Truly kind people of Egypt overthrow ruthless tyrant

By Paul Gordon

(The first part of this essay was written shortly after the protests in Egypt began and while Hosni Mubarak was still in power. The final comments were added after Mubarak stepped aside.)

For the past 30 years of rule under President Hosni Mubarak, Egypt has lived under martial law (e.g. the right to enter anyone’s home), a fact that should send a chill through the hearts and minds of freedom-loving Americans who have consistently supported the current regime.  But more chilling than this well-known fact are the myriad hardships endured by the Egyptian people during this time, hardships which I have witnessed firsthand while living in Egypt for the past month and which have led to the current crisis in Tahrir Square and throughout most of the rest of the country.

Rather than a government “for the people,” Mubarak and his ruling party of so-called “democrats” (neither Mubarak nor his government is actually elected) have prospered while his people have suffered unbelievable hardships: extreme poverty, inadequate health care, salaries which are so low that even educated Egyptians cannot work in their chosen professions, deplorable sanitation (or lack thereof) etc.  And more chilling still is the way the ruling party lives by a policy of “robbing from the poor to give to the rich” that affects everyone I have spoken with on a daily basis.

Any license, permit, document that must be obtained from the government can only be obtained, if it is to be obtained at all, by bribing the relevant officials, and even the slightest infraction, if it is indeed an infraction and not just an invention of the police, must be paid for “under the table.”  Lengthy, often indeterminate jail sentences in horrifying prisons await those who cannot pay, or who have simply reached the breaking point of such systematic “baksheesh.” In many ways, Egypt provides the reverse picture of what we in the West are used to: rather than a government of laws ruling a potentially unruly citizenry, Egypt is a country of unruly police (to be distinguished from the army, who are loved) and government officials ruling a citizenry of remarkably kind, peace-loving people.

In all the time I have been here, I have heard countless stories illustrating these truths, and not one story contradicting them.  In all the time I have been here, I have not met one Egyptian who does not thoroughly despise Mubarak and virtually everyone else in power.  (It was ridiculous to hear a U.S. envoy say on television that Mubarak should be allowed to stay in power until the end of his term “out of respect for all he has done for the country for so long.”)

And yet, despite the absurd, Kafka-esque conditions that ordinary Egyptians must endure on a daily basis, they are, themselves, as far from characters in a Kafka novel as could be imagined.  I have lived in a number of countries other than my own, and I have never met a more helpful, friendly, gentle, humble, fun-loving people.  And I am not talking about the “kindness” of those who are looking merely for some advantage, but, rather, a kindness that comes, as my Egyptian friends say, “from a white heart.”  At dinner last night, I remarked that I seemed to be the last tourist in Egypt (the transformation from the bustling city I first saw to the current status quo wrought by the protests is truly startling), whereupon the wife of my host quickly replied: “You are not a tourist, Paul; you are a friend.”

Viewers of CNN, BBC etc. don’t see the tremendous damage wrought by the current protests in all the side streets, suburbs, small towns etc., changes which have taken away even the few dollars, commodities and conveniences on which ordinary Egyptians depend.  And yet, when I asked a friend who was contemplating the possibility of no gas, no money (imagine if all the banks in America had been closed for a week!), he quickly replied: “I will gladly go without all those things if Mubarak leaves, and if we could recover our dignity as human beings.”

The political considerations that have led past American administrations, and even the current one, to tolerate not only a total lack of true democracy but the abject conditions which are its result, may well seem rational, but sometimes even reason can be another name for madness, and madness is rarely, if ever, politically expedient.

Post-Mubarak addendum: Today I visited Tahrir Square. The mood was festive, and many were busy cleaning the streets and scrubbing the army’s tanks of grafitti (see photo).  Conditions in the part of Cairo/Giza where I live, next to the Great Pyramids, are very grim. People in my area rely largely on tourism, and there have been no tourists in Egypt for many weeks.  Many Egyptians here cannot feed or care for their families or the livestock (camels, horses) on which they depend, another testament to the legacy of Mubarak’s regime.   The dictator and his “government” (now suspended) have reportedly robbed these poor people of hundreds of billions of dollars (Mubarak is one of the richest men in the world), leaving them to beg for pennies in order to live. Inshallah, the money will be recovered and returned to the people and help this beautiful country flourish for another 5,000 years.

Paul Gordon is a professor of comparative literature/humanities at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

Feb. 14, 2011