Once Upon a Revolution (42 page)

“You cannot have any more expectations of voters,” Basem said, slumped over the fading conference table in the Egyptian Social Democratic Party headquarters downtown. “We have struggled for three years against four different regimes,” he said. “All this time, we have been against the regime, but the people are against us. There is no way to succeed without the people's support. The problem is not with the regime, the problem is with the people.”

The Social Democratic Party's shabby headquarters never had been refurbished. I had sat in this corner room countless times in the three years since the revolution began, as the liberal brain trust hashed out its response to the different crises and opportunities it had faced. Now the office was quiet; nearly deserted. Basem's eyes were swollen with tiredness, and his skin had dried into an ashen hue. He smiled less frequently, and his affect had flattened. The revolution had aged him visibly.

“I have changed my thinking,” Basem said. “We must not fight the dictator. We must fight to change the people. If they are hungry, they will not speak about democracy.”

It was time, again, for patient work. “People say I should go back home, to work, focus on my kids, but
haram,”
for shame, he said. “We shouldn't lose all the investment we have made.”

Basem didn't seem capable of facing the implications of his support for Tammarod. He despaired that el-Sisi would outlaw all dissent, but went about his business as if he and his Social Democratic Party bore no responsibility for the coup, the Rabaa massacre, and the political dead end that followed. “I didn't support Sisi, I opposed Morsi,” he said. “Whatever we are now, it is better than the Muslim Brotherhood.”

For three years, secular and Islamist revolutionaries had failed to forge
a shared vision of liberty and rights. Now they were all consigned to the same dreary fate. When and if they managed to create another day of promise, another January 25, 2011, another Tahrir Square, they would once again confront the same divisions. If they couldn't square their divide, they would be doomed to another chapter of dictatorship.

After three years, Basem was no wiser about how to reach this promised land. His sense of mission burned steadily. He still wanted to build the political future he had envisioned while surfing Facebook years ago, but he had no clue how. He knew murder wasn't the way, but the failure of Tahrir had nourished in him an abiding loathing for the Brotherhood. Unlike so many of his peers, however, he knew the Islamists had to be part of Egypt's future.

“The Muslim Brotherhood cannot be finished in Egypt,” he said. “How can it? Can you kill Moaz?” He rattled off the names of other friends and activists, men and women who had come to the revolution from the Brotherhood.

“Can we kill all of them?” Basem mused. “If yes, then okay, the Muslim Brotherhood is finished. But we will not allow it. They are Egyptian, after all. They have the right to express themselves.”

In Istanbul, alone at a small desk, Moaz witnessed his first snowfall. He watched through the window as a drift piled in the alley by his apartment, while on his computer screen instant messages informed him that his last friend in Cairo was being snatched by police. The terrorism case against him was proceeding through the Egyptian courts. Moaz could face a serious prison sentence, depending on the whim of the prosecutor and the corrupted judiciary. He drafted a power of attorney so that his father could pursue his legal defense in his absence. Every thirty days, his tourist visa expired, and he had to travel for a few days to the only countries that would allow him entry: Lebanon and Qatar. Moaz was rattling about, unwanted in his homeland, undesired by the countries in the region, and distrusted by many of the exiles in Istanbul. Through everything, some had maintained their mindless obedience to the Muslim Brotherhood and considered Moaz a traitor to the supreme guide.

On one of his visa trips, he came to see me in Beirut. When we met, he was wondering how and when he could return home, back to Egypt and back in time to that alchemic moment when Tahrir Square had banished the dictator and rolled back the deep state. Before the quest for power had unraveled the revolution. It hadn't been a dream. It really had happened. People had done it. They had changed. They had defied their own fates. They had rejected the status quo with utter bravery. Millions had revolted. Their psychological transformation had been complete. They had been nobody's puppets. All this had happened. It could happen again.

For the first time, we enjoyed a stretch of time together uninterrupted by tear gas, mayhem, or political demonstrations. We sat in the garden. Paralyzed, following the deep state's reemergence from a remove, Moaz was philosophical. He had always thought Egypt's greatest problems were poverty and repression, and that democracy was the beginning of any solution.

“I thought we had transcended the fight between the Muslim Brothers and the liberals, but it is transmitted from generation to generation,” he said.

He whispered a short prayer before raising a forkful of food to his mouth. He had spent a long day recalling the massacre at Rabaa, enumerating crimes and betrayals great and small, including the revolutionary comrades who had countenanced the killing and the restoration of military rule. Many of them had regrets now, and Moaz, still able to slip into a Tahrir reverie, was ready to forgive and begin anew. “Democracy is for everyone,” he said. “I cannot judge people. Anyone who feels he is an angel should not live here on earth with the rest of us. If we want to cooperate with other people, we must cooperate with people who have made mistakes.”

He planned to stay close to Egypt and return the first moment he could, ready to make revolution again.

“We should respect anyone who wants to change the world for the better,” Moaz said. “The same things that united us before the revolution could collect us again.”

The world seems to move faster now than it did a few centuries ago, but societies still change at a glacial pace. The marquee events of history give their yield slowly. America's founders based the Declaration of Independence on the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; yet it took nearly one century for America to end slavery and another for it to establish equal legal rights for people of all colors. Similarly, in Europe, the 1848 uprisings challenged the anti-democratic ruling order at its core, but their ideals only ripened into practice a century later, once the Continent had hosted two catastrophic world wars. Maybe that's how Egypt will turn out. January 25's moment of promise might eventually translate into a new order of rights and dignity, after many decades. Power takes a long time to dislodge, and old attitudes even longer.

The most startling aspect of the Republic of Tahrir was the speed with which common people with no history of activism shed their fears of authority. The most startling aspect of the military coup of July 2013 was the jubilation it elicited from many of these same people. It was no surprise that the old regime returned with such vengeance, but it was a surprise to see who cheered. Among the throngs who anointed General el-Sisi savior of Egypt were people who had braved many army bullets during the past three years. Sure, many of the new junta fans were conformists, Mubarak remnants, stability addicts, uncritical parrots hungry for the structure of a strongman. Many, but not all. Those who dabbled in revolution and then supported the regime's return remain a mystery.
Why did they break the wall of fear in January 2011, and why did they decide three years later that they'd rather live under military rule again? Time will show us whether they really prefer dictatorship, in which case Egypt is doomed to a dark fate, or whether they have made a tactical choice (or are experiencing temporary fatigue) and will attempt to defenestrate el-Sisi in a matter of months or years rather than decades.

Just before he retired from the army, el-Sisi had himself appointed field marshal. Perhaps he was as vain as he was ambitious, or perhaps he calculated that the credential was necessary if he was to retain power. A year after the coup, el-Sisi ran a presidential campaign notable for its scolding, detached tone. There were no public events, only a handful of television interviews in which el-Sisi declared that as president he would be beholden to no one. The
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fat cats delivered their own volunteer ad campaigns on el-Sisi's behalf, but the candidate told them not to expect any favors in return. He refused to publish a platform or describe his economic plan beyond several hectoring references to the sacrifices he expected from Egyptians rich and poor. The election followed the script of dictatorial referendums from times past. There was a nominal challenge from Hamdeen Sabbahi, but el-Sisi won with 96.9 percent of the vote in May 2014. Even dictators have constituencies and need support, but el-Sisi seemed to equate any form of coalition building with pandering. He refused to court Mubarak's old elite. Saudi Arabia and other Gulf countries spent more than $12 billion to bring el-Sisi to power and promised further payments to keep him there. Beyond the foreign cash, el-Sisi offered no hints on how he planned to govern.

At the time of this writing, Basem and Moaz are studying their mistakes, each seeking another path to his goals. So are the scores of thinkers and activists in prison and exile who have not discarded their ideas but who recognize that their efforts in the first three years after Mubarak did not suffice. We who chronicled the uprising have a responsibility to try to be honest and fair. In my estimation, Egypt's revolution was defeated so readily because it wasn't organized, it wasn't political enough, and, most fatally, it didn't have a compelling, constructive idea at its center. It had many other significant ingredients and was led by inspiring, brave individuals. What took place was rare enough: a population pushed to the
edge lost its fear and challenged a rotten regime. That alone commands admiration and emulation. But it wasn't enough to make a revolution. It wasn't enough to change a country.

Many Egyptian activists and revolutionaries have blamed this miscarriage on the revolution's internal tactical choices or its external circumstances. On the tactical level, the revolution never developed any alternative or supplement to street protests. Crowds were its only tool and only measure, and revolutionary fervor is always just a stroke away from the frenzy of the mob. There are arguments about whether the revolutionaries used too much violence, alienating the public with their street fights, or not enough, because a street militia might have won bigger concessions. Many said that if protesters had remained in the square after Mubarak quit, his regime would have followed suit; but the fact is there was no will at the time to continue testing authorities after people got most of what they thought they wanted. Some reasonable theories focus on the private deals between secretive elites and the military that left little opportunity for a revolutionary agenda. The guiltiest party on this front was the Muslim Brotherhood, followed by some of the secular politicians and the bureaucracy of the state.

These critiques all have some merit but limited explanatory power. Ultimately, the status quo is not an immutable law of nature; it is the result of inherently malleable quantities: political circumstances and institutional power. Perception and personality matter in politics. A single man's momentary lapse of confidence can alter the course of a dictatorship. Popular momentum can swamp even a force as potent as Egypt's deep state. For a while, perhaps for as long as a year, that's what appeared to be happening in Egypt. All the status quo powers teetered on the defensive, unsure how they might survive: the military, the Muslim Brotherhood, the
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, and the established politicians. Slowly, however, the legacy powers regrouped as they sized up the popular force and recognized its incoherence. The kings and kingmakers realized that their fearsome adversaries were easily distracted and fragmented. It might take time, but the revolution could be defeated, brought back to earth, fattened, manipulated, silenced. Charged with energy, the revolution agitated against the abuses of the state but aspired to no single aim. For what
did it stand? That depended on whom you asked, and the overwhelming majority of the young people who gave the revolution its striking force also rejected its would-be leaders.