Once Upon a Revolution (33 page)

Basem was much more interested in the internal elections of his party than in the presidential contest. He was convinced Egypt had taken a turn for the better into an era of open politics and free speech. The country needed the patience of a gardener to cultivate institutions more than it needed the flair of a revolutionary infantryman ready to die. Basem was wasting no time; he had a party to tend. At nine o'clock in the evening, he was meeting with his Shoubra team to lay the groundwork for his next parliamentary election campaign, whenever it would be. The first parliament still had not been disbanded, the next president had not been chosen, the SCAF still was completely in control, and already he was running for reelection.

Basem, Ayyash, and Zyad had acclimated to the new order by seeking accommodation within it, settling into roles that they expected would make them players in the country's political future. Moaz and Sally, however,
remained on the outside shouting in. Sally had receded from public view but was working with the same intensity. The Kazeboon! team was producing an ambitious series of films to propagate ideas about citizenship and community through compelling stories: a cultural populist revolution to follow the political one. Meanwhile, Moaz had gone back to his day job. It had been fifteen months since he'd drawn a salary. He had been politicking so long it was a surprise to remember that he had a parallel career as a pharmacist.

The Revolutionary Youth Coalition had nothing left to do. These once inseparable partners had become atomized, each operating in a realm of their own. Tahrir had altered the state forever, and more change was coming. A president would take office, and he would be beholden to the people who elected him. He would have the authority to confront the putrid judiciary, the malignant security services, and the arrogant army. And he would govern knowing that in four years' time he would face another competitive race for president. Egypt, the revolutionaries believed, would never again tolerate the kind of stage-managed charade that had reelected Mubarak to his final term in 2005. Police misdeeds would continue, as would political shenanigans and the reflex to shout down or silence opponents. Yet this was an undeniably freer Egypt, and it was in the throes of transformation. The hardships suffered in revolutionary Egypt were symptoms of a society in transition rather than slumbering in an induced coma. Egypt was going somewhere—somewhere that was unlikely to be worse and would probably be better—and it was thanks to Tahrir. The revolutionary youth of Tahrir could very well become the next generation's political elite. Today, though, they were rolling about like spilled ball bearings, incapable of steering the process they had unleashed.

The Muslim Brotherhood's inimitable vote-tracking operation showed that Morsi had won. Not by a huge margin, but a comfortable 3.5 percent, nearly a million votes. A tense week followed; the official results from the Presidential Election Commission were delayed. The generals issued a new fiat that would supposedly give them control over the next president's budget and office. The Islamists sent a million protesters
to the streets in a staggering show of force against the military; their numbers also served as a rude reminder of how tiny the revolutionary demonstrations were in comparison. By its second day, the protesters at the Brotherhood sit-in had built new bathrooms in Tahrir out of brick. A year and a half after the revolution, the square was full again, but it looked nothing like a revolutionary youth affair.

Authorities finally announced the results a week after the vote. A great suspense gripped the millions outside in Tahrir and in front of their televisions all over the country. If victory were declared for Shafik despite the overwhelming evidence that Morsi had won, it would be outright war. If the presidency went to the man who had won it, a grinding struggle would follow between the Islamists and everybody else. It would be unpleasant but not, it was generally felt, cataclysmic. The fatuous judge in charge droned on for an hour. Finally he read the results: Morsi: 13,230,131 votes. Shafik: 12,347,380.

Only the Brothers celebrated without reservation. A Morsi aide preposterously invoked Nelson Mandela, saying, “We will surprise you with our generosity.” In the square, Moaz stood near one of the officials who had supervised his expulsion from the Brotherhood. The man kissed Moaz's forehead as if they were comrades again, but Moaz knew Morsi's win was not his own. “Yesterday we were working together against Shafik. Tomorrow I will work against the Brotherhood,” he said. “It's not the end of the revolution, it's the start of our work.” In a few minutes he would report for his fourth overnight shift at the Rushdi pharmacy. He hadn't slept in three days. “The revolution will continue, but I cannot,” he joked hoarsely.

As I walked out of Tahrir that night, crowds lined the overpass. Thousands poured in every second, mostly men, with the same slightly menacing air of indiscriminate celebration that had swept Cairo the night Mubarak resigned: jubilant but lacking joy, ready to quaff Tahrir's mob energy. The square was suffocating and airless, too crowded to move, the kind of scene punctuated invariably with sexual assaults and groping. The elections had ended a tortuous period in the country's history. The junta had been unable to stop Egyptians from choosing their own leader, for the first time in history. But the coming inauguration would be a far
cry from a revolution. It was a step, with some undeniable progress away from state terror and toward free speech, but only a tiny one. The day-to-day hardships of life in Egypt persisted. For most people, the revolution had yet to begin, but at least they would have some say over the mess.

The most encouraging thing I saw that week took place not in Tahrir Square but in Ayyash's living room. One of the revolution's most powerful weapons had been its ability to persuade elders to abandon fearful habits of thought. As the Brotherhood prepared to take the throne, Ayyash and his brother shared an after-work lunch with their father. The two sons had left the Brotherhood, but their father was still a trusting member, still ready to blame every single nasty act by its leadership on “outside pressure” or a conspiracy rather than any bad judgment or malice on the part of the Brotherhood.

For decades, and at great risk, the entire family had lived by the Brotherhood's daily rhythms and exacting commitments. Now there was real vitriol in their arguments. Ayyash's father thought the Brotherhood wise and expected it to lead Egypt a step closer to the promised land. Ayyash and his brother thought the Brotherhood feckless and self-serving, and expected it to lead Egypt a step closer to a remodeled era of religious dictatorship. Yet, unlike so many other revolutionaries who had severed ties with their families as they had with mainstream Egyptians, Ayyash still shared his ideas at home with a reciprocated love and respect. In this house, between this reactionary father and revolutionary son, the connection was as strong as ever.

“I believe in my sons,” Ayyash's father said. “They will not leave the righteous path.” He was confident that his boys would be doing right even when they were rejecting their father's way. He was more pleased by their dedication, by their seriousness of purpose, than he was wounded by their break with the Brotherhood. Ayyash and his father would keep talking. And the revolution would continue.

Morsi held his symbolic inauguration in Tahrir Square a day after he had sworn his oath before the Supreme Constitutional Court. The new president's words sounded right for the occasion. “We used to look around us and say: When will Egypt and its people become the owners of their destiny? Today you have become the source of authority,” Morsi
said, to a tumult of cheers. “As for myself, I have no rights, but I have duties.”

His future failures would not stem from callous indifference or from the abusive prerogative of a despot who considers an entire nation his personal property. They would be the mistakes of politics and ideology. The Muslim Brotherhood had committed political errors already, and President Morsi would add his own to the stew. On this day, he made a convincing case that, whatever his faults, he would not be guilty of tyranny and careless ownership. When Morsi first took the stage, dressed casually in a blazer that hung loose around his belly, he pushed aside the officious presidential guards who stood between him and the crowd. Then came a hair-raising moment that framed this middle-aged professor from Muslim Brotherhood as a president distinct from the regal despots who preceded him. Morsi stepped forward and pulled open his jacket. No tailored suit, no tie, and, most importantly, no bulletproof vest. “I don't fear my people,” Morsi exulted. “I don't fear anyone but God.” It was an electrifying gesture that momentarily transcended the triumphalism of Morsi's Islamist supporters and the fears of his secular opponents.

A year and a half earlier, at the close of those first eighteen days in Tahrir, anything had seemed possible. All of us had imagined an entirely new society: Basem and Moaz, Sally and Zyad, Ayyash and his friends. A true revolution hovered within reach. I too had believed they might achieve it. My own experiences had taught me to be cynical and to expect little. Tahrir had smashed through that cold realism, creating possibilities from the impossible. A year and a half later, Tahrir's ultimate legacy still lay in the future. The revolution had transformed many people, even if it hadn't changed the entire world in an instant. In a generation or two, Egypt might be led by wise women and men whose identities and values were forged in those eighteen days at Tahrir. Like everyone else, I would have to be patient.

For most of the revolutionaries, any fleeting sense of triumph had dissipated already. One catastrophe had been averted, as Shafik and the old regime had failed to seize the presidency and turn back history. All was not lost, but little was won. The Tahrir revolutionaries hadn't worked so
hard in order to elevate the Muslim Brotherhood to the presidency. They would march on, in opposition to military rule and Brotherhood authoritarianism, scratching and hoeing and shuffling and planting in the little beds of citizenship they were cultivating. In the meantime, I would have to keep my faith in Tahrir and wait for the harvest.

President Mohamed Morsi unveiled a plan for his first hundred days with the flourish of John F. Kennedy presenting his New Frontier a half century before. Everything was going to change, from the state of law to the state of garbage collection. Only the most ardent of Brothers took this program literally. Never during his campaign had Morsi wholly embraced the revolutionary agenda, even though he hired some reputable outsiders as advisers (including Mohamed Fathy Rifaah al-Tahtawi, the former diplomat who had joined the revolutionaries in Tahrir). He had pledged to listen to young revolutionaries if elected, but he had never actually promised to adopt any revolutionary or reformist policies. Once in office, he kept close counsel, consulting only his colleagues from the Brotherhood.

At any rate, Morsi's power was fundamentally circumscribed. There was no parliament, and the old SCAF leaders remained in charge of the security establishment. Field Marshal Tantawi was still defense minister, and General Sami Enan still ran the military. In June the Supreme Constitutional Court had dissolved parliament and assigned all its legislative powers to the SCAF. These unaccountable and capricious judges, carryovers from the Mubarak era, had reminded everyone that the military wasn't the only old regime institution still thriving in the shadows; the judiciary system wielded tremendous powers, which it was willing to use to defend its own prerogatives.

The Brotherhood had betrayed the rest of the civilian political forces repeatedly over the previous year and a half, most notably by making
deals with the SCAF about the elections and endorsing military crackdowns on protests. As a result, even before Morsi had made a single decision as president, he lacked any reservoir of goodwill to draw on. Mainstream liberal parties, including Basem's Social Democrats, the Free Egyptians, and Mohamed ElBaradei's Constitution Party, joined forces with older non-Islamist movements such as the Nasserists to warn Morsi: they would accept no religious fundamentalism from the presidential palace, and they refused to stomach Brotherhood unilateralism. Already they were worried. They had seen the Islamist electoral machine, and they had watched the SCAF and a compliant judiciary pursue the construction of a new authoritarian regime. They could easily imagine being crushed between two fascist poles. At the Social Democratic Party headquarters, Basem tried to set an invigorating example, keeping people focused on small, achievable goals so they would not think too much about the dispiriting big picture. A party aide named Hala Mostafa slumped in a chair outside the conference room where Basem chirped away with his colleagues. “We were tricked,” she said. “Betrayed on all sides.”