Once Upon a Revolution Read online

  “We are late, as usual,” Basem said.

  Indeed. With days to go before Egyptians were to vote, the revolution was finally ready to tell people why they should vote “no.” Even if they had concocted a brilliant rationale, there was no time left to explain it to anybody. What they had to say made sense, but it was hard to imagine it catching on as a national slogan: “Constitution first.” That was their message. First, a fully representative assembly should write a blueprint for Egypt’s new government. Then the people should vote on their new constitution. Then, with the duties and separation of powers of the new government clearly established, Egypt could elect a new president and parliament. It made sense, but it was a complicated idea, hard to market. The Muslim Brotherhood was telling voters that a vote against the constitutional amendments was a vote against God. The military was telling people that a “no” was a vote against stability and progress. Meanwhile, the trusting revolutionary youth were eager to make their case but would respect anyone who disagreed. It was a clear mismatch, which they were sure to lose.

  The members of the Revolutionary Youth Coalition unanimously opposed the referendum. Such unity was rare. Naïvely, many of them thought that their common sense of purpose would translate into an immediate effect on the public’s perception.

  Basem wasn’t so confident. “I am worried,” he said. “The army is not good. Things are not good. The old regime and the Islamic movements are all united against us.”

  That night, the revolutionary youth leaders refused to meet with US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They didn’t want to be seen conversing with a symbol of American power. So Clinton’s aides assembled a random assortment of second-tier activists, who told Clinton that they didn’t believe in political parties. From then on, Clinton had the mistaken impression that the revolutionary youth leaders of Tahrir had stayed clear of politics, when the truth was that most of them had dived into politics wholeheartedly; they just weren’t necessarily any good at it.

  The Revolutionary Youth Coalition wanted to burnish its nationalist credentials and perhaps feared that it would be portrayed as a tool of the imperialists if it met with Clinton. In style, however, it was displaying the same kind of dumb nationalist chauvinism that was the stock-in-trade of the military and the old regime. The revolution was all about dialogue and combining principles with action. Yet reality presented complicated choices about how to craft a political campaign message, influence senior leaders, and negotiate deals with military officers and rich power brokers. What had worked during the eighteen days in Tahrir might not be the best approach now.

  On the eve of the vote, a few delegates from the Revolutionary Youth Coalition traveled to the provincial delta city of Mansoura to rally against the constitutional referendum. Mansoura was an Islamist stronghold, and the revolutionaries wanted to make a point of establishing beachheads beyond the two major cities of Cairo and Alexandria. I met Ayyash outside the rally; Mansoura was his hometown. It only took a moment to sense how greatly the promilitary, pro–Muslim Brotherhood forces outnumbered the hapless liberals and revolutionaries. I could barely discern any of the white revolutionary banners in the sea of yellow Brotherhood signs that read simply, “Yes for the constitutional amendments.” Many in attendance planned to vote for the amendments but had come to the rally to see what the revolutionaries and liberals had to offer. They weren’t impressed.

  The secular leftists who opposed the Brotherhood had emulated the Islamist tent revival style for their rally. They had set up plastic chairs beneath an awning at a major intersection. Pop music and prayers blared from the system so loudly that it hurt my ears and rendered words unintelligible. First, they appealed to emotion. The father of a boy killed in Tahrir hugged a picture of his son, bringing many in the audience to tears. Speeches extolled the martyrs of January 25. Then the rally organizers tried to galvanize the audience to action. Zyad, perhaps the only speaker under the age of fifty, said that voting “no” was a way to continue the revolution. One speaker called those who wouldn’t vote his way “traitors.” Overall, the speakers sounded shrill, intolerant, and incoherent, and they went on for three hours. In private, I had heard revolutionaries make plausible arguments for why the new amendments would doom Egypt’s transition to democracy by handing too much power to the army and the Muslim Brotherhood, but no one made that case clearly in public. The audience was tiny, maybe a thousand, and afterward I couldn’t find a single person whose mind had been changed.

  Basem and Zyad had been busy with their plans to set up a new political party. They treated the “no” campaign and the Revolutionary Youth Coalition almost as necessary distractions. Instead of thinking about their primary enemy—the military junta that controlled Egypt and its transition—they were scheming about how to compete with their biggest future political rival, the Muslim Brotherhood. Political liberty and free elections were by no means guaranteed while Egypt suffered military rule, but the liberal revolutionaries had already jumped ahead to the electoral contests of the future. They had decided not to wait for ElBaradei and had collected a core group of a few hundred intellectuals and businessmen who shared a commitment to classical liberalism and progressive economics. Their basic idea was European-style social democracy: civil liberties and a free market but with enough government intervention to protect the poor. The Friday night before the referendum, about five hundred of them gathered in a conference room on the fourth floor of the Journalists Syndicate. Smoke stifled the room as they fought over the new party’s name.

  “Tomorrow!” someone suggested.

  “That’s already taken.”

  “How about Egypt Tomorrow?”

  “The Road!”

  “The Free!”

  “The Path!”

  “The Square!”

  The proposals were listed on a whiteboard. From the stage, the party’s presumptive leadership refereed the debate. Sally and Zyad sat beside Dr. Mohamed Aboul-Ghar, the famous gynecologist and dissident whose chants had fallen flat the night before at the Mansoura rally. Tonight he held the central place of honor. Most of the Tahrir activists sat in the room, with the exception of youth from Islamist backgrounds and the April 6 Movement activists, who tended to be more socially and economically conservative. Finally, a more precise if far less evocative name won the day: Egyptian Social Democratic Party. The outcome presaged what would become a persistent problem with branding the revolution and reform.

  “This name—it’s what you get with the democratic process,” Sally said. “I would have preferred El Tarik, ‘the Road,’ or El Masri, ‘the Egyptian.’ ”

  “We are beginning something now,” Zyad said, as if to fend off any premature sense of achievement. “We must start working.”

  These might have been the first and perhaps even the best of the secular activists to establish a political party after Mubarak. Yet it was already apparent that they would be one faction among many in a bickering, fragmented space. Notably absent was Amr Hamzawy, a good-looking young academic who had recently returned from a career abroad to teach at the American University of Cairo and Cairo University. He had spoken charismatically at the rally in Mansoura the night before. The public seemed to like him. Hamzawy found that the social democrats in the making didn’t have clear answers to his questions about how to promote a genuinely liberal Egypt unyoked from military rule, so he had decided to start a one-man party of his own. Naguib Sawiris, a Christian billionaire, was also bankrolling his own more probusiness party.

  Afterward, the younger founders repaired to a downtown beer garden. Basem stayed only a few minutes, while Zyad had one ear in the conversation and one on his phone. He was talking to activists in the provinces, trying to make sure that he had contacts at every major polling station.

  “I think we will lose tomorrow,” he said. “But we have gathered many people to vote no. And we will build on this for the parliamentary campaign.”

  It was easy to see why the revolutionaries and their li
beral allies were likely to fail. Yet, in some ways, the coming referendum felt like a birth. No matter who won, the referendum was a sort of victory for the revolution; a democratic process at work after a half century of paralysis. It set forth a map that was imperfect, flawed, with devils sewn into every detail; but, as bad as it was, it was a map to somewhere. And even if the generals displayed contempt for the people of Egypt, they still had been forced to respect the people’s sovereignty and to seek their approval by ballot. Undeniably, that was something good.

  Saturday dawned crisp and warm, a perfect spring day. Even the outgunned liberals and their doomed “no” campaign couldn’t help themselves, grinning foolishly as they gathered in front of the Kasr el-Dobara Evangelical Church a block south of Tahrir Square. Once again they looked like a wedding party. On this day, everyone in Egypt did. The venom and rancor of the campaign dissolved briefly in the ritual of the vote, the first vote that would actually be counted. Yesterday everyone had traded toxic recriminations. The “yes” voters were undermining the revolution, in bed with the military and the felool, the remnants of the old regime. The “no” voters were trying to turn the country into a chaotic, perpetual Tahrir. Amending the constitution would pave the way for a military dictatorship or the ascendance of Islamic fundamentalists. Or perhaps amending the constitution was the only way to enshrine the revolution into rule of law. Today, however, for a few hours, everyone in Egypt was a democrat, expressing a free will, ready to respect the outcome no matter who won. This was the first tangible achievement of the January 25 revolution.

  The streets were empty of traffic; this debut Election Day was a holiday. The founders of the newly christened Egyptian Social Democratic Party and some of their revolutionary friends had agreed to meet at nine in the morning to walk together to the polling station. They gathered an hour late. Zyad wore a tennis shirt and slacks. Professor Amr Hamzawy had turned up the collar of his polo shirt, like a frat boy, and it mirrored his wild hair. A who’s who of liberal Egypt strolled down Qasr el-Ayni Street, past the parliament entrance and the cabinet of ministers—the seat of government and the site of so much past and future strife. “Sabah al-demokratia,” they greeted one another. “Morning of democracy.” At a primary school, already hundreds of Cairenes were in line to vote.

  Many of the people in line were still afraid to give their names. Almost all of them said that the big thrill of the day was voting without knowing in advance how the election was going to turn out. The governor of Cairo province arrived with a ten-man entourage, in the arrogant style of the disbanded ruling party, of which he had been a senior member. His motorcade double-parked in front of the polling station. Wearing sunglasses, he strode past the line of voters without a word of greeting. This man certainly didn’t betray any recognition that the revolution had changed anything, even regarding the aesthetic requirements of power. He behaved as if he still owned Cairo. The people, however, were done with this sort of display.

  “Wait in line like everyone else!” some shouted.

  “Barra! Barra!” shouted others. “Get out!”

  “Even the prime minister is waiting in line!” someone hollered. “Why are you better?”

  George Ishak, a retired teacher, human rights activist, and founder of Kifaya, knew the governor from years of personal run-ins. He approached, shaking with rage. “I thought we were done with these old games,” he said.

  Ignoring it all, the governor walked into the voting room, took a look, chatted briefly with the judge in charge, and exited. Only then, in the courtyard, did he deign to speak to anyone.

  “I am making an inspection to ensure everything is as it should be,” the governor said.

  A woman shouted, “He at least could talk to the people!”

  The governor stared straight ahead. The chants of the crowd synchronized and swelled. “Get out! Get out!” they roared. The governor slipped into his car, and thunderous applause rang out as the motorcade pulled away.

  On the Nile island of Manial, voters booed when the supreme guide of the Muslim Brotherhood went to the front of the line, even though he was entitled to do so because he was older than sixty. Ahmed Shafik, the general and recently humiliated prime minister, was seen driving himself to a polling station, wearing a tracksuit. Mohamed ElBaradei went to a polling station in Moqattam with a group of supporters but was attacked by thugs who smashed his car windows.

  Unlike his liberal friends, Moaz voted for the amendments. He was loath to vote the same way as the Brotherhood, but he wanted power out of the military’s hands as quickly as possible. “Power is like an apple for the military,” he said. “Even if it does not suit them well, it is sweet. I am afraid of the military’s power. We should make as short as possible the time that the military sits in the president’s chair.”

  The results overwhelmingly favored the generals, with 77 percent approving the amendments. Turnout was higher than in any election in Mubarak’s time, which comforted the revolutionaries. But their showing did not. The “no” side won 40 percent of the vote in Cairo and a third in Alexandria. Everywhere else, it had been completely overwhelmed. The vote had demonstrated the inability of secular and liberal forces to unify and organize. It had also shown the potency of the military and the Islamists, especially when they were collaborating. They had used the state media to campaign for the referendum, and the Islamists had employed shameless libel, spreading rumors that a “no” vote would erase existing references to Islam from the constitution.

  The amendments would be the original sin of the transition. A dictatorship by committee had taken over from Mubarak, and, with a popular vote, it now had gained the stamp of legitimacy. The devil was in the details. By fiat, with no consultation and little thought, the generals had published a vague constitutional road map that contained the recipe for disasters for years to come. The constitutional declaration haphazardly banned some candidates based on whether their relatives had obtained second passports. It didn’t set forth a balance of powers among the parliament, the president, and the assembly that would write the next constitution, setting the stage for confusion, power grabs, and a hyper-empowered bureaucracy. It didn’t establish a timetable for the transition. Any lawyer who read the document saw these perils. To underscore the referendum’s real significance, immediately after winning, the SCAF published the revised constitution that would henceforth govern Egypt. Its text was significantly different from that of the amendments subjected to the vote. But now the generals were confident that they could act capriciously in their own interest, and most Egyptians would still hail them as saviors of the nation.

  The other kingmakers, the Muslim Brothers, were adjusting to the sunlight after decades of operating in secret. Nominally, Supreme Guide Mohamed Badie since 2010 had run the group with a small cabinet called the Guidance Council. A larger body called the Shura, or Consultative Council, elected by the membership, gave input on important matters. In practice, however, the supreme guide, a retired physical education professor, wasn’t considered the most important man in the group; that honor was reserved for Khairat el-Shater, a self-made millionaire with thriving enterprises in technology, textiles, and construction. He was the Brotherhood’s financial wizard. He’d been sent to prison in 2007 by a military tribunal, but from his cell he had continued to run the Brotherhood’s finances and his business empire. He had just been released by the SCAF a few weeks before the referendum, in March.

  Ayyash arranged a meeting with el-Shater; he had good contacts with him because el-Shater had established the Brotherhood’s online presence, in which Ayyash had been pivotal. The day after the referendum, I entered a quiet apartment bloc overlooking the palm-lined square beside the Belal Mosque in Nasr City. El-Shater sat on a gilded Louis XIV sofa, talking with two men. He was a bear of a man, with a huge head and body, wearing a navy blazer with gold buttons. His reading glasses sat crooked on his nose. He looked like a yacht captain or a tennis club owner. El-Shater’s aides had set up a fax mac
hine and a laptop on a small table. Two weeks out of prison, el-Shater had back-to-back meetings, all day, every day. He spoke directly about the Brotherhood’s plans.

  “We believe the problems facing Egypt are far bigger than us and our quest for power,” he said. The Brotherhood knew that it was the most important political factor in Egypt other than the military, and he had no doubt that eventually it would dominate. He saw no hurry: Egypt should handle its transition carefully and establish sound rules for political life, and once the military had been gracefully steered out of power, the Brotherhood could clobber its competitors. He was well aware that his organization had a horrible reputation among secular Egyptians. The Brotherhood, he said, had to tread carefully; political life had opened up, but for decades the government had terrified the public with its anti-Brotherhood propaganda. The Islamists would have to win trust. He sounded all the right notes to reassure those who feared the Brotherhood: “We must cooperate with all Egyptian people, all religions, men and women, all political parties,” el-Shater said. He wanted to persuade skeptical Egyptians and Westerners that the Brotherhood didn’t want to grab power. The group, he promised, would contest only one-third of the seats in parliament, even though it was certainly organized enough to win more. And to reassure Egyptians afraid that a Brotherhood juggernaut might impose religious rule, el-Shater assured me and later on everyone else he met that the Brotherhood wouldn’t run a candidate for president.

  “We know people fear us, and we have to work to make a better image among them,” he said. “There was a lot of cooperation between us to topple the regime. People came together on demands, not on ideologies. After the revolution, we need to convince people to stay in the same spirit.”