Thursday, March 15, 2007

Demon-stration

I interrupted the increasingly tedious home – office, office – home daily routine by attending a demonstration this evening in the ironically named Liberation Square (viva la revolucion.)

Only-in-Egypt hints of a demonstration were on display immediately; packs of stationary vehicles herded together by traffic diversions raged in a cloud of fumes, their horns bleating furiously, as they were watched impassively by twenty men in black uniforms tightly packed and parked in the middle of the pavement. On street corners men in civilian clothes waited and watched as the strange music of their walkie-talkies floated between them. Further on stood more men in black, the uniforms unable to disguise the fragility and poverty of the men inside them. And everywhere the deep blue of giant police vans.

We arrived just after four demonstrators had been taken away, and their arrest effectively punched the demonstration in the stomach, winding it badly, and ensuring that efforts were concentrated on securing their release rather than on the issues which they had congregated to protest against. Those left regrouped as the media – whose numbers almost outnumbered those present – filmed, interviewed and recorded. This small scrum was surrounded by two lines of plain clothed men, rent-a-muscle hired specially for occasions like these. Plain clothed is actually something of a misnomer, since the men are distinctly identifiable by their clothing - many of them favour woolly Marks and Spencer style jumpers twinned with moustaches. They are also distinguishable by a certain trademark surliness, but what particularly struck me about them was their discipline: tightly formed lines of a precision rivalled only by synchronised swimmers, silence, and not a one of them smoking, which is surely a record in the history of Egyptian manhood. Beyond them were more unfortunates in black, the dullness of their stares more frightening than their truncheons.

After attempting to negotiate for the release of those arrested with the powers that be, one of the protest’s organisers announced that the demo would continue until they were set free. His efforts were halted when he himself was dragged away by the punctilious men in plain clothes, prompting two women to stage a sit-in. As I went past them on my way home I saw the women seated on a curb, vaguely visible through the line of six men surrounding and practically standing on top of them.

I left with a heavy heart and head, my gloom intensified by the black sky and bitter cold. Demonstrations encapsulate all that is wrong in Egypt: chaos, the arbitrary abuse of power which this chaos permits; the policemen’s poverty, the desperation…It is hard not to come out of these occasions feeling that Egypt is hurtling down into a vortex of immeasurable anarchy and pain, especially when one considers very recent past wrongs (blogger imprisonment) and future sins (the amendments proposed to the Constitution.) Yet my mother’s generation swore that they would witness Egypt hit the ground and explode during their lifetime, and we repeat the same mantra almost mindlessly. It is only when confronted with scenes like today's that I feel we unknowingly entered the vortex years ago.

8 comments:

fully_polynomial said...

chilling and sad (and possibly very true) conclusion.

Forsoothsayer said...

yeah i caught that shut myself...apparently 32 ppl arrested. i was also struck by those poor teenage boys in black.

Basil Epicurus said...

There's only one solution that's ever worked throughout the history of humanity, when it comes to effecting over-whelming change: revolution and not the bloodless kind. In a sad, fatalistic kind of way, it's almost inevitable.

Anonymous said...

The whole mess is terribly sad,
our government certainly is not their to protect us, rather they hire thugs to intimidate a simple oppisition movement of less than a 100 people. Obviously they're paranoid of something, lets just hope the Egyptian population's complacency will end soon enough and we'll actually take some action to better this country

Seneferu said...

Basil, for what end do you see in sight?

Basil Epicurus said...

Senefru, not a good one. If history's taught us anything, it's that you push people to a breaking point, something is going to set them off. And everything that I'm reading about what's going on in Egypt leads me to believe that.

Jester said...

Don't think any such revolution is likely anytime soon and I'll tell you why, none of the so called opposition movements (disguised, registred, banned or otherwise) are speaking to the people, none of them are actually engaged in any real dialogue with the public, rather they spend their time speaking to one another and directing irate vituperations at the state. The people are concerned with putting bread on the table not amending the constitution, drinking clean water not having fair elections, giving their kids a decent education not removing the 2nd amendment. I'm not demeaning nor belittling the struggle against state oppression, injustice and corruption, nor am I suggesting that we stop fighting for legeslative and executive reform, Im merely stating the obvious that unless our intellectuals and activists learn to represent the issues concerning the majority of Egyptians no such revolution will take place. The key to power is control of resources and our state either holds the reigns to the provision of sustenance or affectively controls it through bureacracy, corruption and a culture of fear which seem sufficient enough to dissuade the public from being engaged in any of the opposition's battles. The Mahalla workers who demonstrated in the thousands and went on strike for weeks and who recieved no support nor backing from any of our opposition groups, organized and rose up collectively simply to attain their yearly bonuses; if there isn't a lesson to be learnt here then we will probably continue gyrating down the vortex until further notice.

Seneferu said...

Jester, why did you stop blogging? Waiting for more posts.