In Egypt it was silence or shouting. Now it’s a great conversation

The fall of Hosni Mubarak – and the instruments of state oppression – have allowed the Tahrir Square mindset to spread Shortly before midnight on Wednesday 9 February, I was with a friend in a small coffee shop in Zamalek, the Cairo district where I live. It was that period when Hosni Mubarak’s government had unlocked the jails, turned thousands of violent criminals loose, “vanished” the police from the streets of the cities and switched off most of the lights. There was a curfew in place from 6pm, but we, and the coffee shop, were ignoring it. We had been in Tahrir Square (where else?) and left it ringing with chants, speeches and debate. But we felt cold and were looking for something to eat before going to our respective homes. It was less than 48 hours before the fall of Mubarak. That morning al-Shorouk newspaper had carried a brief item on the report which my friend – let’s call him MH – and I, along with48 others, had lodged the previous day with the public prosecutor, demanding an investigation into Mubarak’s wealth. Other truants from Tahrir headed for the sushi bar upstairs and we were mostly alone, until a man came in carrying a notebook, sat in the opposite corner and started to work. He was maybe in his late 30s. Smart casual. I thought I clocked him clocking us but I wasn’t sure. As we were leaving he stood up and intercepted us at the door. Quietly he asked if we were MH and AS. We were, we said. I’ve been thinking about how to reach you; may we speak? So we stepped outside and he told us that he had been collecting evidence of the Mubaraks’ financial misdemeanours and had put together one complete case: it’s not very much, he said, only around $13m (£8m) – but it’s watertight. And on a napkin braced against the plate-glass window of our coffee shop he drew the diagram of the financial structure he had uncovered. We gave him our email addresses, agreed that we did not need to know his name and he went to find an internet cafe. Within an hour the documented case had arrived – from “an Egyptian” – in our mailboxes. The next day it was appended to the prosecutor’s report. When I tell this story to friends outside Egypt their first reaction is: “Didn’t you think it might be a set-up?” And the truth is that, no, we didn’t. We trusted him. Why? Well, I didn’t think about it at the time but, looking back, it’s clear: MH and I – and our anonymous friend – were behaving within the framework established in the liberated Tahrir Square on 28 January: we, the people, were rejecting the Mubarak strategies that were meant to make us suspicious and fearful; to turn us against each other. And we were right. A few days after Mubarak’s fall we met our friend once more, again on a late-night quest for coffee and cheesecake. This time we learned his name and exchanged phone numbers – and I left him and MH deep in napkins and diagrams tracking further millions. There was a moment in Tahrir, early on, when sitting on a low wall I watched two young men walking towards me, deep in conversation. One was saying: “The parliamentary system will be better for us because we need to break away from the cult of the leader,” and the other interrupted: “But the ‘leader’ doesn’t have to be a dictator; he could be a useful …” and then they were out of earshot. I gazed after them, feeling I had witnessed something extraordinary. And I had: I’d seen two men, openly, on a Cairo street, discuss an issue bordering on the political. It was the normalcy of it that was so extraordinary, and that was a measure of the repression we had been living under. People had expressed themselves before, of course, but the violence of the regime was such that dissent had to be shouted. You shouted or you shut up. And people shouted – with rising frequency. This revolution was born of the protests that started with the great march against the Iraq war in 2003 and were continued by Kefaya and, later, other groups, and spread so that by 2011 every sector of society was shouting. It was in 2004 that protest slogans started to pinpoint what would become the targets of this revolution: “Down, down with Hosni Mubarak,” broke a barrier of fear. And next came: “State security, tell us straight / Where’s our security? Where’s our state?” My moment of personal unease came on Saturday 5 February. I’d been to the square, gone to a studio to do an interview, then rushed home to keep a 6pm appointment with an Indian TV crew. A moment after I’d let the two young women with all their equipment into the flat, my doorbell rang again. It was the concierge’s daughter. Excuse me, she said, but who are the people who have just come to see you? Since when, I said, do you ask such questions? Well, she said, the [state security] intelligence came round asking if there were foreigners or media visiting any residents. It’s your home and you can do what you like, but we’ll have to report to them. I did the interview. I even insisted on making tea. But I packed an overnight bag, and when the young women left, I left with them. I did the next interview on the phone, locked in my car in a dark dark garage. Then I stayed at

Posted by on March 8, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.