Once Upon a Revolution (15 page)

“I fought in wars!” he screeched, his irritation driving him to nonsense. “I killed and was killed!”

The SCAF decided to fire Shafik even before he went off the air. They replaced him with an avuncular professor of traffic engineering named Essam Sharaf, who had been featured on the Revolutionary Youth Coalition's list of acceptable candidates. Basem, Moaz, and the others took this as a sign of their strength; the junta had jettisoned one of its own loyalists for a man promoted by the revolutionary youth. But just a few days later, the military sent a countervailing signal, breaking up the small sit-in that had persisted in Tahrir. Soldiers burned tents and rounded up activists. They subjected the women they detained to “virginity tests,” probing their vaginas with their fingers. Supposedly this would determine whether their prisoners were already sexually active, so that they couldn't later falsely accuse their captors of rape. One of the detainees was Ramy Essam, a singer who had become famous as the balladeer of Tahrir; he had become a symbol of the revolutionary youth and he performed
his anti-regime songs at nearly every major protest. He was beaten across every stretch of his face and back.

Egyptian media took the side of the military, refusing to publish the detainees' accounts of torture and molestation after they were released. An unknown general named Abdel Fattah el-Sisi made his public debut defending the “virginity tests” as a distasteful necessity. A small group of human rights activists ramped up a campaign against the rampant use of military trials for civilians. But the military had succeeded in convincing much of the public to swallow any account offered by its rulers.

The SCAF had begun a long experiment by first preying on those rebels who were the most marginal, and therefore the most vulnerable: artists, feminists, supporters of gay rights. These revolutionaries were viewed with distaste even by some of the more conventional activists. The military was going to find out whether there would be any uproar over their treatment. If it could finger-rape female demonstrators and scar a visible musician with impunity, then it could move on to bigger objectives.

A sort of disorienting drunkenness had swept the revolutionary organizers; they were not sure what to do next. One week a dozen activists would appear on television repeating the same talking points; they would overexpose themselves, appearing self-promotional and undisciplined. The next week, in an effort to appear less eager, they would disappear, failing to address key developments about the referendum or condemn the beating and arrest of civilians. They scheduled press conferences but forgot to invite any journalists. The Revolutionary Youth Coalition agreed that, for now, it needed to maintain the street pressure. Sally was organizing revolutionary visits all over the country, a caravan that would link Tahrir to the cities and towns that endowed the uprising with its national character. Activists from all over Egypt had made the eighteen days possible; Sally knew that a true revolution required their continued involvement.

The supporters of Mohamed ElBaradei who were now on the coalition also wanted a political tool that could pressure the military and articulate a change agenda for Egypt. They believed “the doctor,” as they affectionately called him, could lead an enduring movement, but they waited
in vain for ElBaradei to take action. “It's time for us to form a political party,” Basem told ElBaradei. “The people need your leadership.” But ElBaradei hesitated. He kept postponing a decision, frustrating the acolytes who had welcomed him back to Egypt so effusively. Alone among them, Basem had a clear direction. Yes, there were infinite possible courses of action, but Basem had learned from his life that he preferred to choose one. Now he wanted to make an impact in politics. ElBaradei's ideas had galvanized him in the first place, and he cared more for them than for the man. He would work to establish the strongest political party that embodied ElBaradei's principles, with or without ElBaradei as the leader.

The referendum was looming, and ElBaradei refused to take a position for or against it. Finally, the secular activists on the coalition decided to move on their own, but they differed on their priorities. One faction, including Sally and most of the veteran street fighters, wanted to preserve the tactics of Tahrir, opposing the referendum and spreading a revolutionary agenda through amorphous grassroots ventures. The other faction, led by Basem and Zyad, was convinced that only a viable political organization could exert any real influence. Anything else was a half measure. They wanted to build a national political party with a concrete social democratic agenda.

Long after it might make a difference, the revolutionaries finally decided to make a public stand against the constitutional referendum that the military was foisting upon Egypt at knifepoint. Just four days before the March 19 vote, the Revolutionary Youth Coalition called a press conference in a borrowed lounge at
Al Masry Al Youm
, one of Egypt's few credible independent newspapers. Nobody in the building seemed to know about it. Finally, someone directed the press corps to the newspaper's kitchen, where a grumpy attendant brewed tea and reporters took their smoke breaks. The Revolutionary Youth Coalition leaders arrived an hour behind schedule; by then it was hard to see through the cigarette fumes.

“We are late, as usual,” Basem said.

Indeed. With days to go before Egyptians were to vote, the revolution was finally ready to tell people why they should vote “no.” Even if they had concocted a brilliant rationale, there was no time left to explain it to anybody. What they had to say made sense, but it was hard to imagine
it catching on as a national slogan: “Constitution first.” That was their message. First, a fully representative assembly should write a blueprint for Egypt's new government. Then the people should vote on their new constitution. Then, with the duties and separation of powers of the new government clearly established, Egypt could elect a new president and parliament. It made sense, but it was a complicated idea, hard to market. The Muslim Brotherhood was telling voters that a vote against the constitutional amendments was a vote against God. The military was telling people that a “no” was a vote against stability and progress. Meanwhile, the trusting revolutionary youth were eager to make their case but would respect anyone who disagreed. It was a clear mismatch, which they were sure to lose.

The members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition unanimously opposed the referendum. Such unity was rare. Naïvely, many of them thought that their common sense of purpose would translate into an immediate effect on the public's perception.

Basem wasn't so confident. “I am worried,” he said. “The army is not good. Things are not good. The old regime and the Islamic movements are all united against us.”

That night, the revolutionary youth leaders refused to meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They didn't want to be seen conversing with a symbol of American power. So Clinton's aides assembled a random assortment of second-tier activists, who told Clinton that they didn't believe in political parties. From then on, Clinton had the mistaken impression that the revolutionary youth leaders of Tahrir had stayed clear of politics, when the truth was that most of them had dived into politics wholeheartedly; they just weren't necessarily any good at it.

The Revolutionary Youth Coalition wanted to burnish its nationalist credentials and perhaps feared that it would be portrayed as a tool of the imperialists if it met with Clinton. In style, however, it was displaying the same kind of dumb nationalist chauvinism that was the stock-in-trade of the military and the old regime. The revolution was all about dialogue and combining principles with action. Yet reality presented complicated choices about how to craft a political campaign message, influence senior leaders, and negotiate deals with military officers and rich power brokers.
What had worked during the eighteen days in Tahrir might not be the best approach now.

On the eve of the vote, a few delegates from the Revolutionary Youth Coalition traveled to the provincial delta city of Mansoura to rally against the constitutional referendum. Mansoura was an Islamist stronghold, and the revolutionaries wanted to make a point of establishing beachheads beyond the two major cities of Cairo and Alexandria. I met Ayyash outside the rally; Mansoura was his hometown. It only took a moment to sense how greatly the promilitary, pro–Muslim Brotherhood forces outnumbered the hapless liberals and revolutionaries. I could barely discern any of the white revolutionary banners in the sea of yellow Brotherhood signs that read simply, “Yes for the constitutional amendments.” Many in attendance planned to vote for the amendments but had come to the rally to see what the revolutionaries and liberals had to offer. They weren't impressed.

The secular leftists who opposed the Brotherhood had emulated the Islamist tent revival style for their rally. They had set up plastic chairs beneath an awning at a major intersection. Pop music and prayers blared from the system so loudly that it hurt my ears and rendered words unintelligible. First, they appealed to emotion. The father of a boy killed in Tahrir hugged a picture of his son, bringing many in the audience to tears. Speeches extolled the martyrs of January 25. Then the rally organizers tried to galvanize the audience to action. Zyad, perhaps the only speaker under the age of fifty, said that voting “no” was a way to continue the revolution. One speaker called those who wouldn't vote his way “traitors.” Overall, the speakers sounded shrill, intolerant, and incoherent, and they went on for three hours. In private, I had heard revolutionaries make plausible arguments for why the new amendments would doom Egypt's transition to democracy by handing too much power to the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, but no one made that case clearly in public. The audience was tiny, maybe a thousand, and afterward I couldn't find a single person whose mind had been changed.

Basem and Zyad had been busy with their plans to set up a new
political party. They treated the “no” campaign and the Revolutionary Youth Coalition almost as necessary distractions. Instead of thinking about their primary enemy—the military junta that controlled Egypt and its transition—they were scheming about how to compete with their biggest future political rival, the Muslim Brotherhood. Political liberty and free elections were by no means guaranteed while Egypt suffered military rule, but the liberal revolutionaries had already jumped ahead to the electoral contests of the future. They had decided not to wait for ElBaradei and had collected a core group of a few hundred intellectuals and businessmen who shared a commitment to classical liberalism and progressive economics. Their basic idea was European-style social democracy: civil liberties and a free market but with enough government intervention to protect the poor. The Friday night before the referendum, about five hundred of them gathered in a conference room on the fourth floor of the Journalists Syndicate. Smoke stifled the room as they fought over the new party's name.

“Tomorrow!” someone suggested.

“That's already taken.”

“How about Egypt Tomorrow?”

“The Road!”

“The Free!”

“The Path!”

“The Square!”

The proposals were listed on a whiteboard. From the stage, the party's presumptive leadership refereed the debate. Sally and Zyad sat beside Dr. Mohamed Aboul-Ghar, the famous gynecologist and dissident whose chants had fallen flat the night before at the Mansoura rally. Tonight he held the central place of honor. Most of the Tahrir activists sat in the room, with the exception of youth from Islamist backgrounds and the April 6 Movement activists, who tended to be more socially and economically conservative. Finally, a more precise if far less evocative name won the day: Egyptian Social Democratic Party. The outcome presaged what would become a persistent problem with branding the revolution and reform.

“This name—it's what you get with the democratic process,” Sally said. “I would have preferred El Tarik, ‘the Road,' or El Masri, ‘the Egyptian.' ”