Once Upon a Revolution (31 page)

Meanwhile, Egypt's military custodians steadily constricted the free space that remained for revolutionary activity. Some activists were conveniently conscripted, disappearing for years to distant army bases. Civilians continued to vanish into military custody, where they were often tried and sentenced before secret military courts. Most of them were apolitical poor people arrested at checkpoints for vaguely defined crimes such as thuggery and violating curfew. The “No to Military Trials” campaign had documented more than ten thousand such cases. Higher-profile cases against activists were designed to intimidate the community of dissidents and critical thinkers. The blogger and revolutionary strategist Alaa Abdel
Fattah had missed the birth of his son during two months in jail after the Maspero massacre. A Christian blogger who had written critically about the military was imprisoned for nearly a year. Those who were jailed on trumped-up or spurious charges were usually released by special pardon, to emphasize that justice was a gift from the ruler, not a transparent process equally available to all. Almost every activist had some charge pending; Moaz was one of dozens under investigation for thuggery.

“We all have cases against us,” he said. “They save them so they have a reason to lock us up when they want to.”

The most extreme case was the SCAF's crackdown on civil society groups. Ever since the summer of 2011, wags like a retired general I interviewed had been peddling a bizarre brew of conspiracy theories about human rights groups and other nongovernmental organizations secretly serving the agendas of the CIA and of global Zionism. By December, that paranoia had permeated official policy. The SCAF arrested forty-three civil society activists and charged them with a variety of crimes bordering on treason. Those targeted weren't the revolutionaries of Tahrir; they were lawyers, researchers, and trainers laboring in bread-and-butter civil society efforts: human rights and election monitoring, organizing, political party and democracy training. These weren't the most visible activists, but they were among the most important. Since the time of Mubarak, they had tallied the accusations of torture, election fraud, harassment, and slander. The SCAF was sending a clear and chilling message to Egyptians: they could be imprisoned easily as foreign agents if they scrutinized the government.

Of those arrested or charged, nineteen were Americans, including Sam LaHood, the son of US Secretary of Transportation Ray LaHood. He had been helping to train new political parties. The SCAF didn't expect this move to jeopardize the next $1.55 million that Washington was due to send it, but an Egyptian military delegation to Washington in February got an earful. Pursuing the son of an American cabinet official triggered a level of irritation that the massacres had not. The Egyptian judges in charge of the case relented immediately, allowing the Americans to be released if each posted $300,000 bail. The supposedly independent judicial system had exposed the depths to which it had sunk.

That spring of 2012, the presidential campaign swept over Egypt in a dazzling display. All the country's political forces emerged into the open. The old regime's organization and supporters had largely stayed out of sight during the fall parliamentary campaign, but they were done hiding. The presidency was too important, and none of the new liberal parties was strong enough to absorb the old elite. Until now politics had played out mostly between the SCAF, the Muslim Brotherhood, and the revolutionary protesters. But there were others to be reckoned with, and the most important was the old regime, which fielded two candidates: Ahmed Shafik, Mubarak's prime minister, and Omar Suleiman, the elderly spymaster who ran Mubarak's intelligence services. Suleiman in particular cut a terrifying figure to many Egyptians: he was a quintessential man of the shadows, and he had been in charge of all the most important business of Mubarak's regime, from squelching terrorism and domestic dissent to handling relations with Israel and Palestine. When it came time to file official candidacy papers, Suleiman's henchmen delivered hundreds of thousands of signatures, far more than required, and leaked that the state intelligence services had gathered them.

The Muslim Brotherhood had insisted it would not put forth presidential candidates, but broke that promise and announced two: Khairat el-Shater, the organization's de facto strongman, and Mohamed Morsi, the loyal enforcer, as backup. Morsi was quickly labeled “the spare tire.” Another phenomenon was the Salafi Sheikh Hazem Salah and his fanatical followers, the Hazemoon. They had managed to glue posters of the sheikh everywhere, unnerving secular Egyptians and mainstream Islamists too.

Suddenly Egypt's political landscape appeared in a different light. The dominant candidates represented the old regime's intelligence service, the extremist Salafis, and the hard-line wing of the Muslim Brotherhood. There was a wide array of candidates in between with more nuanced and moderate views, but until the first round of voting in May, no one could gauge their popularity. There were no credible opinion polls. Unlike the parliamentary elections, which featured broad coalitions, the presidential
race would serve as a precise measure of voter preference. There was a secular Arab nationalist who had worked for the old regime (Amr Mousa), and another who had not (Hamdeen Sabbahi). There was a lawyer with impeccable revolutionary credentials but no direct involvement in rabble-rousing protest (Khaled Ali). There were the Muslim Brothers and the Salafis, and then there was a lifelong Muslim Brother who had been thrown out because of his independence and his willingness to work with secular people (Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh).

Unless a single candidate captured more than 50 percent of the vote in May, there would be a runoff a month later between the top two finishers. Egypt faced the clearest test yet of the population's political tastes. The field of candidates was huge. The extremes frightened many people, who didn't want to be governed by a Salafi or an intelligence man. The Muslim Brothers and former regime candidates had the most polished campaigns because of their organizations' long histories, but on occasion, they veered into rhetoric as mad as Sheikh Hazem's. The moderate majority was fragmented among conservative Arab nationalists, secular liberals, Christians, old regime sympathizers, secular revolutionaries, and religious revolutionaries. It was obvious to all the campaigns that if the moderates could agree on a single candidate, they were almost guaranteed to win. They would need someone who was untainted by the old regime and could make at least a nod to revolutionary sentiment, and who was committed to a secular, liberal state, as well as someone who could rally the support of Christians, big businesses, and people who wanted stability but didn't seek a full restoration of Mubarak. It was also obvious to every candidate that he himself should be that unifying representative. No one could agree, and the field remained split.

In the first round, Basem was drawn immediately to the campaign of Hamdeen Sabbahi, a handsome Nasserist politician who delivered rousing, revolutionary-sounding speeches in a sultry rasp. His actual views were quite reactionary. Sabbahi liked a robust military, and he wasn't much concerned with due process and minority rights. His vision was of a resurgent Egypt that would dominate the Arab world. Sabbahi spouted xenophobic nonsense and conspiracy theories just like the old regime. His slogan was “One of us.” Basem happily campaigned for him. He
liked that Sabbahi wouldn't kowtow to the United States, and he found it reassuring that for all the blather about Nasser and the patriotic army, Sabbahi argued that the military should stay in the barracks, away from the presidential palace, Ittihadiya, in the Cairo suburb of Heliopolis. Other secular revolutionaries stayed away from Sabbahi, gravitating instead to the little-known but more thoroughly liberal lawyer Khaled Ali, who never managed to gain even tiny name recognition among voters. (He ultimately won just 1 percent of the vote.)

Revolutionaries with religious backgrounds joined the campaign of Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, who for a few weeks seemed poised to bridge the divide between secular and Islamist Egyptians. Aboul Fotouh convinced an impressive group of notable secular academics and doctors to join his campaign, and at the same time he won the backing of Salafis. Young activists, including Moaz and Ayyash, gushed; they were convinced this campaign was inventing a new form of Islamic liberalism. However, Aboul Fotouh never committed overtly to basic liberal principles: he acted like an open-minded pluralist, but he never said whether he wanted Egypt to be a secular state, and he never said he would guarantee freedoms for minorities, political parties, and the nonreligious. He grew popular, but because of his silence on central questions, Aboul Fotouh never could gain the trust of Christians or resolutely secular Egyptians.

As a reminder that the old regime's arbitrary enforcement of the law still prevailed, the supposedly independent commission overseeing the presidential ballot disqualified the three most alarming candidates: the Brotherhood's el-Shater; the old spy, Omar Suleiman; and the Salafi Sheikh Hazem. The outraged Hazemoon besieged the Ministry of Defense, camping in tents outside the gates and stockpiling weapons. They seemed crazed, a genuine threat to the state. The Revolutionary Youth Coalition begged them to disperse, but they refused. Some secular revolutionaries even joined the sit-in, a move that the coalition leaders knew would only discredit their cause. Moaz thought he could end the standoff: he planned a march called the “the Final Friday” at the end of the month of May, and assembled a big tent of youth groups, secular and religious. They would walk from downtown to the Ministry of Defense, gather up the Salafis, and take them away, providing a face-saving way
for the Hazemoon to back down. The idea did not seem likely to work. Once Moaz's march reached the ministry, most of its participants joined the Salafis in throwing rocks at the army.

“Selmiya! Selmiya!”
Moaz shouted in vain. “Peaceful! Peaceful!”

But a different chant from the crowd drowned him out: “Death, not humiliation!”

The army moved quickly, sending phalanxes of soldiers into the crowd. Some fled, others stood and fought. Men from the neighborhood armed with buckshot rifles, clubs, and Molotov cocktails came up from the side streets; they had grown sick a long time ago of revolutionary interlopers. As the fighting intensified, Moaz ran through the tear gas pleading.

“This is not what we should be doing!” he shouted, his voice giving out from overuse. “It is not to our benefit to fight here!”

“I've been waiting a year for this,” a leftist answered. “I want to send the SCAF messages carved in dead bodies.”

Against such bloodthirst, politics offered little. Moaz knew that with this clash the revolution would lose yet another sizable chunk of public opinion. Presidential elections were just a few weeks away. The SCAF had promised to cede power by June 30. Couldn't these impatient young people wait even a little?

Basem was in the provinces meeting with Social Democrats when he heard about the fighting outside the Defense Ministry. “All we're going to reap at the end of the battle is more martyrs and martial law,” he remarked in disgust. The revolutionaries had impulses but no grand plan. A few days later, Moaz, Sally, and a few hundred activists marched on parliament, demanding an investigation of the violence outside the ministry. They phoned Basem, who was inside. He refused to come out and join them.