On the State of Egypt (25 page)

Freedom of belief means guaranteeing respect and freedom of worship for everyone, whatever their beliefs and their religion. This is just the opposite of what the Egyptian government does. It cannot demand freedom of belief in Switzerland while obstructing it in Egypt. The Egyptian regime, which holds power through repression and fraud, cannot guarantee freedom of belief for its citizens because if you have lost something you cannot then give it away and because freedom of belief will not come about in isolation from other public freedoms and political rights.

Democracy is the solution.

December 6, 2009

An Unfortunate Incident Befalls a State Security Officer

L
ast Saturday Amr Bey, an officer in State Security, finished his work unusually early and hurried home. He was happy because he would see his only daughter, Nourhan, who is ten years old and whom he rarely sees during the week. He usually comes home from work after she has gone to bed and when he wakes up she’s already at school. Amr Bey came in and greeted his wife, Nadia, who was in the kitchen, and then quickly headed to his daughter’s room. He opened the door and found her studying. She was wearing a blue work-out outfit and had her hair in a ponytail. He kissed her on the forehead and asked if she had had dinner. She said she would have dinner when she finished her homework. Amr Bey told her he would eat with her, then put out his right hand and patted her on the cheek. Suddenly Nourhan looked terrified and shouted, “Papa, there’s blood on your hand!” Amr Bey looked at his right hand and to his amazement found it covered with congealed blood. Nourhan screamed in horror and her mother rushed in from the kitchen to find out what was happening. Amr Bey kept his cool and tried to reassure his wife and daughter. He went into the bathroom quickly and washed his hand with hot water and soap several times until he had removed all traces of blood. Then he dried it with a towel.

When he came out of the bathroom he found Nadia waiting for him. He kissed her on the cheek and smiled to reassure her. The couple went into the bedroom and Amr Bey started to take off his suit to put on his pajamas and go to bed. But as soon as he looked at his hand he shouted, “Nadia, the blood’s come back!” It was no longer possible to ignore what was happening. Nadia dressed hurriedly and took him off in her car. Amr sat next to her and tried to contact the director of Salam Hospital, whom he knew well. He was holding his cell phone in his left hand because his right hand was completely covered in congealed blood. On the way to the hospital Amr began to wonder where all this blood on the palm of his right hand was coming from. He hadn’t injured himself and he didn’t remember bumping his hand into anything.

Amr Bey mentally went over everything he had done that day. He had arrived at the State Security offices at 1 p.m. and before going to his office he had dropped in on his colleague, Tamer Bey, to make sure he had booked his summer vacation in Marsa Matrouh for August 1, so they could spend it together. Tamer Bey was in the same year as Amr at college and was one of his closest friends. Amr Bey went into Tamer’s office and found him busy interrogating some Islamists who were members of the Wa’d (Promise) group. He saw a man hanging upside down by his feet—the position known as the
dabiha
, or sacrificial victim—as the detectives gave him repeated electric shocks between his legs. The man was screaming in a horrifying way, while Tamer’s voice boomed through the room. “You know what, momma’s boy, if you don’t confess, I’ll bring your wife, Bothaina, strip her naked, and have the soldiers do her in front of your eyes,” he said. As soon as Tamer Bey caught sight of his friend, Amr Bey, his face lit up and he rushed to shake his hand. Then Tamer took him aside and assured him he had made the booking.

Amr Bey came out of Tamer Bey’s office and decided to say good morning to his colleague, Abdel Khalek Bey, who was interrogating cement plant workers who were on strike. Amr Bey went in and saw a man dressed only in his underwear, tied by the hands and feet, as though crucified, to a piece of wood they call “the Doll.” The man’s body was covered with bruises and wounds. Behind him stood a detective thrashing him with a whip while other detectives were busy beating him violently about the head and face. Abdel Khalek started shouting at him, “So you’re acting the militant and the hero, are you? Very well, momma’s boy, I swear I’m going to make you kiss the soldiers’ boots. I’ll make you wish you were dead, but you won’t be able to die.” Amr Bey greeted his friend, Abdel Khalek, from afar and hurried off so as not to distract him from his work.

After that Amr Bey settled down in his office, where he interrogated two young men from the April 6 Movement who had been inviting people in the street to come out and welcome Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei at the airport. The interrogation was easy because the men had arrived in his office completely exhausted after detectives beat and whipped them through the night, and in fact Amr Bey didn’t have much to do. He gave the men the usual barrage of insults and was about to dismiss them, but he noticed that one of them was looking at him with a certain defiance. He stood up from behind his desk and slapped him on the face several times. This was the signal for the detectives to start a new barrage of kicks and cuffs. At this point Amr Bey shouted at the man, “Say, ‘I’m a woman.’ Come on!” The brutal beating continued but the young man refused to say, “I’m a woman.” Amr Bey gave an order and the detectives started to drag the man about by his feet, with his head banging against the floor as they hit him with their fists and heavy boots until he lost consciousness.

That’s all Amr Bey had done during the day. He went over it in his mind and did not see anything strange or unfamiliar in it. Quite an ordinary day. So where did this congealed blood come from? Amr Bey arrived at the hospital and found the director waiting for him in person. He gave him a thorough check-up and took a blood sample, which was analyzed immediately. With Amr Bey and his wife, Nadia, sitting in his office, the director read the results of the analysis several times, then took off his glasses and said, “Look, sir. People bleed from the palm of the hand in three cases: because of a wound, or because of an overdose of anticoagulants, or, God forbid, because they have a malignant blood disease. You’re not injured, you haven’t taken any anticoagulants, and the blood looks healthy. The fact is, sir, that your case is odd. Let’s wait twenty-four hours and hopefully the bleeding will stop.”

The hospital director prescribed some drugs, gave the officer some bandages to stop his hand from bleeding, and asked him to stop by in the morning for a check-up. Amr Bey did not sleep all night and in the morning he heard his daughter, Nourhan, as she prepared for school. He decided not to go out and see her in case she was frightened by the sight of his bloody hand. He dressed with the help of his wife, who again went with him to the hospital director, who examined him and repeated with regret that there was no medical explanation for the bleeding. The director asked Amr Bey to continue with the drugs and the bandages.

Amr Bey went back home, called the office, and told them he was ill and would not come in that day. He spent a full day in his room, eating nothing despite his wife’s insistence. He would sleep only for a few minutes before waking up to look at his hand and finding it always stained with blood. The next morning his wife came in and found him stretched out on the bed, apparently completely exhausted. But on his face she also saw a new and strange expression. Amr Bey struggled to his feet, dressed with his wife’s help, and asked her to drive him to the office. There he went to the office of the general who was the director of State Security investigations and asked to see him. They let him in straight away. The general welcomed him and was upset when he saw the bandages on his right hand. “Hope it’s not serious, Amr. What’s the problem?”

Amr Bey told the general what had happened and the general scowled. “Strange story,” he said. “Anyway, take time off until you’re better.” But Amr Bey smiled and with his left hand produced a piece of paper that he placed on the desk in front of the general. The general read it quickly and then cried out in disapproval, “What’s all this? Have you gone mad, Amr? Would anyone leave State Security?”

“I implore you, sir.”

“Give yourself a chance to think, my son. You’re one of the best officers in the department and you have a great future. Can you tell me why you want to leave the department?”

At that point, without speaking, Amr Bey held his bloody right hand in front of the general’s face.

Democracy is the solution.

March 7, 2010

Why Was the General Screaming?

T
he young men and women who came out to demonstrate in the streets of Cairo on April 6 did not break the law or do anything wrong. They only wanted to express their opinion. They were demanding freedom, justice, dignity, fair elections, the abolition of the emergency law, and constitutional amendments to ensure equal opportunities for all Egyptians to stand in elections. All of these demands are just and legitimate. So why were these youngsters abused and beaten, dragged off and detained? No respectable state in the world punishes its citizens in this brutal way just for expressing their opinions. What happened on April 6 will remain a shameful stain on the reputation of the Egyptian regime forever. The youngsters were surrounded by a cordon of riot police, who pressed in on them until they almost suffocated them, then the karate units of the police pounced on them, hitting the demonstrators on the head and body with thick sticks. I have never seen such barbaric methods used on protesters, other than by the Israeli army against Palestinian demonstrators during the Intifada. Why do Egyptians attack fellow Egyptians with such brutality? The young people were screaming and some had such serious injuries that the asphalt was covered with their blood, but the beatings did not stop.

Finally a man in his fifties appeared, well-built, swarthy, and dressed in civilian clothes, with a large prayer mark on his forehead. The man, addressed as “General” by the policemen, gave orders that the girls be taken out of the cordoned area one by one. “Bring me that whore over there,” he shouted to his assistants in a voice like thunder. Immediately the men rushed off to drag the girl away from her colleagues. The youngsters fought hard to defend the girl, protecting her with their bodies and shielding her from assault, but the police attacked with such ferocity and inflicted so many injuries that in the end their resistance flagged and the police managed to remove the girl. They pushed her from behind and hit her until she was standing facing the general, who greeted her with a barrage of vulgar insults. He raised his hand and slapped her several times, then grabbed her
hijab
and removed it. Then he took hold of her hair and dragged her along the ground, kicking her as hard as he could as he went until he threw her toward a group of policemen, who kept hitting, slapping, and kicking her until finally they dumped her, a total wreck, in the police wagon. The image of the general attacking girls in the same way appears in all the video material that escaped confiscation by the police.

But I noticed something strange: while the general was attacking the girl and dragging her off, his face was contorted and he was incessantly screaming. He was making strange rasping, guttural noises as though it were he who was in pain, and I wondered: Why is the general screaming? It’s obvious why the girl would scream when she was being savaged in the streets within view of all the passersby. But the general who was hitting her, why would he scream? He was strong, powerful, and in complete control of the situation. He had everything in his favor while the poor girl had nothing. His word was law and he could do what he wanted with the girl: hit her, slap her, drag her along the ground. Even if he killed her no one would punish him. So why was he screaming? In war a fighter might scream out loud in battle to frighten the enemy, but the general was not at war and he was not facing an armed enemy. He was attacking a defenseless girl who was almost dying of fright, pain, and a sense of humiliation and shame. Was the general screaming as he attacked the girl in order to overcome the reservations of his subordinate police officers, some of whom might refuse to assault an innocent Egyptian girl who had not committed a crime or broken the law? Was he screaming in order to forget that his real duty was to protect this girl from assault rather than to assault her himself?

Was he screaming in order to forget that this girl, whose
hijab
he had removed and whom he was dragged along the ground, was just like his own daughter, whom he no doubt loves and cherishes and whom he would never allow to be insulted or harmed? If his own daughter had a difficult exam or just had a simple cold, the general would not be able to sleep without checking on her. Was he screaming because when he graduated from the police academy thirty years ago, he had dreams of upholding the law and justice and swore to protect the dignity, lives, and property of Egyptians, and then little by little he had been drawn into protecting the Mubarak regime, until in the end his mission was to abuse girls?

Perhaps he was screaming because he is religious, or at least considers himself religious, because he prays and fasts regularly, even performs the dawn prayer on time whenever he can, has gone on the
hajj
and on the lesser pilgrimage more than once, and has had the prayer mark on his forehead for years from all his prostrations. Perhaps he was screaming because he knows that he is over fifty and his death may come at any moment. He might die in a traffic accident or he might be struck down by some serious disease, or even, as happens with many people, he might go to bed one night in the best of health and in the morning his wife tries to wake him up and finds him dead. The general knows for sure that he will die and will stand before God, who will hold him to account, and on that day neither President Mubarak nor Interior Minister Habib al-Adli will be able to do him any good, nor even the prosecutor general, who has been shelving all the complaints against him for lack of sufficient evidence. On the great Day of Judgment, everyone will abandon him—the bodyguards, the informers, the riot police, the officers, his friends, his wife, and even his children. On that day his general’s rank will do him no good, nor his ties to senior officials, nor his wealth. On that day he will stand as naked as the day his mother gave birth to him, weak and defenseless. He will tremble in fear at the judgment of the Creator.