“What was it like to be there during all those events?” has been the recurring question from students, colleagues, and friends since we got back from Cairo. It’s a good question, and I want to end this blog — which I am hereby doing — by starting to think through this business of “being there.”
Aristotle and Rousseau were preoccupied with the possibility of large-scale politics. How, they asked, is it possible to identify and discuss with a group of people so large that you cannot personally see each member face to face? Out of sight, out of mind. Isn’t any community over 100 too big? But scriptural traditions, then print capitalism, and now Facebook have taken care of that. I spend maybe five hours a day (facing my children or my students) living in a physical space; the rest is virtual. My friendships are epistolary; my communities, imagined. I am not one of those people, like Anthony Shadid (a terrible loss!) who travel and report for real, people so gifted and so committed to bringing out details from literarily and politically cut-off places that they may die getting there. Despite having little kids, despite the asthma; amazing. That is not (to my great shame sometimes) the life I have chosen. What I mostly did in Cairo was read and write. So then, why was physical presence so important? Why is it significant to be in the same time zone as a particular subset of one’s friends if one is too busy, or too stuck in traffic, to see them anyway? Or, as a worried U.S.-based interlocutor asked me when the revolution’s second wave broke, “Can’t you tweet and do Facebook from Massachusetts?”
Physical presence created some interesting moments, to be sure. Perhaps the weirdest were the four “Hamlet on the Barricades” lectures I gave at different universities around Cairo in the week between November 17 and 24, even as the Nov 18 protests and downtown violence starting Nov 19 affected everything from traffic patterns to the city’s political mood. It was educational to fiddle with Shakespeare while Cairo burned. Each host department and campus, with its specific facilities (sometimes lacking things like photocopiers) and faculty culture (who knew the Helwan drama department was so paranoid about students viewing theatre performance as un-Islamic?) and student body (sometimes all-female, not from segregation but because language departments are low-prestige) mixed in my mind with the ongoing events, shaping the questions people asked and the details I noticed. On Nov 19 at Cairo U, it was almost exclusively faculty, plus a few grad students and my friend the theatre critic Nehad Selaiha — bless her! — who stuck around for my 5pm seminar with director Hani Afifi; our good but ultimately not urgent conversation (which you can now watch, more virtuality, on YouTube) was overshadowed by people’s very real worries about driving home that night. Later that week I saw pro-SCAF graffiti in Abassiyya en route to Ayn Shams, where some members of my audience (and the professor who was my host!) adjourned almost directly from the Hamlet lecture to Tahrir; I was amazed they bothered to go to an evening lecture on Hamlet at all. At AUC, on Nov 21, students were mobilizing to support one of their peers who had been arrested in the protests, 38 kilometers away (he was released the next day); the energy at my noontime talk was amazingly high; one student who came in late with an eye-patch and a doctor’s note received admiring glances.
So yes, even in a place as well-networked and well-reported-on as Cairo there are things to be learned from “being there.” The crush on the metro, the endless taxi conversations, the ironic comments in passing, the clothes people wear, the hours at which there are lines at food kiosks, the age of the cars and telephones, the theatre performances, the layering of new over old graffiti, the phone conversations with people who could Skype with me in Boston but don’t, the (rare but valuable) experience of noticing something in person first — primed to notice it, of course, by what one has read; I don’t believe in any such thing as direct unmediated experience — and only then seeing how it is reprocessed online.
But the most significant experience for me — and this is why I’m ending this blog — has been the refocusing of attention. As Aristotle said: out of sight (or really, it’s the smell) out of mind. Others can parallel-process, or divide their caring between two places at once. The “Egyptians in Boston” Facebook group is testament to that. So were my friends in Cairo, able to live their normal lives even while being consumed with what they experienced as a historical process of change: my journalist friend whose preschooler still made it to karate class at the Ahly Club, my fashionable professor friend who stopped at the hairdresser’s on her way to her morning class, to wash out the tear gas from her night in Tahrir. I’m not like that, have you noticed? Miss my Cairo insomnia, but can’t recreate it in Boston. Didn’t find time to post during any of the interesting anniversary stuff, the inauguration of parliament, the continuing Occupy Cabinet protests, the anniversary of the Battle of the Camels or Mubarak’s resignation (but Feb 11 is also my mom’s birthday), the soccer match violence, any of the constant wavelets of news and commentary breaking unmarked over the electronic shores. Have hardly even been on Facebook for the past month; only the news about Shadid rattled me briefly back on. (One of my students had just written a paper on a chapter of Night Draws Near, sparking a long conversation yesterday about the strategic deployment of details in war narrative; relating to events at two removes is, after all, my job.)
So, back to the swing of professorial life in this oddly snowless Boston winter. More when there’s something else to report.

Amid protests outside and various theatrics, the newly elected lower house of the Egyptian parliament convened today (photos and updates of the political posturing here). Their supposed main task will be to designate a constitution-writing body, which will have only a few weeks to draft a constitution ahead of presidential elections. But this task is less important than it seems, because 1) an already congealing SCAF-Brotherhood deal will prevent any serious changes to the existing constitution’s protections for both rights/freedoms and privileges (if this deal wasn’t inevitable before, it was made so by the Salafi Nour party’s 24.7% share of lower-house parliamentary seats) and 2) it remains to be seen, anyway, whether the constitution will be respected at all, or whether some new sort Emergency will allow SCAF to abrogate parts of it at will or simply throw the whole thing out the window. (Rremember the whole fight over the constitutional amendments last March, which SCAF’s “constitutional declaration” later overwrote without a trace?)

Thus the resigned tone of veteran human rights activist Hossam Bahgat (quoted in the NY Times article on the deal): “We feel that because of the military council’s mismanagement of the transition, we have been robbed of a historic opportunity to go through a transformative, healing process of asking who we are as a country and what we want our constitution to look like. . . That is a distant dream now.”

Meanwhile, don’t miss Robert Worth’s fascinating profile of Mohamed Beltagy, “Egypt’s Human Bellweather.” Just a glimmer of hope that there are relatively powerful decent people still willing to fight (even within the Brotherhood!) for a marginally more just political system. Otherwise, the situation one year after the “revolution” is making many of my friends wish aloud that Facebook had a “DISLIKE” button (actually I dislike this cartoon too):

(“We chose him, we endorsed him, we’re with him to whatever God wills…”)

Everyone is gearing up for the Jan 25 anniversary. To be followed by a series of loaded dates that SCAF must be busy strategizing how to handle: Jan 29, Feb 2-3, Feb 11. In Cairo, plans for official celebrations and rival protest-celebrations, and Baradei’s withdrawal from the presidential race (in recognition of the fact that the deck is stacked and his presence was giving legitimacy to the process – will be interesting to see what other reasonably decent prez candidates do). Activists entered the new year envying Tunisia and, despite a well-attended and joyful New Year’s Eve concert in Tahrir, feeling generally sad.

In Boston, plans for a small rally Jan 21 in Copley Square, with the well-meant if unpersuasive slogan “We are All One Hand” under the umbrella of the “Global Day to Support the Egyptian Revolution.”

Happy New Year!  Blogging from home (near Boston) now, trying to record-before-I-forget a backlog of vignettes accumulated in Cairo.  Here’s one:

One day as I was walking home from the metro I saw a crowd of people standing around on my street. A huge tree had cracked in half and fallen, crushing several cars.

I asked the neighbors what had happened. “Oh my God, can you believe it, the tree just fell by itself, there was no storm or anything, not even a very strong wind!”

“God just willed it to fall!”

But the old lady who always sat outside her store, wearing the same kerchief and the same facial expression, showed no surprise. “That type of tree. They always crack and fall over. It’s known. That species of tree — I don’t know what it’s called. They are always like that.”
The next morning I saw two men chipping away at the huge trunk with tiny hatchets. By 5pm the whole thing was gone.

Were we the only professorial-class people in Cairo without a maid? While we were in Cairo, the “maid went to vote story” became one fairly developed subgenre of liberal handwringing, typically used to illustrate either the ignorance of the Egyptian electorate or the disjunction in priorities between the educated elite and the poor majority (or both).
Here’s the classic version: “So my maid went to vote. I asked her, ‘Why not vote for the Kutla or something?’ [Al-Kutla = the generally liberal Egyptian Bloc.] But she said, ‘Ya madame, what has the Kutla ever done for me? Have they helped me with our medical costs or my children’s after-school private lessons? No, Madame, I will vote for the Brotherhood.”
A variation: “There’s all kinds of fraud! No one is even checking IDs! For instance, my maid went to vote. But she was in a hurry to get back to work (umm, why?) and didn’t feel like standing in that long line. So she left her ID with her sister and told her to vote for her. I asked, ‘Do you even know who she’ll vote for on your behalf?’ and she said she didn’t know. Imagine the Parliament we’ll get?”
And my favorite, from a beloved longtime AUC Arabic teacher: “So my maid went to vote. She’s a Copt, like me. She told me she voted for the Salafi Nour party. I was like, ‘How is this possible?’ She said, ‘Well, the man giving out the election information told me it was the party of Umm al-Nour, the Mother of Light, the Virgin Mary. How could I not vote for her?’”
For what it’s worth, this morning’s LA Times tallies up the informal second-round election results:

The Muslim Brotherhood said it won about 47% of 180 seats in the second round, about the same percentage it took in the first round. The Al Nour party, part of the more religiously conservative Salafi movement, told the Associated Press that it won 20% of the second-round vote, also matching its performance during the first phase in November. Secular parties are believed to have garnered less than 10% during the second round of voting, which took place Dec. 14-15. Election officials said turnout was 65% in the nine provinces voting.

Hmm. Merry Christmas, y’all!

We are back in the States now: on vacation in Wisconsin. A tasteful “Recall Walker” sign adorns my in-laws’ house in Madison. The kids are fine, riding a scooter up and down the sidewalk. (Sidewalk!) Jet lag; culture shock.
This blog will now stop attempting to respond to the day-to-day flow of events in Egypt. I will probably take a short break and then come back with several “feature” type stories or straight travelogue pieces that got started in Cairo but got pre-empted by the rush of political developments. (I gave up daily newspaper reporting 16 years ago but my mom once described me, very much in the AA sense, as a “recovering journalist.”) Haven’t decided what to do after that, once the semester begins.
But you don’t really need me. Unlike when I started learning Arabic 14 years ago (and that was the main reason why I started), there are now SO many articulate English-language voices commenting on developments all over the region. You can begin here for this week, if you haven’t already: Ahdaf Soueif’s reflection on the military’s brutalization of female demonstrators, and Mahmoud Salem/Sandmonkey’s astonishing piece breaking his silence about Islamist parties, parliamentary elections, the revolution’s mistakes, and more. The New York Times’ coverage has also been surprisingly good, for the most part: so, bravo to David Kirkpatrick (I don’t know him personally) and his stringers and fixers.
Backlogged ordinary street scenes coming soon. Take care of yourselves meanwhile.

Returned from Abu Dhabi at 4am today — just in time for another wave of unimaginable state violence. Military police (i.e., the army, NOT just the Ministry of Interior) have spent all day attacking protesters, breaking up a 3-week-old sit-in outside the Cabinet building with beatings and live fire, even (get this) throwing Molotov cocktails at protesters from the roofs of government buildings. I was offline this morning, taking the kids to visit the Pyramids (had to do it eventually), so first heard about the events because my journalist friend, with whom we were supposed to meet up at a birthday party in Kit Kat, said he was unable to leave his house in Qasr El Ainy. Under siege, again.
I’ll try to write more soon; meanwhile you can read this astonishing chronicle, from what is actually a state run-paper. Among the highlights:

2:15pm A doctor at the scene told Ahram Online that the fighting began when a group of protesting Ultras were playing a football match early in the monring in front of the Cabinet building. The ball flew into the building’s courtyard. When one of the Ultras, named Aboudy, jumped into the building to try and retrieve the ball, he was brutally beaten by security forces. He is now in Qasr El-Aini Hospital.

8:15pm Pitch battles continue in Qasr El-Aini Street as security forces attack protesters on the ground with rocks and Molotov cocktails from the roofs of smouldering government buildings. The protesters have been fighting back all day and, with the ruling military council failing to take any action to restrain the forces under their command, this shows no sign of ending any time soon.

The photos and videos circulating online are pretty amazing too. Army personnel attacking Egyptians with electric cattle prods, dragging them by the hair. A protestor who was an Azhar scholar of Islamic law has been killed; women wearing the full face-veil have been beaten. Yet someone I had coffee with late tonight (a professional actor, hangs out with liberals, etc.) blamed the protesters for what he called their naivete in retrieving a soccer ball (“You idiot! It’s the Ministry of Interior, not the yard of the lady next door!”), not at all the military for perpetrating obvious and gratuitous violence against its own people.

Can’t believe we are leaving this country tomorrow night. Don’t want to go. Feels like abandoning the bedside of a friend who is very dear — and very wounded. Who knows when and in what shape I will see him again.

“Come vote with us!” invited my acquaintance on our street, one of the few real working-class (actually, unemployed-class) liberals I’ve met, after we bonded over his otherwise unshared suspicions of the Brotherhood. I’m excited to be in Abu Dhabi for what promises to be a very fun conference on World Literature and Translation, but sorry to be missing the fun on Voting Day in our neighborhood. Here are some posters from Dokki/Mohandiseen.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

The one of Gamal Abdel Nasser is from the back window of someone’s car on our street; he’s not really running for office, just (as the caption says) “still in the hearts of millions.” The others are candidates. Not a lot of women running, but how do you like that lady whose symbol is the rifle? Or the Brothers represented by two objects they’ve perhaps never used, a stove and a blender? At least you can’t accuse the election committee of sexism. There’s a public service poster advising people on how to vote; most of these have been scratched up or pasted over with posters for particular candidates. Note the statue of Ahmad Orabi in the background of the Midan Orabi photo: he still has an eye patch commemorating the Nov 19-26 violence where several protesters got their eyes shot out. Oh, and one Egyptian Bloc candidate hung his banners over some street signs on major public roads, such that you can’t see the street signs anymore to know where you’re going. Trust him to prioritize the national interest over his own and steer the parliament in the right direction. Somehow don’t have photos yet, but the MB splinter party Hizb al-Wasat, now usually described as “moderate Islamist,” has recently sprouted a very strong presence in our neighborhood, with offices right near the Bahoos metro station and posters all over the place featuring their #1 guy on the list-based vote, a good-looking former Zamalek soccer star.

Turnout promises to be high. Apparently some number of people have had the daylights scared out of them by the MB/Nour sweep in the first round, and are voting Egyptian Bloc “to balance things out.” Certainly that’s the Bloc’s last best strategy: they’ve taken down their billboards with photos of tycoon/party founder Naguib Sawiris (a liability in general, and more so after he made a massive televised gaffe last week), and replaced them with huge posters simply showing the Bloc’s symbol (the eye) and the words, “For a Balanced Parliament.” (Pix of those on my other camera too.)
This was my earlier question about multi-round elections, which my friend Qifa Nabki described in his comment as “not ideal” — and in many cases of course they aren’t. But because late-round voters get to see how the early rounds voted, could this system allow for an early and healthy expression of buyer’s remorse?

This ran today.

Cairo, Up Close and Personal | BU Today | Boston University.

Thanks, Amy Sutherland!