Q&A with Egypt's Gladiator: Fight with Lion still on! - June 7th, 2011
Given the current state of the economy, it comes as no surprise that many Egyptians are doing all that they can to revive international interest in their country. What is surprising, though, is that one man has somehow managed to convince himself - and a few others - that he can single-handedly “boost tourism in Egypt” by fighting a full-grown African lion in direct hand-to-paw combat, in front of the Pyramids at Giza.
Inexplicably, al-Sayed al-Essawy, a 25-year-old from Daqahlia, has come to believe that “the world will flock to see the Egyptian man who defeated a lion with his bare hands.”
The fight, or “battle” as Essawy, prefers to call it, was announced two weeks ago, immediately igniting a firestorm of international protests and online petitions from individuals and animal rights organizations alike. The negative reaction surprised Essawy, prompting the self-proclaimed “strongest man in the world” to admit to being “confused and heart-broken.”
Nonetheless, Essawy insists that the fight is still on, even if he has to stage the battle in a secret location.
Al-Masry Al-Youm: When, and more importantly, how did you come up with this idea?
Al-Sayed al-Essawy: I discovered my incredible strength at the age of 13, and, almost immediately afterwards, promised myself that, one of these days, I would fight a lion. Since then, I’ve been thinking about the best way to go about it, and, after the revolution, with the economy the way it is, I’ve been given the perfect opportunity to realize my dream.
Essawy: If America, or any other country, had a man with the ability to combat the strongest creature on the planet, they would properly promote him, and use his strength to their advantage. He would become a worldwide phenomenon, and people would come from their countries just to see him. This is what I want to do for my country. Do you understand what an amazing spectacle this will be? It will appeal to everyone. The Gulfis will watch and laugh, the Arabs will be entertained, and the Americans will be fascinated, from a scientific point of view. They will marvel at a truly unprecedented feat. This show will have something for everyone.
Al-Masry: What about animal lovers? Are you aware of how many people your lion-fighting plans have angered? People are threatening to boycott Egypt and any Egyptian products because of you.
Essawy: That’s because they don’t understand what I’m going to do. They think I’m going to kill the lion. I’m not going to kill it, nor will I be armed with a sword or dagger - those are all false reports circulated by the media for reasons I don’t understand.
Al-Masry: So, you’re not going to kill the lion?
Essawy: No. Unless it’s a matter of life or death, in which case I will be forced to kill it.
Al-Masry: When is fighting a lion not a matter of life or death?
Essawy: It’s up to the lion. If he chooses to withdraw, or surrender, and lets me tie him up, then I will not kill him and the fight will end. But, like I said, if it comes down to either me or him, I will have to kill him. But I don’t want to kill the lion, nor am I planning on it. I want to make that clear.
Al-Masry: What will you do with its corpse?
Essawy: I will have it stuffed (laughs).
Al-Masry: What do you have to say to your attackers? How is this, for example, in any way different from, say, bull-fighting, which is a major part of Spain’s tourism industry?
Essawy: Exactly! I made that same point to several other people. To my attackers I say, if you think this is wrong, maybe you should change your perspective, or at least, take it out on the bullfighters too, instead of just me. Besides, this isn’t just for fun, what I’m planning on doing. It’s to help my country, and to send an important message.
Al-Masry: What message are you trying to send?
Essawy: When I defeat the lion - which I will - I will pull an Israeli flag out of my pocket, and drape it over the lion, and put my foot on it. Israel led me to this, through all their atrocities which, as a child, I grew up watching on television. The message is that even though Israel and America may be as strong as a lion - the strongest creature on the planet - they too can be defeated.
Al-Masry: By you?
Essawy: By the Arab youth, which is about to explode. Soon, they will be ready to take on the mightiest foe.
Al-Masry: But, technically, the lion’s only fighting because you’re forcing it to.
Essawy: Yes. It’s a caged fight, so there will be nowhere for the lion to run. I have challenged the lion, and I will defeat it.
Al-Masry: So, to dismiss this as just some really crazy guy beating up an innocent lion would be, in your opinion...
Essawy: Completely inaccurate and misleading. I’m not a crazy person. There’s a political reason behind what I’m doing.
Al-Masry: Besides the international outrage you’ve provoked, have you run into any other difficulties on your quest to fight this lion?
Essawy: So far, I haven’t been able to secure any permits. I sent an official request to the Interior Ministry and they never replied. And there are reports in the media that say I was arrested and my lion confiscated which, as you can see, is clearly not true. But even if I don’t get permits, I will still fight the lion. I will just have to do so in a secret location, and make it only open to journalists who can ensure the type of exposure this event deserves.
Al-Masry: So, without proper exposure, this event will be a failure.
Essawy: Yes. If this battle does not get the positive reaction I’m expecting, then I will be forced to leave the country and go somewhere where they can appreciate a man like me: the strongest man in the world. Which is very upsetting, especially since I’ve announced that 50 percent of the profits from this event will go to the families of the martyrs of the revolution.
Al-Masry: Why do you think it’s been so difficult to get official approval from the government?
Essawy: Undoubtedly because of the misguided international reaction, which I truly don’t understand. God made me, and he made the lion, and he put us both on the same planet, which means the lion is fair game. Ethically, there should be no problem.
Al-Masry: If the event is successful, how will you follow it up? More lion fights?
Essawy: I have a whole series of shows planned in my head. I will pull an airplane with my teeth, and I will pull an airplane with my hair. I will also be run over by an airplane. In between each of these acts, there will be lion battles.
Al-Masry: Have you fought any other beasts before? Will this be your first lion fight?
Essawy: This will be my first battle with a lion, yes. I have fought other animals, mainly dogs. On separate occasions, I have fought three of the most ferocious dog breeds.
Al-Masry: You punch dogs?
Essawy: I punch and kick them.
Al-Masry: How are you training for this specific event?
Essawy: By doing a series of mental exercises. Nothing physical, just brain-training. I visualize the fight for two hours at a time. I visualize the lion, and all the possible ways it could attack. Will it go for the head, or will it grab me by the feet? I ask myself these questions and visualize how I will dodge these attacks.
Al-Masry: What about the lion? Have you been preparing it for the fight by provoking it in any way? Maybe abusing it physically or even verbally, like with trash talk?
Essawy: No, I don’t spend any time with the lion at all; I haven’t even given it a name. I don’t want to get too attached to it. It’s on a friend’s farm, and he’s responsible for it until the day of the battle. I’d also like to point out that the lion will not be tranquilized, and I will give it a blood test directly before the fight in order to prove it.
Al-Masry: What combat techniques will you be implementing against the lion? Will you use martial arts, or will you be resorting to regular street-fighting tactics, like dirt in the eye and crotch-punches?
Essawy: I don’t know about the dirt, but the lion will probably not let me punch its crotch. I will have to use a new fighting style I’ve developed, which is called "Life or Death." This will be a caged fight, and I will be desperate to survive, which is why I’ve called the style “Life or Death.”
Al-Masry: As in a ‘life or death’ situation, like "kill or be killed?"
Essawy: That’s right.
Al-Masry: Even though you’re not going to kill the lion...
Essawy: That’s right.
Al-Masry: How confident are you that you yourself will not be killed?
Essawy: 200 percent. No worries whatsoever. If anything, I’m worried for the lion (laughs).
Al-Masry: Can you elaborate on this "Life or Death" fighting style? Is it more kicking or punching? Fists or open-palmed slaps?
Essawy: Everything. It consists of a series of combination moves. I will start off with the slaps, but, you should know, my slaps are unlike any other. My strength is truly incredible and unprecedented.
Al-Masry: Do you have any advice or suggestions on how to fight a lion for any young children out there interested in following in your footsteps?
Essawy: I don’t think anyone can follow in my footsteps; I have a special gift, and I just want to share it to make people happy and to help my country. But the key to fighting a lion is maintaining eye contact, and, really, not wanting to die. You have to recognize in that situation, it’s you or the lion, and you have to really want it to be you.
Al-Masry: So, basically, you have to be prepared to kill the lion, which you’re supposedly not going to do.
Essawy: Exactly.
Al-Masry: Finally, do you have anything to say to the angered public that you feel might change their mind about this lion fight?
Essawy: I think it’s time we start celebrating genuine talent. For years we’ve been celebrating nothing but sex. I’ve taught children how to chew glass and pull cars with their teeth - the proof is on YouTube. I can raise a generation of super soldiers. I’ve jumped from ten-story buildings, I’ve hung myself many times and have been repeatedly run over. So, when I say I have the intellect and strength to take a lion down, people should take me seriously. Why isn’t anyone listening to me? I don’t know, but it’s very frustrating...
Moqattam clashes speak to political void - Mar. 27th, 2013
During a lull in Friday’s violence, protesters gathered across from a Moqattam mosque to buy refreshments from a kiosk through slits in the protective cardboard wrapped around it by its proprietor.
Despite the surrounding scenery — a rock-strewn street carrying cars with smashed windshields and trees with charred limbs — the crowd was in high spirits, having successfully fought off and captured a few Muslim Brotherhood supporters who had confronted them some distance from Nafoura Square.
“How many did you knock down?” a neatly dressed teenager asked a large older man resting on the sidewalk with a hook-shaped steel pipe in his lap.
“A few,” the man looked up. “I wasn’t counting.”
The teenager plucked his cigarette from his lips and, with his other hand, swung a wooden plank.
“I got 14,” he boasted. “One by one by one, right on the head.”
“Bless the youth,” he said.
The Egyptian revolution began amid chants of “peaceful” intentions, and it remained “peaceful” — even as police stations were routinely burned to the ground and clashes continued to quake the lawless outer governorates. The description remained valid because the then-ruling regime had been presented with an ultimatum, rather than a call for direct confrontation, although it immediately interpreted it as such.
And it became a badge of honor of sorts in the face of the state’s well-documented insistence on attacking protesters at their most vulnerable — whether sleeping, praying or hospitalized — and its disregard for the lives of its own citizens. Predictably, that government fell and, perhaps just as predictably, the one that followed has adopted the same heavy-handed tactics with zeal.
In the context of the ongoing revolution, the Moqattam clashes arguably mark a turning point. From the first cries of “peaceful” on 25 January 2011 to the “hunt a Brother" and "kill an infidel” rhetoric of last Friday, it’s easy to see something has changed. Who’s responsible for that change, though, remains less clear.
Whose fault?
Khaled Abdel Hamid of the Popular Socialist Alliance believes “Everyone is to blame. Both sides need to realize that individual violence has never been a solution, nor will it fulfill the goals of the revolution.” he says.
But Abdel Hamid is also quick to point out that “the responsibility, undeniably, lies with the ruling regime. They are as responsible for the actions of their supporters as they are for the actions of their own apparatuses,” he explains. “And these ongoing efforts to marginalize and terrorize the opposition will only bring further instability.”
He says the Brotherhood and its supporters need to understand that “you cannot attack political activists and not expect certain repercussions.”
Human rights activist Ghada Shahbandar speaks of being mildly surprised that “after years of relying on us when they were being abused in prisons, the Muslim Brotherhood no longer seems to believe in human rights organizations. We’re hearing them repeat the previous regime’s rhetoric that we are ‘paid agents.’”
One of the biggest contributors to the deteriorating situation, she believes, is the Central Security Forces. Despite having a heavy presence Friday, with hundreds of soldiers securing the Brotherhood headquarters, the CSF failed “to respond to any of the calls made by Moqattam residents under attack in homes.”
They similarly showed little interest in preventing scores of people from physically assaulting one another, only breaking their cordon to launch an evening attack on protesters, she says.
Abdallah al-Kariony, a member of the Doctors Syndicate Freedom Committee and the Brotherhood, also believes the Interior Ministry should be held responsible.
“In its absence, people are coming up with their own substitutes, and the possible consequences of that are disastrous,” Kariony says. “For the ministry to stand by neutrally, as it has been doing throughout these clashes, is ridiculous and unacceptable. Whatever pressures being put on it that keep it from fulfilling its role must be rejected, and we need to have in place new, effective and realistic laws determining how people can protest.”
But Shahbandar thinks the overall justice system, or lack thereof, is also to blame. “This escalation can be traced to the total absence of justice since the first clashes outside the presidential palace, despite all the reports we have of the serious injuries, torture and detention perpetrated on the scene,” she says. “Had there been a proper investigation by the state or any punitive action, then the people’s anger would have been contained, and events like Moqattam might have not happened.”
While she “equally condemns the violence committed by both sides,” Shahbandar does not find it surprising. “This is what happens when you force people to take matters into their own hands,” she asserts.
For journalist and human rights activist Rasha Azzab, the current situation represents a problem that cannot be solved — one that instead must be un-rooted in its entirety. “The problem,” she says, “is the regime.”
Violence has plagued the country since President Mohamed Morsy took power, Azzab says, and “the only difference now is that the people are no longer willing to be victims. This violence has set us on the road to hell,” she says. “The people are facing a criminal authority with a thirst for blood and no understanding of justice, so individuals, and eventually group violence, become the only logical way to confront it.”
But for former Brotherhood member Islam Lotfy “Too many people are benefiting from the violence.” Lotfy, who left the Brotherhood in mid-2011 and became a founding member of the Egyptian Current Party, accuses both sides of playing up the attacks against them to “gain sympathy. And that in itself is an act of providing political cover to the violence,” he says.
This, he argues, has paved the way for other parties to benefit from the tumultuous situation as they see fit — whether using it as an opportunity to settle old scores or reap new rewards. “The result is we now have a very odd combination of people who are protesting or participating in the protests,” he says. “You have the angry individuals, the political opponents, but also the thugs, the street children, random security personnel.”
The product of this chaotic combination, he says, is “even more chaos. This is why you can’t justify this violence, even by looking at it as a last resort that the protesters were pushed to,” he says. “People that think that way are anarchists and they may be entitled to their opinion, but I’m opposed to the dismantling of the state.”
No politics
While alarmed at the “inevitable” fallout that Friday’s confrontation might bring, Abdel Hamid is more concerned over “the Muslim Brotherhood’s singular vision, and its inability to see alternative options. That’s why they’re alone now,” he says. “That’s how they’ve turned themselves into the counter-revolutionary movement they speak so much about.
“The lack of any political alternative is the reason why the language of violence has become so prevalent,” he adds. “It’s the drive behind this fresh wave of street clashes, this mentality that finds beating Muslim Brotherhood members in Moqattam to be some sort of victory.”
Lotfy also has little faith in current leaders, regardless of which side they’re on. He says a solution won’t be easy, with Islamists still bitter over their treatment under former President Gamal Abdel Nasser, and the National Salvation Front focused on weakening Morsy’s legitimacy. “We need maturity and people who are capable of looking to the future,” he says.
For Shahbandar, the Moqattam clashes had “nothing to do with politics.” People are “disgruntled. They put a lot into the revolution. They expected higher standards. They expected, at the very least, to have a president who served all Egyptians,” she says. “Instead, they have the Muslim Brotherhood kidnapping those who speak out. The people are frustrated, and on Friday, they vented.”
But Kariony insists the focus must be on the bigger picture. “It’s difficult to run the country now, and while there might be some failures on the government’s part, the only way forward remains through the ballot box,” he says. “Otherwise, we’ll find ourselves living in a failed state, like Somalia, or a true dictatorship. Even if it brings horrible results, there are mechanisms within that framework of democracy in place to fix those problems.”
While doubtful of the ruling regime’s capacity or desire for changing its methods, Abdel Hamid believes the bloodshed will cease as soon as the opposition manages to “form a combined front, which is much harder than it sounds. It takes time,” he says.
And there are those who worry that time is a luxury Egypt can’t afford to waste. “Egyptians are not a violent people, but they’re quickly learning how to be,” Shahbandar says. “It’s a trait we’re acquiring, and unless we find a way to reverse it, it might come to define us. We have gone from protests, to street fights, to street wars.”
But Lotfy casts hope away from the traditional political class. “I believe that the younger generations are more capable of forgiveness and the ability to change,” he says. “I believe our hopes lie with them.”
The first picture show: Luxor's only movie theatre - Oct. 28th, 2012
LUXOR — Despite the fact that it now hosts two international film festivals, the city of Luxor hadn’t seen a working movie theater in almost three decades. So when Mokhlis Mikhael opened the doors to the City Mall Cinema in June, residents were intrigued, to say the least.
First reactions to the cramped, two-screen establishment situated on the top floor of the city’s only mall were positive, if a little misdirected.
“People would come in, look around, tell me how nice the place is, and then ask me what it was for,” says Mikhael. “Quite a few people asked if they could have their weddings here.”
A few months later, little has changed.
“I still get asked that question,” Mikhael sighs.
“You have to understand, there are entire generations here that have never had that movie theater experience, who aren’t even aware that such a thing exists,” he stresses.
As a result, it’s been an uphill crawl convincing Luxor residents “why they should watch movies in a dark room with a bunch of strangers, instead of on the couch at home, next to your family.”
Harder still is convincing them there’s nothing morally wrong with it.
“A lot of people think that, because of the fact that we turn off the lights for a screening, this must be some sort of nightclub or a party venue,” says Mikhael.
As a result, his cinema is more routinely frequented by shabab, or youth, as opposed to families.
“It’s not uncommon to hear people gossiping on the street — 'Did you hear? So-and-so took his wife to the movies the other night' — that type of stuff,” says Mikhael, before adding, “I don’t even take my wife to the movies anymore.”
It’s inexperience, rather than ignorance, Mikhail is quick to explain, that he believes to be behind the prolonged confusion.
“People here aren’t that narrow-minded,” he says. “This isn’t a religious thing, and Luxor generally isn’t the type of place where you’ll hear about that stuff. We all get along and nobody cares what religion the other person follows.
“Besides, the same people who avoid cinemas here enjoy going to them when vacationing in Alexandria or Cairo, and families regularly gather to watch cable TV, which is far more obscene than anything we would ever screen here.”
Instead, Mikhael insists that the problem is “a lack of culture, specifically that of the cinematic arts,” and for that he places the blame directly on the government’s shoulders.
“This is supposedly one of the top touristic cities in the world,” he claims. “But there’s nothing in terms of cultural activities for the residents, and there’s no nightlife whatsoever. So people will take whatever they can get.”
Unfortunately, the same problem that originally pushed Mikhael to open the cinema is also keeping his potential patrons at home — money, or more accurately, a lack of it.
“Luxor has been the hardest hit, economically, since the revolution,” Mikhail claims. “Everyone here works in tourism, whether directly or indirectly. So when that died out, so did the local economy.”
This has been reflected in Mikhail’s pricing, which he has continuously tried to keep considerate to his community’s financial woes.
“We’ve lowered ticket prices from LE35 to LE20, and then to LE15,” he shakes his head. “Nothing’s really worked.”
Still, Mikhail isn’t yet ready to call it quits, if only for realizing the value of his venture. Besides a handful of open-air screens in fields and clearings, and the occasional, likely abandoned or converted-into-a-chicken-coop cultural palace, Mikhail’s establishment is “the only real cinema that exists from Assiut to Aswan,” he states, with equal amounts of pride and disbelief.
“That’s half of Egypt! One movie theater in an entire half of Egypt!” he says.
After a moment, he corrects himself: “Aswan did have a crummy little place called Friendship Cinema, but I’m fairly certain it shut down.”
Similarly, Qena Governorate boasts claim to a “seventh-rate venue that’s still screening obscure films from the 1960s,” he says.
Mikhail’s City Mall Cinema, on the other hand, has higher aspirations. It screens current movies, as close to their release date as possible, and only Arabic-language films.
Foreign ones are more expensive, he says, and international distributors are more likely to send their limited number of films to big-name multiplexes in cities like Cairo and Alexandria, which are guaranteed to draw big audiences. But he hopes that will gradually change.
The cinema has already screened all of this year’s Egyptian releases. The more popular ones have even been re-released by the theater, in hopes of capitalizing on the slightest promise of a profit.
It’s a strategy that has so far seen limited success, as attested to by the full audience of two people that exits the latest Ahmed al-Sakka film halfway during Mikhael’s interview with this reporter in late September.
Mikhael looks thrilled to see the pair of strangers, smiling widely as they walk past. Right after they disappear behind the elevator doors, Mikhael’s smile disappears, and his shoulders slump once again.
“Is that it for today?” he calls out to the lone employee curled up behind a corner concession stand. The young man lifts his head, looking momentarily disoriented.
“So far, boss,” he replies, before sinking back behind the counter.
“It’s still the beginning,” he says, referring to the business. “We’ve barely been open for three months, and there was Ramadan in there. In time, things will improve.”
And there’s no reason they shouldn’t, especially given that Luxor now outnumbers Cairo in terms of international film festivals. Mikhael thinks these events can simultaneously make use of City Mall Cinema’s modest and locally unmatched facilities — in theory, at least.
“We weren’t open in time for the Luxor African Film Festival,” he says. “But I did contact the organizers of the Luxor Egyptian and European one, and they seemed very interested, but it was already too late to set anything up for this year.
“Next year,” he hopes, “God willing.”
Discussing his cinema’s potential for being the only proper screening venue for a pair of international film festivals, and the promise of a wider range of films to attract audiences, Mikhael smiles with less despair this time. His efforts, he’s sure, will eventually pay off, and his cinema will expand.
But, as he’s quick to point out, “there won’t be any weddings here.”
Over the past 26 months, Egyptians have protested in public squares, outside state-run institutions and, more than once, at the gates of the presidential palace; each new setting bringing with it an escalation in dissatisfaction, violence, and demands.
Fed up with a government response seen as only comprising of heavy-handed tactics and the occasional provocative statements from a self-described thick-skinned president, protesters have now directed themselves toward the nation’s seat of power — a privately-owned office building in one of Cairo’s secluded districts.
At the opposite end of the street from the headquarters and also waiting for the protesters, several vendors sell flags and drinks, and a few paramedics loiter between six parked ambulances. Calls for Friday prayer sound followed by sermons, also amplified: “Our enemies have an anger toward Egypt; we must use it against them,” “there are those who doubt sharia can be applied in the 21st century, but sharia is God’s law, created for any place and time.”
All crowds swell shortly after prayers; protesters arrive carrying handwritten signs (“there isn’t a drop of fuel in the country but we’ll still set fire to the Brotherhood”) and chanting, while outside the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, supporters recite their own variations on the protestor’s most popular slogans, as well as original ones like “our revolution is about decency, not graffiti”, “Islamic, Islamic, we will not be left out of the world” and, possibly the longest chant in history, a six-point call-and-response list of the president’s mostly metaphorical accomplishments (“he has purified us!”).
“You should have been here early in the morning,” Reda Ahmed, a vendor, says to Egypt Independent in a low voice. “They were bussing brothers in non-stop, bringing them from Minya. That building,” he nods toward the headquarters, “is about to burst with them.”
As he speaks, the chanting Brotherhood members form a large circle, spinning and holding each other’s hands. “Our Quran is our constitution, our Jihad is our path,” they drone.
Meanwhile, Central Security Forces occupy both sides of the five blocks and a public garden separating the opposing fronts, with approximately 500 soldiers scattered across various formations.
“Look at what they’re wearing,” Mohamed Alaa, a 23-year-old protestor says to Egypt Independent, as well as the soldiers standing within earshot. He then turns to them and gestures at the several layers of body armor they each wear. “I don’t remember you guys being dressed up this heavily outside the presidential palace.” They offer no response.
“What can they say,” Alaa turns back to Egypt Independent. “They have no choice, but they need to understand that we won’t let them stand in our way, and that this isn’t about them anymore.”
While a few protesters on the scene may disagree — there are occasional outbursts of chants against the Interior Ministry — it seems most of the crowd agrees with Alaa, as evidenced by how quickly and sternly those chants are stifled by other protesters, as well as the attempts at reasoning with the frontline.
“You’re our sons,” an elderly lady was seen pleading with a few stone-faced soldiers. “You’ve let yourselves be debased by the violence you’ve committed against us, but you’re still our sons.”
Intermittently, small groups of Brotherhood members move past the protesters, on their way to the headquarters down the street. On every occasion, their presence is announced through calls of “sheep!” from the protesters, many of whom chase the Brothers, bleating loudly. The lack of response only seems to provoke protesters further.
Gradually, arguments break out among the protesters over the purpose of their gathering.
“Why are you chanting ‘peaceful?’” an adolescent shouts in frustration. “Have you all forgotten why we’re here?”
“The police are on our side now, we don’t want to lose that!” comes the reply from a man later identified as Akram Saad, a resident of the area whose only concern of the day is “to avoid clashes.” The 32-year-old’s argument fails to convince, and he’s forced to rely on like-minded protesters to form a cordon of their own around those seeking more decisive action. There is pushing that threatens to turn worse until shouts from the group alert them to a car-full of Brotherhood members coming down the street. The protesters run towards it, the car reverses and swerves off, and the crowd chases it down the street.
Over on the Brotherhood side, its supporters have formed their own frontline, consisting, clearly, of the largest members of their group. They watch the goings-on at the protesters side keenly, until one of their own returns to assure them, “calm down, there’s not that many of them and they’re running around.” The frontline disperses as the same man asks, “Who gave the order for us to form a frontline, anyway?” to which another member replies, “I don’t know.”
At 2 pm, there is another outburst of excitement at the protesters’ side, and another rush down the street. A man has been pulled out of a passing bus, deemed to belong to the Brotherhood, and is being beaten on the street by a small group of protesters. There is immediate swarming around him, shouts of “kill him” and “don’t kill him,” pleas for self-restraint and calls to search the man, to hand him over to authorities. Throughout the debate, the beating never ceases and the man’s head is soon split open. He is carried to a building and protesters fight each other off until an ambulance arrives and the man’s protectors rush him into it. The ambulance drives off and the episode ends without a shred of evidence supporting it.
Across the street, three young men — who appear to be Brotherhood members, and later confirm so to Egypt Independent — watch the scene unfold with grim faces.
“This is civilized behavior?” one of them asks. “Killing each other when we’re all Egyptians?”
When faced with the suggestion that this violence is seen by some as a last resort and others as a response to the ruling party’s methods, the young man shakes his head. “This is not true. The government listens to the majority. If you want to know who the majority is, ask yourself who won the elections.”
“These people on the streets,” the 26-year-old Brother, who wishes to remain anonymous, explains, “they’re all acting for personal benefits, not national ones. If you have a complaint about the government, then express it, and give them the chance to fix it. Don’t get in their way and set fire to the country — that helps nobody.”
When this point of view is later relayed to two young boys — 16 and 17 — wearing ski masks and belonging to the now famous Black Bloc opposition group, they scoff and cuss. “My friend Nader got several rounds of birdshot in his face this week; he lost an eye,” the Black Bloc member says. “And he wasn’t at a protest, he was on his way home from school.”
“It’s oppression, and that’s not a way of life,” the second boy adds. “Not after the revolution. We won’t live like sheep, and we won’t be oppressed again. Otherwise, what did people die for? Why a revolution and all this mess, then?”
A few minutes later, two teenagers with regular scarves wrapped around their faces and bottles in their hands come running down the street, and hurl their bottles at the area where the protesters meet the CSF frontline. There is an outburst of chaos and screaming, and immediate scuffles. Two shots ring out and the scene quiets down before chants rise up again, this time addressing the president’s mother.
Protesters are caught off-guard again when, minutes later, a shot rings out from the residential building they and the CSF frontline are positioned under. The protesters respond by hurling rocks at its windows, two more shots follow from the building, leaving a cloud of smoke over a third-floor window. Two CSF officers appear on the roof, one floor above, and wave for protesters to calm down — one of the officers holds a handgun in his waving hand — and then they disappear and a child briefly peers over the same ledge. The protesters roar in fury, some attempting to raid the building, others pelting it with rocks, aiming for a specific window, but smashing a few others. The CSF soldiers on the ground remain motionless.
Two streets away, another battle ensues, one between the two sides actually in opposition. Marches planned throughout the day have begun arriving to Moqattam, the number of protesters quickly growing. They move past Moqattam’s central Nafoura Square and down Road 13, waving large white flags honoring martyrs on the two-year revolution, and beating drums. Ahead of them, hundreds of individuals run back and forth, breaking off chunks of the sidewalk for ammunition, carrying wounded comrades over their shoulders, hurling rocks and bottles at the approximately 300 Muslim Brotherhood members at the end of the street. There is no clear frontline, just an ebb and flow between the two sides. A knot of protesters forms—they have dragged over an opponent from the other side. An ambulance, one of many parked along the sides of the street, swerves in but the protesters refuse to hand over the man and instead, the ambulance is attacked and forced to drive off. The alleged member of the Brotherhood is only visible in glimpses of bloodstained limbs, and then disappears entirely as the protesters carry him away. The screams are deafening, between those justifying the man’s death, and those deeming it cold-blooded murder. At the end of the street, the man is set on the ground and beaten, picked up and beaten and eventually, tossed into an ambulance. As it drives off, there are disappointed remarks — “he’s still alive” — and two men are seen cheering a young boy, clutching a bag of rocks, for the “punishment” he bestowed on the man. The boy, not possibly older than 10, snarls, “I wanted that Muslim Brotherhood son of a bitch.”
Back at the other end of the street, the Muslim Brotherhood supporters have lost ground, retreating to the top of one of the many rocky hills on the outskirts of Moqattam. The rock pelting goes on, small groups of protesters, mostly adolescents, make their way up the hill, and fistfights ensue between them and the older, burlier Brotherhood members, who are easily outnumbered. On several occasions, protesters come running back, a battered and unconscious adult in their grip. They tumble down the rocky hillside, attract more protesters and provoke more arguments over the merits of mercifulness.
There are calls of warning among the protesters — their numbers well over 1,000, stretching upwards toward the heart of Moqattam — and sure enough, another group of Muslim Brotherhood members comes marching down a side street. The air thickens with rocks, fireworks, smoke; car windows are smashed, and one protestor is seen dousing three small trees with gasoline and setting fire to them, presumably to create some sort of smokescreen.
As the Brotherhood front retreats once again, a subgroup of approximately 20 protesters breaks off and rushes to meet them on the other side of the hill. Along the way, they are struck by rocks from the roof of a nearby building, and their attention diverted. They gather around the building, a crowd quickly follows, and they call for the “cowards” to “show themselves.” A teenage boy pops his head over the ledge and ducks back immediately.
“You’re coming down dead, you son of a bitch!” someone from the ground calls up. Rocks fly as infuriated protesters rattle the gates and climb the walls of Building 211 on Road 33. Simultaneously, someone draws the crowd’s attention to four buses parked further down the street. Moments later, they are in flames.
When asked about proof that the buses belonged to the Brotherhood, various replies are offered:
“There were pictures of Morsy inside the buses.”
“People said they belonged to the Brotherhood.”
“There were Brotherhood members in them, we pulled them out” — a claim that was immediately denied by several protesters within earshot.
From the roof of an adjacent mosque, Muslim Brotherhood members pelt protesters with rocks until the mosque is stormed. Members of the Muslim Brotherhood were being held inside as prisoners, and there was blood splattered across the courtyard floor. One hostage was held outside, a middle-aged man with open wounds all over his face, pleading for his life. Two protesters held him in a tight grip, ignoring the comments of the gathering crowd: “He’s the mosque’s superintendent, I know him.”
But it turned out he wasn’t. Given the chance to explain himself, the man swore he was a construction worker from Maadi who had only come to join the protest.
“Say ‘fuck the supreme guide’” one of his captors challenged him, referring to the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood.
“Fuck the field marshal,” the man said, dribbling blood, referring to the previously ruling Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi, the head of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces.
His captor slapped him. “The supreme guide, not the field marshal!”
“He can’t hear you,” another protestor explained to his peer. “He’s lost his senses. Let’s search him.”
At the mosque’s two main doors, the same debate was being held: forcing the hostages out versus preserving what remained of the sanctity of a house of God. While some protesters threw themselves at the doors, screaming for justice and the friends they had lost, a larger number pushed back.
“We need to be better than them,” a young man urged. “We need to show them we can be better than their Muslim Brotherhood, that we’re Muslims, too.”
“They’re not Muslim! Don’t insult our faith! God would disown the whole filthy lot of them!”
“Islam is mercy! We need to be merciful!”
“They’ve beaten the mercifulness out of us, they’ve turned our hearts to stone! How much longer?”
“We’ve cut the power and water to the mosque. We have them. They’re not going anywhere until we turn them in.”
“But they don’t belong in a mosque! They just blew one up in Syria and killed its imam! They don’t know anything about Islam!”
At the back of the mosque, nine men stand at a window, communicating with two of the captive Brothers. “How many of you are hurt, and how serious are the injuries?”
“We’re all fine, except for two of us and it’s not an exaggeration to say they’re dying,” comes the reply. “We’ve already called an ambulance but we can’t go out there. All we ask is to let it take the injured. You can keep us here, just convince the others to let the ambulance take our injured.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
The sun has set and as the nine men talk amongst themselves, a call for prayer is heard from one of the protesters on the other side of the mosque. Two of the men leave and a third approaches the window. “Listen,” he says to the hostages. “We’ll turn the water on for you for five minutes so you can wash up and pray if you want. But do me a favor: when you pray, ask God to put some sense into us. Ask him to calm down people on your side and ours, ask him to save our country.”
Calm follows, but only at the mosque. Back at the Muslim Brotherhood headquarters, CSF troops have begun firing tear gas on protesters, who have responded by setting fire to the tires they’ve brought with them in order to combat the blinding gases. The streetlights have gone dark, the only illumination coming from the flames. The protesters, regrouping through the smoke, begin to chant against the Interior Ministry and its dogs. This time, there are no calls for restraint.
Rationalizing the violence witnessed throughout the day, activist Alaa Abd El Fattah wrote on his Facebook page upon his return from the clashes in the early hours of Saturday that those protesting against the Brotherhood in the street do not see its rule as legitimate authority.
“Those in the street see that the authority is ignoring its Constitution and its laws, even though the Brotherhood is controlling them both. If you think our moves should respect the rule of law, or at least seek the rule of law, then you will have to find a way to pressure the state, the regime and the Muslim Brotherhood to respect the law,” he wrote.
On Monday afternoon, a 12-car train carrying hundreds of Central Security conscripts left Upper Egypt for Cairo. Before midnight, the train derailed, leaving 19 of its passengers dead, and another 120 wounded. This is not an unusual occurrence, coming as it did a few hours after a court ruling regarding a similar accident last November, which claimed the lives of fifty-one children.
President Mohamed Morsy briefly visited on Tuesday with those injured in the incident, currently residing at the Maadi Military hospital, while high-ranking Freedom and Justice party member Saad el-Katatny was quick to publicly blame the toppled Mubarak regime for their negligence of the nation’s infrastructure. Meanwhile, protests broke out in Cairo and Alexandria against the ruling regime for so far failing to effectively respond to the nation’s myriad problems, infrastructure among them.
Ahmed Korashy Ahmed, a 20-year-old conscript from the village of Bardis, was on the train when it derailed. With a patch on the back of his head, a heavily bandaged arm, and a few scattered cuts and bruises, Ahmed considers himself “blessed to be alive,” and mourns for the friends he lost.
“The first time we stopped it was for about twenty minutes. The next stop was probably more like seven or eight minutes long. We would stop at stations. I don’t know how long the third stop was for; I’d been asleep. I woke up and we were at the Minya station.”
Some of the guys who were awake, though, they were saying they saw soldiers getting off the train at the stops and gathering around the last two cars,” he recalls. “Like they were checking to make sure everything was okay. I didn’t see this myself, but I trust the people who told me they say it. It even made us ask again if anything was wrong.”
“I fell asleep again after we started moving, and woke up because of how strongly the car was rocking. The first thing I noticed was the wind, and the dust, moving through the car with such strength. I told myself ‘we must be going very fast’ and then there was a sound like a bomb. I don’t know what happened. I don’t think any of us realized. There was no moment of realization. We were all stunned. I remember seeing us all slowly getting up, those of us that did, and I remember thinking ‘this is the afterlife.’ I’m sure the others felt this way, too. Then I noticed the back of my head was bleeding very badly, even though I couldn’t feel it,” he says.
“The ambulances arrived within maybe five minutes. They were quick, to be honest. And the staff at the Badrashin hospital did all that they could. But what are they going to do? my friend who, minutes before the train left the station, we were eating and laughing together, his twin was also in the train and he died in Badrashin. He’s a conscript who died not in a war, mind you, but a train accident. The brother, my friend, his leg is seriously injured.”
“These accidents happen a lot,” Ahmed sighs. “They just keep happening. I don’t blame one person; I don’t think there is a person to blame. I blame negligence, in general. On whatever level it may be. Whether it’s the armed forces that was being negligent, or the railways, the result is the same. But I don’t think this is like the other accidents. Some accidents are caused by negligence, but others seem like there might be more to them. I don’t want to accuse anyone of anything, I’m just asking, how can two cars just detach? Two whole cars? I was in the last one, and this is a crime. I saw things…thank God for everything, but I saw some really horrible things. God spare you such sights.”
“I’m not taking the train back to Bardees. Of course not. How can I? And I’m not going back to the army either. How can I,” he asks, “after this?”
“People might think that for soldiers and conscripts it’s different. That we might feel secure, or more secure, in this country now. This is not true. There is no sense of security. If they make me go back to the army, it’ll be against my will, just like the first time they made me go. Anyone would feel the same. The abuse and the insults. Who wants that? Even simple requests, like going to the bathroom, are always denied. How can you keep a human being from going to the bathroom? That in itself is not human.”
“In the hospital here, now, they’re great. They’re very considerate and are giving us excellent care. Butt this is just here, and just now, and because of the train accident.”
“I’m not taking the train back home,” he insists. “I’m not going back to the army. I don’t care if they threaten to kill me. At least I’d die in my own home.”
'Faith! Determination! Morsy shoots to kill!' : A sit-in unlike any other - Dec. 14th, 2012
Despite its location, there hasn’t been much coverage of the Salafi sit-in outside Media Production City; possibly due to the fact that its members are calling for a potentially violent purge of all “corrupt” and “ant-Islamic” media personalities.
This reporter arrived to hear his former boss’ name mixed into the death threats rising out of a handful of protestors gathered at one of the MPC’s side entrances, while a formation of 17 men in track suits and galabeyas performed military-style drills up and down the driveway, chanting “Faith! Determination! [President Mohamed] Morsy shoots to kill!”
Watching from the gates with a bemused look on his face as a single row of officers sways behind him, a police brigadier general explains to Egypt Independent that “they do [these drills] a few times a day, every day. But if you want to see the real scene, you should to go to the main entrance.”
Last Friday, Islamist protestors rallied outside MPC, decrying the “bias against Islamists” they alleged is practiced by the staff, and is reflected in the content of several privately-owned satellite channels such as CBC, Dream TV, Orbit, and ONTV and ONTV Live. The latter reported that its crew had been assaulted that evening outside the city gates. When Central Security Forces intervened to keep protestors from raiding the complex, tents were erected and a sit-in declared.
Three days later, numbers at the gate swelled again, as a “Sharia First” protest formed to call for enforcing Islamic law. In the meantime, the tree-lined exterior of the nation’s only Free Media Zone has become a gallery of blacklists, banners and posters promoting the arrest and eternal damnation of “un-Islamic” media figures.
At the main gate, there were more protestors and fewer officers. A long driveway separates the city’s entrances from the highway, where the first of two protestor checkpoints stands a few feet from a large model of the MPC logo, recently spray-painted with various slogans. The gardens flanking both sides and directly facing the highway are now dotted with tents, as well as herds of grazing cattle and redbrick outhouses, which the protestors built and connected to the MPC’s sewage pipes.
“Civilized people have to act accordingly,” the checkpoint guard says, as he catches this reporter eyeing the cubicles. “Here, we don’t just go in the bushes like they do at some of the other sit-ins.”
He then reassures Egypt Independent that “each bathroom has its own ablution area.” Responding to an inquiry on the cattle, the guard claims they “belong to Bedouins who bring them here to graze.”
When asked why, in the almost two-decade lifespan of the MPC, no one had reported on the “Bedouins” grazing their cattle there, he laughs: “I don’t know, I’m not from here.”
He hands back my Journalists Syndicate card after stating, “Sheikh Hazem has ordered us to treat all visiting reporters with respect,”— referring to prominent Salafi cleric Hazem Abu Ismail, who stirred controversy earlier this year by urging his followers to occupy Tahrir Square when he was disqualified from the presidential elections.
The broad-shouldered young guard then points out other signs of civility among the 500 or so members of the sit-in, as he leads the way to the “media center.” He points out the tents and the orderliness of their arrangement, which is not immediately remarkable to this reporter, and the stage that has been erected for “special occasions.”
The atmosphere is calm — men dozing in the grass, black slivers of female visible between tent flaps. Children wander around, despite it being 1:30 in the afternoon on a weekday, and, closer to the gate, two rows of vendors watch over limited spreads of socks, perfume vials, twig-style toothbrushes and CDs of Quranic recitals similar to the one playing at a low volume over the scene. Crates of tangerines, free of charge, sit on the corners of the central clearing, where a few carts sell sandwiches, mostly sesame paste and processed cheese triangles. In the background, a single row of CSF officers stretches along the last gate before the city.
Arriving at the media center, it’s clear there’s a problem. A small group of men stand huddled around a young, clean-shaven man with teary eyes. He is being held in place by the protestors under the direction of a grey-bearded man in a reflective maintenance vest, who is explaining: “You have to know what it is you’re saying. You can’t just make dangerous statements like this and expect nothing to happen.” And he gave the young man’s arm a tug.
“I swear I only came here to help,” the young man urges. “I wanted to tell you about the Facebook pages, and that I have numbers!”
“Alright, then but what’s that got to do with ElBaradei?”
Tensions briefly spike before another older man, bearded and in a grey galabeya, arrives and restores order, commanding a few individuals to “escort [the young man] to the gate, and make sure he gets out safely.”
Egypt Independent is later informed that the young man had come to the sit-in to complain about several “anti-Islamist Facebook pages” and to “give us the contact information for the people behind them.”
Once the youth is taken away, the recently arrived sheikh is shown Egypt Independent’s identification. Not offering any elaboration beyond his self-described role as an “organizer” of the sit-in, Sheikh Mohamed Ibrahim, referred to by all those around him as Abu Ammar, begins to list the reasons behind his personal “longing” for a media purge.
“The Egyptian media has killed the revolution,” Abu Ammar says forcefully. “They lie to promote the interests of their foreign masters. They’re working to turn Egyptians against themselves, and to cripple the nation.”
“Ever since the revolution, the media has been warning us of another one to follow: the revolution of the so-called starving masses. Where is this revolution, and why would the starving masses revolt now when they’ve always been starving, when all they’ve ever known is starvation.
“Remember Algeria,” he fumes. “When the media was telling us we were going to go to war against Algeria, over a soccer match [the 2010 world cup qualifications round]. Tell me, when did this war happen, and who won it?”
“And now they’ve created this myth of the ‘Couch Party’ and are telling us the ‘Couch Party’ is out to get us,” he says, to increasing grumbling from the crowd. “I’m telling you, there’s no such thing as a ‘Couch Party.’”
He shoves a newspaper into Egypt Independent’s hands, a copy of Hadith Al-Madina (Talk of the Town) carrying the apparently offensive headline “New York Times: Church orders followers to rally against Morsy.” Abu Ammar is outraged. “What is this filth? What if my neighbor is Christian? How can I even look his mother in the face now?”
Egypt Independent suggests this might be an overreaction, which further infuriates Abu Ammar. “There is an active movement within the media aiming to nudge the Egyptian people out of their naturally pious mind frame and into an area of Islamophobia. They want us to think that the Sharia is a restriction of freedom, when it is the in fact the very essence of it.” He then lists, at length, the practicalities of government-imposed religious law, before concluding, “and we will defend it with our last drop of blood.”
“We are not the ones to fear,” Abu Ammar says, turning his attention back to the media. “We are not the ones who kill when we protest, or start fires. Show me one of our protests where a single store was forced to close. Yet, these media personalities, these supposed purveyors of the truth, paint us as monsters and then won’t even let us on their shows to defend ourselves.”
The whole time he’s talking, men from the small surrounding crowd have been taking turns praising his words. It goes too far, though, when one of them attempts to film Abu Ammar’s sermon with his mobile phone. “Put that camera away,” the sheikh snaps. “No photography allowed, you know that.” The rest of the crowd admonishes the man accordingly.
Abu Ammar refuses to directly answer most of Egypt Independent’s questions, offering instead claims that cannot be immediately verified — “Eighty percent of the Egyptian people are supporting us”; an allegation countered by a random crowd member who shouts “Ninety!” — as well as some Quranic verses.
Abu Ammar then ends the interview, indicating wordlessly that no further questions be answered by anyone else, while members of the crowd put the request into words for him. That does not, however, prevent Ashraf Omran — a councilor, political analyst and legal expert, according to the card he slips into Egypt Independent’s hand — from stepping up and promptly dictating his point of view on the matter. As the only man in the crowd wearing a suit, he seems exempt from their restrictions.
Before leaving, Egypt Independent is stopped by Ahmed Mohamed Abu Zeid, secretary of the Salafi Nour Party’s Monufiya branch and self-proclaimed cousin of opposition heavyweight Hamdeen Sabbahi. He claims that he personally saw former MP Mohamed Abu Zeid, who was brutally attacked last Saturday, infiltrating an Islamist rally and “firing his gun and insulting the Prophet in the midst of protestors.”
“He was also clearly drunk and had taken lots of painkillers because he knew he’d be attacked for his actions,” Abu Zeid adds.
As the same young guard leads the way out, the platoon from the side entrance jogs into view, knees rising to their chests, repeating the same chants as earlier. When asked about the military-style drills, the guard smiles. “Those are just morale-boosting exercises,” he says, failing to specify whose morale they’re meant to boost.
No sooner has the cab started moving then the driver pulls out his phone and dials a number. After a rushed greeting, he asks the other end, “Have you heard the latest? Morsy shoots to kill!” before bursting out in laughter.
“Shave your beard and show us your face, so we can see your true disgrace: you look just like Mubarak!”
It didn’t take long on Tuesday for protesters to fill Tahrir Square, or the air above it with similar chants aimed at Mohamed Morsy. When the president issued a series of decrees Thursday drastically expanding his powers while robbing the judiciary of its own, the consequences were immediate: a weekend of renewed violence, a nosedive in the stock market, and the widespread branding of the nation’s first elected leader as a tyrant. As a further result, numerous opposition groups arranged for a collision of marches in Tahrir on Tuesday, which arrived amidst a steady flow of independently aggravated citizens.
“Freedom. It’s as simple as that. We want freedom,” Omar Khaled Hussein tells Egypt Independent shortly after arriving in the square with several friends. The 20-year-old claims to have been “astonished” by what he interpreted as a blatant power grab by the president. “We had our revolution. It’s like Morsy doesn’t understand that, or he doesn’t know what the word means. It’s like he thinks we just elected him to replace Mubarak.”
“Today, we’re here as Egyptians and nothing else,” they announce, mostly to be met with immediate compliance and a few rounds of appreciative applause, as members of various syndicates and labor groups blend into the crowd. “Today,” several speakers declare on several occasions, “we are all brothers and sisters, children of one nation!”
It’s a notion repeated by Khaled Youssef between turns rallying a crowd of journalists toward the square. Youssef, deputy editor-in-chief of the now-defunct Al-Shaab newspaper, says, “We Egyptians are all one in the same; our only problem is that we’re misinformed, so it’s easy for misunderstandings to thrive, and for ignorance to be manipulated by those with an interest in doing so.
“To deny Egypt its freedom of press is to deny its citizens the right to information,” he emphasizes. “This is why we cannot accept the president’s decrees, especially since journalism is the conscious of the nation.”
Behind him, a row of female journalists continue to chant about grinding the Muslim Brotherhood under their feet.
There are similar sentiments in Tahrir, and the procession of journalists arrives at 3 pm to be greeted by a group of young men passing out signs that read "EGYPT IS THE GRAVEYARD OF THE BROTHERHOOD…CATCH A BROTHER NOW!" Chants carry threats to the “illegitimate” organization, banners prohibit its members from entering the stage, and there is plenty of overheard talk of the “bastards” and “how to deal with them.” But there is little aggression to match it. Instead, the square is alive with beating drums, ear-piercing horns, and on at least two occasions shortly after sunset, fireworks.
“Of course I’m upset about recent events,” 18-year-old Mohamed Amin Idris insists, with a tabla in one hand and the colors of the flag streaked across both cheeks. “And that’s why we’re all here. But we’re all happy to be here because we took back the square. The Brotherhood tried to hijack it like they hijacked the revolution, but they need to understand Tahrir is Egypt, and it belongs to Egyptians.”
Mostafa Mahmoud Okasha agrees, having come all the way from Qena for what he knew would be an impressive turnout. The 23-year-old, who claims to have frequented the square in the early days of the revolution, recalls the despair at seeing “what had happened to it” in recent months. When asked how he would describe it now, Okasha replies, “healthy.”
“This is right, being able to agree,” he says. “Some of us voted for a president with ties to the Brotherhood, some of us didn’t. But we can all agree that nobody voted for a tyrant.”
Behind him, the onstage speaker announces, “there is a possibility that sexual offenders have been sent into this crowd to give us a bad name. Regardless of where they come from, anyone who harasses any girl in this square will be dealt with swiftly, and brutally, by all of us.” The statement is met with thunderous support.
As the crowd continues to swell to an almost immobile extent, disagreements of the sort that would have constituted a fistfight in previous weeks seem to instead mostly turn into experimental forms of group debate. Even the question of whether Morsy should step down, or just withdraw his decrees is discussed with cautious consideration. At one point, this reporter witnessed a middle-aged, pony-tailed man attempting to explain to a group of larger men in torn, traditional clothing the importance of the constitution.
“You can’t elect a president before you have a constitution; it’s not normal,” he explains. “Think of it like this: what comes first, the chicken or the egg?”
“You don’t know! Nobody knows!” one of the men, clearly offended, yells. “You can’t tell me you know who came first!”
“Alright, bad example,” the first man quickly recants. “Think of a train and its tracks, then.”
Even the random overheard snippets of hate-speak seem somehow softened by the jovial atmosphere. “Look,” a rotund, middle-aged woman points her husband’s attention to a street artist’s depiction of the president as a farm animal, and chuckles. “Look at that sheep-faced son of a bitch.”
It’s a running theme throughout the day’s protests, with many of the chants comparing Morsy and his supporters to mindless members of the supreme guide’s herd, and much of the street art and homemade signs mocking the opposition’s need for a leader to idolize. That, however, doesn't stop large segments of the Tahrir crowd from flocking later in the evening to the square’s stage at the first announcement of Hamdeen Sabbahi’s arrival, and cheering in wild support of the former presidential candidate, who had yet to physically appear.
Sabbahi says nothing new — he could have said nothing at all — but he manages to effectively stir the crowd by reiterating what they had been chanting all day: “This revolution started in Tahrir Square, and it will end in Tahrir Square! I swear on the blood of the martyrs, we will unite Egypt! Bread! Freedom … ”
Every slogan he screams is met with a healthy roar.
Across the square, Abdel Kader Ahmed holds up his sign — a poster of Anwar Sadat above the caption, "The Great Peacemaker" — for all to see. When asked about Sadat, however, he promptly begins to list the similarities between Morsy and a more recent former president. “How is [Morsy] different than what we overthrew? And the people who say ‘give him a chance’ — how can I when the man is so clearly insisting on going in the wrong direction?”
He then cracks some jokes at the current president’s expense, and our own, smirking.
“It used to be soccer distracted us from lousy presidents. Now lousy presidents are distracting us from soccer.” He stares up at Anwar Sadat. “Rest in peace,” he shouts.
A day at the protests at the American Embassy in Cairo - Sept. 15th, 2012
At this very moment, Americans are piling into movie theaters, cheering through their popcorn at the notion of the Islamic prophet as a goat-romancing child molester, and sending “The Innocence of Muslims” to the top of the box office charts. It’s an evil that must be stopped at all costs, or at least, “before the film is released in European cinemas,” urges Ahmed Ibrahim as, behind him, three of his colleagues collect rocks off the rubble-strewn street and dump them onto an improvised sling — a tattered and stained Egyptian flag.
Like the hundreds of adolescents surrounding him, 23-year-old Ibrahim claims to have spent the last three days hurling rocks at — and surviving lethal attacks by — the security forces that have not only “prevented the Islamic population from defending their honor,” but, worse yet, chosen to “align themselves with the American pigs, rather than remain loyal to their own religion.” As the four young men each grab a corner of the cloth and rush off with a flagful of ammunition, they pick up on the chant roaring over the scene, a holdover from the 2011 revolution, mutated to fit the occasion, “The people say anything but the Prophet.”
Misguided as their efforts may be — like most protesters at the scene, Ibrahim believes “The Innocence of Muslims” is a Hollywood production that, like any local or international film released in Egypt, and presumably elsewhere, passes through several rounds of censorship and receives official state approval from its own government before seeing the light of day — there is little doubt over the severity of the situation, and its potential fallout.
“What do you mean ‘smart’ course of action?” one protester roars at Egypt Independent’s suggestion. “The film has already been made; it exists. Our only course of action is war, because this was an act of war.”
“This is our Prophet, our religion. Or are you not Muslim?” he challenged.
“We want a formal apology from [US President Barack] Obama, we want the filmmakers executed, and we want all copies of the film destroyed,” another protester cut in. “All those tapes must be burned.”
As news of the film broke out earlier in the week, and furor over its content and the intention of its makers mounted, the Egyptian population — along with the rest of the world — held its breath in anticipation for Friday’s planned protests, which would once again test the bitterly strained relationship between protesters and police forces.
Despite promises by the Muslim Brotherhood — which had announced it would organize peaceful protests across the nation following noon prayers, but not in Tahrir or within the vicinity of the American Embassy, so as to avoid any altercations with security forces assigned with protecting it — the square was packed as noon prayers were set to begin, and protesters — already vocalizing their rage through chants — gathered to hear the imam vow that Muslims would soon “vanquish the cross-carrying armies as we have before,” a reference to the Crusades which was met with much cheering. No sooner had prayers ended than the crowd pulled together and announced it was heading to the embassy.
The procession was an unusual sight; approximately 300 individuals of all ages — including children — mostly dressed in rags or heavily worn shirts and galabeyas, carrying signs that either praised Prophet Mohamed or condemned the hypocrisy behind the American invention of “freedom of expression” — one memorable sign read, in English, “If America says they understand freedom of expression, they must be coooooool (sic) with us.” Adding to their surreal appearance was the fact that, besides headbands, many of the protesters had wrapped their heads in the material that had been distributed earlier in the day to use as prayer rugs; in this case, shiny silver-and-gold gift wrapping paper. Weaving in and out of the group, a smaller crowd of vendors did their best to sell “double-faced Prophet love cards” — laminated index cards that bore Quranic phrases and statements of adoration to the Prophet on either side. “You hang it from your rear-view mirror,” one vendor explained, “or wear it around your neck.”
The group marched slowly, waving flags — some of Saudi Arabia, others, black with the phrase “There is no God but God,” which they also chanted. Pauses between the lines of a chant were peppered with desperate screams, either echoes of what was just sung, or howls of “I love you, Prophet!” and “God is great!” Fistfights broke out, repeatedly, for a variety of unrelated reasons. Spitting blood, waving a shard of glass, and just barely held apart from his opponent who had been gashed across the forehead, one wild-eyed man screamed: “We’re here for the Prophet, and you’re pimping out prostitutes, you son of a bitch!”
To which the opponent replied, “I’ll pimp out your mother,” giving the first man the motivation needed to break free and attack again.
Mocking cries of “peaceful, peaceful” — used as a statement of intent by protesters in early 2011 — were made and laughed at as the procession passed Omar Makram mosque, where a few individuals attempted to dissuade them from continuing to the walled-in embassy, but to little avail. “You’re going to set fire to more police cars?” an older man shouted from his spot on the sidewalk. “Who do you think ends up paying for those cars? The Egyptian people can’t even afford to eat, but they’re burning their country down. I hope the Prophet had a sense of humor!” The procession paid him no attention, but another elderly man did, replying, “As long as you’re unable to feed yourself and reaching out to others, you’ll always be worthless,” before concluding, “Fuck the USAID for turning us into savages.”
Not everyone, however, is as willing to blame the Americans. Rushing to board up the windows to the wig store where he works, and which stands at the corner of the wall separating protesters from the embassy and security forces surrounding it, an employee wishing to be identified only as “Ibramovich,” said, “This is the Egyptian character, this is typical. We were in the right at the beginning of this whole mess, and we had the support of the international community, but we pissed that away by choosing to act like the savages we are.”
“Try talking to these kids down there,” he gestures towards the crowd at the entrance to his store, “and see how far that gets you.”
Apparently, not very far. “You try to talk sense to these people, and you’re likely to get hurt,” fumes Tarek Farouk, a 27-year-old and one of the few maintaining a frontline of their own, one that separates the crowds in Tahrir from the ones throwing rocks and chunks of glass and metal over the wall and at security forces. Desperate to end the violence, Farouk and his colleagues have tried pleading with, and physically preventing, people from crossing over to confront the state security forces, but it’s a losing battle.
Behind him, the stream of airborne rocks is endless, young men cheering every time the shattering of glass is heard, riding on each other’s shoulders to make their insults more audible, taking apart the neighborhood around them in the hopes that its broken pieces would serve as ammunition once they run out of rocks.
“What do these people know of the Prophet?” sighs Farouk.
To his left, his colleague asks, “What Prophet? You think any of these people care about religion?” He turned to Egypt Independent and added, “You’d think these were the most pious people on Earth, but we were here for dawn prayers and we can tell you not a single one of them stopped throwing rocks long enough to pray.”
Moments later, two teens rush past, carrying a child with blood spurting out between the fingers he has over his right eye.
“Good,” Farouk says. “Serves him right. I hope they all die. Those little kids are all hired to add to the chaos.”
When asked hired by whom, Farouk shrugs.
A few feet away, 51-year-old Reda Mohamed is wandering amongst the rock-throwing youth, sharing words of encouragement. When asked how attacking the US Embassy makes any sense, he replies flatly, “It’s their embassy.” After listening to an extremely brief explanation of how unrelated the embassy remains to the filmmakers, Mohamed, without the slightest change of tone or expression, states, “It’s wrong to attack the embassy.” But then the conversation is interrupted by two younger men who claim the film was financed, in part at least, by the US government. “See?” Mohamed replies with a look of disgust, before following the two men in the direction of the temporarily guarded embassy.
The crowd erupts shortly afterwards, its attention drawn to the two foreign men being quickly escorted from the scene by a small group of Egyptians. One of the men has had his green t-shirt torn; his left shoulder and part of his chest are exposed. Within seconds, hundreds of protesters have descended upon them, some laughing, others clearly enraged, thumping the foreigners on the head, piling on top of them and trying to wrestle them to the ground while bystanders shout for help and the prevalence of common sense. “You’re beating random foreigners, you dogs!” one woman in a burqa screams. For several moments, the foreign men are completely obscured by a flurry of fists and bodies, until enough individuals come to their aid and manage to extract them from the cluster. The small group escapes and is chased out of sight, with those left behind clearly struggling to come to terms with what they had just witnessed. One woman breaks down into tears, men mutter in disbelief, and an adolescent admonishes nobody in particular, shouting, “I know those men — one is Italian, the other is Dutch. They have nothing to do with this, they’re not even Americans.”
“So what if they were?” one older man bursts, before repeating the question again at a louder volume. “Have we all gone crazy?”
An answer can be found at the wall, where Hassan Eid, a protester who claims to have been “suffering” at the scene “for the past 10 days” — despite the fact that the violence began on Tuesday night — continues to bark orders at his rock-throwing comrades.
“People who say this is crazy have no honor, or religion,” he asserts. “What is so crazy about protecting your honor, and protecting what is most sacred in all our lives? This is not crazy. This is a new age, under a new regime. And this is our new way of protesting.”
