Eye on Cairo

funny thoughts on egyptian politics

2007-11-07T11:57:00.001-08:00

found this in my notes from 12/05. funny, upset, but apt?

It is now a two sided political system here, kind of like the Democrats and Republicans, except that in this case we are talking about the crazy autocratic corrupt single party state security obsessed ruling party and the crazy god obsessed, we are doing this all for god, don’t recoginize Israel, ultimately people will ask for god’s law, including stoning, to be implemented Muslim Brotherhood. It’s the wacko show, and the religious wackos are outdoing their bloated, corrupt counterparts. The legal opposition, meanwhile, isn’t even in ring three, its out mopping the bathroom somewhere. That’s how bad its gotten.

from a Dec 2005 column

2007-11-07T11:34:00.000-08:00

The stark choices in Egyptian politics were captured this month in the dramatic standoffs in front of dozens of polling places during Egypt’s parliamentary vote. Rows of riot police blocked access to the polls, as hundreds of angry men and veiled women of the banned Muslim Brotherhood pressed up against the barricades, demanding to be allowed to vote.

The violence that erupted in these showdowns left five people dead and hundreds wounded by the poll’s end December 7. It was the same number as were killed in the last parliamentary election in 2000, indicating that while some of the rules of the game have changed in Egyptian politics, the government’s desire to maintain dominance at any cost remains the same.

It was a sad lesson to learn for any who might have taken seriously the National Democratic Party’s pledges of political reform over the past year. The government permitted a direct presidential vote for the first time in September, and let that vote take place without significance interference from security forces.

NDP spokesmen have been proudly showcasing the party’s ambitious reform agenda for the next parliament, which includes lifting the nation’s 24-year old Emergency Law, which strictly represses political life in Egypt, and loosening many of the current restrictions on political parties that have helped maintain Egypt as a single-party state.

The future of Egypt lies with a “multiparty political system, a political system where you have alternatives to the majority party, whatever that party is,” said Mohammed Kamal, one of the NDP’s leading young ideologues, on the day before the voting began.

“The government, the president, is committed to conducting a free and fair election, with state institutions staying neutral,” he said in an interview.

Instead, a disturbing pattern unfolded throughout electoral districts in Egypt. The government gave the Muslim Brotherhood unprecidented freedom to campaign and hold rallies before the vote. But when Brotherhood candidates began to win in far greater numbers than had been predicted, the soft-shoe manipulation and vote-rigging that marred the election’s first round gave way to strong-arm tactics remininsent of elections past.

When posting riot police in front of polling stations didn’t deter opposition voters December 7, state security forces fired tear gas and rubber bullets. In some cases, live ammunition was used, killing opposition party supporters, according to independent election observers. The Egyptian government denied Wednesday that its election security forces shot live rounds.

In theory, many secular Egyptians would agree with the government that all things being equal, it would be desirable to keep the Muslim Brotherhood’s presence in parliament in check. There is a great deal of fear about their ambiguous agenda should they gain power, and the impact their religious views will have on the rights of women and non-Muslim minorities.

But the cheating used to limit the Brotherhood’s gains laid out in unusually clear terms a basic question for those who are interested in democracy in Egypt: Is it better to stand with the side that wants to impose Islamic law, or with the side that will employ any means to stop them from voting?

Liberals and secular opposition politicians are increasingly choosing to stand with the Brotherhood’s right to participate, even when they oppose their religious platform. Egypt’s weak secular and liberal opposition groups courted the Brotherhood for their united opposition front before this election.

For the past year, Brotherhood members have participated alongside Marxists, liberals, and socialists in anti-Mubarak demonstrations in Cairo. Analysts increasingly say that the Brotherhood’s presence in parliament could help to revitalize political life in Egypt by encouraging reform within the NDP and other parties.

With all of the rhetoric about democracy now in Egypt, cheating in elections is an increasingly appalling option, even for those who think that checking the rise of an Islamist party is a noble cause. Indeed, it is hard not to be moved by the sight of hundreds unarmed voters risking violence and arrest to cast their ballots and have their voices heard.

Brotherhood supporters also stand accused of paying voters in some districts and engaging in violence in an election that was far from clean on all sides. But the Egyptian government’s refusal to accept the will of its voters did something for the Brotherhood it could not do for itself: it turned a group whose slogan is “Islam is the Solution" into the most powerful emblem of the nation’s desire for democratic change.

Mubarak Rally, Sept. 2005

2007-11-07T11:15:00.000-08:00

With our blood
And our souls
We sacrifice for you
We sacrifice for you, Oh Mubarak!

Catchy, isn’t it? It is to me now, this simple chant, repeating over and over in my mind, reminding me of the feel of the democracy emerging in Egypt. I’ve just come from Mubarak’s last political rally in the campaign, Egypt’s first contested presidential election will take place in three days. Mubarak delivered a speech at the rally, but the crowd barely heard him. They refused to stop chanting their dedication to the president, arms high, waving posters and banners, shouting over one another and over Mubarak himself. “We love you Mubarak,” they chanted. “Gamal,” they chanted, addressing the president’s son and protégé. “Tell your father that we love him.”

The rally was called for 8 p.m. in one of the largest open squares in Cairo, the formal square around Aberdeen Palace, the last palace of the king. As we approached from the downtown area, security forces manned a metal fence, blocking off the road a few blocks from the rally. We showed our journalist credentials and got in, making our way with a steady stream of people past rows of stores to the rally entrance.

There were a bewildering array of security forces. Police in white uniforms, decorated officers in formal attire, security men in black bulletproof vests and in riot helmets, camouflaged-swathed army and Republican Guard types, suited undercover security forces. Thousands of men, arrayed in rows, most looking no older than 19.

Our first idea was to try to join the main crowd and come through the admission line. We joined a line pushing through a gap in the riot police, which led to a metal detector. The young men pushing past us wouldn’t let go of each other to let us through. Around the back of the event, where we were sent when unable to navigate this scene, there was little securely, but a long list, like a bouncer would have. Finally they found my name and let me through…no friend and translator though. We walked into the main rally space, climbed over a fence with the help of a few chairs and security forces, and put myself on my way.

From my archives

2007-11-07T11:05:00.000-08:00

God, can't believe how much I had that I didn't write about. What was I thinking? How unsettled must I have been? Anyway, here's a journal entry from late 2005:
Visit to al-Azhar

One of the most unique aspects of my time here is that I am officially affiliated with Al-Azhar University. The oldest university in the Muslim world, it was officially founded in the 10th century, or four centuries after the death of Mohammed. In the 1950s and 60s, under Nasser, it was expanded to include more than just its ancient mosque and the training of religious scholars. There are two large campuses in the ‘new’ part of Cairo, Nasser City, the men’s campus housing 85,000 students; the smaller women’s campus with 15,000.

Only Muslims are allowed to teach and study at the school, though some foreign visiting teachers of different religions are permitted. The campus looks a bit like a 60s blueprint of a modern university, left to decay, with a wide central street, a fountain in a central median, and buildings lining each side of the road, which slopes gently uphill. There’s something vaguely Chinese about it, centrally planned. Not sensitive to the purpose of the place, not quoting of its ancient roots across town.

To enter the campus all women must wear headscarfs. At first, Im dropped off by the taxi at the Men’s Campus, because this is where I met my faculty advisor the last time. The guards are surprised, “This is the men’s campus” they keep saying to me. I throw on a loosely tied brown head scarf and insist that I am a student here. They let me in.

In the shade of a tree I watch the men stream on to campus. They look young, thin, and intense, but most are not bearded. Later I would see some wearing the al-Azhar uniform--a red fez, or Turkish hat, with a white band around the face. They wear sweaters and brown and black pants or jackets. Most carry one book only, or not at all. The main reason it seemed like a university is that everyone seemed to have a purpose and actually be going somewhere-not all that common in Egypt. And no one actually hassled me under that tree--perhaps it was because we were on religious ground.

After a while, I called my advisor, wondering if perhaps she had sent people to fetch me at the wrong gate. It turned out I was on the wrong campus--I should have gone to the women’s college after all. A guard helped me choose an appropriate minivan, and I threw myself ungracefully into the front seat. Off I went to the women’s school.

When it was time to get out of the van, a woman took my hand and led me across the train tracks, down a set of stairs, and voila, there we were. Amany, for that was her name, spoke to my teacher on the phone and agreed to lead me to her office. Under her headscarf, her blue/green eyes were truly beautiful.

On the campus, there was fabric flowing everywhere. Like butterflies with the occasional moth thrown in. Headscarves of every color and arrangement, long coats covering the body. And lots of nikabs--full veils covering all but the eyes, and sometimes the eyes too--more than I’ve seen anywhere in Cairo. It was hard to judge but about 1 in every 10 women was fully veiled. None of their teachers seemed to wear the nikab, just the students, in a kind of religious revival. And though it is a women’s school, there are some men on the faculty and on the staff, so they keep the things on, even in class.

The classrooms were packed, over filled with billowing women. There are between 70 and 100 students per class here in classrooms meant to hold forty or fifty. Somehow women in all this fabric seem to take up so much more space.

The students of my teacher all had their faces visible but one. They were not wearing makeup and looked coarse--nothing like the beautiful girls that seem to be everywhere at AUC. “I don’t like the nikab,” my teacher said. “I think it is misunderstood and often taken for the wrong reasons.”

She herself is like a kind grandmother, a wide, pretty face, in a headscarf tied in the old fashioned way, just around her hair, with her neck exposed and some wisps of hair hanging out. She has on an old sweater that comes down to her thighs and is reverse woven with many colors. Her feet are so swollen she barely fits into her shoes, she takes the stairs one by one. And yet when it comes time to leave she pushes her small car out of the space with me because someone parked so close too her that she can’t get in. “Its gotten so crowded here--so crowded!” she says, nodding her head from side to side. And if she gives you an order you are doing it.

What are they teaching them there? How does the women’s education at Al-Azhar in Islamic studies differ from what men are taught? What about women becoming muftis?

Muslims in America

2007-04-29T11:04:00.000-07:00

I didn't quite realize it before I went to Egypt, but now that I'm back, its clear: Islam is kind of treated like a new, unfamiliar cult in America, very very cautiously, with an initial assumption that it is bad and warlike and probably should be kept at arms-length. It's funny because Islam has been around for 1,400 years, has billions of adherents, and its longevity alone should qualify it as something that probably is somewhat life-sustaining rather than just life-ending. We are up to a "Muslims are people too?" level of debate. And yet, before there's even the thought that things could flow in the direction of learning and tolerance, we have a whole series of new best-sellers appearing which state the point again and again: Islam is a religion of violence and intolerance. Sam Harris's The End of Faith is one such work. These books claim to be debunking religion as a whole but their slant or inspiration, if you will, is clearly anti-Islam: the beginning of Sam Harris's book is a Muslim suicide bomber and Islam is its particular focus.

Is it possible to say that Islam is a religion of many things--war and peace, justice and injustice, without sounding like an apologist? It is an entire system of life and worldview--it must contain all of these opposites. Islam is a different way of looking at the same reality---just as any religion is. It places, non-scientifically, of course, the invisible at the center of events (Freud, anyone?). In religion, it is what you don't see and can't prove that is most important.

Some thoughts about morality

2007-02-06T14:41:00.000-08:00

What does it mean to say about someone, you know, before you found Islam, you weren’t a very good person. But now, that you follow these rules, and believe in God, your behavior has improved. You treat other people better…more like people.

It means that starting out, you weren’t very much at all. Maybe you were raised in a society that on some level was deeply sick. Maybe you grew up not knowing the difference between treating people as ends and treating people as means. Maybe you didn’t even know there was a distinction.

Maybe you looked for advantage all the time and felt justified doing so because, well, either on some level you didn’t care about others, or because you just felt you hadn’t been given a fair shake. Your life was a series of obligations you had not chosen. Your future was circumscribed by a society that did not encourage success. Your success enviably would lift the veil of denial cushioning other people’s compromises and failures. And that would just be too painful for them to take.

What do you do with such a person, such a society? Here, there is an entire moral system just waiting for you, all you have to do is sign on! Follow these simple five steps: pray five times a day, give charity, fast for Ramadan, believe in the one true God and his prophet, go to Mecca once in your life. Do it with a pure heart, motivated by true belief, and the riddle is solved.

It is the ultimate 12-step system, except its even simpler. It’s the Five-step system. Do it with your whole heart and it can save both you and your society from oblivion.

The risk, of course, is the all or nothing system it creates. When there is only one truth, only one way, you are either following it or you are not. When you fall short, there is no break: no system of secular morality to fall back on. In the push to follow the one true way, encouragement to understand the purposes of moral behavior, which creates conviction, may not exist.

The stakes become very high, and the definition of what the proper path is exactly becomes all important. And not just for you personally. Someone doing things another way points out the fact that perhaps your way might just be wrong. And with not just this life, but the next life riding upon your judgment, that may just be too painful to take.

Exporting an Egyptian Cat: Update

2007-02-05T07:57:00.000-08:00

So...at the advice of a pet store owner in Zamalek, I decided to go over to the Ministry of Agriculture today to get an official export health certificate for my cat, Sami. Turns out maybe you don't have to go back to the vet five days before you travel after all.

Before I begin this story, let me give you some advice: if you don't want to create havoc in the ministry office, just ignore the fact that they will give you incorrect receipts for the money you will pay. Apparently even asking about this is deeply insulting. Which leads me to my Cairo behaviour theorem of the day: the more people yell and complain about how honest they are being, the more likely it is that they are cheating you.

Anyway, the place you have to go is located on Nadi al-Sid Street in Dokki. If you're coming from the 6th October bridge, turn onto Nadi al-Sid, go down about two blocks, and you will see a kind of Belle-Epoque colonial building on your left. That's not it. Where you want to go is that Stalin-esk structure across from it on the right. It kind of like looks two giant housing project buildings. OK, go on through the last gate. If you are foreign-looking, they'll know why you've come--you are not the first foreigner looking to ''export'' an Egyptian dog or cat.

The division is called the General Services Veterinary Section, what you want is a health certificate (shehada al-sehi). It's on the second floor. A nice beefy guy in a suit or a skinny guy in government issue polyester casuals (I stole that description from a friend) will escort you past the crumbling Mubarak statue in the lobby (the paint has come off half the face) and into the kind of elevator where you are like, wait...I'm not going in there. Does it work? And then you go in because everyone else is doing it. On the second floor, make a right, people will help you find the right place.

You will enter a standard Egyptian public office: five people, only one of whom is doing anything that looks work-related. Then there's the woman with the flowing hijab/abaya and gloves on reading the Quran; the less covered-up middle-aged woman next to her just staring off into space; the director of the office, a balding man in his 50s, whose job it is to collect money and sign things. Explain what you want: they will ask for some amount of money: in my case, 50 pounds. Pay. Then go over to the ''vet'' in attendance with your cat's vaccination record, and she will sign a document certifying your animal is healthy. Don't bother to bring the actual animal. Its not necessary.

Everything was going smoothly, and normally I wouldn't have rocked the boat, but...because I was going to write about this, I decided to actually ask: why, if the certificate says I paid 22.75 LE, and then another illegible scribble on another piece of paper looks like it says I paid 20 LE, was I charged 50 LE?? Just wondering, I said. At that point, everyone shook the sleepers out of their eyes and looked over at me, as if not sure I had just said what I had just said. The boss, who was by then playing solitaire on the only computer in the office (hey--at least they had a computer!) looked up too. He had taken the actual cash earlier, and made change from the money in his pocket. And then it got crazy.

I don't know; said the veterinarian, looking innocent and wide-eyed, turning to another woman. WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT??? screeched the other woman, a big lady in a black headscarf who had recently arrived. Then they began to throw a bunch of numbers at me: 100 for this stamp, 200 for this other stamp...voices rising. A young woman who had been doing some accounting was staring at the scene with a bemused smile on her face, like, ummm...this is interesting, i wonder how they will deal with this? No one offered to give me another receipt. But I didn't expect that anyway. I just kind of wanted to see what would happen if I asked.

"Sorry!" I said. "I'm just asking a simple question. My friends' are going to come and I wanted to know all the information."

''Next time you need something done, go to the office at the airport!!" yelled the big lady. "Tell your friends to go to the airport too!!"

"Don't worry about it," whispered the vet as I was gathering my things to go, surprised at how easy it had been to create chaos in the office. "You can come back here next time."

Listen: I know they don't pay them a lot at the ministry. I know everyone is just supposed to ''go with the flow'' and pay all the hidden baksheesh as required. But pretending that you are in the right by freaking out and coming up with a million and one reasons why there is nothing wrong just makes things worse. If people pretend not to see all the graft that is built into the system, or get extremely defensive when it is pointed out, how are things ever going to change? No one individual is to blame. But the sad fact is that lying every day to make a few dollars for your family ultimately has a corrosive impact on both the people who lie and their society.

27 Days and a cat

2007-01-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

With 27 days to go here in Cairo, I thought I would begin to share some of the information I've gathered all these months here. Some of it will be practical, others will be thoughts, rants and opinions. I appreciate your feedback on any of it.

OK, lets start with the practical.

WHY YOU MIGHT WANT TO ADOPT AN EGYPTIAN CAT

If you've ever spent any time with Egyptian cats, you know they are a breed apart from American cats. Over the last few thousand years they have developed into highly intelligent scavengers with impressive fighting skills. But like any good Cairene, they've developed impressive social skills as well. They know there's no animal protection laws out there insuring they get fed. So they've figured out how to build almost human-like relationships with people to ensure that the food keeps coming.

Take my cat, Sami, for example. He is a strange cat, even by Egyptian standards: he loves water, and thinks that chasing shadows is even more interesting than going after the real thing. In his free time, he teaches himself tricks: he can now climb to the top of a 10-foot wooden trellis on the balcony. He climbs paw over paw as if it was a ladder, then balances on the inch-wide surface up top, turning foot by foot, until he can position himself for a leap onto a nearby table. On one of his first days here, he figured out how to jump on top of the refrigerator and open cabinets from above. He approaches household objects with an engineer-like curiousity. Recently he's decided, for example, that it would be more interesting watching water go down the bathroom drain if he removed the metal cover. So every night he sticks his claws into the cover and slides it off the drain. When the shower starts up in the morning, he runs over to watch the water pool before it disappears.

He saunters like a street fighter--admitedly a retired one, with a bit of a furry white paunch. His forearms are thick like tree branches and his hind legs remind me of a frog's. He is not afraid, just deeply curious. After going to the vet for the first time, he looked in amazment at his cat carrier once he returned home, as though it was some kind of magical transporter that lifted him out of his dull apartment, and brought him into the exciting streets of Cairo, into a noisy cab, halfway across the city. Now he jumps in there expectantly sometimes, like a dog grabbing at his leash.

Affection comes naturally to him too. When I'm studying, he likes putting his head on my arm and draping an arm non-chalantly across my shoulder. He curls up by my stomach when I have a stomach ache. He is almost always near me if I am home. He likes laps: my lap, visitor's laps. He likes the arm holes of winter jackets. He likes climbing into a basket and leaping out to surprise me. And even when he looks like he's sleeping, he usually gets up and goes with me when I leave the room.

It makes you wonder: where does the American cat stock come from anyway? I loved my American cat, Kitty, but her speciality was sitting on the couch and getting petted. Besides the occassional pen, she never chased much of anything. Who were her ancestors? The few cats that made it to America on merchant ships? Modern times have been even worse for American cats. We have been killing tens of thousands of urban cats every year, afraid they will be some kind of disease risk. But let me ask you, wouldn't you rather have cats than rats?

BRINGING AN EGYPTIAN CAT TO AMERICA

OK, I haven't completely figured this out yet. But here, I gather, are the rules. I think Egyptian cats need their rabies shot before they arrive in America, and according to my vet, this must be administered 28 days before travel. I was unable to find any information on the CDC website in America confirming this, so I can only assume this is correct.

Cats flying through Europe also need a microchip implanted in their necks with an identity number. Sounds freaky I know but it was really easy. The thing is so tiny it fits in a regular hypodermic needle. Once in there, it can be read with a bar code reader for the next 75 years (now that is freaky).

In Cairo, you can get all of this done at the Egyptian Society of Animal Friends in New Maadi, 30 Korshed Street, across from the Modern Academy. Dr. Rania Kashif. The clinic's number is 010-620-5694. For the rabies shot, another standard feline shot (Fel-o-Vax, I believe against leukemia), and the microchip it cost 340 L.E. Plus you get a cute little ''cat passport'' which lists your cat's ID number and serves as his vaccination record.

Another vet in Zamalek has been recommended by friends, but I've never been there. His name is Dr. Rafiq and his number is 736-2402.

Five days before you travel your cat needs to be examined by a vet to make sure he is in good health. You then carry his health certificate with you to the airport. If you plan ahead, you can bring your cat on as carry-on luggage and stow him under your seat. This costs as much as an extra bag: ie. on Lufthansa, $155. Not cheap, I know.

I justify all this time and expense to myself by thinking there is no way I can leave behind such an interesting and extraordinary animal. For Americans who have never met a cat quite like him, he will be a kind of cultural ambassador. Plus I really want to see him run in grass, and, oh yeah, kick those American cats' asses.

Cairo Malaise

2006-06-18T01:35:00.000-07:00

CAIRO MALAISE

For months I thought: If I can just get one thing done today, a trip to the store, a workout at the gym, I will have accomplished something.

My friend John went further: “It takes one day to buy the groceries…and the next day to put them away,” he said.

It's not that it is so hard to get things done in Cairo. Its just that there is something about the pace, the heat, and the general feeling that nothing is really going anywhere that contributes to the malaise.

There is also something so pleasant about sitting in a sunny living room in Cairo, drinking coffee in the morning for an hour after you force yourself out of bed. And feeling the heat build as 10 a.m. moves toward 11.

And there is something so daunting about the streets, with the endless honking, the black and white metal shells without air conditioning that pass for taxis, the incessant blare of Arabic pop music or Quranic verse through tinny speakers, the fur lined---yes, in this climate!—-the fur lined dashboards and dangling prayer beads.

If there is nothing one has to do, why do it? Rent is cheap, food is cheap, taxis are cheap: we are all surviving without much effort.

Clubbing protesters "evidence of democracy"

2006-05-25T03:25:00.000-07:00

The Egyptian government, and its (and our) use of the word democracy keeps getting more and more absurd. In this article, I particularly enjoyed the Mubarak's use of the third person in describing his "liberal" attitude toward the Muslim Brothers:

Speaking about himself, he said: "Mubarak, and no one else, has allowed their entrance into the parliament as the biggest opposition block, although he could have prohibited them if he wanted."

Very caveman.

I will also post the Prime Minister's comments on the Brothers, also from Sharm. Today is a big protest day here: the one year anniversary of the referendum that allowed for (practically meaningless) direct presidential elections.

By all accounts, the Brothers are acting as a responsible, active, but powerless opposition block in parliament here. But the regime is not comfortable with the amount of attention and power they are garnering, and no compromise solution is in sight.

http://www.news24.com/News24/Africa/News/0,,2-11-1447_1937656,00.html

Rallies 'evidence of democracy'
23/05/2006 09:12 - (SA)

Cairo - President Hosni Mubarak lashed out at coverage of Cairo street protests in which more than 600 Egyptians were beaten and arrested, calling the rallies "evidence of democracy" and coverage of them "libel and blasphemy".

Mubarak said: "Continuation (of the protests) is evidence of democracy", adding that he was surprised by some media coverage.

For the past three weeks, international media had shown footage of young activists being beaten in downtown Cairo in broad daylight by plainclothes police.

More than 600 people were arrested, mostly members of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, but also secular pro-democracy activists.

US criticises Mubarak

Protesters were rallying in support of two reformist judges disciplined for blowing the whistle on electoral fraud. The United States openly criticised Mubarak's handling of the protests.

Mubarak accused his opponents, including some journalists, of having "mean intentions and wanting to achieve personal benefits" in their coverage of the protests.

He said: "Most of what they are writing could be punished according to the law, because it is libel and blasphemy", adding that he supported freedom of the press and thus had not cracked down on such coverage.

Mubarak said: "If they think that what they are doing is an expression of their freedom, they should remember who gave them this chance, and who is insisting on its continuity."

Brotherhood 'tolerated in Egypt'

Mubarak said that his policy towards the banned Muslim Brotherhood was unfairly characterised as harsh.

Speaking about himself, he said: "Mubarak, and no one else, has allowed their entrance into the parliament as the biggest opposition block, although he could have prohibited them if he wanted."

Outlawed since 1954, the Brotherhood was tolerated in Egypt within limits. Its candidates, fielded as independents, won 88 seats in the 454-member parliament in elections late last year.

Mubarak also said the success of the World Economic Forum, which ended on Monday in Sharm El-Sheik, was proof that the international community had faith in Egypt's economy.

He said: "We are on the right path."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/20/AR2006052000356_pf.html
Egyptian PM says not in hurry for political reform

By Jonathan Wright
Reuters
Saturday, May 20, 2006; 5:19 AM

SHARM EL-SHEIKH, Egypt (Reuters) - The Egyptian government is not in a hurry to change the country's political system, Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif said on Saturday.

"It doesn't take a month or two or six. It will take years... We have the time. We are not in a hurry," he told reporters before the opening of a World Economic Forum meeting in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.

The Egyptian government changed the constitution last year to introduce the country's first multi-candidate presidential elections.

President Hosni Mubarak won a fifth six-year term in contested elections in September and the opposition says the government has since reverted to a repressive approach.

In recent weeks plainclothes security men have beaten and clubbed peaceful demonstrators protesting in solidarity with judges seeking judicial independence from the executive.

Nazif denied the government had taken any steps away from political liberalization but said it had to take into account Islamist successes in parliamentary elections.

The opposition Muslim Brotherhood won a fifth of the seats in the Egyptian parliament in November and December, confirming its position as the country's largest opposition group.

"Once the process starts, things happen. You see Islamists for example gaining in parliament here, in Palestine, in Iraq, so we start recalculating what's going on," he said.

"You need to recalculate, you need to revisit some of your assumptions, to make sure you are really on the right track but in the end I don't think there is any way to go back on this."

He played down the recent demonstrations in Cairo and other towns as the work of "special interest groups."

The Kefaya (Enough) Movement, for example, which opposed Mubarak's reelection and any attempt to arrange a succession for Mubarak's son Gamal, had 2,000 members, he said.

The prime minister said one of his economic priorities was to reorganize the system of subsidies, which cost the government 40 billion Egyptian pounds ($7 billion) a year for energy alone and are the biggest factor in a budget deficit running at about 9 percent of gross domestic product.

He said the strategy would be to target the poor with cash subsidies tied to the families sending their children to school and taking part in literacy and family planning programs. But he gave no timetable for changing the system.

Nazif said he was confident the Egyptian stock market could ride out the effect of sharp declines in Gulf markets.

"Their price/earning ratios are three times as much as ours so our market is still very attractive one and I think it will continue to be so," he said.

"The market has reacted very gracefully so far and I think with the kind of growth that we are seeing here in Egypt I'm not worried. The market is developing in a solid way," he added.

Morning routine

2006-04-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

Morning routine

For those of you wondering what it’s like living in Cairo, I thought I would narrate the events of this morning, to give you an idea.

6:30 a.m. I am up for some reason, even though I went to sleep late and didn’t sleep much at all the night before. Perhaps some random street noise woke me up, or a prayer call? Hmmm…guess I will just lie here for a while and try to get a few more hours sleep.

7:30 a.m. Why is this bed so uncomfortable? Must switch mattress with foam mattress in other room. This mattress is completely shot, I am now trying to curl up on a decent 18-inch wide section on the far left side of the bed. Will get this done today.

8:40 a.m. OK, I am waking up. Opening the shutters, pretty nice day out there. I can see a pretty tree, but the backyards of all the buildings near me are filled with old bricks, slabs of concrete, some basic trash, and other random building materials.

8:50 a.m. Making coffee, American style. I have two bags of Starbucks coffee left, which I cherish and ration out like I’m in the war. A few weeks ago, I broke the glass pitcher part of the coffee maker so now I just stand there while the thing is brewing and stick a knife under the drip contraption so that the coffee can drain into a mug. This is a very imperfect system that ends with significant sludge at the bottom of my cup. I tried to order a new pot…they were going to deliver it….don’t know what happened with that. Must follow up with that this week.

8:55 a.m. I open the cabinet to get some sugar for the coffee. Holy shit! There are more ants than I’ve ever seen in there. They found a way into the Tupperware container filled with sugar and are swarming everywhere. There are more ants than sugar and lots of ants that look as though they have gorged themselves to death. Luckily, they are really small, easy to kill ants, though. I throw all sugar into the garbage and clean out the cabinet. They appear to be entering through a hole in the cabinet where it meets the wall. Must try to tape that up.

9:30 a.m. Checking email. DSL works, thank god.

10:00 a.m. Get phone call on the landline. Yesterday, the line was completely dead, but today for some reason it seems to be working. It’s the engineer from the phone company, asking if he still needs to come. No, I tell him, the phone line appears to be working now. Strange.

10:15 a.m. Watering plants on patio. Most have more or less survived my five days out of the country, but some of them just are not making it out there. A thick layer of dust covers the patio. OK, if you saw it, you would call it dirt, not dust. Anyway, its what's in the air here. Must see if cleaning lady can come tomorrow.

10:30 a.m. Bawab (building super/doorman kind of guy) rings bell. Everything ok with the phone? Yes, I tell him. Thank you.

10:35 a.m. I realize full extent of the amount of stuff I have left behind in my hostel in Israel. I rushed out of there hoping to get to the Temple Mount before my flight yesterday. Lost: one pair of awesome prescription sunglasses; one cheap pair of headphones; one half-empty container of special antibiotic face pads to counteract effects of pollution on skin.

10:40 a.m. I decide to do some laundry, maybe that will go well. Machine appears to be working. Yay!

10:45 a.m. One more look in cabinet. Ants are back, looking for something to eat. I put everything on a different shelf, spray too much Raid and close the kitchen door.

11:00 a.m. Time to go to work! What was it I had to do today? OK, will just throw some stuff in a bag and get going. Hmm...I'm hungry. Must get some lunch.

I can't believe this

2005-12-22T08:30:00.000-08:00

This is similar to what Egyptian security forces do at rallies here in Egypt. Infiltrate them to cause trouble and clashes with the police. This is happening a pro-bicycle riding rallies in New York. Is this really in the name of anti-terrorism?

New York Police Covertly Join In at Protest Rallies
By JIM DWYER
Undercover New York City police officers have conducted covert surveillance in the last 16 months of people protesting the Iraq war, bicycle riders taking part in mass rallies and even mourners at a street vigil for a cyclist killed in an accident, a series of videotapes show.

In glimpses and in glaring detail, the videotape images reveal the robust presence of disguised officers or others working with them at seven public gatherings since August 2004.

The officers hoist protest signs. They hold flowers with mourners. They ride in bicycle events. At the vigil for the cyclist, an officer in biking gear wore a button that said, "I am a shameless agitator." She also carried a camera and videotaped the roughly 15 people present.

Beyond collecting information, some of the undercover officers or their associates are seen on the tape having influence on events. At a demonstration last year during the Republican National Convention, the sham arrest of a man secretly working with the police led to a bruising confrontation between officers in riot gear and bystanders.

Until Sept. 11, the secret monitoring of events where people expressed their opinions was among the most tightly limited of police powers.

Finding God

2005-12-14T07:43:00.000-08:00

Abdullah: A professor at the American University in Cairo who found Islam after a particularly heavy night of drugs in Tangiers in about 1960. He was cast into a vision of hell that lasted six weeks, and people came to minister to him at his home during that time. Finally he got up the strength to make the long trek back to America, flying through Cuba with dark glasses on (his onward ticket had been from there; he had been fighting the Revolution on the side of the revolutionaries until becoming disenchanted with the movement’s Stalinist tendencies.) When he arrived back in New York, the vision came. In Tangiers, he said, strangers--men-- acknowledged each other when they met for the first time on a bus and inquired about each others lives, whether that meant a conversation ending in hugs or blows. But on the New York City subway, Abdullah saw that everyone sat alone, afraid of intruding into anyone else’s space, alienated. And Abdullah (at that time, Mark) felt, “We are not meant to live this way.”
He was a Forest Hills native, but he had just come from a theocentric community, one in which people lived by and acknowledged and were colleagues in the worship of god. What impressed Mark the most about Islam were the little, basic things; how men washed themselves after the bathroom, making themselves really, not just in name, clean; their penchant for greeting and acknowledgement. Mark had tried the capitalist life, the bohemian life, and the life of the Marxist revolutionary. None of them had been satisfying.
So Mark in New York opened the Koran at random, hoping for a sign. What came up was the phrase “Allah knows us, but we cannot know Allah, for he is unknowable.” It was both an acknowledgment and a release, a release from the need to know, and a promise that knowing was not necessary to believe. So he thought, if this is not a sign, I don’t know what is. And he threw up his hands and said, I submit, I submit to the will of god.
In Morocco, it had been the Sufis that Mark was attracted to. They were mystics of the highest order, they could approach Allah by reciting his 100 names, over and over. A beat generation poet, Mark sympathized with the idea that there was something in the word, in the name itself that contained deity and power.
After an unsatisfying visit to an Islamic Center in Manhattan, Mark found his way to a small mosque in Brooklyn. The imam, who was wearing Sufi beads, asked him if he was a Muslim. “No,” said Mark, “but I want to be.” So Mark recited his pledge right there--according to the Quran, he was instantly cleansed of all his past sins.
Mark gave up cocaine after becoming Muslim, but not alcohol at first. He had graduated from the University of Pennsylvania, become a young hot shot at Young and Rubicam, took a cross country journey while Jack Kerouac was still penning On the Road, dropped out and found Alan Ginsberg and the beat generation, wrote poetry, joined up with the Cubans, and gone to Tangiers to space out and find another form of life.
“Had I gone to a Buddhist country, I would have likely become a Buddhist. Had I gone to a Catholic country, I would have likely become a Catholic,” he said, but he came to a Muslim country, was impressed by the community of faith therein, and found Allah.

Rejecting God
Mahmoud: At age five, Mahmoud asked his mother why it was that his family ate meat when the other families around him subsisted on beans and bread. His mother said, this is because of what God wills. So Mahmoud said, if this is what God does, I do not think I like God. And his mother was horrified, and cast him out to live with his grandparents.

At age eleven Mahmoud had a shock. He went to wake his grandfather up from his bed, but he was dead. So Mahmoud had no choice to return to his home, where he was not made to feel particularly welcome.

When he reached 15, Mahmoud moved out and found a small room in the home of an older man. He worked at a textile factory all night and went to school during the day. Despite this he graduated second in his class and had his choice of university subjects.

Mahmoud tried business studies. But he didn’t like the attitude of the rich young men he met on the campus, whom he found false. He ended up switching to law with the idea of standing up for the disenfranchised. Not sure when he became a Marxist but it was probably around this time.

To this day Mahmoud is suspicious of rich people and shuns their friendship. He believes that the truth is with the poor, the genius is with the masses. Reflecting on the failures of dictatorship, he now believes that freedom has to come before social justice, a noteworthy intellectual development among former Marxists here. Of the slim portfolio of ideologies available to idealists in post-Revolutionary Egypt, Mahmoud’s is among the kindest.

Voting in Shobra el-Kheima

2005-11-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

For those who don’t know it, Shobra el-Kheima is a vast working-class neighborhood on the outskirts, of Cairo-- so vast, in fact, it is actually part of a different province and didn't even vote with the rest of Cairo earlier this month. Its ringed by a few main paved roads, but beyond those there are just tightly packed unfinished apartment buildings divided by garbage strewn alleyways. Two million people live there.

My friend Mohammed lives out there, and on Saturday, he invited me to see an example of kind of voter intimidation that has been going on throughout the country during the second round of these parlimentary elections. When we arrived, a ring of riot police surrounded the entrance to a polling station at the Batin secondary school. A large crowd of men were gathered outside the ring. They all wanted to vote, but the security forces were preventing everyone from getting inside, and had been for hours. The men inside the cordon, plainclothes intelligence officers, police, and NDP officials, drank juice and tea and eyed the crowd blandly.

Every once and a while, the security forces closest to the wall of the school would allow a few voters to squeeze through. These were mostly Brotherhood voters, people there said. At the center of the cordon, a gap would occasionally open and let groups of other voters calmly saunter in without a hassle. These, people there said, were NDP supporters, many brought by minibus to vote.

“Freedom is being confiscated!” said Walid Abu Fatah, a broad-faced Brotherhood supporter. “As you see, soldiers prevent people from giving their votes!”

The security forces had arrived in the morning and formed the cordon after a battle had erupted between NDP and Brotherhood supporters. A gun had gone off. As the hours went on, things became tense again. The crowd of voters waiting to get inside began to chant Brotherhood slogans. Posters materialized. An old man came rushing up to us at a nearby cafe (we had retreated after a while to watch from a distance.) He was beside himself--his wife had gone to vote at a nearby polling station, only to find that someone had already voted in her name. When she complained, she was threatened by the judge there--who said he would hit her and put her in prison if she didn’t leave. "There is corruption in this election!" he shouted to us, looking to me in the hope that I had the power to somehow stop all of the chicanery. "They take pride in the cheating, in making the National Party win!” His name was Shouki Awed Ashur Zaidan, he was the father of five.

Meanwhile, at other polling stations, things were comparatively calm. Apparently four polling stations, all in areas thought to be Brotherhood strongholds, were blocked by police, while voting at others continued. We met a judge supervising one poll who expressed frustration that his authority ended at the door to the classroom where he was signing in voters. Within his tiny area of responsibility, he tried to keep the election clean.

Many of the problems had been set into motion well before election day, and that, as the outside of the station, was out of the hands of all poll workers. Throughout the parliamentary vote, I've talked to judges and poll workers who estimate that at least some 30 percent of the names on the voting lists are incorrect. My friend Mohammed couldn't vote, for example, because a silent letter in Arabic, the tarmabuta, was missing from the end of the spelling of his last name. His cousin, an NDP supporter, couldn't vote for a similar reason.

We interviewed the MB candidate in the district before leaving. Gamal Mahmoud Shata was a squarely built guy who seemed a bit new to his olive suit and striped tie. As he moved though the polling station, greeting the workers, many shook his hands proudly. Two women murmured, May god support you.

“The government didn’t project that we will succeed in this way. When it happened, they lost their minds. They will do anything to prevent this win in the elections,” the candidate said.

The MB has support even among the bureaucrats, even within the polling stations themselves. Young enthusiastic supporters of the MB, both men and women, stood in front of polling places, sometimes putting their arms around voters and whispering in their ears right up to the ballot boxes. Despite the blocked polls and intimidation in Shobra el-Kheima, the Brotherhood candidate ultimately won. And this was the case in districts throughout Egypt.

It is for that reason that the Brothers have thrust those of us who want democracy for Egypt into a kind of dilemma. We believe in one man one vote. We believe that people should be allowed to vote for who they want to win, and that the candidate who gets the most votes should be declared the victor. And yet we don’t know whether the Brothers are playing the populist card of religion for power alone. They say they will play the role of a responsible government opposition, pushing for the end of corruption, for change that will benefit the system as a whole. Is such a hope realistic in a system such as this one? From where would they have learned anything but winner take all politics?

Here come the Brothers

2005-11-27T11:24:00.000-08:00

As I said somewhat flippantly below, its been two months since the Presidential Elections here, but SO much has changed. We are now in parlimentary election season, and the headline of course, is the Muslim Brothers. Their performance so far in this election is really astounding. Along with the 76 seats they've won so far, are many other seats which I believe they would have won save for the blatant interference, cheating, and fraud from government NDP candidates. Which means that in nearly every district, for nearly every seat, the MB ran strong or won. So anyone who guesses "just 25% of Egyptians would vote for the MB if they were legalized" should take another look at this situation. Perhaps not for President--that is the most powerful post by far, and many voters would be loathe to take the risk of appointing an untested figure. But as for parlimentary elections... They are extremely organized, many live in and offer social services in the areas where they are running--not the rich NDP enclaves. And certainly, more people I've met at the polls seem to passionately support them than the morally compromised, no services machine of the NDP.

The other main story to watch here in Egypt now, from the standpoint of political opposition and democracy, is about Kifaya. Where are they? As I learned more about them they began to strike me as so disconnected, with a tiny base of supporters, their members backing a wide variety of political ideologies that are old fashioned and don't resonate with the people. Each protest began to seem the same, and no political candidates save one or two even showed up at a rally. The legal opposition is getting crushed by both the NDP and its alternative, the Brotherhood. Even more depressing is the local opposition press, which an Egyptian colleague now helps me read. Instead of banding together, the parties attack each other, kicking each other when they are down. Competing, as my friend Josh Stacher here said--to be the first among the shackled.

Technical issue solved

2005-11-27T11:05:00.000-08:00

So finally, FINALLY, I have achieved the Holy Grail of internet access here in Cairo--wireless access IN MY HOME! So with that I will begin posting afresh with all of the many observations and sights and scenes I am gathering here. For those of you rejoining after I'm sure 'many weeks' of checking in on the blog to no avail...sorry for the wasted effort! And welcome again!

A brief note on problem solving here in Cairo--what is needed is a period to gather information (all by word of mouth, of course), then a moment of clarity and focus, and a deep breath. And a leap of faith that you will find someone who won't totally rip you off for a service and the gathered strength to walk away or fight if they do. Once all that is done, solving problems here--like finally getting wireless access hooked up--can sometimes just fall into place like a ball of string unraveling. Why? Because here you can ask someone for help, a friend or a guy from a store, and they can come to your home, for free or for a few dollars. In the end it cost $18, three hours of effort, and a new router to get my long-awaited DSL to go wireless. Hamdulliah! Why did I wait so long!

Two Months have passed since I've posted

2005-11-16T11:24:00.000-08:00

Two months! And so much has changed! Kifaya is so out of it, man...the Muslim Brotherhood is so in! So what if they want Islamic law and won't say what that actually means and stand with Hamas and the Iraqi resistance and yet insist on their non-violent label. They are a walking conundrum, the progentior of modern radical Islamic thought, yet also--if you trust their rhetoric--at the forefront of the call for free elections and political rights.Kifaya, it seemed, wanted the right to stand and shout down Mubarak. They never answered the question of 'then what'. The Muslim Brothers have...after you give us our freedom, the the justice and will and happiness of God will follow! Who could resist!

Marching through Dokki

2005-09-14T10:35:00.000-07:00

I just got back from another Kifaya protest, this one aimed at the problem of political prisoners in Egypt. Like Ayman Nour's campaign, Kifaya notifies media and others of their events through telephone text messages, or SMSs. This time my phone beeped with the following:

Mubarak rosy promises excluded stopping tortue. "End torture in Egypt" is our call. If you agree, join us in Dokki Square Wed.@ 6 p.m.

The protest started just after 6. Like the other recent protests--the one in central Midan Tahrir on Election Day, and a large protest in Talat Harb downtown on Saturday, the police hung back and watched, but did not interfere with the protesters (at least during the hour or so I was there). Again there were white uniformed officers and plenty of intelligence officers in suits. But they let the protesters gather--even though they were blocking traffic in a very busy intersection--and let them go where they wished.

The core crowd of protesters numbered about 100-200. But many people on the street joined to walk with the crowd, till it numbered some 400-500 or so. It was hard to tell how many people joined in out of curiousity, because political protests are so novel, and how many were moved by the cause. But its fair to say there was considerable interest in the issue of torture in prisoners and unfair detentions. A young man handing out photocopied information sheets about the cause was swamped with people.

Along with the young, long haired student activist and artist-type young men leading the chants as the protests started, there were other types: There was a man whose body seemed pained and twisted in a wheelchair held up by the chanting crowd. There was a group of some 20-25 heavily veiled women--most of them middle aged or old-- holding up black and white photos of their imprisioned sons, brothers and fathers, arrested for their alleged involvement with the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups. One woman said her husband has been in prison for 40 years. There was one young man prominently holding up a Koran--quite a contrast from the leftists in Kifaya I've spent some time with in the last few weeks.

During the 7 p.m. call to prayer, a Kifaya protester gestured to the crowd to quiet down. They did, stopping their chants (Down, Down Hosni Mubarak!) as long as the muazzin's prayer rang through the streets. Some 20 or 30 protesters then switched from anti-Mubarak cries to 10 or 20 rounds of Allah Akbar (God is the Greatest) and then into political slogans: "Security for Egypt, not for Israel."

Unity of purpose, not uniformity of belief, definitely seemed the name of the game.

Apparently there was a much larger protest last Saturday, with some 5,000 people. I did not go to that one, but will hopefully hit the next.

NOTE: Final results in the election, for the record, were 88.6 ercent for Mubarak, 7.6 percent for Nour and his al-Ghad (Tomorrow) Party, and 2.9 percent for Gomaa and the Wafd Party. The most interesting thing about the results? Only 23 percent of Egypt's 32 million registered voters actually turned out. Either this was a dramatic effort at honesty from a regime known for inflating turnout figures by two or three times, or the real turn out was much lower. Mubarak knows that the low turnout gives him less legitimacy--but perhaps what is most interesting about that is Mubarak has to worry less about legitimacy than an truly elected leader. There are many other essential ingredient that keep his party in power; the large security presence, entrenched bureaucracy, corruption, apathy, inertia, and an actual affection for Mubarak as leader (things could be worse!)...the list goes on and on...

Four polling places

2005-09-09T04:32:00.001-07:00

The preliminary results are in....it's Mubarak in a landslide, with some 80 percent. Nour is the second-place finisher, with between 10 percent and 12 percent of the vote. Nour's showing was stronger than some people expected, but less than half of what he believed he would get in a fair poll. He has already sought to have the election results invalidated for reasons of fraud; the election commission (controlled by Mubarak's people) rejected the request. My sense is that there is no way they would ever dismiss the results of this poll--which took place under the ground rules set by Mubarak, and by those rules, went quite as you would think.

By now, you've likely seen the stories alleging all kinds of fraud and undue influence by Mubarak's NDP in the presidential election are well known: the NDP paid voters, bused them en masse to polling stations, offered them entrance into a lottery for cash and trips for voting, threatened to fine NDP members 100 L.E. (about $17) if they didn’t vote. In addition, the pink phosphorescent ink that was supposed to mark the fingers of people who had voted was quite easily removed. One man I spoke with late in the day said he had voted but then removed the ink with gasoline.

The visits I made to polling stations confirmed the general impression that the NDP dominated the voting process. We saw buses festooned with Mubarak banners that certainly looked as though they were taking voters to the polls (of course, U.S. political parties do a similar get-out the-vote move in the States). More disturbingly, we saw polling places overseen and staffed by NDP officials, who were open about their affiliation. In one case, men holding Mubarak signs were standing in the doorway of the school where people were voting. There were no representatives from members of other political parties: though apparently they were permitted to be there (perhaps they just didn’t have enough representatives to go around.) I saw some chaos and confusion about who was registered and whether people’s names could be found on lists.

My general impression was that few people in the society at large seemed to be voting. At 3:30 p.m., and then again at 6 p.m., I couldn’t spot a single pink finger in the crowded Metro I took back and forth from Shubra El Kheima, a very poor district at the end of the Metro line to the north of Cairo. Outside of the polling areas, I didn’t see a single pink finger on the streets. The few people I spoke to late in evening about their apparent lack of interest in voting said that, of course, they would like to vote (for Mubarak) but they had to work all day and were unable.

I would tend to think that except for the party faithful and people with government jobs, who were given time off to vote, most people did not turn out. In Shubra, based on a glance and the voting list at 4:30 p.m. or so, I guessed some 5% of voters had been to the station. Early reports from the government indicated that there was about 30% turnout in the election--but I would be shocked if those official figures did not rise: in the past, the government has always inflated the turnout figures.

Why so little interest? Mostly because there’s no real need to vote when you feel there is no contest and you know who will win. The campaign period was only three weeks, and what we heard from voters again and again is that people didn’t “know” the other candidates; how could they trust giving someone unknown so much power? What if the new president broke with America, started a war, or instigated enmity between Muslims and Christians in Egypt? In fact, this argument is logical. The presidency is so powerful here that giving it to an untested candidate would be a very scary and bold proposition. How would that person function within a bureaucracy completely dominated by the NDP? Would all those party members even listen to the dictates of the presidency? No, in fact, you could argue that it only made sense to vote for opposition candidates if you knew for sure they wouldn’t win. Unless you were a very, very brave person.

Another important factor is how divided the opposition is here. Many of the small opposition parties, especially on the left, decided not to run candidates in the election and encouraged their followers to boycott it. This was true of the Kifaya movement as well. The Muslim Brotherhood leadership, on the other hand, told its followers to vote, but not whom to vote for. The oblique insinuation was that people shouldn’t vote for leaders who were corrupt, a statement that implied, but did not directly command, a vote against Mubarak.

Ayman Nour likely attracted some protest votes, and people in the neighborhood where he is an MP and provides social services apparently turned out for him. Other voters who wanted a change likely felt more comfortable casting their vote for the Wafd Party, Egypt’s oldest national political party active since the 1920s. Nour promised that he would open up the system, making the president more accountable, if he were elected. But the people had little to go on as to whether they could trust him.

My general impression was that this election was an excuse to celebrate Mubarak. In that sense, it remained a yes/no referendum on his rule. It did not have the beautiful and moving solemnity of the 2000 election in Kosovo. There, people who had only known repression and felt like they were someone becoming more human by voting would have waited in line all day to vote. In Iraq, the cameras showed the same feeling; the solemn sight of people risking their lives to make their voices heard for the first time. This election was certainly not a transition in the same sense.

What follows is a general account of my experience at four polls on Election Day:

10 a.m.
Zamalek is a rich districts with lots of embassies and foreigners--including lots of journalists. I'm living here. Two friends and I--one is originally from Egypt and translated--stopped by the voting at the School of the Arts to get a general idea the voting process.

We had no problem getting into the polling station. I said I was a journalist, but it probably wouldn’t have mattered much either way. There were a few uniformed policemen outside the polling place: we didn’t see any uniformed security at the other stations.

The mood was calm and tranquil. It was a beautiful morning, and there was a garden in the courtyard of the school. The walls of the vestibule of the voting area were covered with neat voters lists taped to the wall. Almost no one had yet voted.

And yet, there were at least 20 or so men around the polling area. Who were they? Mostly NDP officials. A man who spoke English and wore a formal suit stood in the vestibule directing voter traffic: he was an NDP official. Men (only men were voting at this station, women at a separate station) brought NDP posters into the polling place with them. People were happy to talk to us about how Mubarak was the best choice for Egypt.

“Off all the other times I can remember, this is probably the best organized election, and everything that’s been promised has been kept and done that way,” said NDP member Mohammed Kamel Wagdi, 45, a principal of a local elementary school.

In past elections, before voting he would just make a check mark next to his name. This time, they checked two forms of ID: his drivers’ license or other personal ID and his voter card. He also had to sign his name twice, once before he voted, and once after he voted.

The actual process is as follows: find your name of the list of people registered, take the ballot and mark it behind a curtain, place the ballot in the box, sign that you voted. “Its very, very fair,” Wagdi said. “They’ve made these changes and this is the first time there’s been a real election here.”

Then he repeated something we heard many times: that a vote for Mubarak was a vote for change. “Everybody who feels they really want a solution for the political problems here will vote for Hosni Mubarak,” he said.

A drastic change is not good for the role of the president, who leads the whole country, he added. An unknown leader could take the country into war, or create tensions with America. “It’s not in Egypt’s interest to be an enemy to anybody.”

The NDP official in the suit directing traffic in the polling station was even more enthusiastic for Mubarak. There will be a high voter turnout, he said. “Today there is a big tendency for people to come since they can feel real democracy is going on and their voice will count.”

“Evaluate what Mubarak has accomplished compared to the other candidates for president. I personally feel that the fact that Mubarak has been 24 years in power is not something negative, it is positive. He has gained a lot of experience. He is a very deliberative, very aware person.”

Our next stop was Bulaq, a much poorer neighborhood about a 15 minute drive from Zamalek. Here, the apartment buildings are rough and unfinished--not much more than stacks of red bricks upon concrete stages. These buildings can go up and up--in Bulaq, however, they are all about six stories or less. The narrow streets (a bit more than one car’s width) are filled with people walking and donkeys carting vegetables, with laundry and blankets hanging from the windows. Stacks of fruits and vegetables filled the local souk, an open area shaded by plastic tarps on poles.

A significant number of Christian Copts lived in the neighborhood. The priests were out walking toward the polling place, men in long black robes, small caps and scruffy beards, with beautiful black and white crosses around their necks. The archbishop of the Copts in Egypt had endorsed Mubarak, and the priests were taking their congregations to the local school to vote.

The school yard, at the corner of two alleyways, was festooned with Mubarak banners and bustling with activity. The local MP--an NDP delegate--was there, getting out the vote. There was an Arab television journalist out interviewing the priests and local authorities and creating a lot of interest. When we went to talk to the MP, we were ringed by maybe 50 people listening in…next to him, burly men in suits, but mostly, what looked like the working-class men from the neighborhood.

“Things will change for the better after this election,” the MP, Amar Zayed, said.

“I want the whole world to know that Egypt is living in the best of times. People are moving and there is action going on. It is very apparent that there will be change.”

We spoke to some of the Copt women, who had come with the rest of their congregation. They were wearing a different style of headscarf--black--or none at all, but looked neither richer nor poorer than their Muslim neighbors.

They were overwhelmingly, rapturously in support of Mubarak and crowded in to tell me so. “He’s making Egypt better for us,” one woman carrying an infant said. "He is providing medical benefits for all their children. He’s brought down the price of staple foods. And most importantly," she said, "he supports peace between Christians and Muslims.”

“We feel this is the first time there has ever been elections in our lives,” another woman said. “We just hope Mubarak wins,” another woman interrupted. “We want him to be our president forever!”

“Mubarak, Mubarak, that’s it!” another woman kept shouting.

Late in the afternoon, after I’d watched the protest of Kifaya in the central Tahrir Square (I will post on this later) we went to another polling station, in Shubra. It was about 4:30 p.m. and things were very quiet. A glance at the register indicated only about 5 % of the voters had as of yet shown up. Again, mostly Mubarak supporters, but one black-swathed widow stopped us in the street to say the polling stations were filled with undercover security men. She was voting for Nour, and felt pushed to vote for Mubarak, or not at all.

As we went from one school to another around the corner, we were followed by a burly guy in a suit from the first school. I didn't notice, but Mohammed, a lawyer and Kifaya activist who was with us at this point, did. As we got into the car to drive away, one of us said “Shukran” (Thank You) to the man that had been tailing us. “He wasn’t very happy to be discovered,” he said.

All for Mubarak

2005-09-06T13:49:00.000-07:00

On the evening of September 3, my Egyptian journalist friend Khalid and I headed to the square in front of Abdeen Palace for the last major political rally of the campaign for Mubarak. Most of the city’s security forces, it seemed, were already there. The 500-room 19th century palace served as the royal residence until Egypt’s monarchy was abolished in 1952. The royal location seemed fitting, because I felt as though much of the crowd was waiting to see their king.

Now, admittedly, I’ve never been to a major campaign rally for President Bush or any other seated U.S. president, which would of course entail a large security presence and attract thousands of cheering, loyal followers. What made this feel so different? Well, the type and level of security presence, for one. They were everywhere: masses of riot police in bullet proof vests and face shields, rows of regular police officers in white uniforms, Republican guard troops and regular army. Security forces in suits and ties controlled the crowd, and many more were probably in street attire blending in. I didn’t see any tanks, but there was at least one piece of major artillery mounted on the back of an open truck.

There was almost no hardened security on the roads leading up to the gathering, in fact, just a few portable metal gates that could be lifted to allow dignitaries in. The rows of riot police instead were posted by the small entrance where all non-VIP Egyptians who wanted to join the rally would enter. Getting into the rally, we soon found, required pushing single file past the phalanx of forces, getting looked over by plain clothed security men and uniformed officers--some of them carrying mimeographed lists of invited guests--handing over all cell phones and cameras, passing through a metal detector, and finally entering the open area. The men who were pushing through, determined to show their support for Mubarak, were generally young (under 25), and rough, for lack of a better word. Khalid said it was his distinct impression that many of these men were actually in the Egyptian army.

Around the back of the square, where the dignitaries and journalists were supposed to enter (and we ultimately ended up), things were much calmer. There were only Republican Guard troops and plain clothed security. Once my name was found on the appropriate list, a call went out--I had just gone from a nobody/bothersome intruder to someone entitled to enter. I was ushered into the square, past the large stage where the president would speak, threaded through rows of seats, helped up onto a chair to climb over a low fence, and then dropped into a thicket of empty chairs reserved for foreign journalists and told to stay there.

I couldn’t see the bulk of the rally from where I sat. But my section was not calm or contained. The crowd was just next to me--almost all men, waving signs and chanting. “With our souls and our blood we sacrifice for you O Mubarak” “We love you Mubarak” Many were wearing new Mubarak t-shirts. At one point, someone got into a tussle and a chair was thrown. The crowd responded by chanting louder for Mubarak. The security forces remained calm, in all, they seemed very comfortable with the crowd’s enthusiasm.

The campaign then projected onto huge screens a slickly produced video featuring Mubarak, his wife, Suzanne, testimonials from religious and other leaders, and scenes from Mubarak’s last 24 years in power. Tall banners hung around the rally showed different varieties of healthy looking working men--a waiter, a construction worker in his helmet--endorsing Mubarak. On stage were an array of “regular looking” Egyptians--women in veils, young men--town-hall style. But they never, as far as I could tell, said anything.

In fact the entire event consisted of an introduction for Mubarak, Mubarak’s entrance amid much cheering, and an hour long (I’m guessing here) speech in which Mubarak laid out his program for the future. Every few minutes the crowd returned to chanting and shouting for Mubarak (Gamal, tell your father we love him!) so that he was quite hard to hear. An amateur body builder in a cut off t-shirt emblazoned with the word "Fussball" leaned in to help translate the speech for me and a Finnish journalist. (My Egyptian friend had been denied entry.) A cameraman fell or fainted, causing another brief ruckus. The speech went on and on-- I hoped it would end soon.

When Mubarak was done, he left the stage, and the event immediately came to an end. The 400 or so party faithful in front of the dias quickly got up, and within a few minutes I was back over the fence and out of the rally area. “What did you think?” an Egyptian man in a suit asked me once we were out. “Chaotic,” I said. “You couldn’t even hear what he was saying.” “That is the Egyptian way,” he told me. “You cannot stop them from expressing their support.” I bummed a cigarette from him and he gave me his card--he was a member of the central NDP committee.

As the crowd dispersed and I found Khalid, I noticed that many of the women who had been in the rally were collecting empty water bottles and putting them into boxes they carried under their arms. A row of buses lined up to collect the rally’s participants. “It shows you how poor they are, that they are collecting bottles,” Khalid said. Khalid, who had gotten into the rally along with the other Egyptians after he leaving his camera at a nearby sweets shop, said he had heard many Mubarak supporters worrying about how they were going find the correct bus to take them home to their neighborhoods on the outskirts of Cairo. It was Khalid’s impression that most of them had been paid to come.

On the way home, Khalid and I stopped at the sweets shop to retrieve his camera. He had bought three bags worth of a sweet pastry, kind of like an Egyptian elephant’s ear, in exchange for asking the store to hold his camera. It occurred to me that the pastry--fried dough covered in powdered sugar--reminded me a little of the rally we had just seen. The fried dough was the single-party, autocratic security state of the NDP. The powdered sugar was the coating of democracy, just lightly sprinkled over it.

Kifaya and Mubarak

2005-09-05T04:46:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I went to two very different events: a press conference by Kifaya, the small movement that is challenging Mubarak to step down by staging illegal street protests; and the massive Mubarak rally that ended the nation's first campaign season. I went without a translator, just by contacting the campaigns, so unfortunately my observations had to be somewhat general. I went anyway because my goal was to gather impressions and contacts as I plan my work in the year ahead.

It took a while to find the Kifaya (Enough!) press conference, which was on the second floor of an old building off of Sharia Sherif, one of Cairo's busiest downtown streets. The press conference itself was in a very small room with maybe two dozen chairs, and a large table at the front where George Ishak, one of the founders of the movement, and four or five other people sat and spoke. The room was hot and noisy, with an open window and no air-conditioning, packed to the gills with mostly Arab journalists and TV cameras. The only decoration was five yellow stickers with the word Kifaya in red letters hapzardly stuck on the wall behind the speakers. The press conference was disorganized and rambing, yet in the end it felt more like a meeting of revolutionaries than a coordinated media appearance, with everyone in the audience encouraged to ask a question or make a statement, and the event running until everyone was done. There was an guy from the state TV ministry who took to the front table to decry corruption in his ministry and complain that local TV covers primarily Mubarak and his family, and a young woman and mother in the back row who complained that Kifaya was disorganized and still an elite movement. She worried that group's members don't even know eachother--she just comes to rallies when she sees them posted in the newspaper--so what will happen if she gets arrested? Will Kifaya as an organization even be there to help? She complained that the organization does not yet have a way to reach out to the masses. She got a lot of nods when she spoke, but no real answers from the leaders at the desk in front.

George Ishak is a grey haired man, about 60, with an expressive face-large lips and bulbous nose. Flanked by a sweaty, owl-eyed lawyer in a full dark suit, and another man in a white short-sleeved shirt working hard on his aqua colored worry beads, Ishak looked calm and intellectual, the leader of the assembled speakers. He explained that people didn't have the freedom to be candidates, so there is no fairness in the election process. "We are adopting the stance of boycotting because this is not an election as generally understood," he said. Kifaya will set up a shadow government after the election and a committee to draft a new constitution.

There are some reports, he said, that there could be a crackdown against the group after the election. But he was defiant:

"Anybody who wants freedom has to be ready to pay the price. We are ready."

Ishak is predicting that there could be a popular uprising aftter the election to topple the regime, because nothing will change and the frustration of the people will rise. "We are against this despotic regime. We will continue," Ishak told me after the conference.

The meeting felt revolutionary, and yet strange, because this was not happening in secret, but in the open, under a government that in the past has reacted harshly to dissent and challenges. Ishak himself has a Marxist background, and it did feel somewhat like the meeting of a leftist cell.

What will happen if Kifaya gets its way? The group has not defined a positive program, or a leader. But its goal now--and if it accomplishes this, it might well be ''Enough''-- is to encourage Egyptians of all creeds and believes to overcome the culture of fear in Egypt that hems people in and prevents them from defining a government for themselves.

The movement seeks not to articulate a goal, but instead to attract discussion and frustration from all groups, Islamist or Marxist, or otherwise. If people of all stripes stand up and say Enough!, they feel that will be enough to create a movement. It is the lack of a program, in fact, that makes the group feel so edgy and perhaps, powerful.

After the meeting, another journalist and I went to have tea with Mohammed, a young man involved in Kifaya. We walked around the corner behind the central bank to a cafe where the group's members often gather. Mohammed said he was working to get over the culture of fear, but that he was still a bit afraid. He quivered slightly as he sat, sweating, in his olive colored suit and maize tie.

more later...

First Impressions

2005-09-05T03:27:00.000-07:00

Cairo, a dusty, polluted, traffic-filled but charming city. Charming? Yes...and here's why. The people in the vast government ministry building smile when they take your passport and say it will be back to you on Sunday, 'inshallah', realizing why that sounds funny to a Westerner; everyone at your three star hotel, including the "maids"--rough looking guys with missing teeth or a punched-in eye--greet you enthusiastically each morning with a "sabah al-heir" and praise your improving Arabic, your ''official'' press credential is a flimsy business-card like document to which they have stapled your picture which was cut crooked with scissors; when your taxi driver asks a fellow Egyptian for directions, a guy jumps in the taxi to help him find his way to your destination, taxi drivers captianing rolling junk piles hurriedly throw a useless seat belt over their shoulder when they see a police officer; no one actually runs you over as you cross through five-lanes of traffic without a light; walking alone at night feels fun, even exciting.

My body is not reacting that well, I am having trouble eating, and the pollution from the cars makes me nauseaous. And I am nervous about how to use my time--to study, to research, to write, especially as this presidential election looms. But I am OK. This is going to be an adventure.