An American prof’s impression of what is happening in Cairo now. Please read:
Darkness on the Edge of Cairo
by John William Salevurakis
Every day I walk from my fashionable neighborhood to the university and pass a pair of very kind, white-uniformed police officers. They stand in their almost blindingly clean attire, only a block from my crumbling apartment building, smoking Egypt’s cheapest Cleopatra cigarettes and directing traffic. “Ya Pasha!” they shout, “Habibi!” This is my daily greeting as I pass and kiss each of them on both cheeks. Since I came here from Utah nearly two years ago, I have been “a ruler” and their “dearest one” nearly every day. I don’t smoke but they commonly offer me a cigarette so I will take the time to uneasily chat in my pidgin Arabic. We talk about mundane things like the summer heat or when I’ll again be visiting America or Europe. In Cairo, the mundane is really of immense value as a symbol. It is a social ritual, it seems, representing calm and a certain degree of material prosperity, a sign that one can afford to be concerned about such things pertaining to one’s self and others. With regularity, however, the calm is now broken on the edges of Cairo, and the darkness, fueled jointly by domestic and foreign powers, is creeping in from the edges of town. Everybody’s got a secret, it seems.
On May 25th, Karim Al-Shaer and Mohammed Al-Sharkawy were arrested at a local protest and taken to the Kasr El Nil police station near my apartment. They were beaten and tortured, and Al-Sharkawy was sexually abused, and then turned over to State Security Forces, at which point their long-term futures became even more uncertain. The two were then allegedly denied medical care and remanded to the Tora Prison for a minimum of 15 days under Egypt’s widely criticized yet strikingly familiar “Emergency Laws” which have been in place, almost without interruption, for the last 38 years. A second protest on June 2nd (Correction: actually it was June 1st) saw the detainment of three Egyptians and an L.A. Times reporter who also had his camera smashed by police in front of the Kasr El Nil station. It was loudly and repeatedly noted by security: “There’s no permit for a protest today for the demonstrators. There is no permit for the coverage by reporters!” Historically, no one has asked any questions when faced with statements such as these . . . but that obedience is starting to evaporate.
This cycle of demonstrations and arrests is becoming more frequent as the darkness extends further toward the heart of the city. The calm that generally characterizes Egypt in the region is shattered in support of journalists and judges who are being oppressed by the Mubarak regime. The mundane is perhaps most foundationally overshadowed by popular frustration over last year’s forced re-election of President Hosni Mubarak. It is common knowledge here that voter fraud was rampant and neither journalists nor judges are being allowed to voice this reality. Support for those who do voice it is then swiftly met with brutality or the credible threat of it. What’s more, the American government issues only occasional communiqués of concern regarding these events of repression and hails Egypt as a fertile root of democracy in the region. On June 2nd, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt expressed “disappointment” but continued to simply state: “We don’t know all the facts. We know that there are at least two sides to every story.” A day later, the U.S. State Department issued a statement in which Tom Casey said, “We are troubled by the recent reports that Mohammed Al-Sharkawy as well as Karim Al-Shaer were arrested and, during their arrest and detention, were tortured.” He continued to soften American concern by adding, “If those allegations are true, that would certainly be a violation of Egypt’s own laws” and “If the allegations are true, what we want to see happen is. . . .” What a repulsively inappropriate assertion of either doubt or diplomacy, given that a political activist in the region’s first true “democracy” was just reportedly sodomized with cardboard in a police station. Of course, maybe the definition of “democracy” is somewhat flexible as all of this was taking place a mere two weeks after President Mubarak’s son, Gamal, had met with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and National Security Advisor Steve Hadley while visiting the U.S. on “private business.”
At my university, I teach economic principles largely to the children of ministers in the Mubarak government or American students privileged enough to spend a semester or year abroad. When controversial political topics invariably arise, I make uneasy jokes about the room being bugged or offending someone’s father with my impending comments. Everyone laughs . . . but the darkness is here in my classroom, too, and perhaps only temporarily hiding behind the mundane graphical representation of supply and demand or the oblique writings of Thorstein Veblen. I still pass the usual white-suited police officers on my street. I still exchange smiles and handshakes and still get offered cigarettes. We chat about the mundane . . . the weather, my wife, our dog, and their families in Upper Egypt. I look at them and wonder, though, about the true reach of darkness into Cairo, from where it originated, and how far it will ultimately travel. I look at the policeman’s aging face, tobacco-stained teeth, and graying wiry hair, thinking only that this smiling gentleman could very well have been jumping on the stomach of a prisoner yesterday or penetrating another with whatever implement happened to be convenient the week before. A mundane object like a cardboard paper towel roll assumes a new horrifying aspect in hindsight.
The calm here remains generally widespread, making the surface of daily life courteous, yet it is widely understood to be a façade for the externally supported brutality maintaining it. The United States has found itself stuck fast in a tarry mass of its own prejudice and financial interests in Iraq and yearns for allies, any ally, in the region. The price for this is paid by Egyptians who are victimized in the name of domestic political stability as well as by Americans, even Utahns, who find themselves witness to domestic imprisonments without trials, remote European “interrogation facilities,” or warrantless domestic surveillance in the name of insulation from terror. Hearing I have contracted to stay in Cairo for another three years, people of varied origins — including Americans — often ask me if I feel “safe” in what they perceive to be the darkness completely external to their own lives. My response to Americans is simply, “Do you?”
Darkness on the Edge of Cairo
by John William Salevurakis
Every day I walk from my fashionable neighborhood to the university and pass a pair of very kind, white-uniformed police officers. They stand in their almost blindingly clean attire, only a block from my crumbling apartment building, smoking Egypt’s cheapest Cleopatra cigarettes and directing traffic. “Ya Pasha!” they shout, “Habibi!” This is my daily greeting as I pass and kiss each of them on both cheeks. Since I came here from Utah nearly two years ago, I have been “a ruler” and their “dearest one” nearly every day. I don’t smoke but they commonly offer me a cigarette so I will take the time to uneasily chat in my pidgin Arabic. We talk about mundane things like the summer heat or when I’ll again be visiting America or Europe. In Cairo, the mundane is really of immense value as a symbol. It is a social ritual, it seems, representing calm and a certain degree of material prosperity, a sign that one can afford to be concerned about such things pertaining to one’s self and others. With regularity, however, the calm is now broken on the edges of Cairo, and the darkness, fueled jointly by domestic and foreign powers, is creeping in from the edges of town. Everybody’s got a secret, it seems.
On May 25th, Karim Al-Shaer and Mohammed Al-Sharkawy were arrested at a local protest and taken to the Kasr El Nil police station near my apartment. They were beaten and tortured, and Al-Sharkawy was sexually abused, and then turned over to State Security Forces, at which point their long-term futures became even more uncertain. The two were then allegedly denied medical care and remanded to the Tora Prison for a minimum of 15 days under Egypt’s widely criticized yet strikingly familiar “Emergency Laws” which have been in place, almost without interruption, for the last 38 years. A second protest on June 2nd (Correction: actually it was June 1st) saw the detainment of three Egyptians and an L.A. Times reporter who also had his camera smashed by police in front of the Kasr El Nil station. It was loudly and repeatedly noted by security: “There’s no permit for a protest today for the demonstrators. There is no permit for the coverage by reporters!” Historically, no one has asked any questions when faced with statements such as these . . . but that obedience is starting to evaporate.
This cycle of demonstrations and arrests is becoming more frequent as the darkness extends further toward the heart of the city. The calm that generally characterizes Egypt in the region is shattered in support of journalists and judges who are being oppressed by the Mubarak regime. The mundane is perhaps most foundationally overshadowed by popular frustration over last year’s forced re-election of President Hosni Mubarak. It is common knowledge here that voter fraud was rampant and neither journalists nor judges are being allowed to voice this reality. Support for those who do voice it is then swiftly met with brutality or the credible threat of it. What’s more, the American government issues only occasional communiqués of concern regarding these events of repression and hails Egypt as a fertile root of democracy in the region. On June 2nd, the U.S. Ambassador to Egypt expressed “disappointment” but continued to simply state: “We don’t know all the facts. We know that there are at least two sides to every story.” A day later, the U.S. State Department issued a statement in which Tom Casey said, “We are troubled by the recent reports that Mohammed Al-Sharkawy as well as Karim Al-Shaer were arrested and, during their arrest and detention, were tortured.” He continued to soften American concern by adding, “If those allegations are true, that would certainly be a violation of Egypt’s own laws” and “If the allegations are true, what we want to see happen is. . . .” What a repulsively inappropriate assertion of either doubt or diplomacy, given that a political activist in the region’s first true “democracy” was just reportedly sodomized with cardboard in a police station. Of course, maybe the definition of “democracy” is somewhat flexible as all of this was taking place a mere two weeks after President Mubarak’s son, Gamal, had met with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, and National Security Advisor Steve Hadley while visiting the U.S. on “private business.”
At my university, I teach economic principles largely to the children of ministers in the Mubarak government or American students privileged enough to spend a semester or year abroad. When controversial political topics invariably arise, I make uneasy jokes about the room being bugged or offending someone’s father with my impending comments. Everyone laughs . . . but the darkness is here in my classroom, too, and perhaps only temporarily hiding behind the mundane graphical representation of supply and demand or the oblique writings of Thorstein Veblen. I still pass the usual white-suited police officers on my street. I still exchange smiles and handshakes and still get offered cigarettes. We chat about the mundane . . . the weather, my wife, our dog, and their families in Upper Egypt. I look at them and wonder, though, about the true reach of darkness into Cairo, from where it originated, and how far it will ultimately travel. I look at the policeman’s aging face, tobacco-stained teeth, and graying wiry hair, thinking only that this smiling gentleman could very well have been jumping on the stomach of a prisoner yesterday or penetrating another with whatever implement happened to be convenient the week before. A mundane object like a cardboard paper towel roll assumes a new horrifying aspect in hindsight.
The calm here remains generally widespread, making the surface of daily life courteous, yet it is widely understood to be a façade for the externally supported brutality maintaining it. The United States has found itself stuck fast in a tarry mass of its own prejudice and financial interests in Iraq and yearns for allies, any ally, in the region. The price for this is paid by Egyptians who are victimized in the name of domestic political stability as well as by Americans, even Utahns, who find themselves witness to domestic imprisonments without trials, remote European “interrogation facilities,” or warrantless domestic surveillance in the name of insulation from terror. Hearing I have contracted to stay in Cairo for another three years, people of varied origins — including Americans — often ask me if I feel “safe” in what they perceive to be the darkness completely external to their own lives. My response to Americans is simply, “Do you?”
John William Salevurakis is Assistant Professor at the Department of Economics, American University in Cairo.
To put the professor’s mind at rest, if they are dressed in white and directing traffic, they are probably traffic cops and not in the business of jumping on prisoners’ stomachs or sodomizing them. Unlike the black-clad riot police or their officers (who wear black or white depending on the season) the traffic police are pretty low down the social totem pole and receive a fair bit of abuse themselves. Pretty much the only people they can abuse is taxi drivers, and that with unwarranted tickets and demands for bribes. On a side note, Cairo traffic cops, as a profession, have one of the highest lead contents in their blood of anyone in the world.
Very well written, and good to see AUC faculty speaking out about the repression and brutality that maintain Egypt’s facade of stability. I thought the white-clad cops were traffic cops only too, but seem to remember some pictures from May protests that showed said traffic cops beating people up – ?
Don’t remember the May pics too well, but officers of the police force (not just the traffic force) wear white in summer and they did beat people as I recall.
Evaporating obedience? Dr. Salevurakis should go to a demo sometime. Half a dozen disobedient souls surrounded by a thousand obedient blank faced peasants. Somewhere between field and street they hand in the hoes for truncheons, but they arrive with stolid sense of purpose and respect for the Basha’s word untouched.
The day we see Taxi Drivers for Change shutting down the streets or the Barsoum Reapers for Change marching ten thousand gallebeyed men with sickles into Tahrir perhaps we can say that obedience is evaporating. But until that day this calm Salevurakis mentions is going to continue, as it has for the last few millennia, on the backs of the peasants who do as they are told. Grow cotton, sodomize some guy, build pyramid, beat up that woman over there, and so on.
As for AUC students, back in March 2003 some fashionably dressed AUC students tumbled out into Mohamed Mahmoud and dashed up through Tahrir Square with a ragtag bunch of middle-heavy security guys waddling after them. Seems these little regime scions and scionettes wanted to protest outside the US Embassy, shout their slogans in front of the security cameras there in the hopes that their daddies’ paymasters might … well, we don’t know what they were thinking.
They were met in Soliman Basha by a line of riot police who smacked the crap out of a few of them with thin bamboo canes and those kids came back up the street almost as quick as they had gone down it, their faces slicked with bright red blood. Probably took two runs through the dry cleaner to get that stuff out of their shirts and they haven’t been back since.
“Probably took two runs through the dry cleaner to get that stuff out of their shirts and they haven’t been back since.”
Not all of them had the chance to “dryclean their clothes”, as at least three of them were detained by State Security, and spent sometime in Lazoughli and Tora. While others like my friend Jano Charbel were picked up on Friday 21, and was beaten up and locked up in Darassa CSF camp for two or three days. I myself, an AUC alumni, was detained on March 22, and taken to Gamaliya Police Station, and then to Lazoughli.
Other AUC activists and Alumni were also later active in Kefaya demos, and the pro-judges demos in April and May. And if you are following the blog, you should know that Ahmad Droubi, the recently released Youth for Change activist, has been an AUC activist for the past four years, and recently graduated. So I strongly disagree with your point.
Regarding your point on things never change in millinia, that depends on which history books you are reading. History is always written by kings, presidents and bosses. There’s a whole school of history, called “history from below”, where social dissent plays a great role in analyzing events. Egypt’s history is full of events of militancy and struggle by proud citizens. There is literature about that around, but it takes time to find it… most people unfortunately depend of the govt’s Ministry of Education textbooks, or mainstream historians to drive their info… and then you get not-so-brilliant-and-historically-wrong ideas and views about how Egypt never and will never change because of its “submissive peasant population.”
First, let me say that I’m glad to see this piece getting attention outside its original publication outlet. As an American having only been here a couple of years, I tried very carefully to avoid giving the impression that I know all there is to know about the struggles in Egypt. I was simply trying to illustrate what I perceive to be the symbiotic relationship that exists between our two governments and how I, as a relative outsider, view Cairo as a city of contrasts. The above essay was also written primarily for an American audience as many of the facts and perceptions mentioned are more obvious to Egyptians. If you, as individuals much more familiar with the struggle than I, enjoyed it as well then I take this as a great compliment.
I will make only one comment indirectly relating to what has been said in reaction to my essay. Simply put, I believe it unwise to simply exclude particular groups of people from a movement on the basis of accidents of birth.