On the State of Egypt (20 page)

The demands of the Copts must be national, not sectarian. The proper place for the Copts is not at all in the corridors of western foreign ministries. Their proper place is here, in Egypt, with their Egyptian brothers, fighting for justice and freedom. When the despotic regime disappears and all Egyptians wrest back their natural right to choose their rulers freely, when emergency law, election rigging, repression, and torture come to an end, only then will all Egyptians, Muslims and Copts, obtain the rights they have been denied.

Democracy is the solution.

January 25, 2010

Egypt Awakened

A
lthough the Egyptian government officially ignored the arrival of Mohamed ElBaradei in Egypt, it did in fact send a clear message to Egyptians when the Interior Ministry detained several young people simply for urging Egyptians to go out and welcome him. The security agencies also made it clear that they would not allow Egyptians to rally to greet ElBaradei at the airport and announced they had mobilized eight thousand riot police to deal with anyone who gathered there. These unofficial statements were leaked and some ‘independent’ newspapers published them on their front pages in the same form on the morning ElBaradei arrived in Egypt. I read these reports as I was preparing to go to the airport and I was certain that, given this campaign of intimidation, Egyptians would naturally be reluctant to go and welcome ElBaradei. It’s true that greeting someone at the airport can never amount to a crime, even under the emergency law by which President Mubarak has governed Egypt for the past thirty years, but since when have the Egyptian police needed a charge to arrest anyone they want? Egyptian citizens know well the extent of the abuses committed by the security agencies. On many previous occasions the security agencies have not flinched from committing horrendous crimes to suppress demonstrators: beatings, detention, sexual abuse of protesters, and hiring thugs and calling in convicted criminals to shed protesters’ blood while policemen look on without intervening. I knew that, and I told myself that although it is true that Egyptians like and support ElBaradei, it is also true that fear is a human instinct we have to understand. I braced myself not to be disappointed if only a meager number turned out. But as soon as I reached the airport I was taken by surprise by hundreds of Egyptians, who soon became thousands, all of whom had come to greet ElBaradei. They were not frightened by the government’s terrorism or the threats of the security agencies. They wanted to prove to the whole world that they would support Mohamed ElBaradei and would work with him to recover the rights they have lost. The vast and impressive popular reception that Egyptians organized for Mohamed ElBaradei’s return to Egypt conveys several important messages:

First, from now on no one can accuse Egyptians of being passive, submissive to injustice, disengaged from public affairs, or any other of those claims that no longer reflect the reality of Egypt. The thousands of Egyptians who conquered their fear and gathered at the airport to welcome ElBaradei were not professional politicians, and most of them did not belong to political parties. They were very ordinary Egyptians, like our neighbors or our colleagues at work, and they came from different provinces and different social classes. Some of them came in luxury cars and many came by public transport. They included university professors, professionals, students, farmers, writers, artists, and housewives, Muslims and Copts, women with and without veils and some wearing
niqab
. These Egyptians, different in every way, all agreed on change, on serious work to restore justice and freedom. Egyptian public opinion, once a hypothetical term, has now become a real popular force whose influence is growing day by day. That force revealed itself in all its strength on the day of the reception for ElBaradei.

Second, I congratulate Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei on the trust Egyptians have in him at the same time as I realize the weight of the responsibility thrown on his shoulders. The thousands of Egyptians who stood all day to greet him are in fact representative of the millions of Egyptians who like him and trust him. I was standing in the middle of the crowd when an old woman came up to me and asked to speak to me in private. I took her aside and in a low voice she asked me, “Do you think the government will do anything to harm Dr. ElBaradei?” When I assured her that this was most unlikely, she sighed with relief and said, “May God protect him.” For millions of Egyptians Mohamed ElBaradei has become a symbol of hope for change in every sense. Perhaps the deafening chants at the airport—“Here are the crowds, ElBaradei; there’s no going back, ElBaradei”—clearly reflect how much Egyptians trust ElBaradei and that they are confident, as I am, that he will never let them down.

Third, the truly exhilarating aspect of this reception was the great work done by thousands of young people of both genders, most of them university students or young graduates. These people form the power base of support for Mohamed ElBaradei, the unknown soldiers in organizing this historic reception. They set up Facebook groups to support ElBaradei, some of which attracted seventy thousand members, and they prepared well for the reception, using their technical expertise to set up an extensive and effective communications network on the Internet. Several days in advance they prepared and distributed everything necessary: maps of the airport and specific instructions on how to get there by public transport or by car. They even drew up an emergency plan in case the police prevented them from entering and set up a dedicated hot line for people to call if they were detained. The names of the organizers should be recorded on a roll of honor: poet Abdel Rahman Youssef, Heba Elwa, Ahmed Maher, Amr Ali, Bassem Fathi, Nasser Abdel Hamid, Abdel Moneim Imam, and dozens of their colleagues, who really set a high standard for bravery and orderly and systematic national action.

Fourth, from the start the security forces decided not to block people because the international media were all present at the airport and would have caused a major scandal, which the regime did not want, if security had attacked ordinary citizens who had come to greet a respectable public figure who is well-known internationally. Another reason is that the security agencies were confident that Egyptians would be frightened off by the threats and the detentions and that the number of people at the airport would be insignificant. The security agencies did not interfere with the people already inside the airport, but when the number had grown to several thousand, police officers began to harass people just arriving. They kept out all those carrying banners in support of ElBaradei and anyone they suspected was coming to greet him. When ElBaradei’s plane landed, the arrival hall was chock full of people chanting slogans and singing songs. But security prevented ElBaradei from coming out, and closed the gate on the pretext of maintaining his safety. The fact is that security could easily have protected ElBaradei but the decision to keep him back was basically political, because to have ElBaradei emerge surrounded by thousands of chanting supporters in front of the western media was more than the regime could tolerate. Security officials took ElBaradei out through another gate, far from his supporters, but he sent them a message through his brother, Dr. Ali ElBaradei, saying he would come to greet them. The thousands stood around waiting until ElBaradei’s car appeared and he saw for himself the people’s genuine enthusiasm for him.

Friday was a wonderful day in my life because I truly felt I belonged to a great nation. I will always remember the atmosphere of sincerity and enthusiasm I experienced. I will not forget the sight of the thousands of people chanting “Long live Egypt” or singing the national anthem. Some of them could not control their feelings and wept. I will not forget the people eagerly discussing what ElBaradei should do now that he is back in Egypt. They were speaking with the affection and intimacy of friends, though they were meeting for the first time. I will not forget the man who came with his wife and their pretty little girl with two plaits, who sat on his shoulders carrying a picture of ElBaradei. I will not forget the people who gave out mineral water and cold drinks to those present. I will not forget the dignified woman in the
hijab
, the good-hearted Egyptian mother who brought with her several packets of fine dates. She opened them one after the other and started to give them out to people standing around that she did not know. When someone said, “No, thank you,” she gave them an angry look, then smiled and said, “You must eat something. You’ve been on your feet all day and you must be hungry. Please have some.”

This is the Egypt that has woken up, an Egypt that from today onward no one can enslave, treat with contempt, or oppress.

Democracy is the solution.

February 21, 2010

The Story of Mamdouh Hamza

D
r. Mamdouh Hamza is one of the best civil engineers in Egypt. He has supervised dozens of major projects in Egypt and around the world, including in the United States, Britain, and Japan. He has received countless prestigious international prizes and his achievements are a real source of pride for Egyptians and all Arabs. Aside from his professional distinction, Dr. Hamza has a deep sense of public service and believes that knowledge brings with it a responsibility to mankind. He often says that since poor Egyptian taxpayers covered the costs of his studies at Cairo University he has a duty to use his knowledge to help them as much as he can.

When floods recently hit Aswan Province and made thousands of people homeless, Dr. Hamza felt he should do something for the victims, so he appeared on the Orbit television channel with presenter Amr al-Dib and volunteered to help build alternative housing for those displaced by the floods. Donations poured in to the program and soon reached 28 million Egyptian pounds (about $5 million), which was deposited in the account of a charitable organization for the housing project. Enthusiastic about the project, Dr. Hamza abandoned his private work in Cairo and traveled to Aswan to supervise the building work in person for free. As one would expect, the governor of Aswan, Major General Mustafa al-Sayed, welcomed Dr. Hamza warmly and thanked him for contributing his time and effort for the sake of the poor. The governor quickly had a piece of land set aside for the project but then instead offered another piece that was rocky and difficult to build on. But Dr. Hamza, who is a professor of soil mechanics and foundation engineering, accepted the challenge and managed to overcome the problem of the rugged terrain, building twenty-nine houses in the record time of three weeks. Because of his experience he was also able to keep the costs down to the unprecedented amount of 35,000 pounds (about $7,000) per house. Dr. Hamza hoped to extend his project to other parts of Egypt in order to provide shelter for millions of Egyptians who live in inhumane conditions in shantytowns, without basic services such as electricity and sewage systems.

Work was proceeding rapidly and everything seemed propitious for Dr. Hamza’s project to house the poor, but the winds suddenly changed and instead of offering appreciation and praise, the authorities in Aswan turned against Mamdouh Hamza. They refused to provide the project with water, refused to give Dr. Hamza building permits, and refused to pay the wages they had agreed to pay the builders. They even froze the account with the citizen donations and threatened the charity with severe measures if it disbursed a single pound to Dr. Hamza of the donations people had contributed because they trusted his sincerity and competence. They even went as far as to report the project to the police, who arrested some of the engineers and builders while they were working at the site. The police took control of the site, stopped the work, and refused to take statements from Dr. Hamza. In this way Dr. Hamza became enemy number one for the governor of Aswan, who called in some engineers, all of them former students of Dr. Hamza at the college of engineering, to write reports asserting that the houses in the project had construction flaws. Most of the engineers refused to go against their consciences and wrote reports praising the work of their mentor. The governor shelved those reports because they were not to his liking. In the end the governor of Aswan referred the matter to the public prosecutor, a strange procedure given that Dr. Hamza is not a murderer or a thief who requires questioning by prosecutors, but rather a great Egyptian who wanted to serve his country by volunteering his money, time, and effort. Unfortunately we cannot be optimistic about the investigations because the public prosecutor is not independent of the political authorities in Egypt. The question arises: Why did the regime turn against Mamdouh Hamza and oppose him so fiercely after initially welcoming his project? The reasons are as follows:

First, the houses Dr. Hamza built were very inexpensive at 35,000 pounds each, compared with the 80,000 pounds Aswan Province spends on houses for the poor. The difference between the two costs goes into the pockets of big contractors who enjoy close and influential relationships with government agencies. These contractors see the success of Dr. Hamza’s project as the basis for a new model for housing the poor. They realize that if it were to spread, it would be a serious threat to their interests because they would lose millions in profits. Hence they would do everything possible to put an end to Dr. Hamza’s project.

Second, the projects carried out by the provincial authorities will be inaugurated by Suzanne Mubarak, the wife of President Mubarak, and in the minds of officials it would never do for Mrs. Mubarak to open high-cost housing projects for the poor while Mamdouh Hamza is succeeding in building better houses at half the cost. Perhaps the nightmare that haunts senior officials is that Mrs. Mubarak might hear about Mamdouh Hamza’s successful project and ask them this logical question: “How can Dr. Mamdouh Hamza build houses for the poor at half the cost that you charge?”