Presentation Inspired, Transfixed and Transformed: Painting the Egyptian Revolution
Host: Egyptian American Professionals Society
Date: 24 September 2011
Time: 7.30pm
Venue: Marriott Woodbridge Renaissance Hotel
It is a great honour to be here, and I would like to thank Professor Morad, and the Egyptian American Professionals Society for the invitation to be present in New Jersey. Growing up in Australia, I first heard of New Jersey because of Bon Jovi. He had it on the back of his jacket so I thought New Jersey was a brand name of a jacket. The world has not forgiven you for Jersey Shore. But you made up for it with Jon Stewart.
As you well know Australia is very far away. To show you how far away it is, I grew up in a city in Western Australia called Perth. We have a central park there, and when I asked my high school teacher why that is so, he said that if you dig a hole through central park in Perth, straight through the Earth’s core, you will come out in Central Park, New York. But I found the process too difficult so I took a plane.
Before anyone asks why my accent is not completely Aussie, it’s just an unfortunate case where vocal cords never assimilated with the rest of my body.
Although I’m from the other side of the world, I have observed carefully how Egyptian-Americans, Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans, Arab Christians, went through. I did my Master’s sub-thesis on Arab-Americans, and how they interact with the political system and the challenges they face. I interviewed former Arab-American politicians, civil figures like James Zogby, as well as Jesse Jackson. Jesse was an interesting one.
I have to say, you as a community, have certainly come a long way. The horrific tragedy of 911 that struck a decade ago sent shockwaves throughout the world, and may we never see anything like that again. I was in Berlin during the 911 commemoration, and at the Brandenburg Gate, participants had formed a long and impressive inter-faith human chain to celebrate the unity of humanity. Call me an idealist, but that is the type of world we should always fight for.
Since I left Australia last month, I met with many Egyptians abroad, from Asia to the Gulf, to Europe, and now I’ve arrived at the mothership.
I think I speak for many in the audience when I say that it is a great privilege to be a witness to the tectonic shifts taking place in history. It has been said that there are decades where nothing happens, and there are weeks where decades happen.
Many of us who migrated abroad, or born abroad, had to contend with an Egypt that faced political and cultural stagnation. As the world moved ahead, freedom came to Eastern Europe, you had India and China speed up economically, we where wondering when will Egypt’s turn come. But then something happened, and the rest was history.
I want to make it clear, I’m not an artist per say, I have studied developments in Egypt amongst the youth. What I will do tonight is to tie art to the socio-political factors that inspire such art, and the implications that one can draw from.
Art is a phenomenon that is integral to Egypt’s culture, but art is more than just drawing, it is poetry, it is music, and it it’s even humour. In fact, many witnessed the comical routines that took place in Tahrir Square during the revolution. I think it must have been humour that sustained the Egyptians throughout Mubarak’s reign. Yet this humour, is not a modern day phenomenon, it has always been a problem for Egypt’s rulers throughout history. One of the earliest jokes came from Ancient Egypt, and it was in the form of a question, on hieroglyphics, there is a joke that says how do you get the pharaoh to go fishing. You wrap a women in fishnet. Then in the first century, under the Roman occupation. The Roman authorities prevented Egyptians from practising law, and the reason was because Egyptian lawyers made too many wisecracks in court. In the 14th century, the great Arab philosopher, Ibn Khaldun, when visiting Egypt from Tunisia, described the Egyptians as a satirical people that makes them disrespectful of authority. And we come to the past hundred years, where the advance of mass media has proliferated humour through Egypt. One of the most common jokes that has made the rounds this year is this one: Mubarak goes into the afterlife, and meets with former Egyptian presidents Nasser and Sadat. They asked him: “How did the Egyptians kill you?” By poison, like Nasser?, By gun, like Sadat?’. Mubarak said, ‘no, they killed me by Facebook.”
I’ll be discussing social media in a while, I wish to get to the root of art.
SLIDE TWO: Passion
To understand passion is to understand art. When I was in Tahrir Square several months ago, on a Friday, the day everything usually flares up. I came across this young girl who was on the microphone shouting pro-reform slogans, and denouncing the military for delays in the transition to democracy. (PLAY)
Now what she was doing was not unusual in the context of Tahrir. Yet what impressed me was her endurance, that she, along with her colleagues, were shouting from 2pm until 10pm at night. If any of us tried shouting, we would lose our voices in 20 minutes. When I spoke to her afterwards, she showed me caning marks that she had received at the hands of the authorities, yet what does she do after she’s realeased, she simply comes back to the square and does what she always does.
That is a resilience of what we are witnessing in the new Egypt. The disintegration of the fear that shakled the Egyptian mindset for long. A passion that drives all the artistic endeavours of Egypt. She may not be an artist per say, but she has the ingredients of one.
The empowerment of the youth cannot be emphasised enough. Now when Tunisians overthrew Ben-Ali, it broke the psychological barrier for Arabs that an Arab leader no longer needs to die in office, but can be sent on a way ticket to Saudi Arabia. For Egypt, the effect of overthrowing Mubarak has been hypnotic. Because they defied the historical odds.
Now if you look at most articles written between the overthrow of Ben-Ali in mid-January and the overthrow of Mubarak. Many scholars and self-styled experts went on record saying that Mubarak won’t be affected. With titles such as “Mubarak is not Ben-Ali”, “Egypt won’t befall Tunisia’s fate”, “Forget about Egypt”, And they used the same repeated explanations such as Egypt does not have a large middle class like Tunisia, Egypt has a high illiteracy rate, Mubarak has an entrenched security apparatus. None of them factored that on the street level, Egypt was a ticking time bomb. What Egypt did in 18 days was to make obsolete much of the literature on Egypt and Arabism, and it led to Middle East departments at universities to search for new answers and theories.
What drives someone to have such endurance?, what Egypt went through in the past few decades: the corruption, economic stagnation, human rights abuses; has bred this new type of Egyptian: fearless, determined, and very impatient.
SLIDE THREE: Encapsulating Young Egypt
This painting encapsulates a great degree of what I will be discussing.
· This man’s expression of rage which is a common expression amongst the youth when they are actually protesting as we’ve seen with the young girl. This I believe was taken from a torture video that was circulated a few years ago on YouTube. Ever since, we have seen variations of the mouth open widely screaming from the top of their lungs. But it also leads us to see image as an agent of change, as to some extent, photographic icons is inspiring art.
· Social media in identity formation, and how tools such as Facebook has become the defining feature of the youth.
· Religious healing between Muslims and Christians, and why despite recent tensions, it will improve.
· The slow rise of Egyptian people power and how this is impacting the region.
SLIDE FOUR: How much is a picture worth?
Imagery has transformed itself into an agent of change. Social media and satellite TV aided in the proliferation of images which have had a profound impact on the Egyptian psychological mindset. With revolutions, what tends to take place is that everything speeds up and you don’t have time to read news analysis. And any analysis you read becomes obsolete in a matter of hours. So the fastest and enduring form of communication is the visual image. (Explain the images).
SLIDE FIVE: Immortalizing the Image
The psychological impact of imagery has in itself become transformed into art. What we see throughout Egyptian art work is the tendency to take up iconic photographs, usually young figures and social media, and translate that into the defining feature of the revolution. But its more than just the image, it’s the symbolism that is sought after.
SLIDE SIX: The Hunt for Symbolism
What reform movements always do is look for a unifying poster child. Now Egypt got its Khaled Saeed, Tunisia got its Mohamed Bouazizi, and Syria its Hamza Ali-Al Khateb. Hamza was the Syrian boy who was mutilated in the most horrific and disturbing way, Mohamed set himself on fire kick starting the Arab uprisings. To those not familiar with the story, Khaled was a 28 year old Alexandrian, who died at the hands of the police at an internet cafe, and became the unifying symbol for the Egyptian Revolution.
The story of Rosa Parks is quite telling, the 42 year old African-American lady who refused to give up her seat for a white man in Montgomery, thus lighting up the fire of the Civil Rights Movement for the next decade. Yet what is often overlooked was that the NAACP were proactively searching for a Rosa Parks. They had rejected previous cases where the black victim might damage their cause, such as being pregnant out of wedlock. Perceptions were driving how the NAACP was going to construct the narrative for black emancipation. For Martin Luther King Jnr. and the NAACP, Perceptions and legitimacy of the black struggle had to be maintained at all costs. Rosa Parks, a middle aged Church-going seamstress, approached the NAACP and volunteered to be a test case. And then history took care of the rest.
Likewise, Khaled Saeed, post-mortem, was moulded and mythologised in order to symbolise the struggle for Egyptian freedom. Which I’ll discuss more soon.
Such figures, whether Khalid Saeed, Mohamed Bouazizi, Hamza Ali Al-Khateeb, Neda Agha Soltan of Iran, or Rosa Parks, help to personalize and humanize complex issues that can often drift into murky abstractions. As long as the Arab uprisings push onwards, we will continue to see the rise of icons. Yet what is giving such icons the larger than life image is social media.
SLIDE SEVEN: Social Media as Identity Formation
To understand the significance of the social space in Egypt is to understand the weight of social media in Egypt. The traditional social space for a hyper-social society like Egypt’s was the coffeehouse, but over the past decade internet cafes grew as a rival. Some places physically merged the two, where you could smoke sheesha and surf the net. Six years ago, social networking sites like Friendster, Myspace and the aging mIRC were the popular choice. When I asked the youth what they used the internet for, it was mainly for job hunting and girl hunting.
In 2004, there was an estimated 250 social protests, most dealing with rising food prices. A watershed moment came when the movement Kafeya (Enough) burst onto the scene, in which they demanded that Mubarak had ruled long enough and it was time for him to go. It was an exciting prospect, but my observation was that it seemed limited to university students who were out of touch with Egypt’s masses. Social media had not fully matured to the level that could facilitate an effective form of civic activism. Yet over the years, with the rise of social media tools, there began an experimentation with these fabled applications as a form of civic protest. Egyptian youth started utilising Facebook, Twitter, as a way, for example, to create flash protests and decoy protests.
Social media in the Egyptian revolution and beyond fashioned a decentralised horizontal resistance movement pitting it against security forces that only understood hierarchical structures which they then took out the streets and looked for the same sort of structure in the protest movements.
The notion of Thawrat Al-Shabab (youth revolution) has nurtured a discourse that has transformed social media into their defining hallmark. In Egypt, the deification of Facebook, Twitter, Youtube and other tools has cultivated a self-perpetuating belief and bandwagon effect that such tools are instrumental to enacting positive change, and hence the more people will use such technologies despite not having placed much importance on them before. Moreover, online identities become intricately linked to the Revolution. For example, it is not uncommon for the youth to change their birthdays on Facebook to 25January 2011 (The start date of the Revolution).
SLIDE EIGHT: Constructing Khaled Saeed
The script of social media went out to look for an actor. Khaled Saeed is the 28 year old Alexandrian who died at the hands of police last year on the 6 of June and was the inspirational face of the Egyptian Revolution. Now Khaled was my neighbour in the suburb of Cleopatra Hamamat. His death undoubtedly affected all our friends. Yet no one on our street was prepared for what was to come: His myth-ologa-ization.
So why Khaled Saeed and not the countless others who suffered at the hands of the regime? Well let’s look at the most commonly repeated version of his death: a young blogger enters an Internet cafe to upload an expose video of crooked police sharing the spoils of drugs to YouTube. He was then beaten by the police and died at the Internet café. Here you have a powerful figure that can now encapsulate the young generation: young, social media savvy, and anti-authoritarian, and he was martyred at an internet cafe. This is the young and wired Egypt! On top of that, his name is given to one of the largest activist Facebook groups: “We Are all Khaled Saeed”.
Now the version I just narrated of Khaled’s death I find it at odds with what I’m currently researching into, but it has been seized by the pro-democracy movements and human rights activists and reported as factual in the world’s respectable press. Yet whatever is said, it will not matter. A marriage of youth activism and social media had given birth to a poster child. Khaled Saeed’s myth was set in stone.
Khaled Saeed was rapidly adopted by Cairo based social media groups, and the further you go away from Khaled’s Saeed’s neighbourhood, his larger than life image grows.
Egyptians had found their Rosa Parks.
SLIDE NINE: Religious Healing
As you may know, Egypt in recent times has witnessed the flare-up of religious tensions. We witnessed a horrific bombing of a church in Alexandria at the beginning of this year. One of the most common drawings you will see in Egypt is the crescent and cross, and they’ve taken this concept from the time of the British occupation when civil unrest grew to a peak in 1919. When you look at the literature and records, for much of the 20th century, religious tensions were almost non-existent. This started to change when Sadat started using Islamists to counter the left-wing Nasserists, and various divide and conquer strategies where employed by the Mubarak regime. Moreover, what happened to Egypt was the suffocation of the political space led to the exacerbation of the religious dimension. This along with an uninspiring leadership, and overall stagnation, led to some of the most disturbing trends we have seen in religious discourses. I won’t delve into this, because it is a vast topic on its own.
What gives me hope, is that in the different age groups I interviewed, I rarely heard any sectarian statement from those in their twenties. What is interesting, is that this group is closer to the those in their sixties and seventies. The ones in their fourties were a different story. One person working in the tourism industry put it bluntly, the older generation have to go, we want to take over and fix the country.
SLIDE TEN: The Quest to Restore Leadership
Another art form that has arisen exhibits Egypt as the mother of the world. Egyptian prestige has gone through much battering in the past few years. We witnessed it during the Egyptian-Algeria soccer match and the accompanying riots, complicity in the Gaza siege.
Although many Egyptians don’t like to admit it, Egypt does feel like its ego was bruised by Tunisia. It’s like the US being up staged by Canada.
Although Tunisia set the tone, Egypt stole the show due its dramatic strength of people power. The subsequent developments have led to a logical outcome.
SLIDE ELEVEN: Egypt’s Soft Power
One pivotal factor that is seeing a resurgence is Egypt’s softpower.
The term soft power was first coined by Joseph Nye. As opposed to hard power, which means military might and economic sanctions, soft power emphasises the power of attraction, as opposed to the power of coercion. It is the ability to influence and shape the preferences of others as a derivative of a nation’s culture, values, and achievements.
Now the concept of soft-power has often been used for the US, and recently, China. But the world has gravity centres of soft power. Just like India exhibits a soft power over the countries of the sub-continent, and Brazil over Latin America. So does Egypt, exhibit a soft power effect over the Arab world.
This manifests itself from the Al-Azhar’s Islamic discourse making Cairo the intellectual nucleus of Sunni Islam, Egypt’s popular music and film industry, to the widely comprehendible Egyptian dialect that is, for example, adopted by Lebanese pop singers.
Egypt’s mixture of soft power and hard power reached a peak in the 1950s and 1960s. The rise of Nasserist Egypt, underpinned by a Pan-Arab ideology, inspired the overthrow of monarchies and colonialism across the Arab world.
To Arab eyes, Egyptian prestige received a battering following the 1967 war, but more so following the signing of the 1978/79 Camp David peace treaty. In the past 30 years, Egypt’s socio-cultural stagnation came on top of the rise of newer mini-soft power centres in places like Dubai, Beirut, and Doha. The overthrow of Mubarak has been interpreted as a reattainment of the preeminent role of Egypt as the leader of the Arab world. There was a logical outcome to this.
SLIDE TWELVE: The Other Side of Tahrir
The Egyptian Revolution mesmeirised the entire world, but for the Arab countries, its impact has been profound. What I noticed over the past few months in Tahrir Square, was the number of non-Egyptians filling up the square to rally people to their causes. There were many Libyans, Palestinians, Yemenis, Syrians, and their throngs of Egyptian supporters utilising the Square for their democratic struggles. Everything from the discussion of strategies, tactics, ideas, to publicising and enacting their motives, is being witnessed in Tahrir Square. This is not just symbolic of Tahrir Square’s perception as a source of legitimacy, but the perception of Egypt as the leader of the Arab world. Political, social, cultural and religious movements in Arab countries take their cues from developments in Egypt. Hence why it is critical that Egypt get the democratic experiment right.
Egypt’s emboldened youth have sought to capitalise on their country’s soft power image and transcend borders. They delivered medical convoys across to Libya, pressured the Egyptian authorities to open the Rafah Crossing to Gaza, travelled to Sudan to meet with the State Minister for Foreign Affairs, and played a major hand in fashioning the non-violent but short-lived Third Palestinian Intifada.
To get a sense of the alarm that Egypt’s soft power is fomenting in the region, one country that knows this problem too well is Saudi Arabia, which is struggling to contain the cascading effects. The Saudis extended an invitation to Morocco and Jordan to join the Gulf Cooperation Council. The aim was to construct the perception that revolutions are a phenomenon that only affects republics, but never touches a monarchy.
Strategists in Riyadh are viewing Jordan’s powerful security apparatus as a useful buffer against revolutionary penetration from neighbouring Syria. Morocco is the one that has puzzled many observers, due to its location on the far end of the Arab world. Yet its advantage is the 35 million population and large military, which may take the place of Saudi Arabia’s old heavyweight ally, Egypt.
The Saudis have legitimate concerns, many of them are old enough to remember the Nasserist days when Cairo spearheaded the revolutionary Arab socialist republics against pro-US conservative Kingdoms. One scholar at SOAS has even hinted that we may see some elements of a neo-Nasserist world coming about, which may be far-fetched for some but should not be ruled out, in which a scenario of two camps in which Egypt will lead democratic Arab republics and Saudi Arabia will lead repressive Arab monarchies. Yet the difference between today and back then is that we are witnessing a pan-Arabism from below, rather from above. This has come back about partially by the next point.
SLIDE THIRTEEN: The Al-Jazeera Effect
The role of Al-Jazeera in the uprisings cannot be emphasised enough and has been discussed elsewhere. Yet Al-Jazeera and Arabic satellite TV in general has played a subtle role in fashioning the Arabic language.
Now on the screen we have the various dialects of the Arabic language. The literary standard that is taught in all schools throughout the Arab world is the Fus-ha Arabic or the modern standard Arabic (or MSA).
In the 20th century, certain Arab populations often faced a problem after school, unless their work required MSA Arabic, such as diplomacy, banking and the clergy; they drifted further away from the use of MSA and resorted to the colloquial dialect.
Now this was fine if it was limited to their cities and towns, but transnationally it was a different story. 50 years ago, if someone living in Lebanon went to Morocco, they would struggle to communicate with each other as neither would understand each other’s dialect, and MSA might not have been practiced in years for it to be effective.
So one way to get around this was to communicate in the Egyptian dialect, due to the widespread Egyptian popular arts. So you had this tiny geographic space influencing the linguistic abilities across the Arab world.
What the rise of satellite television did, and Al-Jazeera in particular, was to push forth the MSA standard, and this re-engaged Arabic viewers with their MSA. This is not to say that Arabic viewers could never comprehend MSA before that, but satellite TV invigorated the debates, callers to shows, panels, quiz shows, as now viewers were engaging with each other across national boundaries, while state TV receded into the background.
So the Arab youth are a generation that have been raised in the era of Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, and other stations that strengthened their post-schooling MSA. For those of the lower-socio economic backgrounds, the saturation of Al-Jazeera and pirated satellites enabled a basic relative understanding of what is occurring in the world.
To understand this quasi standardisation of the Arabic language, is to understand the rapid transmission of perceptions and influences throughout the Arab world’s current upheaval, and why anti-regime slogans were utilised using the MSA standard.
A cross-pollination of Arab people discourses started to ask the hard questions to each other. Questions like why does Spain have a bigger GDP than the entire combined GDP of the Arab world. How did China, India, and Brazil move ahead in the world, and Egypt was left behind. Bit by bit, day by day, a common grievance was established Over the past few years, the idea that Arabs have been swindled by high politics started to gain traction more than ever before.
SLIDE FOURTEEN: Cascading Effects
It would be misplaced to say the Egyptian masses reacted to corruption, abuses, and rising food prices alone. In oppressive regimes, there will be a mismatch between what someone believes in private and what they say in public. There is considerable evidence to show that Egyptians reacted when the relationship between their private beliefs and public lies were no longer sustainable, and a perception of a fracture in the status quo enabled the galvanisation of cascading effects, this by far and large, could be seen to be the modus operandi of the Arab Spring.
In the book, Private Truths, Public Lies: The Social Consequences of Preference Falsification, Timur Kuran explains the consequences of expressing support for an opinion that isn’t one’s actual belief, or making a choice against one’s actual desire. He calls it preference falsification:
“Where the status quo owes its stability to preference falsification, there are people waiting for an opportunity, and perhaps others who can easily be induced, to stand up for change. Some eye-opening event or an apparent shift in social pressures may cause public opposition to swell. The public preferences of individuals are interdependent, so a jump in public opposition may be self-augmenting. Under the right conditions, every jump will galvanize further jumps.”
In the 1940 classic novel, The Heart is a Lonely Wonder. One underlying message that comes from the reading is that people see what they want to see, and in the era of social media, digital cameras, satellite TV, and the rapid transmission of images, they are given plenty to see and act upon.
On the Friday 27 of May this year, I was observing the mass demonstrations in Alexandria, what was dubbed the second revolution. One of the lead protesters took out his smart phone to check the progress of demonstrations in Cairo, and announced to the crowds that our brothers in Cairo have reached a million. The implication being that Alexandria can beat that. The Alexandria protests got bolder, the chants got louder, the marches got stronger. The event, like many, encapsulates several factors.
SLIDE FIFTEEN: Perceptions Shape Reality
What I have been researching over the past couple of months is how Egyptians behave before, during and after the revolution in relation to each other. What I’m finding is that revolutionary events in Cairo and Alexandria fomented a mutual cascading effect between both cities, amplified by satellite TV and social media, which helped to break down each other’s sense of isolation. Egypt illustrated that protest movements in its major urban centres were galvanised by each other’s images and discourse, leading to a spiral of civil disobedience in which one city attempted to, inadvertently, outdo the other. Firstly, it’s crucial to get a sense of how perceptions and stereotypes of the other city will eventually shape artistic narratives.
Cairo perceptions of Alexandria: Often a romanticised view of the coastal city that is associated with escapism, summer, sea, and vacation.
Compared to other Egyptian urban centres, Alexandria is given the highest number of positive stereotypes such as “Bride of the Mediterranean” and the “courageous people”. Egypt’s popular arts and regional soft power has helped engender Alexandria with this generous image.
Alexandrian Perceptions of Cairo: A mixture of awe, envy and resentment. Cairo is referred to as Masr (Egypt).
Alexandrians tend to have a slightly less favourable view of Cairo. Much of this resentment arises from the capital city’s centralisation of power and job opportunities. The most common complaint over the years that Alexandrians make is the traffic problems caused by Cairo holiday goers in summer. Recently, it has manifested in a grudge of Cairo taking credit for the Egyptian revolution which Alexandrians believe started in their city.
Now not too much should be read into this, they are not so serious so as to prevent marriage and trade between the two cities. But what it does do is provide a contextual backdrop as to why cascading effects and social media interplays with each other.
It also partially explains the myth of Khaled Saeed. Had Khaled died in prison, or in the slums or if the exact same circumstances of Khaled Saeed’s death took place in a different part of Egypt such Luxor or Sohag, the chances of Khalid rising to prominence post-mortem would be doubtful. Yet with the backdrop of an innocent Alexandria, Khaled’s youthfulness, middle class tech saviness, catapulted Khaled to prominence.
Khaled Saeed was rapidly adopted by Cairo based social media groups, and the further you go away from Khaled’s Saeed’s neighbourhood, his larger than life image grows. Alexandria had in effect laid the foundational myths of the Revolution and set the tone for change.
SLIDE SIXTEEN: The City behind the City
In mid-July, protesters from Tahrir Square went to Alexandria, the Lotus Revolution Coalition representative Ahmed Bahgat addressed the Alexandrian protesters, saying, “It is a great honor to be here in Alexandria, from which came the first martyr, Khaled Saeed…Your sit-in here gives us protesters in Cairo the motivation to continue our sit-in as you lend us emotional support. If you disperse, we cannot continue, as we draw our strength from you.”
Now at first glance, this might come across as self-serving rhetoric employed by revolutionaries to safeguard a national consensus and momentum, but Bahgat’s statement is not without some considerable merit. The images here highlight a sense of urban identity that matters to Alexandrians that you would rarely see in Cairo.
With the exception of the intensity of the 18 days of the revolution, Alexandria before and after the event, has provided much of the narratives and myths, while Cairo has provided the power backing.
In my months of research between the two cities, I have attempted to document how and why one city is influenced by the other. The relationship between Egyptian cities are complex and mixed, but the ones that do have a sizeable impact are the gravity centres of Cairo and Alexandria, and to a lesser extent, Suez. They share passions, envies, hopes, and stereotypes. All when channelled through the social media sphere, distorts the picture by fomenting an amplification of the other city’s situation.
In the course of the revolution and despite the many deaths of protesters in Alexandria, the coastal city’s inhabitants largely reacted more vehemently to coverage of events in Cairo’s Tahrir Square than to events in their own local vicinity. In post-Mubarak Egypt, protests in Alexandria have been partially fuelled by the social media-enabled perception that Cairo is receiving better reforms than Alexandria. In turn, Cairo’s protests are further encouraged by the sight of protesters in Alexandria, therefore giving the impression of a national movement that has yet to lose momentum.
Now many Egyptians will tell you that the revolution was about overthrowing tyranny. Yet the road taken was heavily dependent on how Egyptians perceived each other in who will first crack the status quo. Much of the art work you have seen is located in Alexandria, and part of my research is to try and see why Alexandria is providing much of the artisty, myths, and narratives for the revolution. The answer may lie in Alexandria’s geography.
SLIDE SEVENTEEN: The Socio-Geographic Perfect Storm
What makes Alexandria’s situation peculiar is the close proximity of the protest epicentre, university campuses, and the Library of Alexandria. The court yard of Qaed Ibrahim is the Tahrir Square of Alexandria, the library serves as a venue and hub of intellectual debates and special guests. The campus is what I call the stronghold of the digital youth. The University of Alexandria has its faculties spread out across the city. Yet the ones that would have the most politically charged up students happened to be coincidently placed closer to the epicentre of activism: The faculty of arts, law and commerce.
Such a close proximity enables charged up youths to unleash a creative energy into the nearby social movements. This triangular zone becomes a sort of incubator for the revolution’s creative angle.
SLIDE EIGHTEEN: The Alexandrian Long March
Yet protest activity will translate into long marches that crosses 11 suburbs. Starting at the Qaed Ibrahim courtyard, they will march through the major roads of the city. Alexandria’s protests are what I call take away revolution. Where unlike Cairo, you need to go to Tahrir to witness demonstrations, in Alexandria, the revolution comes to your doorstep. Literally.
SLIDE NINETEEN AND SLIDE TWENTY:
The implication is that a large swathe of people is exposed to political activism that they may not otherwise have joined. Also the protests foment a bandwagon effect, in which people viewing from their balconies would come down to join the protest. The most common chants heard in the streets, “Come down oh Egyptians”. (VIDEO SCREENING) Yet the numbers coming out into their balconies translates into a multiplier effect causes another phenomenon.
SLIDE TWENTY-ONE: The initiation point of Social Media: The Camera
I lost count with the number of Alexandrians who took out cameras to photograph the marches. The outcome is that Alexandria’s social media angle is inserting a disproportionately a high number of images and commentaries into cyberspace that is sustaining the post-revolutionary activities. Of course this does not mean everyone snapping a photo with their camera phone is going to upload it to social media tools. Yet the probability increases dramatically.
SLIDE TWENTY-TWO: The Prayer of the Matriarch
To give a snapshot of how this one photo of this woman that was snapped during protests and uploaded to the “We are all Khaled Saeed” facebook page. On the comments section, people claimed to be inspired by the photo, that it had given them hope once again, but what this all does is feed the appetite for the post-revolutions hunger for symbolisms. Then a debate ensued as to where this photo was taken, I went through my photos and videos that I took, and I located her.
SLIDE TWENTY-THREE: The Prayer of the Matriarch VIDEO
What social media is doing is to nurture the rise of mini-icons, and once again, the power of the visual image resonates strongly in the current conditions. (VIDEO SCREENING)
SLIDE TWENTY-FOUR: Scripting the Alexandria Playbook
The number of images is one matter, but there also comes a story with Alexandria’s protest styles, which I have yet to confirm to what extent it is planned. At every point in the protest movement, you’ll come across scenes in which stories are told. (Explain the images)
I wish to add that the linear movement of the city’s roads and transportation system enables the youths to move from one part of the city to the other side at relatively low cost and on a predictable route. Hence the youth are not only able to organise on social networking sites, but to also spread their activities, especially protest style marches, through a large swathe of the city’s cornice. Whereas Cairo, with its distant, costly, hazardous criss-cross network of roads, often only sees its protests limited to Tahrir Square.
SLIDE TWENTY-FIVE: Tahrir Square
Now the role of Tahrir Square and Cairo plays a paramount importance, there is much credibility to the saying that he who controls Tahrir, controls Cairo, and he who controls Cairo, controls Egypt. Mubarak would not have cared as much if the protesters had taken over the Pyramids.
Tahrir Square does not have the same coincidence of design, it has the AUC, but that cannot be said to be representative of Egypt’s mainstream youth. Yet Tahrir’s layout makes up for it with intensity and symbolism. The centralisation of protest movements enables an intensification of human movement, crowd issues, and notably, the social media spectacle it provides.
The international media spotlight on Tahrir Square has given the square legitimacy in Arab eyes, during the Revolution, Tahrir Square galvanised Alexandrians in which many attempted to reach Cairo only for the regime to cut all rail links to the capital.
Although some Alexandrians can argue with some justification that the seeds of the revolution started in Alexandria, the revolution could not have been accomplished without the entry of Cairo.
More often than not, we have seen a dependency in which one city depends on the other for myth building and narrative construction, and the other depends on it for power and shaking up of the system. It is for this reason that Cairo is what I call an actor without a script, and Alexandria is a script without an actor. There are exceptions, the city of Suez played a big part in the initial stages of the revolution, images of torching the premises of the NDP party, police stations and murals of regime figures, galvanised much of Egypt. Suez is what I call the mouse that roared. (Tell story about Cairo activist that felt bruised by Suez)
SLIDE TWENTY-SIX: Destruction of Art
Throughout Egypt’s history, whenever a despotic leader was deposed or a nation conquered, it was always followed by the destruction of their statues. The Romans vandalised most artwork displaying Cleopatra, the censorship back then was a matter of chipping away at the image. With Mubarak, censorship has led to defacing of statues, ripping up posters, renaming of over 330 schools. But we have to be very careful, a line needs to be drawn. Some in the film industry want to erase every image of Mubarak where his portrait appears in the background of movies and soap operas. As despotic as Mubarak was, he has to be accepted as a fact of Egyptian history, and to serve as a lesson for future generations. The same tactic was used for King Farouk in black and white movies. Furthermore, Mubarak’s trial needs to be carried out in a fair and transparent manner, even if he deprived his opponents from such fairness. As a new chapter for a nation can only begin its healing when fairness takes priority over theatrics and vengeance.
SLIDE TWENTY-SEVEN: Where to Next?
This image I snapped of a young girl giving change to a beggar, and the beggar is under the sign of freedom, with a bird flying out of its cage. And here is the subtext, without economic progress, Egypt’s democracy will not materialise.
– For the moment, we need to appreciate the pivotal point in history that we are in the midst of. You are now in a transitional point, this type of event opens up a window of opportunity for one to make their voices heard, these type of events don’t happen except every 150 years. 1919 and 1952 pale in comparison to what Egypt is undergoing. As a community abroad, you will go through transformations given what is happening in Egypt. The Egyptian American Professionals Society was formed in 1978, and it is no coincidence that it was the same year as the Camp David Accords, when Egypt gained mainstream acceptance due to the peace overtures of Sadat. Since then, Egypt dropped off the news radar, and would only make the occasional appearance for the wrong reasons. This year Egypt is back again, with the world for the first time taking an interest in its people, rather than just its ancient past. I can only take so much re-runs of the Ten Commandments film.
– This is the time to be able to effect change, in the aftermath of revolutions always provide a window to channel ideas and initiatives. In five years time, the ink on the Egyptian revolution story would have dried, and minds will be set in place.
– Also Egyptians may be suspicious of foreign governments, but time and time again, they are always honoured when Egyptians abroad have exhibited interest in their welfare. This should not be as a matter of pride for us, but a matter of humility. When you speak to Egyptians, encourage them, congratulate them for what has happened, and ask how you can do your part to help them. As hypocritical as this may sound, but emigration should not have to be the only option for Egyptians.
– We also have to prevent the Kitty Genovese syndrome from setting in. Now Kitty Genovese was a woman who was murdered in Queens in 1964, over 50 people witnessed her death from their windows, but no one reported it, because each person assumed that the other person will do something. We don’t want Egypt to become the Kitty Genoviese of nations, where we assume someone else will do something. At this point in time, I can’t see that from happening. Every Egyptian I’ve met abroad from Asia, to Europe, to the US, wants to do something. There are many initiatives taking place. If Arabic is not your strong point, then there is facebook groups like ‘Egyptians without Borders’ and the ‘Nebny Foundation’ where you can participate. I’ve come across amazing initiatives taking place, like donating your old laptop to an Egyptian student, or every Egyptian abroad opening a bank account in Egypt, depositing atleast $1000, and if we all did that, we could significantly help to clear Egypt’s debt. We have a group of Australian dentists going there to do volunteer work. I’m currently working on a project to help build university partnerships between Egypt and Australia. You can do it solo, I met an Egyptian-German waitress in Berlin, and she writes letters (not emails) to the Egyptian authorities denouncing them for the slow pace of reforms.
– The other thing if you go to Egypt, please don’t spend too much time in Tahrir Square, unless you live in Tahrir Square. The reason is many Egyptians who go back want to obtain a rite of passage by giving too much attention to Tahir, rather than their communities of origin. Egypt is bigger than Tahrir Square, and if you happen to be from Luxor or Alexandria, or other part of Cairo, then go there and ask what needs to be done. Although I’ll be starting on a project with the world bank next month, but with all due to respect to multilateral organisations, no one can match your local expertise of the area you are most familiar with.
– One type of amusing argument you may encounter from pro-Mubarak and anti-reform supporters, is this one: “What would you know, you don’t live here and see what we are going through”. That is a logical fallacy, we may not be present in Egypt right now, but we have the faculty of empathy. According to the Global Financial Integrity Report, in the past 8 years, Egypt lost 56 billion dollars in financial crimes and government corruption. That should make anyone shudder.
– The crying mother
SLIDE TWENTY-EIGHT: Reasons to be Hopeful
– Historically, corruption in Egyptian dramatically decreases following major political turmoil: 1919 and 1952.
– Gallup polling shows 88% want freedom of speech into the constitution. The highest in the Muslim world. No Egyptians wants any form of tyranny.
– Egyptian as a whole is the second country after Lebanon in the Middle East to be more accepting of other religions.
– 2011 Egypt is not 1979 Iran
– US-Egyptian ties is aiding in ensuring a smooth transition. Many Western governments are abandoning the notion that stability must always come at the expense of democracy, especially as didn’t achieve either. Egyptian military did not fire on Egyptian protesters (blog report)
– Egyptian-Americans can effect a disproportionate effect
– A democratic Egypt is the only way. Call it whatever you like, but there needs to be popular representation of the peoples will, and the respect for the dignity and human rights of Egyptians.
– Fixing Egypt is fixing the Arab world.
– Importantly, be optimistic! Egypt has enough pessimism fuelled by conspiracy theories to go around. (train incident between Cairo and Alex)
As we saw in the video. We need that young man’s vision for tomorrow’s Egypt, we need the energy of that girl from Tahrir Square, with the blessings of that grandmother in the balcony.
Thank you very much.
