From Behind Bars Mubarak Smiles

On April, 13, the former dictator of Egypt was wheeled into court.  The occasion was his retrial on charges related to the killing of protesters in January and February 2011, prior to his forced abdication on February 11 of that fateful year.  So why was he smiling from behind those iron bars?

His two sons, Alaa and Gamal were next to him as co-defendants.  Some of his supporters showed up and cheered him.  Nattily dressed, Mubarak sat up in his hospital bed, no more the laid-up sickly person with his finger in his nose as on prior occasions.  In recognition of those cheers, he raised up his hand in a gesture of confident greetings for his supporters.  The families of the victims of early 2011 were outnumbered and looked sullen.

Outside that Cairo court, more Mubarak supporters showed up in buses, private cars and on foot.  Shouting slogans of acclamation, their signs in Arabic read “THE PEOPLE WANT TO HONOR THE PRESIDENT.”  That was a slogan debunking the anti-Mubarak slogan of 2 years ago which reverberated through Tahrir and throughout Egypt and the rest of the Arab Spring countries:  “THE PEOPLE WANT TO COLLAPSE THE REGIME.”

Back to the court, another big surprise: As Mubarak smiled, (or was it a smirk?), the presiding judge, Mustafa Hassan Abdulla, unexpectedly ended the session as quickly as it began.  Recusing himself, he cited conflict of interest, whatever that meant in this context.  Those events scarring the progress of the Egyptian Revolution, the mother of all Arab Spring revolutions, may be pointing to the emergence of a new theory of revolutionary relativity.  It may be briefly expounded in one basic question: “Between the Stability under the Mubarak dictatorship and the chaos under the Morsi democracy, what should the average Egyptian choose?”

This is a huge question which can only be answered on the ground in Egypt by Egyptians who are the only party that could define their own expectations.  For now, there is no clear definition for those expectations except through hurling insults by the secularists at President Morsi, and by the Islamists calling the secularists all kinds of names.  That verbal war, though not an answer to the lack of security or to the economic near-collapse, might be a catharsis for the 60-years of imposed silence on the Egyptian masses by the former security State.

Other questions are now thrown into the mix and are generated by the Mubarak smiles from behind bars.  That smile and that wave by the hand in greeting his supporters in that Cairo court room conveyed what the Germans call SCHDENFREUDE - malicious enjoyment of others' misfortunes.  The others are, of course, all those whose revolt brought down the throne of that latter-day pharaoh.  Mubarak, for the duration of his 30 years of rule (1981-2011) has told the world: "Either I or chaos!!"  For the moment, with chaos rampant in Egypt, his demeanor in court conveyed an unmistaken message: "I told you so!!"

Mubarak supporters are now repeating the same mantra.  I asked an Egyptian businessman in New  York City about his feelings regarding post-Mubarak Egypt.  His swift response was "I yearn for even one day of Mubarak's rule.  He made the streets safe and business vibrant."

The Egyptian judiciary, at least its Islamist segment, felt differently.  The Attorney General (AG), Talaat Abdullah, has now ordered Mubarak's removal from the comfort of the Armed Forces Hospital overlooking the great Nile in Maadi, south of Cairo, to a hospital bed at the Tora prison where Mubarak's two sons are held.  The AG's office announced that the return of Mubarak to the prison's hospital was recommended by a  medical team which, after examining the deposed President, concluded that his robust health merited such transfer.

Simultaneously, the President of the Appeals Court (a lower court as compared to Egypt's highest court - the Court of Cassassion), Counsellor Samir Abu-Elmaaty, fixed a new date for the retrial of Mubarak and his sons - May 11.  The venue of that trial is the Criminal Court of Cairo North (the 2nd Chamber).  The charges have remained the same: Complicity in the death of nearly 900 demonstrators in early 2011, and corruption represented by the conversion of public wealth into private wealth.

Those who smile (or laugh) last, smile (or laugh) longer.  Yet the smiles of the anti-Mubarak forces in Egypt - a country united by the pharaohs and the Nile, and split by the January 25 revolution by the Islamists versus the secularists including the Copts - are also an expression of SCHADENFREUDE!!

Death at the Cathedral - St. Mark's Cathedral, Cairo, Egypt

Gone are the days in the late 1960's.  Nasser was in power; the dictatorship kept the streets safe; and Muslim-Coptic conflict was unheard of, in fact unthinkable.  That great Cathedral where St. Mark of Alexandria is interred had stood at that time unfinished.  Nasser noticed and asked his escort why had construction stopped.  The answer came crisp and clear: "Mr. President: the Coptic church ran out of money!!"  Nasser's response was historic: "The State should fund the project" And it was done!!

As we know, St. Mark was one of the great four Gospel writers: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  Through St. Mark, and through history, including the flight of the Holy Family to Egypt, the land of the pharaohs has always enjoyed a special place in the history of Christianity.  In fact, the word Egypt in Greek means the land of the Copts.  "Blessed is Egypt my People" (Isaiah 19:25); "Out of Egypt I called my son" (Matthew 2:15); "Egypt is not a country in which we live.  It is a country that lives in us" (His Holiness, Pope Shenouda III, who joined his creator on March 17, 2012).

The Vatican released the remains of St. Mark to Egypt, 2 years before Nasser died in 1970, for reburial in his homeland, which lived in him.  St. Mark's return to "the land of Copts" for reburial at the great Cathedral named after him in Abbasia, east of Cairo, was a great national day.  In fact it was international, as Emperor Haile Selassie of Ethiopia and many other world dignitaries also attended.  The Ethiopian Church was, and continues to be, a branch of the great orthodoxy of the Eastern Roman Empire from which emerged the Russian, Greek, Syrian and Armenian churches.

Tradition holds that the first church in Christendom was that of Alexandria -established a mere 200 years after Christ.  Christ had stayed in Egypt, together with the Virgin Mary, for four years.  Hence the title of the heads of the Coptic church as "The Pope of Alexandria and the Patriarch of St. Mark's Bishopric."

That was and remains the indelible link of Egypt to Christianity, as well as to monotheism in general, including Judaism through Moses who was Egyptian-born.  But with the destruction of dictatorship in Egypt as result of the Revolution of January 25, 2011, something else was born as an unwanted companion to democracy -chaos.  With chaos in the Egyptian street, came the Muslim-Coptic conflict.  The Morsi regime was pulverized by the events which began at a village north of Cairo called (Al-Khossouss) on Sunday, April 7, which resulted in the death of 4 Copts, one Muslim, and the injury of many.

But the tragedy of the newly-introduced sectarianism in Egypt did not end there.  As the Copts and Muslims were processing from St. Mark's Cathedral for the burial of the 4 Coptic youths, additional blood was spilt.  Details of the tragedy are still unfolding.  What is clear so far was that the Cathedral was the scene of an ugly confrontation.  At the beginning, security was nearly absent.  But as additional security forces arrived, the intensity of the melee increased as tear gas canisters were hurled by officers haphazardly into the Cathedral compound.  Lack of training?  Perhaps.

Morsi called for a prompt investigation and called the attack on St. Mark's Cathedral "an attack on me personally."  Al-Azhar, as well as all stripes of political and other institutions, organizations and movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, raised their voices in anger condemning that dastardly attack.  Al-Azhar also cited a prior attack on its own headquarters by "thugs."  The very fabric of Egyptian society seems to be coming apart.

One wonders about the Arab Spring as it  unfolds in Egypt.  Several questions arise: Is there a sectarian conflict in post-Mubarak Egypt?  Yes.  Are the Copts, who constitute perhaps more than 10% of a population of nearly 90 million anxious about their future?  Yes.  How do they express that anxiety?  They point to their marginalization, especially under an Islamic-oriented regime.  That marginalization has been eloquently expressed by a great Coptic writer in New Jersey, Francois Basili.  Francois is the son of a famous Coptic priest by the name of Bolus Basili who, though a cleric, was a member of Parliament during the Sadat era, representing both Muslim and Coptic residents of the Cairo district of Shobra.

Have the Copts materially manifested their fear about the ominous trend toward Islamic-Coptic animosity?  Yes.  One of the great families of Coptic entrepreneurs, the Sawiris Group, has left Egypt, together with their huge investments in telecommunications.

The attack on the Coptic Cathedral is not the only instance of of the vanishing tolerance for diversity and cosmopolitanism in Egypt.  Other examples abound.  There is a rise in anti-Shiism as manifested by the recent Salafi attack on the residence of the Iranism diplomat in Cairo who is charged with overseeing Iranian interests in Egypt.  (There are yet no diplomatic relations between Tehran and Cairo.)

There are constant verbal attacks on the liberal Mufti of Egypt, Sheikh Aly Gomaa.  Furthermore, there is a spike in acts of sexual harassment intended to shove women out of public life.  In a sign of palpable anger, the Pope of Alexandria has left for self-exile in the western desert where the Wadi El-Natroon Convent exists.  It is an act intended to say, as the late Pope Shenouda used to say: "God hears our silence!!"

The future looks ominous.  But it is not yet definitively desperate.  For the land of the Copts, the homeland of St. Mark, the country which lives in the Copts (as well as in the Muslims) is probably trying to rediscover its historic and authentic identity.  With revolutions, patience is a great virtue.  May the blessings of St. Mark and the moderation of true Islam heal those wounds.

In Egypt's Valley of the Kings, The Pharaohs are Angry Tonight

From Ramses, to Tut; from Nefertiti to Hatshepsut: along the western edge of the great Nile, the Pharaohs are angry!! In the stillness of the desert night, brightly lit by the moon and the stars, they wake up from their slumber.  A soft but angry whisper is passed amongst them, from tomb to tomb; from mummy to mummy.  Then the whisper becomes a quieter rage carried north to Cairo on the wings of the desert winds.  It reverberates and grows into a hurricane of protests in which Cheops of the Great Pyramids, and the Sphinx join in a maddening scream:

"WHERE HAVE THE TOURISTS GONE? WE ARE ETERNAL, AND WE HAVE RIGHTS TOO!! WE ARE LONELY, DESERTED, EVEN DESPISED BY SOME OF THOSE WHO ROSE IN REBELLION AGAINST MUBARAK.  MUBARAK PRETENDED TO BE ONE OF US.  HA, HA, HA!!  WE BUILT A STABLE AND A GREAT NATION.  EGYPT IS OURS.  WE STAYED AND IT STAYED.  BRING US BACK OUR TOURISTS, OUR TRUE WORSHIPPERS, OUR THOUSANDS OF FOREIGN FRIENDS WHO TAKE PICTURES AND PROVIDE MOTHER EGYPT WITH HUGE INCOME.  GO BRING THEM BACK.  AND IF YOU DON'T, OUR CURSE SHALL BE UPON YOU!!"

Twenty percent of Egypt's foreign currency earnings have evaporated.  The income from tourism is probably more stable than the income from the Suez Canal.  But with the chaos in the Egyptian street, the tourists are staying away.  In December last year, I got accustomed to have breakfast alone at my Cairo hotel.  The cook and the helpers were my only companions.  They looked sad, even frightened as they tell me: "Dr. Yassin, we are at only 20% capacity!!  No more tourists except the occasional backpacker who cannot spend too much.  We have to feed our families and keep this place open!!"

In their frustration, they are not alone.  From the Minister of Tourism, Zaazou, to the Head of the Egyptian Tourism Authority, Nasser Hamdy, to the idle guides, the great city of Luxor now looks like a ghost town.  Ninety percent of its population depend on tourism for their livelihood.  Guides have tours but only three or four a month.  The guards of those great monuments are also idle.  Cruise ships are moored together in bunches along the Nile.  The smell of death, death of a great Egyptian industry, is unmistakable.  Neither Indian nor Iranian tourism can replace the traditional western, Russian, Japanese, and Australian tourists who are the big spenders.

In 1949, one year after college graduation, I wrote a play in Arabic, one of a total of 17 which in 1952 garnered for me a Fulbright Scholarship to the U.S.  My plays, which were also used as methods of teaching Egyptian history, had songs in them.  I was reminded of one of them at the Valley of the Kings, west of the Nile in Luxor.  Here is how it happened:

I was standing with a group of American friends at the entrance of the tomb of King Tut.  Our young guide was an Assistant Professor of Antiquities in Cairo.  His name is Tarek, a bright young man whose mother was German, and who loved his subject.  Suddenly Tarek told the group:

"We have among us today the author of a play in Arabic which my University Department has used as a part of lively teaching material.  The title of the play is 'Conflict Among the Gods.'  Here is the author!!"  His finger was pointing at me.  It was a play on the original ancient concept of the Holy Trinity: Father (Osiris), mother (Isis) and son (Horus).  Horus, depicted in monuments as a falcon was avenging the brutal death of his father at the hands of the malevolent, Seth, Osiris' brother.  Osiris stood for ancient Egypt as the great just ruler.  He also stood for the concepts of resurrection and victory over death.

The love of ancient Egypt was drilled in us as of primary school.  At the age of 8, my father, an Islamic scholar, took me from our village northeast of the Nile Delta to Cairo.  It was my first time in that historic capital.  Our first destination was the Pyramids and the Sphinx.  There I stood speechless gazing upon those timeless attractions.  Suddenly my father started to recite a secular prayer -a poem extolling the nexus between Egypt and its monuments.  In my translation, the poem goes like this:

"These are our monuments;

 After we are gone;

Don't forget to come gaze upon us."

But today, the Pharaohs are angry!! No more tourists to gaze upon them!!