(Less Scattered) Thoughts on Thawrah 25 yanayir

Somehow, it's already been nine years since one of the most seminal series of events in my life took place. At the same time, it's hard to believe that it's only been nine years since whatever it was that happened...

Like so many other Egyptians, the 2011 revolution felt like my raison d'être. Even from halfway across the world, it was difficult to think of much else. I remember skipping lecture after lecture just to steal away into the library and obsessively refresh my Twitter feed, aching to be there myself. It gave me a reason to write that felt like something bigger than me and my tiny world. 

In addition to recognizing the difference in atmosphere between Egypt and Canada, I’d grown up largely listening to my father’s own memories of living in a repressed, paranoid military state. It all made this movement feel that much more important. Here was a country in which anti-government opinion was restricted from all media, inside and out. A country filled with stories of police aggression--some made notorious (like the audacious 2010 murder of Khaled Saeed by Egyptian police in an internet cafe), some disguised in films that toed the line of censorship, and some only whispered amongst terrified neighbours when nobody else was listening. 

Never had we been given so much access to the news coming out of Egypt. Every major media outlet was locked into the quickly unfolding events. Every channel we tuned into seemed to be reporting live from the scene, or engaged in some sort of discourse around the revolution. And of course there were the videos being uploaded to Youtube, videos that carried narratives the bigger networks were too afraid to show. Outside of my father's daily insistence on reminding us of the place, I had never seen so much focus on the country I was raised to consider "home".

Egyptian Revolution Solidarity March in Toronto (January 2011)

And it wasn't just the Egyptians back home or in the diaspora (or those from the diaspora who went back home for the revolution) who kept me engaged. Finally my friends were asking me about things other than the pyramids, my professors involving me in conversations that didn't revolve around the free will of Muslim women. One of my English professors at the time--a well-known poet who openly spoke of his own revolutionary tendencies as a youth--especially indulged my preoccupation. We exchanged handwritten messages about the developments in Egypt after class and interesting articles with intersecting opinions on the future of the revolution.

I've memorized my father's nostalgic and proudly recounted version of the military coup that overtook the British. It was as if he was directly involved in the cause of liberating their country. It wasn’t so much that he was living vicariously through Nasser and his comrades, but living alongside them--when they spent countless months planning and re-planning every step without leaving a paper trail, when they took over state radio to make the announcement, and when they paraded through the same Tahrir Sq. among thousands of people…As the headlines quickly went from "protest" to "unrest" to "revolution", I felt like I was able to relate in ways I never had  before. This new raison d'être was also a means by which I could wrestle some attention from my ever-elusive father.

In those few months, everything took on mythic proportions.

As one of the most enthralling and deeply embedded bloggers to cover the revolution @sandmonkey once wrote,

"It's hard not to disengage from reality when observing or experiencing the revolution; through it we have lived all of our Hollywood cinematic fantasies." 

I used to cry a lot about the revolution. It was the infectious tone of hope by demonstrators, carried in the clever chants of hundreds, thousands of in-synch voices. It was the scenes of brutal violence that met them, and the stories of those mourning the (too) many who lost their lives in the carnage. It was the impassioned arguments I had with my father, who suddenly seemed to embody the general malaise that seemed to overshadow what had felt like the most momentous time I would ever witness. It was the eventual reality that perhaps the revolution was over, and that whatever dreams I once obsessed over may have just ended up being fantasies.

 

As the pace of the events sped into what felt like a constant whirlwind, thinking about everything seemed to induce a sense of vertigo. At times it felt like too much to keep up with, in other moments it felt like everything was at a standstill and I was just halfway across the world, helplessly waiting. In the last few years, my reactive responses have given way to a nostalgia painted in cynical hues. Losing my father last year meant losing a lifeline to the place I'd inherited as homeland. And my relationship to the idea of Egypt as my only "home" has only grown more complicated, nuanced, and precarious. 

In a post from February of 2011 (called "Scattered Thoughts on Egypt", of course),  I shared some of my conflicting feelings on the revolution. When I read them today I felt a tiny spark of the intensity those days brought to my life, and I feel a tinge of the lassitude that hasn't subsided since. Mostly I felt the sense of belonging to the revolution, of finding "home":

I sat by watching, my mind eager to snatch any new breakthroughs or information. My energy went from being fully devoted to listening to the stories from the front lines, to feeling weary and almost wishing the entire situation would just end.I've had trouble eating and sleeping, and have obsessively spent my time flipping between CNN and BBC, to getting live streams of Al Jazeera online. It borders on hysteria. 

I've Youtubed the same videos over and over, marched with hundreds of Torontonians for 2 Saturdays in a row, and have relentlessly pounded my cousin with questions about what its REALLY like down there.I've engaged in debates, explained what was happening to anybody who will listen, and brushed up on historical accounts of the power struggle that has ailed my country for decades. 

I'm tired. 

The other day, I scolded myself for feeling this way. I thought "What on earth gives YOU the right to feel weary and over-informed when these heroes are out there on the streets, determined to find an end that can satisfy them?!?"But am I really wrong for needing a break from all this overexposure? Have I betrayed my country and fellow Egyptians every time I've given a half-assed answer to people's questions in order to avoid launching into a full conversation?---- 

I'm at the point where I can look back at the full range of emotions and ideas I've had since January 25, and almost pinpoint the days when my attitude went from an excited, curious, hopeful observer, to a weary, almost paranoid bystander who got sucked into a dramatic scenario unwillingly. 

I remember feeling, albeit selfishly, PROUD and EXCITED that my country was making headline news. For once in my 21 years in Toronto, people recognized the flag on my bag. For once, I could head downtown and find hundreds of other supporters of the Egyptian people, speaking my language, sharing my vision for the future of our homeland. 

And I ate it right up. I stayed glued to CNN, collected any newspaper headlines (most, making front-page) about Egypt, and shared videos on my feed.

I've absorbed the news with an almost sadistic pleasure. I hate the way they make us look on TV. I resent the images of people fighting off men on horseback, burning pictures and flags- this is merely a snapshot of a situation that the rest of the world wants to dismiss as black-and-white, ignoring the multi-faceted colours emerging with every new image, testimony, or minute change... 

But I love seeing my country on there...

Making Myths Out of Massacres: on Rabaa & the challenges of mourning

"Right there. That's where it happened."

I follow Mohamed's nod, trying to take a long look at the somewhat distant cluster of buildings, fruitlessly searching for a minaret or anything to indicate the presence of a mosque. Our van defiantly lurches ahead, the image disappearing behind us before I can register any meaningful details. 

It's 2014 and our biennial family trip to Egypt is coming to a close as we drive through Madinet Nasr. Mohamed, the young man hired to drive us (and our growing pile of belongings) around the country for the summer, expertly navigates the full van through traffic. Polite and soft-spoken, he hasn't said much for the whole trip, even during the endless drives to the Red Sea a few weeks earlier when he brought a friend to accompany him. Sometimes I catch his spectacled gaze in the rear-view mirror, though it never seems prying.

"Atee3a! To hell with them!" my mom proclaims with uncharacteristic crudeness from the row furthest back. "They were going to bring down the whole country."

By "they", she is referring to The Muslim Brotherhood, who seem to have re-assumed their position as Voldermort-like sources of death and destruction in the psyche of people like my mother and father, whose mere mention by name proves too mention. "They" also happen to include Mohamed, who has just pointed out the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque to our left. I stare at his face in the rearview mirror, looking for anything, even a flinch, but Mohammed's eyes stay glued to the road, unchanging. I feel a tinge of shame for my mother and after fighting back the urge to react to such a harsh display, I feel the shame for myself.

This is the way it has always been whenever my parents, relatives, or their friends refer to the Brotherhood (or whatever conveniently constitutes that category at the time). They are not unlike many Egyptians, and many more diasporic Egyptians whose allegiance is inextricably tied to a regime that plays into their fear of instability and promises to deliver that rare, depleted regional resource, security--even as it actively compromises the safety of those it pretends to protect. Indeed, even if this allegiance compromises more important things, like their moral standards.

Just one month prior to this, on the cusp of the one year anniversary of the deadly dispersal, another moment of (imagined?) tension surfaced during a drive with Mohamed. Human Rights Watch had just released their controversial report on "The Rab’a Massacre and Mass Killings of Protesters in Egypt", forcing open the wound that had been callously bandaged by those crafting the narrative for people like my parents. It wasn't surprising to see the immediate reaction to details about the mass murders, to watch the reactive denial of eyewitness accounts and registered figures. It wasn't surprising but it was disheartening. Throughout the discussion happening between my cousins and parents and the accompanying friend in the passenger seat, I kept looking to Mohamed for a response. He said nothing and drove.

Perhaps I am just projecting all of these expectations on Mohamed. Maybe all those conflicting ideologies packed into one van isn't such a big deal after all?

We learned of Mohamed's affiliation with the Brotherhood during the first ride we shared with him. When the driver hired to take us to Alexandria didn't show up several hours after he was scheduled to, my cousin offered to send a trusted friend with a van to help us out of the predicament. My mother seemed to pause, considering her options as she heard the name, but it was the day before Eid and she must have realized it was either Mohamed or missing out on Alex. A tall, stocky young man with a light beard and big glasses showed up within the hour, whisking our heavy bags into the large white tourist van that would become our main means of transport for the remainder of our stay. I don't remember the exact conversation that lead to the revelation of his association with the group, but I do remember it being a hot topic of conversation in the apartment that night. Eventually no one spoke about it at all.

Maybe that's why it was so easy to blindly deny the tragic reality and to propagate the regime's narrative right in his face.

I remember casually reading through the HRW report over a light breakfast and carrying on with my day, only remembering it if it popped up on my Twitter timeline. I was horrified by the flagrant brutality, but I was looking for something more tangible than shock. That overwhelming spate of grief I sought eluded me. Had I too become desensitized to "them"?

All sorts of thoughts are interrupting themselves in my head as we pull further away from Rabaa. The cacophony of chatter surrounding me fades into the background. I am being pulled by that same feeling that gripped at me as I walked through Midan el Tahrir months earlier, my first visit since the events of 2011. It is like a combination of grief and guilt, made heavier by the need to repress it. By the pressure to participate in the active denial of these realities. Or worse yet, to partake in the delusion that such loss, such taking of life, is ultimately inconsequential.

I turn my head all the way back to squint at the site, but by now all I can see are the massive military buildings in the horizon as Mohamed drives on.

Scattered Thoughts about Egypt

Hours turned to days, then days now to weeks. I sat by watching, my mind eager to SNATCH any new breakthroughs or information. My energy went from being fully devoted to listening to the stories from the front lines, to feeling weary and almost wishing the entire situation would just end.

I've had trouble eating and sleeping, and have obsessively spent my time flipping between CNN and BBC, to getting live streams of Al Jazeera online. It borders on hysteria.

I've Youtubed the same videos over and over, marched with hundreds of Torontonians for 2 Saturdays in a row, and have relentlessly pounded my cousin with questions about what its REALLY like down there.
I've engaged in debates, explained what was happening to anybody who will listen, and brushed up on historical accounts of the power struggle that has ailed my country for decades.

I'm tired.
The other day, I scolded myself for feeling this way. I thought "What on earth gives YOU the right to feel weary and over-informed when these heroes are out there on the streets, determined to find an end that can satisfy them?!?"

But am I really wrong for needing a break from all this overexposure? Have I betrayed my country and fellow Egyptians every time I've given a half-assed answer to people's questions in order to avoid launching into a full conversation?
----

I'm at the point where I can look back at the full range of emotions and ideas I've had since January 25, and almost pinpoint the days when my attitude went from an excited, curious, hopeful observer, to a weary, almost paranoid bystander who got sucked into a dramatic scenario unwillingly.
I remember feeling, albeit selfishly, PROUD and EXCITED that my country was making headline news. For once in my 21 years in Toronto, people recognized the flag on my bag. For once, I could head downtown and find hundreds of other supporters of the Egyptian people, speaking my language, sharing my vision for the future of our homeland.
And I ate it right up. I stayed glued to CNN, collected any newspaper headlines (most, making front-page) about Egypt, and shared videos via my page.

It wasn't until the 5th or so day that I began questioning the over-saturated coverage. WHY was CNN (which has, in the process, became the manifested representation of Americans for me) so deliberately covering every nuance and detail of the unfolding "crisis" as they put it? WHY could I now pick up any newspaper, conservative or mainstream, and see the word "dictator" beside Hosni Mubarak's name?
I've always been a firm believer in a lot of conspiracy theories. But with the relentless, almost "Big-Brother"-like involvement of the US in everything that has transpired since the fateful day in January, I've taken an unhealthy approach to the apparent American conspiracy being played out in front of us.

How could people be sooo eager to listen to Obama's statements about Mubarak and the protestors, when Mubarak himself (the man at the centre of this drama) hadn't even made an attempt to comment. How could American diplomats and Israeli power-houses continue to taint the mainstream opinion- to demonize the protestors and insist that Mubarak is a pillar of stability in the region.
Could millions of people- some on the streets, some unable to go public with their feelings after experiencing a brutally repressive regime for decades- be wrong?
Are Egyptians, Arabs, Middle-Easterners- are they all too stupid to choose who they would like to represent their state? Is the right to self-determination reserved for Western countries whose political representatives are nothing but mere puppets of the same system?
Is it really a crime to demand that your country undergo a period of restoration?

I've absorbed CNN with an almost sadistic pleasure. I hate the way they make us look on TV. I resent the images of people fighting off men on horseback, burning pictures and flags- this is merely a snapshot of a situation that the rest of the world wants to dismiss as black-and-white, ignoring the multi-faceted colours emerging with every new image, testimony, story of a protestor's disappearance, or minute "change" in the government. These all help tell the story of a country, a people, torn between the lives they have come to know and the unpredictable, intimidating change that "threatens" to swoop in.
But I love seeing my country on there...

Power is revealed only by striking true

“ Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

-       Honore de Balzac

I’ve been examining the whole situation (for lack of an adequate word) going on in Egypt with a bit of divided perspective. On the one hand, I feel the way I’ve felt since my 2010 visit- the moment I first saw a civil protest in Cairo’s main downtown square (ironically “Liberation Square”-Tahrir in Arabic). That I’d grown up largely listening to my father’s own memories of living in a repressed, paranoid military state probably led me to feel as awed and curious as I did when I saw the demonstration.

Here was a country in which anti-government opinion was strictly restricted from all media. A country filled with stories of police aggression- some made notorious (like the apparent brutal 2010 murder of blogger Khaled by Egyptian police), and some only whispered amongst terrified neighbours when nobody’s listening.

And these are just things my generation and I have been exposed to as the country’s 30-year “state of emergency” remains.

To fully understand the scope of today's Egypt would mean diving into my father’s memories, and those of the generations before him who lived to see numerous wars, an independence from the British, instability throughout the entire region, and a military revolution.

But that last point is one of the most fascinating, to me, and has been for as long as I remember.

Growing up I would listen, stunned, to my father nostalgically, and more importantly, proudly recount the story of how Colonel Nasser and some other important military figures overtook the British-led monarchy and installed their own Egyptian leaders. It was as if he, like every other Egyptian lucky enough to see that proud day, was directly involved in the cause of liberating their country. It wasn’t so much that they were living vicariously through Nasser and his comrades, but living alongside them- when they took over state radio to make the announcement, when they spent countless months planning and re-planning every step without leaving a paper trail, and when they paraded through the same Tahrir Sq. to, again, thousands of people…

Now I must make mention of the 2nd perspective I have, one almost diametrically opposed to the first, one grounded in pragmatism and an understanding that things are never as black-and-white as they seem.

 From the first reports taken of the protests, to the powerful images surfacing up everyday, the message has been the same- there is an unspoken and strong bond between the Egyptian people and the military. Maybe this is due to the fact that Egypt has a conscription law still in effect- essentially, every male must serve in the military. Thus, the military and the Egyptian citizens are synonymous. Or maybe it has something to do with the history of military operations in their country—indeed, the military leaders at one point created the Egyptian Egypt. That feeling of pride and identity, and knowing what it means to be an Egyptian- and not an Arab, North African, Middle Easterner, etc.- was reinforced by Nasser and the other decorated leaders. Whatever the case, the famous image of the old weeping Egyptian woman kissing the cheek of a young, uniformed Egyptian solider with piercing eyes, perfectly captures that soldier-civilian relationship. However disillusioned the people have become by their government’s strict system of security, they have found a way to embrace their soldiers wholeheartedly.

Which brings me to my main point. Much has been said about Egypt’s current president Hosni Mubarak- he’s a tyrant, a peaceful leader of the region, an incompetent president whose relied on American aid too often, a beacon of stability in the Middle East, a dictator (a label Western news outlets have avidly embraced for the first time), a wealthy, aged power-hungry lunatic, etc. But there hasn’t been much mention of Mubarak’s rise to power and his role in the 1952 Revolution.

Mubarak actually got his background in the military, graduating from the military academy and climbing the ranks to finally become Commander of Egypt's Air Force & Deputy Minister of Defense. In fact, he was rewarded and promoted for his outstanding services in the military during the Sixth of October War. With such noted roles in the military and an intense pilot training past, Mubarak's role in the 1952 Revolution cannot be undermined or ignored.

Maybe thats what continues to draw people like my father (he himself grew up in a military household and dreamed of being a soldier after witnessing the Egyptian Independence Movement) to the aged Mubarak. Ideas like loyalty, death before dishonour, and dying a hero are ones highly valued by people with close ties/sentiments to the military. And as I outlined before, Egyptians really have no choice but to feel this way towards their own soldiers.
That's is why its so difficult for me to maintain an agenda that is 100% compliant with the protestors. Maybe a bit of me relates to the sentiments my father has. Maybe as an Egyptian it's difficult for me to watch one of my own go through this public debacle. Like I said, the issue is grey at best- never black and white. Who will replace Mubarak? How will the USA continue to interfere in Egypt's domestic happenings? If Mubarak is the lesser of 2 evils (the other evil being the Muslim Brotherhood), how can we ask him to step down and instill one of our own? And finally, what about the transition? How will a new government be integrated? Will there be an interim government in the meantime, and if so who decides who that government is? The questions are endless.

However, an important thing separates me from my father and other Egyptian supporters of the regime. I grew up in Canada. This is a country known for promoting it's democratic ideals and a traditionally liberal, capitalistic agenda. We enjoy regular elections, political stability, and (almost always), a transparent government. I, like most other Canadians and even those Bush-electing Americans, can never imagine a system in which we were forced to sit by and watch a leader, who none of us seem to remember electing, continue being in power for 30 plus years. With all opposition prevented from having a voice, its not like an election would do the job anyway.
I can sympathize with those supporters because I know what they want: life, liberty and the freedom to pursue happiness. I know, because living in Canada, I am given those things without ever really facing the threat of losing them...

My sister got me one of those cool day-by-day calendars of Inspiring & Enlightening Quotes. Everyday I rip off a day to reveal some insightful-sometimes ideological, sometimes overly cheesy- advice/knowledge/ideas from different artists, theorists, writers, teachers, etc.

And on January 29, four days after the fateful demonstrations began, I ripped off another day to reveal the insight for that day. The quote was from French novelist Honore de Balzac, and came at such an appropriate time that I was compelled against all laziness to sit down and right this post:

 “ Power is not revealed by striking hard or often, but by striking true.”

And, as Hosni Mubarak has learned the hard way over this past week, his hard-struck, often-used power has essentially come to an end. Let's just pray and ensure that whatever future awaits my homeland, there will be eras of truth-revealing power.

The Last Pharoah

"The Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, through his spirit, courage and creative thought, and through the dream of the greater Arab homeland, is not a memory, nor is he yesterday's cause. He is the present, today's cause, the cause of the shining Arab tomorrow, to which the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser devoted his whole life and died a martyr, as a pan-Arab nationalist and Egyptian patriot and as a Palestinian resistance fighter on the soil of struggle and confrontation against colonialism, both old and new; against the usurpation of Palestine and its colonization; and against division and fragmentation.

He is glory and dignity. The cause of the Warrior-President Gamal Abd-Al Nasser and his message and struggle is the cause of each and every Arab from the Atlantic Ocean to the Gulf, whether he be a ruler or an ordinary citizen, because the principles of Abd Al-Nasser are the principles on whose basis our Arab nation is rising up and taking its place in the sun.

The Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser devoted his life to the glory of the Arab nation and its unity and dignity, and to expelling the forces of colonialism from all regions of the Arab homeland...[It is Abd Al-Nasser who proclaimed], 'Colonialism should now pick up its walking staff and leave,' 'from now on, there is no place for colonialists, occupiers, and invaders,' and 'this land is Arab, and no flag but that of the Arab nation shall ever fly above it.'

 The Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser is alive in his nation and in Arab minds, and in the Arab hands that carry his message about Arab liberation, unity and progress. They will never abandon his principles and never lay down the banner that president Abd Al-Nasser raised - a banner that is a lighthouse shedding a bright light for the whole [Arab] nation... he is not a memory but the soul of the Arab nation....

...I say to you with confidence that the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser is with us in the trenches, with us under siege, with us in self-sacrifice [in battle]. [He is with us] with his thought and his manliness, creative spirit, and stature that neither bow nor retreat, no matter how difficult the struggle and how great the sacrifices...

We therefore have no path other than that of steadfastness and sacrifice for the sake of the homeland, the [Arab] nation, and the future. We salute the Warrior-President Gamal Abd Al-Nasser, the lantern shining before the nation and its [future] generations. The warrior Gamal Abd Al-Nasser - the president, the commander, the leader, the pioneer - is alive in our midst and in our [future] generations. He has not died and shall never die. Peace and God's mercy and blessings be upon you."


- Yasser Arafat
(delivering a euolgy on the 33rd anniversary of Nasser's death)

Egypt's "People's Revolution" comes to Toronto

I've been so caught up trying to find out all the information that I can about the current movement taking place in Egypt right now.
I've been flicking through mainstream news channels, searching for independent media sources, and clicking away at various websites.

Today, I was very excited to take part in Toronto's own show of solidarity with the Egyptian protestors.
People started gathering at Dundas Square (Yonge & Dundas, Downtown Toronto) well before 2:00, the hour the demonstration was slated to start in.

I was definitely feeling the crowd's energy-which by some reports, numbered over 600 at some points. I instantly had an overwhelming sense of pride as I watched people of all ethinicites chant along in the crowds. I wore my huge Egyptian flag proudly, and just took in the collective force that I swear I felt.

Snapped some of these photos before my battery died: