Shortly before midnight on Wednesday 9 February, I was with a friend in a small coffee shop in Zamalek, the Cairo district where I live. It was that period when Hosni Mubarak’s government had unlocked the jails, turned thousands of violent criminals loose, “vanished” the police from the streets of the cities and switched off most of the lights. There was a curfew in place from 6pm, but we, and the coffee shop, were ignoring it. We had been in Tahrir Square (where else?) and left it ringing with chants, speeches and debate. But we felt cold and were looking for something to eat before going to our respective homes.
It was less than 48 hours before the fall of Mubarak. That morning al-Shorouk newspaper had carried a brief item on the report which my friend – let’s call him MH – and I, along with48 others, had lodged the previous day with the public prosecutor, demanding an investigation into Mubarak’s wealth. Other truants from Tahrir headed for the sushi bar upstairs and we were mostly alone, until a man came in carrying a notebook, sat in the opposite corner and started to work. He was maybe in his late 30s. Smart casual. I thought I clocked him clocking us but I wasn’t sure.
As we were leaving he stood up and intercepted us at the door. Quietly he asked if we were MH and AS. We were, we said. I’ve been thinking about how to reach you; may we speak? So we stepped outside and he told us that he had been collecting evidence of the Mubaraks’ financial misdemeanours and had put together one complete case: it’s not very much, he said, only around $13m (£8m) – but it’s watertight. And on a napkin braced against the plate-glass window of our coffee shop he drew the diagram of the financial structure he had uncovered.
We gave him our email addresses, agreed that we did not need to know his name and he went to find an internet cafe. Within an hour the documented case had arrived – from “an Egyptian” – in our mailboxes. The next day it was appended to the prosecutor’s report.
When I tell this story to friends outside Egypt their first reaction is: “Didn’t you think it might be a set-up?” And the truth is that, no, we didn’t. We trusted him. Why? Well, I didn’t think about it at the time but, looking back, it’s clear: MH and I – and our anonymous friend – were behaving within the framework established in the liberated Tahrir Square on 28 January: we, the people, were rejecting the Mubarak strategies that were meant to make us suspicious and fearful; to turn us against each other.
And we were right. A few days after Mubarak’s fall we met our friend once more, again on a late-night quest for coffee and cheesecake. This time we learned his name and exchanged phone numbers – and I left him and MH deep in napkins and diagrams tracking further millions.
There was a moment in Tahrir, early on, when sitting on a low wall I watched two young men walking towards me, deep in conversation. One was saying: “The parliamentary system will be better for us because we need to break away from the cult of the leader,” and the other interrupted: “But the ‘leader’ doesn’t have to be a dictator; he could be a useful …” and then they were out of earshot. I gazed after them, feeling I had witnessed something extraordinary. And I had: I’d seen two men, openly, on a Cairo street, discuss an issue bordering on the political. It was the normalcy of it that was so extraordinary, and that was a measure of the repression we had been living under.
People had expressed themselves before, of course, but the violence of the regime was such that dissent had to be shouted. You shouted or you shut up. And people shouted – with rising frequency.
This revolution was born of the protests that started with the great march against the Iraq war in 2003 and were continued by Kefaya and, later, other groups, and spread so that by 2011 every sector of society was shouting. It was in 2004 that protest slogans started to pinpoint what would become the targets of this revolution: “Down, down with Hosni Mubarak,” broke a barrier of fear. And next came: “State security, tell us straight / Where’s our security? Where’s our state?”
My moment of personal unease came on Saturday 5 February. I’d been to the square, gone to a studio to do an interview, then rushed home to keep a 6pm appointment with an Indian TV crew. A moment after I’d let the two young women with all their equipment into the flat, my doorbell rang again. It was the concierge’s daughter. Excuse me, she said, but who are the people who have just come to see you? Since when, I said, do you ask such questions? Well, she said, the [state security] intelligence came round asking if there were foreigners or media visiting any residents. It’s your home and you can do what you like, but we’ll have to report to them.
I did the interview. I even insisted on making tea. But I packed an overnight bag, and when the young women left, I left with them. I did the next interview on the phone, locked in my car in a dark dark garage. Then I stayed at my brother’s.
The apparatus of repression was – after the ousting of Mubarak – the first target of the revolution: “The people demand the dismantling of state security.” This is not as mad as it sounds, because the security of the Egyptian state is actually in the care of the National Security Organisation. The State Security Intelligence Service was invented more recently for use against internal “enemies”. Us.
On Friday 4 March, after Ahmad Shafiq, the last-minute prime minister appointed by Mubarak, finally resigned, and minutes after the new prime minister had spoken in Tahrir, people noticed plainclothes men carrying garbage bags out of state security headquarters in Alexandria. They intercepted the men and found the bags contained shredded documents. The people formed a cordon and insisted nothing leave the building. State security went on the attack. The army, after standing on the sidelines for a while, came in on behalf of the citizens. Within minutes the people had moved on state security buildings across Egypt, and everywhere they found documents being shredded or burned, and computers stripped of their hard disks. But they found enough files to show the enormity of the operation that had been in place against the Egyptian people. They found prisoners in underground cells, and they found the pink bathroom of Habib al-Adly, the minister of the interior, who is now on trial.
For one hallucinatory evening our young people were inside the state security buildings rescuing files (pictured) and taking our calls as we urged: “Find my file.”
People found files on their parents and grandparents. They read information about themselves. They found files that seem to indicate that the plan to use horse and camel thug cavalry on the people was designed for the moment when Gamal Mubarak, Hosni’s son, would be slotted in as president, and files that seem to indicate that the bombing of the Church of the Two Saints in Alexandria on New Year’s Eve, which killed 21 worshippers, was planned in the ministry of the interior. They found – and took the testimony of – the companion of Sayyid Bilal, the young Muslim who was accused of carrying out the attack and tortured to death to extract a “confession”. Then they handed everything over to the army in the presence of senior judiciary.
Two days later the thugs came back. But now the revolution belongs to everybody, and they won’t let go of it.
A taxi driver tells me he fought for Tahrir as he has to work 16 hours a day and can’t imagine how many his children will have to work to stay alive. A man I chat with outside the parliament building turns out to have worked in the office of the minister for industry and has been keeping a diary of all the transgressions he’s witnessed. He’s lodging them with the prosecutor. A newspaper seller says the police collected protection money and bribes and left them with him until the end of their shift.
A woman says that when her son was framed on a drug-dealing charge the police had “dared” to write “unemployed” in the profession box; was it his fault he was unemployed? Who is it that has ruined our country?
“Everyone who loves Egypt/Come and help build Egypt.” That was the cry that went up when Mubarak’s departure was announced.
Some 4,000 years ago, Egypt descended into a great chaos that lasted two centuries. In the literary “complaints” of that time the refrain is the despairing, rhetorical: “To whom should I speak today?” For us, it’s the worst thing: to have no one to speak to. And when we, 4,000 years ago, managed to speak to each other again, the result was the Middle Kingdom: a thousand years of great civil projects, commerce and art. Today, everywhere in the country, a great conversation is going on.
© Ahdaf Soueif 2011. Ahdaf Soueif is speaking at the Frontline Club, London, on March 30
After the revolution
11 February After 18 days of protests, the Egyptian vice-president Omar Suleiman announces that President Hosni Mubarak is to step down with immediate effect. Power is handed to the Supreme Council of Egyptian Armed Forces.
13 February Egypt’s new military rulers announce parliament is to be dissolved and the constitution suspended. The Supreme Council of Egyptian Armed Forces in a television broadcast outlines its commitment to forming a “free democratic state”, adding that it will remain in power for six months, until a new civilian government can be formed and a new constitution drafted and submitted to a referendum.
15 February: Judge Tarek al-Beshry is selected by the military to head the eight-member constitutional reform panel. Its proposals will be put to a national referendum on 19 March.
18 February Protesters undertake a “victory march” and gather in Tahrir Square to mark the first week of Mubarak’s resignation. Protests in Tahrir Square continue about the role of the military council and the need for elections.
21 February David Cameron becomes the first world leader to visit Egypt since the ousting of Mubarak as part of a tour of the Middle East.
26 February Protesters in Tahrir Square calling for the resignation of prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq, are dispersed by the military, using stun guns and batons and firing shots into the air.
28 February Egyptian public prosecutor announces Mubarak is to have his assets frozen. Mubarak is also issued with a foreign travel ban.
3 March Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq resigns amid calls he is too close to the old regime. Former transport minister Essam Sharaf, who stepped down from the cabinet in 2005, is announced as his successor.
5 March Two hundred protesters storm Egypt’s state security agency building, demanding an end to emergency laws. Prime Minister Essam Sharaf calls on protesters in Tahrir Square to help rebuild the country saying “I am here to draw my legitimacy from you.”
7 March New Egyptian cabinet, headed by Sharaf, takes office following a ceremony in Cairo. The cabinet will take over control of Egypt’s affairs from the supreme council until parliamentary and presidential elections are held.