I have left Cairo, but it seems Cairo will not leave me. The
truth is, my heart is breaking for Egypt.
Yesterday I wrote paragraph after paragraph of the kind of
personal essay material I’ve been writing for the past year. But the poetry of
it seems wrong. What is happening is horrible and there is no way to write
about it “right” that isn’t simple and raw. The whole year (the year I was in Egypt) seems pointless,
wasted. It’s even more painful to watch the country fracture into smaller and
smaller pieces, each calling the others traitors or infidels, when I think
about the moments and hope and promise (January 25, February 11, June 30). All
this “eid wahda” – “one hand” –
stuff: it seems so empty now. Yes, I felt a pit in my stomach on July 3, but it
didn’t seem like a point of no return. Now more than 700 people are dead in two
days, and it does.
Certainly democracy is a pipe dream, but even peaceful
coexistence seems far-fetched. Why would anyone think participation in the
political system means anything now? There is no game in town except the army,
and they will make sure that doesn’t change. In any case, it seems that no one’s
hands are untarnished.
Of course, I’m no longer in Cairo. And for the first time, I
am really glad I am not. It’s not the lack of security that makes me suddenly
glad to be far away, but this: How can anyone go about the day with such
searing divisions hanging between friends, neighbors, colleagues? Even between
those so-called liberals, the kind of people I knew or who lived in my building
or shopped in the same stores and ate in the same cafes: Some stand by the
military and some have changed their mind. For those, I think it must be a
bitter pill to swallow. But how do you just look the people around you on the
street in the eye and carry on? It’s no longer just a matter of political
differences, but a matter of moral conscience.
How can Egypt possibly move forward? How can anyone forgive
or forget?
On Wednesday morning, I woke up early for work and scrolled
groggily through Facebook statuses about beaches and babies and haircuts. Then suddenly
the Arabic posts appeared, a lot of them all at once. The order had finally
been executed to clear the sit-ins.
Any elegance, any grace that had attached itself to politics
– the kind of healthy and hopeful protest that saw Cairokee weaving through
Tahrir singing about the Voice of Freedom or ballet dancers pirouetting against
the Culture Minister on a makeshift stage outside his compound – had dissolved.
In its place was something ugly and divisive, mangled bodies, a video of an APC
being thrust off a bridge and pelted with stones, pleas for mercy from doctors
at a field hospital showered with bullets.
I saw a photo Tweeted from Mostafa Mahmoud mosque in
Mohandiseen, where Morsi supporters began to reassemble after their previous
camp was bulldozed. I checked the article several times – how was it possible?
This was the spot where twice I had met friends as they joined the secularist
protests against the Morsi regime. It was also where there was a Cilantro cafe
where I’d done a Princeton interview with a well-groomed teenager with a
designer purse. Nearby was the new H&M store where I’d gone shopping just
before I left; the BMW showroom where Seeko and I once pretended to be
customers. I tried to imagine a gun battle on the leafy streets, or empty and
barricaded and covered with debris. I couldn’t.
I also heard reports of the Nahda Square sit-in being
dispersed. Its human contents were spilling out – some limping and bloody,
others bearing weapons – into surrounding neighborhoods. What lay between my
calm pocket of Dokki and Cairo University were the Orman Botanical Gardens. I’ve
written about them before -- dry, overgrown, forgotten – and, since July 3, guarded with a tank. “Bulldozers
in Orman” I read somewhere, and the flower show I went to just a few months ago
floated into my mind. There were waterfalls for your backyard, exotic cactuses,
and even a man with a cage full of doll-like Persian cats. Families strolled in
the aisles planning their gardens in the suburbs and young guys dashed around
with wheelbarrows offering to take your purchases (or you) for a ride.
I also remembered how Magdy had promised me, when I first
started seeing him, that we would take a picnic to Orman. Later I reminded him,
but by this point the protests had started. “Of course,” he had said, “We’ll go
after the revolution.”
The relationship ended before that revolution did. Now there
were guns and bulldozers.
I’ve had such a hard time reconciling these images because
things like this just don’t happen in places I know. They happen far away,
where anonymous people kill another anonymous people.
On July 1, the military had just made its ultimatum, and the
air was tense but hopeful. Change was coming. I told Magdy I was nervous about
the military’s intentions – was it really interested in democracy? I doubted
it.
The only way left to
go is Left, he told me. We’ve tried
everything else.
Like so many people I talked to in those days, he was sure
that the military had learned its boundaries. SCAF rule had been tried before,
and it hadn’t worked. The people had spoken again, and this time they would be
heard.
But who are the people, really? I think this latest episode
has shown that the people who revolted on January 25, 2011 were not just one
thing rising up in harmony against a shriveled autocracy. The harmony was, it
seems, a tragic illusion that could only last so long. There is no consensus
about what Egypt should be.
The devolution into smaller and smaller factions is horrible.
ElBaradei leaves and is accused of being a traitor by his own Dostour Party and
the Tamarod Movement – all those bright young people who led millions of people
to the street and now refuse to acknowledge that the military has betrayed
their ideals, defending the military’s actions with a stomach-turning
absolutism. Or maybe their ideals are different than we thought.
What’s next? Baradei & his cohort have made their exit.
It seems he thought this was finally his moment, after rejecting a few others.
Turns out he was wrong. Likely he’ll try again later. Who else is waiting in
the wings? Nobody, it seems this time. In any case, I can’t imagine there is
anyone who could unite factions so rudely torn apart
At work, I plugged in my headset and streamed OnTV, a
post-revolution satellite channel that was supposed to represent the new wave
of independent media. Instead, it is a new kind of propagandistic drivel.
Before we could ridicule it, but now it made me nauseous. Carrying a weapon is an undemocratic act, said one of the pundits
knowingly, before correcting himself to specify civilians. All these people are carrying weapons. They’re terrorists. Of course
the military must respond with force. Then came the West-bashing segment, a
favorite. The West wants to compare us to
Rwanda! Said a voice off-screen. They
issue statements comparing our clashes to the Tutus and the Hutsis, he
added incredulously, mixing up the names of the tribes. Dealing with the Egyptian people as if they’re a savage people?! This
is not acceptable. Ah, racism to stoke the fire. A little later in the programming, the presenter brought up
the burning of a police station in Kerdasa. A handful of conscripts were
killed. There should be a public funeral
for these martyrs of duty and honor! he proclaimed, lauding them for
fighting attacks that were the utmost of horror and ugliness. The tagline at
the corner of the screen read: The people’s word against extremism.
I had to shut it off. The whole year I lived suddenly felt
like a sunny anomaly in a pressure cooker destined for incineration. Was this
what lay below the surface all along, waiting for the right moment to bubble
up?
As I closed my eyes to sleep, a giant airbrushed portrait of
El Sisi floated before my eyes. It was unfurled – one of three – across the façade
of the villa across the square from my apartment. He stared (not quite at me,
but slightly averted) into the distance, his expressionless face and uniformed
chest floating on an empty white background. I tried to block it out.
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