The kidnapping of Philip Rizk

This weekend revealed that justice can be undermined in many ways, including in a white Suzuki microbus.

On Friday journalist/masters student/filmmaker/blogger Philip Rizk and others organised a march as part of their 'To Gaza' campaign and I went along to cover. I hadn't taken the word march very seriously, but we ended up walking what felt like one million kilometres to the neighbouring governorate of Qalubeyya, through the countryside.

Against all the odds we (15 of us) managed, almost, to complete the 10 kilometres of the march without being apprehended by the po-lice, despite the fact that, firstly, the group included foreigners caped in Palestinian flags and, secondly, part of the march's route went through a village where we were accosted by a group of extremely animated kids. It was only near the very end of the route that I heard the chittering of a distant walkie-talkie and knew that the game was up.

State security decided to stop us after we had got into a microbus. It subsequently transpired that this was a deliberate strategy: they stopped the microbus driver, too, and used his bus to hold us in rather than the consulate-inducing alternative of a police van.

Bureaucracy is the trademark of all areas of Egyptian officialdom, and its police department is no exception to this rule. Parked on the side of the road, we were immediately surrounded by members of the police and state security who set about gathering and writing down our names, ages, addresses and occupations with a tedious assiduity. The process was make doubly excruciating because of the large numbers of foreigners involved, and the necessity of spelling out their names in Arabic.

Aside: While the police are always equipped with a clipboard for this task, I have never yet seen a state security police officer with one. They favour small pieces of paper procured from God knows where, making them look like trackside bookies. The suits and general dodgyness only adds to this impression.

When we inquired why we being held, we were told that this was normal procedure carried out with all foreigners who find themselves in Qalubeyya. They ensured us that we would be released in 20 minutes or so, though the three police vans and some 10 – 15 police officers surrounding us wasn't reassuring.

The activists had decided to conceal the political nature of their march, and instead told the police that we had come to Qalubeyya “just for a visit”, prompting guffaws from one state security officer who asked, “why would anyone visit here?!?” I understood this sentiment because I'm from Croydon.

We were stopped at around 5 p.m., and kept there for four hours in the ever colder weather. Juice and biscuits were supplied for us by the police, who all the while insisted that, “another 10 minutes and you'll be on your way.” The food and drink was brought by car, by two blokes wearing gallabeyyas. I overheard a police officer say to one of them, “enta taba3na?” [are you one of us?] to which the man responded in the affirmative, and wondered what exactly was the nature of the relationship.

I informed Moftases about what was going on and, in what turned out to be an excellent decision, he subsequently arrived in his car, with a lawyer in tow, God bless them.

While there are many worse features of dictatorships and oppression, I am always reminded that one of its defining aspects is tedium, and that it involves hours of standing around waiting with that awful mixture of boredom and fear in your chest.

While waiting I shot the shit with a state security officer who told me that they are not allowed to travel abroad, not even during their holidays. I wonder if there is any way to establish the truth of this.

At around 8.30 p.m. We were informed that we had to photocopy our I.Ds and that the nearest photocopying shop was near the Abu Zabal police station, conveniently. We went, in a convoy of a police car in front, the microbus, Moftases' car and the police general's car behind us.

Further waiting took place outside the police station, until state security suddenly requested that Philip go inside the police station “just for half an hour to answer some questions.” He declined, of course, saying that he would not go inside until the lawyer came back from overseeing the I.D photocopying. Negotiations took place, with the state security officer getting ever more impatient and aggressive. In the end they agreed to wait until the lawyer came back, before going inside. They were subsequently joined by another lawyer, Ahmed Ezzet.

Possibly the saddest thing about this part of the whole sorry episode involved the microbus driver. After Philip went inside we were told that we were free to go. We didn't leave of course, and took shelter from the bitter cold inside the microbus. The driver, a man in his 60s called Said was desperate to leave, to make some money and return the bus to its owner but said that he couldn't leave us in the cold. He stayed with us.

Lawyers informed us that the officers were “waiting for a phone call”... Below we bought food. While five of us were sitting outside the police station, eating, some kids on a bike went past and shouted out “el Ingleez e7telo el balad!” [the English have occupied the country!] providing what turned out to be that last moment of humour that night.

All hell broke out at 11 p.m. The lawyers rang down to say that Philip had been kidnapped: state security officers had told him that they wanted him for questioning without the lawyers in a room next door. They took him downstairs and put him in a Suzuki microbus which, when it appeared at the police station's exit, we attempted to prevent moving by blocking its path. It forced its way through while state security officers frenziedly threw us out of the way.

Moftases meanwhile had started his car. Droubi and I got in it, Moftases put his foot down and the police attempted to stop us moving by standing in front of it. Moftases drove anyway. Per Bjorklund subsequently told me that they were pulling the police officers off the car. Good for them.

There then followed a car chase, Moftases establishing that if he ever tires of Psychiatry he should consider a second career as a rally-driver. The microbus – whose rear number plate had been obscured by a piece of cloth – moved at great speed through the busy main street before suddenly veering off into a neighbourhood of narrow alleys where it attempted to lose us. They hadn't reckoned on Moftases.

Should have removed the water bottle from the dashboard.

Philip was sitting at the back of the microbus, with roughly four or five men including the driver in front. At one point he turned around, saw us, and smiled. I hope we provided some comfort, however fleeting.

This – extreme speed, dangerous overtaking, sharp turns - went on for about 45 minutes. I don't mean to make it sound exciting. It wasn't. It was sickeningly absurd and unglamorous (a Suzuki microbus for God's sake), frightening, dangerous, and I needed the toilet throughout.

After about half an hour it turned around and went back the way it came. Playing with us, we thought.

It turned out that they had been waiting for a police general who had been at the police station to get himself and his assistants to a police checkpoint building where they extended barriers across the road. We were done for: the microbus – and Philip – disappeared into the night.

The general, beside himself with fury, descended on us with his men. Moftases was ordered out of the car and taken into the police checkpoint building, a crappy looking one-storey, one-roomed block. Me and Droubi were ordered to stay by the car, on the other side of the road. I could hear the general's voice as he bellowed at Moftases even from there. Worse still, I overheard two men coming from the opposite direction saying, “beyedrobo 7ad gowa” [they're beating someone inside].

It turned out that general did punch Moftases – a psychiatrist who works with victims of violence and torture - but “only” once, in the shoulder. This is of course totally unacceptable, but one of Egypt's greatest tragedies is that the sheer volume of suffering and injustice means that a sort of spectrum has emerged. The myriad, “minor” injustices such as a punch by a policeman are overlooked. Goes without saying that it is exactly the fact that these minor injustices are ignored which allows the truly gross violations to take place.

Moftases was also subjected to a lengthy and tedious bellowing by the general about how he (Moftases) is his son's age, and a respectable individual who should know better etc etc which - peppered as it was by supposed witticisms - was arguably more painful than the punch.

A police officer told me that “what Philip is involved in is bigger than you think”. Whatever. The only explanation we have come up with so far is that his two-year stint in Gaza (as a humanitarian and political activist) is what has made him of interest to the authorities.

Ezzet appeared at the police checkpoint and interceded. Car keys (and my and Droubi's mobile phones) were returned to us, and we were allowed to go, at around midnight.

Needless to say we all went home feeling devastated. I won't go on about what a lovely, passionate, caring bloke Philip is because it's irrelevant. Even a total shit doesn't deserve to be kidnapped.

And this was a kidnapping: on Friday night Philip Rizk could have been anywhere in Egypt. There wasn't a hope in hell of establishing his whereabouts because usually when a kidnapping occurs recourse is sought to the police and/or the ordinary judicial system.

This kidnapping occurred with the complicity of the police – the laughing general – so the police are out of the picture. The judicial system meanwhile has been entirely emasculated by what is a mafia given a legal licence to operate freely. They are above the law in the sense that they have trampled, spat and shat all over it, reducing it to the crumpled up betting forms which litter racetracks after bets gone wrong: yes in theory there is a remote chance that the law might protect you, but your odds depend on who you are, and where you're from, and who you know, and the mood of the state security officer holding you.

Like me, Philip is half-Egyptian, half-another nationality which carries some weight, and I truly hope that this both protects him while he's in the custody of this gang and ensures his release.

But think for a moment of the Egyptians without another nationality and the protection is affords, without foreign friends. What a truly sorry state of affairs, Egyptians in state security custody who are turned into ghosts, the odds of their escaping this mafia intact - physically, mentally and in terms of their dignity – virtually impossible. Unreachable and lost.

On Saturday morning, outside the public prosecution office an unpleasant state security officer said to Philip Rizk's father, “rabbina yetamminak” [may God comfort you]. He may of meant this genuinely, but coming from him it sounded like a warning, or a joke.

Of Flesh and Blood

Here is a review what I wrote. It's about an excellent documentary on Gaza. See it if you can.

Stories from the other side

It is telling that much of Egyptian media coverage of the most recent Israeli attack on Gaza focused on a critical examination of Egypt's own relationship with Palestine; on its complicity or otherwise in the hand-wringing, posturing, and conferencing which formed the Arab response to the crisis.

Two camps emerged, broadly-speaking, during this debate. The first decried Egypt's abandonment of its role as defender of Palestine and the alignment of its foreign policy with Israeli interests, while the second posited a suddenly rehabilitated President Hosny Mubarak as peacemaker and defender of Egyptian interests, par excellence.

Egypt's 14 km border with Gaza has come to symbolize this divide. It is variously a bastion of Egyptian sovereignty, an agent of Egyptian complicity in the Israeli attack and, in its incarnation as the transit point for the trickle of injured Palestinians permitted into Egypt for treatment, Gaza's faint pulse.

Ironic perhaps, that a border dividing a single town (Rafah) should have these multiple identities; yet another example of the weird physical realities - the facts on the ground -Israel's existence has engendered.

Palestinians pay the price for the political smoke circles of course - a point Egyptian director Azza Shabaan makes in her moving documentary Of Flesh and Blood when she asks, “Why is this border so different to every other other border in the world?”

A timely question, as both sides claim victory and Gaza attempts yet again to get back onto its feet and aid continues to force its way across the Rafah Crossing. In her 27-minute film Shabaan takes us back to January 2008, when Gazans in Palestinian Rafah – who by then had been under an Israeli siege for a year – breached the border and crossed into Egyptian Rafah.

Shabaan, armed with a handheld camera and a desire to witness Gaza at first hand, made her way through the throngs of Palestinians and Egyptians buying, selling and bargaining at the demolished border fence, and filmed in a “five day sneak” into the beleaguered Gaza Strip. Her aim she says is to “break the silent siege that has been imposed on it for so long, and to present to us a perspective of the people of Gaza different to that which the media presents.”

Shabaan admits that this is “the first time” that she has picked up a camera – a fact evident in the film's naive, unfinished quality. Rather than undermining the film this stripped-down quality (the camera which goes in and out of focus during interviews, the shaking during shots in moving cars) lends it a strange, unearthly power which captures the fragility and desperation of life in Gaza.

A glimpse of life in Gaza – of its day to day hardships and overwhelming tragedies – is presented via the group of Gazan women Shaaban meets and follows.

A sense of quiet anger, resignation and, most remarkably, humour pervades the film. Thus we see a woman struggling to put petrol into a car's tank using a tube connected to a petrol jerkin. Shaaban explains that the woman has insisted on her taking on a car tour of Gaza despite the siege-induced petrol shortages. “Arabs insist on selling us petrol despite the crisis we're in but I give it to my friend for free,” the woman jokes.

Having succeeded in filling up the petrol tank Shaaban and her companion go on a tour of Gaza. What was life like when the settlers were here? Shaaban asks. The woman explains that she used to spend days at checkpoints, that she was forced to sleep in her car at the checkpoints. The worst thing, she says, is that her house would be visible on the other side.

Another woman narrates the history of her family's three forced displacements since 1948 and the grandchildren her father never saw because he couldn't leave Gaza and the children and their fathers, now resident abroad, were prevented by Israel from entering the Strip. She relates this with an impossible equanimity, jokingly asking someone off camera, “Where shall we go the fourth time we have to leave?”

The only music used in the film is a song, song unaccompanied, by the sister of a prisoner of war, Alaa, held in Israel. Shabaan asks her long Alaa was sentenced to. Three life sentences, she replies, seeking clarification from her friend of how long a life sentence in Israel is. It is 33 years.

Israel is the absent but omnipresent villain in this story, but Hamas are also the target of anger. A woman asks why in the coup it was only teenaged policemen who died before relating the story of a man who she says had both arms and legs broken by Hamas members after committing an infraction of some sort.

The most poignant moment in the film – and its masterstroke – are scenes of a wedding party complete with guests, cake, music and bride. The only thing missing is the groom himself: he is studying in Spain and has not been permitted to reenter Gaza. The families decide to go ahead with the wedding anyway, an act of defiance and desperation. There is perhaps no more powerful symbol of Gaza's plight than this, the abandoned bride of Palestine sitting alone and surrounded by well-wishers unable to do a thing to help her.

Originally published in Daily News Egypt.

MAFEESH 7AD A7SAN MEN 7AD

Watching Hosny's tough man 'red lines' speech about foreign troops on the border with Gaza reminded me of another preposterous, lightly obese, combative Egyptian gentleman with dyed hair and delusions of grandeur – retired wrestler, CAPTAIN MAMDOUH FARAG.

While staring unseeingly at TV ads one day some months ago I was suddenly confronted with this:



Captain Mamdouh's 'HEY sa3ba geddan bass sahla geddan' [HEY very difficult but very easy] ad for his weight-loss programme.

What I like most about Captain Mamdouh is his look, which is Goodfellas meets a hirsute Frank Butcher out of Eastenders:

A former British soap opera actor

A retired Egyptian wrestler

A look which cannot be faulted.

The other day, while caught in traffic in Mohandiseen, and on my way to a possible fight about a washing machine, I saw an advert announcing that Captain Mamdouh will soon be appearing in a film called 3AL2ET MOOT or SLAP OF DEATH. I almost passed out with happiness.

Serendipitously, someone also directed me to the short interview below.

There are too many good things to list about this item but here are some of them:

1.El Capitaine's rigid, at the dentist smile at the very start.
2.0:16 - The rich bass with which he emits 'wallahy'
3.0:27 – no explanation needed.
4.the 'mafeesh 7ad a7san men 7ad' fighting talk.
5.Mr Nefa3 Abdel Hady
6.A well cooked dish.
7.Full professional wrestlers with no solution.
8.Herman za german, el woria, Hogan el so3'yyar beta3 ingleterra.

And so on.

Loose change

Qandeel mentally drawing up a list of his top 10 fav thrash metal artists

Kefaya leaders are currently trying to breathe life back into the corpse of the opposition movement and held a press conference this week to present their new coordinator, Abdel Halim Qandeel.

It was held in a dodgy-looking building in Mounira. One of those splended pre-war edifices which have been left to go to seed, all broken windows and stained walls. I was initially convinced that I had got the address wrong.

Having neglected to observe the golden rule regarding press conference timing I waited 45 minutes for the effin thing to start, despite arriving fifteen minutes late. I used the time to watch the organisers put the finishing touches to the setting. This largely consisted of hanging up zillions of banners and pieces of cards bearing anti-Zionist and anti-regime slogans, until the place looked like a giant library notice board gone mad. A huge Palestinian flag had been affixed above the speakers' heads while Hassan Nasrallah looked out beneficently from the front of the speakers' table, to which he had been pinned.

One restless organiser decided that it would be a good idea to clean the table while waiting for proceedings to begin, and did so using a tissue moistened with a mineral water bottle containing tap water. He apparently tired of the table halfway through the endeavour and instead switched to his head, wiping the bald pate with a circular motion while in discussion with another organiser.

The table the organisers selected was a mistake. Qandeel is a small man, and the table's elevation/shortness of his chair/both had the effect of making him look even tinier. The effect was only intensified by the chaotic collection of huge banners which surrounded him above and below: Kefaya has always been dwarfed by (rather than exploiting) the issues around which it rallies, and Qandeel seemed the embodiment of this, shrunk and lost somewhere in the midst of the slogans. And Nasrallah.

A political movement must have an identity independent of the issue(s) around which it rallies if it to endure, innit. As has often been pointed out, this is/was Kefaya's critical weakness: it based its existence on opposition to the presidential elections, succeeded in capitalising on the momentum generated by popular opposition to inherited rule, and has since been busy playing Swingball with itself now that it apparently doesn't have an issue to lob at the regime.

Interestingly Karima El-Hefnawy told the press conference that Kefaya came into existence to oppose the regime, and will cease to exist once the regime ends. Qandeel meanwhile said that as part of Kefaya's makeover, they will cease merely to be an anti, 'no' movement and will instead be a force for change - a la Obama, perhaps?? This he says will be carried out via the 'Coalition of Egyptians for Change' which will apparently unite in one group Egypt's political and social forces. I don't know why but I thought of the Travelling Wilburys.

It's an ambitious endeavour given the fragmented state of Egyptian politics, the crippling apathy gripping the street, and the regime's WWF approach to protests. Qandeel has promised some kind of earth-shattering 'surprise' in February concerning the Coalition. Short of the news that Hosny Mubarak will be joining the Coalition of Egyptians for Change I can't see what magical political alchemy they have in store.

I overheard a comment made just before the start of the conference, while the bald man was busy polishing his head. It was saddening somehow, in its delusion. Someone who had just arrived said to the organisers, “I thought I had got the wrong place: the street is completely empty! There's no police at all – during a Kefaya conference!”

Almost as an afterthought, he to reassure himself he added, “Perhaps they're all on Qasr El-Aini Street [the main street perpendicular to the street in which the press conference took place]”.

He may have been joking, but seemed not to be.

Sa-trap

This week an American gentleman in full military uniform and wielding a rifle in a tiny fenced-in compound with a basketball court in the middle of Sinai's dog teeth mountains threw up a peace sign as we drove past. Some days later, in the middle of the thirsty, flat desert between Taba and Suez, we were met with another lonely compound. Someone had scrawled “bienvenidos!” on a white board and drawn a smiling face.

What I can only imagine are very bored members of the Military and Foreign Observers (MFO) force are deployed in these compounds, part of Sadat's legacy. Eleven nationalities are involved, including the friendly Columbians and the basketball-playing Americans we saw. Their job is to "supervise the implementation of the security provisions of the Egyptian-Israeli Treaty of Peace and employ best efforts to prevent any violation of its terms."

Approximately a minute after passing the compounds we would be met with a checkpoint, manned by a couple of bored Egyptian soldiers. To remind us that this is still Egyptian sovereign territory, perhaps.

I was struck by the disconnect between the theoretical threat of mobilisation by the Egyptian army in Sinai - which the MFO are meant to ward off - the massacre going on in Gaza three hours away, and the political emasculation which means that Egypt, the 2nd biggest recipient of US military aid will never meaningfully challenge the 1st biggest recipient - militarily, diplomatically or otherwise - under the current regime. Even when the latter sprays shrapnel all over its neighbour's side of the border, injuring four people in the process.

There's something slightly menacing about Sinai, a sort of latent threat. This despite – or perhaps, because of – the beauty of its vast emptiness, its mountains like monsters which seem to move and change shape as they are enveloped in the usurping darkness.

It is the weight of history though, rather than its topography, which makes Sinai so imposing. As we moved through it I wandered whether Israel mapped out the road we used, whether it lay the foundations of the hotels we stayed in, whether Sharon had taken this very same route when he and his troops rolled through the Mitla Pass. In the gruesome Taba (which has a spirit similar to that of a kitchen showroom) we stood and looked at Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, and then stood at the border with Israel looking at their flags flying in the very near distance, and the army posts on the hills above us, and the shocking normality of it all.

A Russian teenager playing pool in a Taba hotel had a T-shirt bearing the inscription 'Israel' against a backgrond of brightly-coloured pictures.

A Bedouin man at Saint Catherine told us (as my father and Dr Moftases bounced up Mount Moussa and I ascended in a state somewhere between cardiac arrest and respiratory failure) that business was slow, that he only goes up the mountain once every ten days at the moment. Because of Gaza? Dr Moftases enquired. No, the guide said. Because of the global economic crisis.

Gaza is in such close physical proximity to Egypt and, yet, so removed from it. When the 1st Intifada broke out in 1987 I was a 10 year-old in the north of England. My mother is strongly pro-Palestine, bitterly anti-Israel, and she transmitted that partisanship to me emotionally before the injustice of Israel's colonisation of Palestine and the atrocities committed in its name became apparent on an intellectual level.

I was shocked - and saddened - when I came to Egypt in 1996 on a visit and discovered that there wasn't straightforward support for the Palestinian cause. Or even straightforward sympathy. The issue came up amongst a group of AUC student friends of my cousin, and what have now become familiar accusations of Palestinians having 'willingly sold their own land to the Jews' were bandied about, accompanied by the usual charge that 'one cannot trust Palestinians' because they're 'disloyal'. I wondered if I had arrived in the wrong country from the UK, where people didn't give a toss about Palestine but at least they (mostly) didn't demonstrate this odd venom.

The schism in public opinion towards Israel's invasion of Gaza, the reaction to protests, reminded me of this. The Muslim Brotherhood demonstrated both its ability to mobilise large numbers and its capacity to impose strict discipline: demonstrations were segregated according to gender (which might have occurred naturally) and observed a strict policy of No Domestic Issues (which was orchestrated). Chants of 'down, down Hosny Mubarak' were quickly replaced with cries of 'with [our] soul, with [our] blood, we sacrifice ourselves for you, O Palestine' initiated by energetic men standing in front of the crowds.

Leftists in these protests were outnumbered by the MB and didn't stand a chance of getting their voices heard.

The authorities' policy towards protests steadily became less tolerant during that first week. Seven days later and a terrifying number of police officers, central security forces members and state security investigations officers were deployed in Ramsis outside the train station on a Friday morning. They surrounded the men performing prayers on street corners while passers-by looked on, waiting.

The end of the prayer was like a starter's pistol. The crowd immediately began chanting and the police responded, forcing them into an alley before pummeling them with batons and picking them out one by one and taking them to police vans.

At another mosque further down the street men shouted zalem [oppressor] at a plain clothed police man chasing a protestor. The police man stopped and began walking towards the group, his fists clenched. He then picked up a wide slab of concrete from the floor, raised it above his head and broke it at their feet, before cursing them and walking off.

I think that if it was possibly diplomatically to do this, Mubarak might do the same thing to his detractors. Except on their heads. Egypt's role in facilitating/ignoring the deaths of nearly a thousand Palestinians is currently a topic of much discussion. Numerous media articles have presented this a simple case of The People vs. The Regime, which is not strictly accurate.

There do of course exist many, vocal critics of the regime's ball-less, shameful response to the issue, but equally, many have come out strongly in support of the continued closure of the border crossing and as little involvement as possible with it. Formally, the reasons for this include the heavy loss of Egyptian life for the Palestinian cause over the years. There is also the frying pan and fire theory, according to which if the border was opened thousands of Gaza's population would come flocking through it and take up residence in northern Sinai. I'm particularly baffled by this: it hasn't happened in the three decades that Israel has been tormenting Gaza, so why should it happen now?

There has also been a backlash to the backlash against Egypt prompted by protests outside Egyptian embassies demonstrating against Egypt's policy in general, but its failure to open its border in particular. Funnily enough, many of the people I know who have taken umbrage at the attacks from abroad and are now banging the nationalist tub are the very same individuals who are most critical of the way that domestic issues are handled by the current regime.

Interestingly, after I left the protest on Friday, shortly after I had seen a protestor beaten unconscious by the police, I got into a taxi driven by a man with a huge beard and shaved head. Without any prompting he launched into a monologue about his eight years locked up in an Egyptian prison because of his membership of an Islamic group (“they were the best years of my life”) before he held forth on the uselessness of these protests, suggesting that they do nothing to either influence government policy or help Palestinians.

Per makes an interesting point on his blog, that oppressed working class Egyptians identify with Palestinians not just because of their shared language, culture and religions but also because they share “a common experience of colonialism and dispossession.” Per points to the numerous times he has heard Egyptians say (of the government) “they're treating us like Israel treat the Palestinians.”

My own feeling is that this tells us more about Egyptians' relationship with Israel and their own government, than it does about their relationship with Palestinians and Palestine - rather in the way that Germany remained a bogeyman for several generations of British people after the 2nd World War. The attitude lingers on in expressions such as “so and so is a right Nazi”.

That Israel has become a metaphor for oppression explains both the extreme governmental sensitivity surrounding anti-war protests in Egypt (the ever-present threat of protestors who have not received the MB memo vocally making the association between Israeli aggression and domestic repression) and the moral bankruptcy of the current regime in the eyes of many Egyptians. The worst thing about this bankruptcy is that – like everything about this government – it isn't based on any discernible and defendable policy or moral stand but, rather, is a mixture of unimaginative pragmatism, opportunism, and bending over for the masters.

Bread & Butter V

Here is a criticism of this article which inspired much fanmail as you can see in the comments made online, sigh.

CAIRO: The feature titled “Honey, I’m homosexual” which ran on Dec 5, in my opinion, perpetuates myths about homosexuality and, in doing so, contributes to the culture of intolerance in Egyptian society.

The tone is set from the angle of the article itself, with its focus on the closet gay men who, unable to resist their desires, break up marriages. While this angle isn’t necessarily problematic, its execution in the article is, as I hope to explain below.

Take for example this reference to Islam Online:

“But a wife with a homosexual spouse is no longer uncommon judging by the frequency of such cases and the scores of Arabic websites, including religion-based ones like IslamOnline, that discuss the issue openly.”

How has the author reached the conclusion that homosexual spouses “are no longer uncommon?” Has he conducted a study of the appearance of “such cases” on Arabic websites? Over what time period? If they are now no longer uncommon, when were they uncommon? Before the creation of Islam Online, for example? We are not told.

The article purports to use “scientific” and/or “expert” opinion to back up its assertions, which is what makes it dangerous rather than merely lazy journalism.

None of the so-called specialists interviewed seem aware of the fact that homosexuality was removed from diagnostic guidelines as a psychiatric pathology in 1973. Psychiatrist Mostafa Hussein, suggests that its replacement with “ego-dystonic homosexuality” was a political move.

Ego-dystonia is the compulsion to perform behavior in conflict with one’s ego, or one’s ideal self-image. The labeling of homosexuality as ego-dystonic is thus political because societal norms are clearly implicit in its categorization as such.

Homosexuality was removed entirely from the WHO diagnostic guidelines in 1987 i.e. it is no longer regarded as an illness by the international psychiatric community.

And yet the bulk of the contributions selected by the article’s author perpetuate the idea that homosexuality is “abnormal”, or a “disorder” requiring treatment without presenting the other side of the argument. While this may reflect attitudes in Egyptian society, it is an inaccurate, or incomplete, presentation of psychiatric approaches. Even worse, it neglects to present the sinister side of the treatments described in the article.

“Treating homosexuality is a black spot in the history of clinical psychology and psychiatry,” says Mostafa. “The behavioral treatment, aversion therapy, is a cruel method that involves — as written in the article — trying to sexually arouse a person with photos of the opposite sex but what is not mentioned is the common use of electric shocks while viewing photos of nude men. Hence the name aversion therapy.

“Military forces in several countries in the 1970s would use such methods for their homosexual soldiers. In Egypt parents still panic about homosexual children and take them to get treatment from psychiatrists who claim that they can treat the condition.”

In addition to ignoring its sinister aspects, the article also fails to point out that such treatment, the attempt to “straighten” gay men, has largely been discredited as ineffective.

“Aversion therapy was used widely in the 70s in the US,” continues Mostafa. “It was later found ineffective. Modern psychological therapy for gay people acceptable by the American Psychiatric Association and the American Psychological Association is called Gay Affirmative psychotherapy, which helps people with conflicting beliefs towards their sexual orientation to come to terms with it and accept it. I am not sure if it is practiced in Egypt.”

Why was this crucial point left out of the article? The fact that homosexuality is rejected in Egypt is no excuse for such an oversight. Efforts should have been made to find Egyptian psychiatrists who do not endorse the idea of homosexuality as a disorder in order to give some balance to the article. The exclusion of the role of societal norms in defining psychiatric attitudes towards homosexuality is inexcusable.

In a previous article that ran in Daily News Egypt, psychiatrist Nasser Loza’s says: "Is this still being debated? We're in 2006. Homosexuality is not a disease.”

If you chose to run this story because you wanted a “fun” peek into the strange world of homosexual men and their “red underwear” then I suggest the pseudo-science should have been left out. Its inclusion is damaging.

Egyptian society’s rabid attitude towards homosexuality (which the media seems to do all in its power to stir up) results in incidents such as the Queen Boat case, when gay men were rounded up and tortured because they were gay or assumed to be gay, and in the persecution of a group of men living with HIV/AIDS convicted of “debauchery”.

“Honey, I’m homosexual” contributes to the myths surrounding gay men, encourages their exclusion/isolation and “backs up” its ideas with allegedly expert opinion.

Note that the basis of my criticism of this article is not that its author, Daily News Egypt readers or Egyptian society should accept homosexuality. The author’s own attitude towards homosexuality should have been irrelevant, but alas was made all too clear in the moralistic and extremely subjective tone of the article.

Originally published in Daily News Egypt on 9/12/2008, my sodding birthday.

Cops and bloggers

While surveying the latest developments on Fartbook this morning in an attempt to put off doing any work, I saw that someone had very usefully used his status to report that there were rumours that a blogger*/journalist had been arrested by the police.

Further enquiries revealed that the blogger was Ahmed Abdel Fattah, that he was being held in Doqqi police station, and that he had been arrested while covering the (aborted) departure of an aid caravan to Gaza. (This is the second time in as many months that activists attempting to deliver aid to Gaza have been prevented from doing so. The Egyptian authorities are (inexcusably and stupidly) super sensitive about anything Rafah Crossing-related, having been caught with their pants down in January).

I went to the Doqqi police station. Dr Moftases was already there, as were two lawyers from ANHRI, hanging around in the vestibule area of the police station’s first floor.

Dokki police station is partly housed in a converted villa which, in its prime, must have been slightly fabulous. All high ceilings and wooden floors. It is, of course, in a lamentable state now: dirty, exhausted and sinister - a bit like the Egyptian police service itself.

The vestibule we waited in was empty save for in one corner a huge map on an easel marking out the geographical scope of the area covered by the Doqqi police force, and opposite, a “law7et sharaf” [honour board]. This was a glass case attached to the wall containing a piece of paper on which was printed “el sha3b wel shorta fe khedmet el watan” [the people and the police: in the service of the nation]. I’m unsure why this falsehood was housed in a glass case, like a museum relic – perhaps to stop passersby defacing it?

The lawyers said that they had initially been told that Ahmed wasn’t in the police station, but that they had spotted him inside. This was eventually confirmed by an employee (whose job description I didn’t establish) who said that they were in the process of calling state security investigations to check whether they wanted to interrogate Ahmed or not, and that they would know in ten minutes.

While waiting I wandered into the large balcony at the end of the corridor where on one side there was a folded-up camp bed and on the other three handcuffed men seated on the ground. One of the men was barefoot, his feet black with dirt.

A brusque, aggressive man came out, announced himself as head of criminal investigations, told us that Ahmed would indeed be sent to state security and that we should now all bugger off thank you very much. One of the lawyers requested to see Ahmed, “just for a couple of minutes”. The man said no. She repeated her request. “Do you want to argue with me?” he said. Viva the Criminal Procedures Code.

We went downstairs and waited. Ahmed emerged, handcuffed to a policeman. I took a photo with my mobile phone, semi surreptitiously. One of the bastard policemen ratted on me. A man (who later turned out to be the police station ma2moor or chief), approached me and, bizarrely, told me off for leaning on the police station wall. Another officer took my phone from me. I had by this time turned the camera off. He stared at the phone, then gave it back to me, being either too lazy or too technically inept to check for a photo.

(How do I save a zoomed in picture?)

Ahmed kindly sent me a zoomed-in version

Ahmed, who was in good spirits, was taken to the state security headquarters in a box (pick-up truck is it?). We followed in a taxi and got out near the HQ, which is at the end of a peaceful, leafy suburban street. People are prevented from approaching it by plain-clothed officers stationed at a metal barrier thing on wheels. One of the lawyers, approximately ten metres away from the gate - i.e. in supposedly non-SS territory - was told that talking on his mobile in this area was prohibited. Maybe non-SS territory doesn’t exist.

The lawyers eventually got inside and Dr Moftases, an Ikhwan activist (who had joined us at the police station) and I went to get something to eat, having been forbidden from standing still in the SS street.

ASIDE: In case you care, I was treated to a very nice shrimp sandwich from Semsema (which I wholly endorse) by the Ikhwan activist.

A third lawyer emerged while we were heading back to the SS HQ. All of a sudden Ahmed emerged out of the darkness, to a rapturous reception by the 3^rd lawyer and the Ikhwan activist who ran towards him with arms outspread, like when kidnapped children are reunited with their parents in films. It was a beautiful moment which ideally should have happened in slow motion, and sort of did, given that the Ikhwan activist had just consumed a Shawerma fransawy.

We were happy, but it still wasn’t over. Another journalist, Aya Youssef, had been detained with Ahmed at the same time and was still in Doqqi police station. Back we went.

Aya was being held downstairs, in the area designate for inmates. She was sat, looking a bit wan, in a cage which contained her, an old man in a gallabeyya sitting on the ground, a young man with a big bandage on his head and other women (from what I could see).

ANOTHER ASIDE: For those of you who have had the misfortune to see Heyya Fawda, the room was identical to the set used in the film, and the ma2moor looked a bit like whathisname who played the dirty cop, as it goes.

The ma2moor and approximately ten other policemen stood around outside the cage, looking intimidating. The lawyer was told that Aya would be taken to the public prosecution office. Ahmed said that she had been questioned about leaflets found in her possession when she was arrested during the caravan debacle, but didn’t know what was written on the leaflets.

The lawyer said that the ma2moor “just wanted to get rid of” as many of the people in the police station as possible, because the cage was getting crowded. Ahmed later told us that many of the detainees had been brought in from a local slum area where there had been a fight. What looked like the relatives of these people were sat opposite the police station. Women and children, one of whom was asleep across his mother's lap. They were camped out under the huge, imposing tower of the Islamic Bank.

Ahmed also said that he had been held with men who had been in the police station “for five days without charge” and that they were beaten on a daily basis and generally kept in deplorable conditions. He said that one of these men lifted up his shirt to show him cigarette burns on his torso, inflicted by the police.

Ahmed was particularly moved by the plight of a female detainee was being held inside the police station with her 2 year-old daughter. The child was hungry, and Ahmed gave a policeman 20 LE to go and get her some food.

Aya’s release was ordered by the public prosecution office at around 9 p.m. The latest is that she'll be released at midnight. I had to leave at around 6.30 p.m., three and a half hours after I arrived. Not that long, but it felt like years. I left with renewed respect for the junior lawyers who put in the leg work running from police station to police station after detainees, trying to prevent them disappearing into the system. They’re the unsung heroes who rescue the soldiers on the frontline after the world has forgotten about them.

*Bloggers seem to be a favourite target at the moment. On a related note, CPJ report that more internet journalists are now imprisoned than journalists working in any other medium. So as a journalist working in print and a blogger who links to my print articles on my blog and who references other people's blogs a lot in my print articles perhaps I should just turn myself in now? Or self-combust? Or what?

Cairo International Film Farcical

Mysterious sheets of plastic appeared on the railings of the Cairo Opera House on 17th November. The railings separate the Opera grounds from the busy central artery of Tahrir Street, an extension of the Qasr El-Nil bridge popular with ambulant lovers taking evening strolls.

The sheets’ function was revealed the following day when guests of the Cairo International Film Festival made their appearance at the opening ceremony, parading the red carpet in their diamante-studded, perfumed glory. The sheets had been strategically-placed to protect the good and the grand of Hollywood and Spain and Egypt from the unwholesome, hungry stares of Egypt’s hoi polloi.

Rows of security guards along the red carpet, a 100 metre gap and metal railings were apparently not enough to protect the A-listers from whatever mischief the CIFF/Opera organisers feared the no-listers would engage in: they were not prepared to risk the evening being defiled by the uninvited participation of the unimportant in any form.

This attitude – exclusion - seems to be the ethos of the 32 year-old festival. 2008 was my second film festival, and I have yet to understand who, exactly, it is for. Article 1 of the CIFF regulations (available on its lamentably inaccurate website, about which more later) states the following:

The goal of The Cairo International Film Festival is to promote films, to create artistic links between different nations, to encourage comprehension and meetings between cinema professionals around the world and to develop the Film industry in the Arab world, in the Middle East and all over the world

As I understand it, this goal encompasses behind-the-sheets ordinary people of all nationalities, (“different nations”) and actors, film directors and producers and journalists (“cinema professionals”). In short it means everybody.

In theory.

The reality is very different. The most important thing to bear in mind for the uninitiated is that the CIFF takes place in Cairo, which is in Egypt, which – for all its wonderful qualities - remains a class-ridden autocracy of individual fiefdoms where rules are designed to fit wallets and who you know is more important than who you are.

This stratification has necessarily seeped into all areas of the CIFF. Witness Omar Sherif’s remarks in the opening ceremony about Egyptians being poor but “always smiling…smiling at the sun and the blue sky, and knowing that if they don’t get their reward in this life they’ll get it in the next”. Which is perhaps why it doesn’t matter that the smiling buffoons had been kept behind the sheets.

Within the CIFF fiefdom Hollywood has most currency, followed by Egyptian stars, followed by popular Turkish soap opera actors. This year Goldie Hawn, Kurt Russell, Susan Sarandon, Charlize Theron, Julia Ormond and Mira Sorvino brought the LA starlight to the Festival, guarded by Amr Badr, a cigar-smoking individual whose job as far as I can tell is to keep members of the lower species known as the press as far away from his charges as possible. We were batted away like flies.

The flights and accommodation of these guests are paid for by the Festival. Is it conscionable that in a week’s stay in Cairo they are brought out for only 1 or 2 press conferences and spend the rest of the time sight-seeing? The question again poses itself: who is the CIFF for?

CIFF’s relationship with the press is a story in itself. I attended ten CIFF events (film screenings/press conferences/symposiums) this year, only five of which went without a hitch. Finding out about the timing of these events was in itself a challenge because I made the mistake of relying on the CIFF website, whose schedule is as reliable as a pubescent teenager.

I went to the Good News cinema on Sunday expecting to watch Fawzeyya’s Secret Recipe. Having been informed that it was playing in the main auditorium I waited as a press conference for another film came to an end. It ended, and I was then ejected from the auditorium “so it could be cleaned.”

I went back upstairs to the smaller screen where I located the man who had given me the wrong information. “No, Fawzeyya is playing here, and it’s for the judging committee only.” No apology was offered, no explanation.

I didn’t have the chance to ask why he had chosen to neglect communicating this minor detail to me an hour ago, because next to me an extremely angry Palestinian woman was trying to extract some sense out of a Good News employee.

She had come specifically to watch Palestinian film Salt of This Sea, at the Good News cinema. The problem is, Salt of This Sea had at some point been moved to the Opera Creativity Centre. I had found this detail out entirely by chance two hours before, from the film’s director herself. God knows how many people missed the film because of the organisers’ failure to update the website.

The woman said that this was the second time she encountered this problem. The Good News man said he wasn’t responsible, that the CIFF organisers bore responsibility. But of course.

(Unfortunately, it was crap) I got to see Fawzeyya’s Secret Recipe in the end, seated on the cinema floor (no problem, I have a press card, I wasn’t paying) with my friend (who had paid for a seat).

When I went to the Creativity Centre to watch Under the Bombs on Wednesday I was accompanied by the same press pass-less friend. Not a problem since the CIFF website announced the screening as open to the press and public.

They refused to let my friend in at first on the pretext that attendance was by invitation only, and that we had to go to the press centre to get an invitation. Tired and frustrated by a week of similar incidents I must admit that I lost my rag with the Creativity Center official who told me that in fact no, I had not seen an (American) friend admitted into the Creativity Center without an invitation earlier this week to watch Salt of This Sea. I had. He wasn't having any of it.

Voices were raised, as was blood pressure, until another Creativity Center official took my friend aside, took an invitation (for an entirely different film) out of his pocket and gave it to him saying “this is my fiancee’s but I’m giving it to you”(!) before admitting him.

Is there an equivalent word for ‘je m’en foutisme’ in English? Its literal translation is not giving a damn-ism, and should be the CIFF’s motto.

On Friday I turned up at 11.30 a.m. for a symposium on human rights. A CIFF official appeared at 11.45 a.m. and announced that the symposium would begin at 1 p.m. “as had been stated on official invitations.” Some of us lower-level amoeba hadn’t received this invitation. Who cares. Our time isn’t important, after all.

The not giving a damn extends to guests, too. Annemarie Jacir, director of Salt of This Sea told me that some of the actors and crew involved in her film had been invited to the Festival, and that visas would be waiting for them at Cairo Airport.

Then, she told me via email, this happened:

Then they 'suddenly' couldn't help us and told us 3 days before flying that there would be no visas for them at the airport nor would they help get them one. So it was urgent because Ossama [Bawardi, the Palestinian producer] had a flight landing him in Cairo airport and suddenly was told he had no visa to enter. The festival wouldn't even help us change the flight or give any solutions so I ended up paying myself for a new ticket since Cairo fest refused to take responsibility for it. I am of course totally broke and it cost us a lot of money that we simply don't have.
CIFF had “discovered” that Jacir’s Palestinian crew members hold Israeli passports and summarily dropped them.

This is aside from the fact that upon arriving in Cairo Jacir was hustled into a symposium at the last minute. She had no prior idea what the symposium was about or what was expected of her. Aleya Hammad, the symposium’s moderator (who in an urgent whisper asked her who she was while she was on the podium), described Jacir’s feature film as a documentary.

At the beginning of Charlize Theron’s press conference, as photographers and cameramen fought in front of her to get the good angles, press conference moderator Ezzet Abo Auf said (in Arabic) “let’s have some order, we don’t want to look bad in front of our guests.”

This obsession with image. With makeup, and fireworks, and revolving stages that spin out their startled occupants as the crowd claps and the music plays and ugly reality is kept at bay outside, 100 metres and a million miles away behind a plastic sheet.

I reject the argument that because CIFF is held in Egypt, we should forgive it the incompetence of its organisation, the constant screw-ups, the continual late starts, the complete absence of a relationship with the press…etc.

That stuff (independent political parties, World Cup bids, independent film festivals, historical parliamentary buildings, police-citizen relations) is repeatedly messed up in Egypt is clearly not because of some entrenched incompetence within the fabric of Egyptian society. Rather, the problem is twofold: firstly, talent is usually inextricably linked with creativity, and original thought, and is therefore a potential risk. Secondly, raw natural talent lacking the benefits of wealth and connections is necessarily crushed by poverty and its associated concrete ceilings.

Which means, inevitably, that many of those at the top are dullards, and all take care of interests other than those of the many million they are meant to represent.

CIFF - like everything else in Egypt - is the embodiment of these factors, the embodiment of this calamity. Its mistakes therefore aren’t just minor errors, or the product of good ole Egyptians and their quaint time-keeping. Rather, they are the manifestation of a sickness.

On a lighter note, Yosra in her 'Faith' George Michael redux cap and science lab goggles was one of the Festival's few highlights.

Tanta French-style

I went to Tanta four times this week, which meant a daily dose of Peugeot. On Wednesday at the Aboud bus station I said to one of the drivers there, ‘Tanta, two people’ and he led Per Bjorklund and me to a microbus. I told him that I wanted to go by Peugeot.

He indicated the Peugeot in front and said to another of the drivers, “Fransaweyeen dool. El fransaweyeen mabye7eboosh el yabaany, beye7ebo el faransawy.” [They’re French. The French don’t like it Japanese, they like it French].

“Ah bey7ebo el faransawy” [yes they like it French] the other driver replied conspiratorially.

While this may have been an innocuous commentary on the vehicular preferences of the Europeans, to “like it French” is also slang for - ahem - enjoying teeky-teek on all fours.

I was depositing myself in the back seat of the Peugeot, face-first arse-last (which somehow increased the trauma of it all), when this was being said, and was thus unable to fully gauge the tone of the conversation by scanning their no doubt smirking faces.

I explained the double entendre to Per, who said it had made him feel dirty before explaining that while they of course have a lexicon of dirty jokes like every nation, Swedish people are embarrassed by toilet humour - which I found astonishing coming from the representative of a people I have always associated with the frequent and untroubled removal of clothing in public areas.

I then asked how Swedish people swear at each other, given that profanity is one of the keys to understanding a national psyche. Apparently, Swedes do not involve their parents in the cursing of others, surely one of the few nations not to do so? Per said that if one Swede imputed lax morals to another Swede’s mother, the latter would probably ask why the first Swede is involving a 3^rd party in proceedings which have nothing to do with her.

Which is surely the sensible response to be expected of a people which gave us elegant yet functional self-assembly furniture.

We then lapsed into silence as the Peugeot pulled out of Aboud, and my mind drifted to the trial, and yesterday’s proceedings, and miscarriages of justice etc.

“COCKSUCKER,” Per suddenly and violently exclaimed from nowhere, before explaining that said expletive is a popular term of abuse in Sweden.

(Aside for linguists/swearword enthusiasts: In Swedish it is Kojsoger or something approximating that. Probably with testicular umlauts somewhere).

The Mahalla 49 trial concluded on Thursday. The final verdict will be delivered on December 15^th, but two of the defendants were released on Thursday. The police attempted to stitch Essam Ibrahim up by claiming that he’d stashed stolen goods in the address listed on his ID card. Alas the stupid lazy buggers neglected to check that he actually lives there: he hasn’t, since 2001, and this was proved to the court.

Essam Ibrahim

Ahmed Farhana had started shouting at the judge during Thursday’s session, in a slurred, distressed, drawl. “Ya 3am el 7ag el mo7ameyeen dool ana ma3arfhomsh. 3owez arawwa7…3awez arawwa7…” [Old man (I am stumped as to how to capture the meaning of 3am el 7ag here) I don’t know those lawyers…I want to go home…I want to go home…] Many of the people in the courtroom laughed at his outburst, including the judge. I found this unfathomable.

He was clearly mentally disabled – the lawyers say that he his mental age is much lower than his years - and unable to understand what was happening to him, never mind willingly and knowingly participate in a criminal conspiracy. Shame on the judicial/prison system for keeping him locked up for seven months.

Ahmed Farhana

A reader of this blog has inexplicably requested my thoughts on the Ghad party headquarters incident, possibly having confused me with that other legendary political pundit, Mohamed Hassanein Heikal.

I have very little to add, other than I woz there, but alas arrived 10 minutes after the fire was put out.

I arrived to chaos in Talat Harb Square, chaos of much lower proportions than it could have been because of the distinct and strange absence of a police presence to ensure complete pandemonium (see: the Shura Council fire. See: the April 6 clashes in Mahalla. See: any gathering of more than 15 Egyptians other than for a wedding or football celebrations).

When I arrived Moussa Moustafa and Ragab Helal Hemeida were standing in the square looking sheepish and telling everyone that Gamila Ismail had set fire to the Ghad HQ. I confess that before I arrived in Talat Harb Square I didn’t know who Moussa was, and was stumped as to why he would suggest that Ismail had torched her own flat. Which perhaps indicates the transparency of Moussa’s lie. Even an idiot could smell a rat.

On a side note I took an instant dislike to Hemeida because of the way he had done the buttons of his leather jacket right up to the neck, which gave him the look of Nehru crossed with a Croydon drug dealer. This is aside from the fact that he was spouting a load of shite about Molotov cocktails landing on his head, obviously.

Members of opposition parties in Egypt cannot fart without the immediate imposition of a security cordon. Which is why the occurrence of a near-riot in central Cairo involving flying rocks and the vandalising of buildings using blowtorches in the complete absence of a police presence is such a give-away. There are plaques all over Egypt - on university gates and tram stops and hospitals - proclaiming that Mohamed Hosny Mubarak opened this, or oversaw that. Moussa should have stapled one to his back. Organised crime indeed.

On Monday evening a DNE colleague and I went to Talat Harb Square to cover a solidarity protest with the Ghad party. The contrast in terms of a security presence couldn’t have been more marked. It was awash with plain-clothed policemen and security trucks.

We saw two women sitting on the pavement surrounded by about 10 men who then bundled them into a (police) microbus. When we stopped for half a millisecond to try and identify the women an extremely unpleasant policeman shooed us away. When we slowed down he proceeded to shove my male colleague, quite forcibly. Even Scandinavian Per said he was subjected to the shoving treatment when he tried to stand still and interview an activist. Needless to say, the protest never happened in Talat Harb, and was re-located to the (easier to contain) steps of the Journalists’ Syndicate.

Peugeot-rative language

A protest in the Ghazl El-Mahalla spinning factory necessitated another memorable trip in a 7-seater Peugeot on Thursday, this time driven by a man with the world’s foulest mouth.

Short, dishevelled and unshaven in a striped t-shirt, he had a bar-fighting attitude to driving - while the bloke across the room may not have been looking at his bird, he probably was.

The blokey cockiness was probably in part encouraged by the two insalubrious-looking types next to him on the front seat. One of this pair spent the first ten minutes conducting an animated mobile phone call in which he informed his interlocuteur and everyone else in the Peugeot that he had “flogged the car for a grand” and “had Mohamed so and so’s licence” and wouldn’t sell it for less than 50 quid. “Fuck no, 50 quid or nothing” he declared.

He had a dirty laugh of the best kind. The rumbling sort. A filthy old engine starting up.

The journey started with a tape of Qu’ran recitation, to ensure a safe journey. The driver and the dirty laugh man talked up front, exchanging jokes, gripes and cigarettes while the slightly younger and timid-looking man sat between them acted as a buffer for the stream of profanities they emitted.

Listening to the driver was like watching Goodfellas dubbed into Arabic. Nothing escaped his venom. Kossom [fuck*] this and the ebn el weskha [son of a slut] that. It was spectacularly vile language for a Thursday afternoon, particularly given that swear words are frowned on in Egyptian society much more than e.g. England, where one can not give a flying fuck audibly in public without raising many eyebrows.

The Qu’ran was eventually replaced by a tape of sha3by mawwal, which was when the fun really began. This cassette we were treated to was obviously a particular favourite of the driver’s, and he bellowed out the lyrics (sometimes in advance of the singer actually saying them). When not singing, he danced, requiring the use of his torso, and both hands.

“Aho…aho…” [there it is…there it is…] he said to Dirty Laugh while shoulder shimmying with both hands off the wheel, and looking at Dirty Laugh. Dirty Laugh smoked and nodded approvingly, apparently unconcerned that we were going at 90 kilometres an hour on the Delta road and that control of the car had been sacrificed for boogie wonderland.

A particularly rousing chorus suddenly inspired the driver to clap noisily and at length, again while we sped along and vehicles zigzagged behind us and in front of us like video game space invaders. I can’t say I blame him. Sometimes musical needs must.

We stopped three times. The first time all three men got out, opened the bonnet, revved the engine once manually, and then got back in. In silence. The second time the driver parked the car on the side of the motorway, sort of, and then asked whether anybody wanted something to drink before the three men absented themselves for about five minutes. The last time we stopped, the driver didn’t have time to steer to the side of the road because he was too busy going through the A-Z of swear words.

Traffic had almost come to a halt for some reason, and while we crawled along a lorry to our right very slightly cut the driver up.

“YA OSTA! YA OSTA!” [Oi, driver!] dirty laugh bellowed out of his window, prompting absolutely no response from the lorry driver, probably because he couldn’t hear him up in his cab.

Driven wild by this atrocity the driver sprang out of his car and delivered a verbal assault of astounding proportions involving the lorry driver’s mother, homosexuals and pimps. He jumped up and down while clenching his fists by his sides. Dirty laugh looked on impassively, smoking as usual, as if he was at the cinema.

The driver returned to his car eventually (still swearing), opening his door from the inside, and was only pacified by a cigarette.

Another encounter occurred when a microbus driver decided to overtake us at approximately 100 kilometres an hour, on our right. The manoeuvre forced him off the road slightly, into the dust, and a sleeping passenger in our Peugeot was suddenly woke up by a hail of mud and pebbles hitting him in the face.

The microbus sped off in a cloud of dust while in front the driver’s face slowly turned red.

“I’ll get that fucking son of the bitch at the road bumps,” he hissed.

And indeed he did. Traffic slowed down and we were soon side by side with the microbus.

A 3-way conversation then ensued between the microbus driver, our driver, and dirty laugh. Driver ended every literally sentence he said with “ebn el weskha”, e.g. “mesh sama3 bey2ol aih ebn el weskha dah” [I can’t hear what that son of a slut is saying] he said, as he reluctantly turned down his sha3by mawwal and leaned towards the passenger side of the car. This carried on for about two minutes (while we were still moving, and cars piled up behind us) until the microbus driver handed our driver a packet of biscuits, and then it was over.

The driver opened the biscuits and consumed them, while still cursing the microbus driver.

He only interrupted this process to curse the speed bumps we encountered, in the process of being made. He dismissed them as "mattabaat sena3y bent weskha” [fucking speed bumps], before railing against the people making them, who were of course welaad el weskha.

Arriving in Mahalla with my swearword vocabulary doubled, I found a very different scene to the last time I had been to the town. Medan Shoon, the scene of April’s clashes was sleepy, with barely a policeman in sight. Last time I had been here it had looked like a military barracks.


On our way to the factory journalist Per Bjorklund and I saw a stream of people coming from the direction of the factory. Per correctly identified them as workers, who it transpired had been let out early, an attempt by state security to control the size of the protest.

A group of women stopped me, asking if I was a journalist before they caught sight of Per. Who is Swedish and looks it.

“ALLAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3EYNAYK GAMILA GEDDAN!!!!!!!!!!!!!! [WOW! YOUR EYES ARE REALLY GORGEOUS!] she cooed/screeched at Per. Who smiled a twinkly smile with his heavenly Scandinavian blue eyes.

I managed to extract from the women that the 3 p.m. shift had been let out early from the factory before they returned to the theme of Per and his eyes.

Outside the factory a group of women waited, flanked by the usual state security men in tight jeans and sunglasses. I recognised one of them from the Mahalla 49 trial. He never ever lets me in to the courtroom until the last possible moment.

I also remembered a state security officer I had seen outside the Doctors’ Syndicate last week. An underling brought him a chair, before wiping it clean for him. After el basha had sat down the underling, a kid of no more than 22, held his coffee for him. But to ensure that it was at the correct height he bent over at back-breaking angle while el basha talked on the phone, just froze in that position. One of the more nauseating sights I have witnessed recently.

I’ve heard that Ghazl El-Mahalla women tend to spearhead protests in the factory, and today seemed to be no exception. “El sa7afa fein?” [where’s the press?] they chanted, as they waited to either enter the factory, or for their male colleagues to join them.

They entered the factory eventually. Their male colleagues were assembled in the factory’s central courtyard. A fight ensued with factory security about whether the women would be admitted into the courtyard. They were, and the women flocked through, journos sneaking through in the middle of them.


Protests have a unique sort of energy, and experiencing them is always inspiring. This is particularly true of Egyptian protests, where participants in them risk so much. Individuals who lead chants know that they will be noted, a mark placed against their name, and yet they risk all.

At one point during the protest I was standing near the gates, and overhead a man saying of the participants “dowl schwayet 3ayyal malohomsh lazma” [they’re a bunch of useless kids] and of a woman protestor, “bent el weskha bet3mel fadee7a” [a daughter of a slut making a scandal]. It wasn’t the Peugeot driver, I checked.

* Commenter Fully P has pointed out that 'fuck' conceals the true vileness of the literal meaning of this word, which is 'your mother's cunt'. Since this delicate expression isn't a popular term of abuse in English, I chose the nearest equivalent. 'Cunting' might have been an alternative, if that exists outside Croydon. But the absence of the mother from this again misses the gynacological intensity of the Arabic.