The Long Haul

They're camped out in Tahrir again.

A tent city has sprung up to house those displeased with the feet dragging of the military men running Egypt. The scene is at once festive and urgent. Acoustic performances precede chants of "The people want the fall of the Field Marshall" (Tantawi, the head of the military council). And when the government allegedly cut the electricity in Tahrir last week, memories of the Revolution's martyrs kept the square aglow until dawn.

Over the past few days, I've read many an Egyptian youth quoted in the paper saying something to the effect of: "Mubarak is gone, but his regime remains. We will not leave the square until we're satisfied."

And so a sort of rough, interactive check on power has taken place where the people occupy the square as a simple "no" vote on issues such as the pace of transition to a civilian government and Prime Minister Sharaf's new cabinet picks. It is democracy in its chaotic, physical form, the only recourse of a people without democracy in writing.

The revolution must go on. For the sake of Egyptian dignity. For the sake of casting a compass for the Arab world. For the sake of shattering all of the hypocrisy and condescension that has gone into supporting Arab strongmen at the expense of the Arabs themselves. For the sake of seeing the odious old man of Sharm el Sheikh behind bars.

The Egyptian military still carries great respect among Egyptians of all backgrounds. But for this covenant to stay in tact, the council needs to reciprocate with greater respect for civil society. Rather than censoring the press, lecturing youth leaders of the Revolution, and maneuvering to write their power into the new Constitution, the generals should remember that this was a Revolution, and not a coup.

A few analysts have connected Egypt today with Turkey 20 years ago, when the Turks were stifled by a poor economy and a meddling army. Turkey's military retains great power today, but is also a relatively healthy democracy with an average income of $13,000. The other path drawn from present-day Egypt is to Pakistan, where a civilian leadership cowers before the military and the economy runs on foreign aid.

Cultivating a strong civilian leadership starts in Tahrir, where this week the people's chanting drowned out a military spokesman who came to appeal for patience. The people still want the fall of the regime, and in its place one of their own.

Dispatch from Tahrir

6/29/11

The following is a brief account of the recent clashes between police and protesters in the streets of Cairo as I saw them. This is just a snapshot. If you want the backstory check the international media. In short, an incident Tuesday (6/28) night, in which police would not let a crowd of people into a theater to commemorate those who died during the Revolution, sparked an overnight standoff that carried through this afternoon (and perhaps even now)

I got word of the unrest while at work, a few miles down Cairo's corniche from Tahrir Square. Twitter was crackling with indignation at the police response to the protestors. "How can these pigs call us thugs?"; "A group of doctors carrying medical supplies to Tahrir have been arrested."; "Guys, if u wanna come to Tahrir, bring water, vinegar, and food, we're starving."

I asked one of my colleagues about the wisdom of going to Tahrir. He struck me as a deliberate guy, and he had warned me to approach an uneventful protest last month carefully. "You should go," he said. 'There might not be another opportunity this exciting while you are here."

And so I went. I arrived in Tahrir proper about 1:30 pm and saw smoke creeping up the street where the American University of Cairo stands. The street was strewn with rocks and charcoaled rubble. Young men with bandanas as shields from the smoke were dragging barricade fences up the street with vigor. As I walked further down the street, my eyes began to simmer and I saw passersby weeping from the tear gas. People lined the sidewalk in clusters, where they seemed to be recounting the day's action and checking for any battle wounds that they could wear proudly. One man raised a bloody hand to wipe a face full of anguish. Others posed with their bandages for grateful photojournalists. There were also several crowds forming around men who were shouting and gesturing widely at each other. My limited Arabic kept me in the dark as to their grievances.

I turned down a street that had a climactic look to it - an army truck was parked at the far end, while a small fire smoldered in the foreground. Droves of men with arms linked shouted "back to the square!" and strode past me. I came to the barricade at the end of this street. Riot police had erected a fence and were lined up across from about 50 protestors. Some youth had climbed atop the fence and were shouting slogans at the police, who would not engage with direct eye contact but instead muttered replies and stood rooted to the ground. I walked round this scene, all the while taking pictures.

Then a scowling man caught my eye. I looked back and sensed that I had triggered something unpleasant in him. He marched towards me and rapped my chest with his stubby finger.

"Where you from?"

I stuttered while saying, "Amrika."

"You sure?"

I offered my passport as proof, which he pored over much more carefully than had the immigration official who admitted me to the country. Every stamp was suspicious. Why Egypt? Why now? I simply said, "I am a student. I like Egypt."

"Ok. I thought you were from Israel. Be careful."

This accusation is making its way into the official repertoire. I won't say much other than that I hope xenophobia does not reach the levels it did during the Revolution, when government propaganda spoke ominously of a foreign hand and several journalists were attacked. This is not about to happen again. People are by and large hospitable. But the accusation of espionage against foreign nationals has been used. It is a sensitive time.

I left Tahrir today knowing that the Revolution is ongoing, that popular protest is a necessary antidote to official inertia, and that many people here are still subject to the whims of a few.

Looking for a Brawl with Fascism

Christopher Hitchens, the inimitable atheist, elegant writer, and principled gadfly, among other superlatives, has esophageal cancer. I am not going to pretend as if I know the man, but after reading his delightful and erudite attack on religion, God is Not Great, and watching him excoriate the deceased Jerry Falwell in front of men very sympathetic to Falwell, I can say that hearing of Hitchens' illness brought me uncontrived sadness.

As a critic recently said of Hitchens, "if (he) did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him." His writing sets out to shock you and challenge your convictions. He rightly argues that cruel rituals such as genital mutilation and the taking of child brides would scarcely be tolerated if stripped of their religious pretext. And his indictment of religion certainly isn't scant on historical detail or exegesis of scripture. Hitchens has gladly debated scholars of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam in many a public fora.

Mr. Hitchens does not see a contradiction in being at once a freewheeling drinker, a dispenser of insults and also a person of great character. He, like his hero George Orwell, sees the fight against fascism and its present day derivatives as the final test of someone's morality. At the age of 59, he welcomed a beating from a fascist militia in Beirut when he defaced one of its swastika-stamped posters. Hitchens later matter-of-factly told a media outlet, "My attitude to posters with swastikas on them has always been the same. They should be ripped down."

David Brooks sees Hitchens as unique in the field of American journalism in that he underpins his opinions with a literary perspective that values "psychology, context, courage, and virtue - important things that are hard to talk about in policy jargon or journalese." This is precisely why, in a field so sorely in need of resolve, it will be necessary to revive and reinvent Christopher Hitchens as time passes.

A Distant Land, A Distant Hope

"Whither Iran?....."

About a year ago, I was itching to go to Iran. I sent out a rousing and somewhat satirical email to friends who might be interested in going, boasting that the “mullahs won’t know what hit them.” To be successful, any such trip would have to be meticulously planned and executed with high caution. But I wanted to whip up support with some cavalier language. I wrote that “ideally, we would be there for the June elections when there is a palpable but distant chance that Ahmedinejad will get upset.” It is a good thing that I wasn't able to get into the country then. Foreign journalists with actual credentials were bullied, harassed, detained, or deported. But any freelancing fool, especially an American, might have it worse.

It does not get worse than Evin Prison, where so many blameless Iranians have wasted away. The dungeon sits right in Tehran, and many accounts of the abuses within have reached Western audiences. The Iranian theocracy takes much the same attitude with Evin as it does with its nuclear bomb-making: “What will you do about it?” We can at least listen to the many tortured voices that ring forth from the prison gates. One such voice is that of Roxana Saberi, an Iranian-American journalist who, in her new book, evokes the many layers of sorrow residing in that monstrous jail. By the end of Ms. Saberi’s 100-day captivity, her plight was finally in the international spotlight. But this was not before she languished for weeks without word to the outside world.

Perhaps it was Saberi’s unique ability to report to the West from Iran that so riled her captors. A comely blend of Persian and Japanese parents (she's probably sick of those preoccupied with her good looks), Saberi carries an American passport and a tongue fluid in Farsi. She arrived in Iran in 2002 to research a book she planned to write on Iranian society. While doing so, she was drawn to the people and decided to stay in the country after her press credentials were revoked. In the early pages of the book, one gets the sense that, despite being a foreigner, Saberi felt somewhat at ease in Iran and unencumbered by the authorities. There was the occasional snooping from the intelligence ministry, but nothing that signaled she was in grave danger.

And then something snapped. Her life was blindsided by self-deluding men accusing her of espionage. The game played by these thugs is frighteningly cynical: "We know you are working for the CIA. Admit this and agree to spy for us, and you will be freed. Deny it and you will stay in prison indefinitely." The "evidence" presented against Saberi was laughable. By the end of the psychological warfare waged upon her, Saberi's captors admit to knowing of her innocence all along.

Why carry out this fakery? I think it was simply an exercise in power for the Iranian secret police. They were angered by Saberi's ability to move about the country without a translator doubling as a snoop. And once they had Roxana in their clutches, they got personal. "How long do you want to be in here?" one of the agents asked her in first day of captivity. "In a couple of years, you will lose your looks." They were trying to reduce her to a pretty face, and a fleeting one at that. As the reader finds out, Saberi is no brittle belle. She forces Evin's hand with a hunger strike and instead offers nourishment to her cellmates with her stories from America. After three months of prison, she emerges a haggard reflection of her former self. Yet despite enduring the evil of Evin, and inspiring many along the way, Roxana is dogged by her conscience. What of her acquaintances and contacts whom the secret police may now take a keener interest in because of her? What of the cellmates she was leaving behind to rot while she resumes life in America? Ms. Saberi will be hard-pressed to find an antidote for her anguish, but she deserves one.

International attention was the tipping point in Saberi's case. Despite all of their suffocating methods, the authorities could not keep Saberi completely hidden from the public eye. Once, in transit between courtroom and prison, a young woman caught her eye and smiled subtly while saying, "You must be Roxana. The whole country knows about you. We are praying for you." The support of the Iranian and American people sustained Saberi, and showed that shared compassion can sometimes outmaneuver politics to good effect.

With Iran being the steel trap to Americans that it is now, I am forced to read about the country from the safety of my dust-ridden couch. Most of this reading will be rather depressing tales of persecution and suppressed talent. But I look forward to using this blog to highlight examples of a resilience that will hopefully carry the Iranians through this perilous time. No one knows when it will come to pass.

Roxana Saberi with Mohammad Khatami, Iran's president from 1997 to 2005 and a current member of the opposition movement.

Broadway Makes Waves

In a bid to broaden his repertoire, your correspondent donned the cap of a theater critic and boarded the Intrepid, a massive carrier docked off the west side of Manhattan for "Fleet Week". The occasion was an hour-long medley of Broadway hits performed by the casts of The Addams Family, American Idiot, Hair, Million Dollar Quartet, and Promises, Promises. Having heard about the rip-roaring energy of American Idiot, I envisioned a swell of boisterous sailors moshing to this punk-rock opera. That this vision failed to materialize did not make the American Idiot cameo any less jolting. The frontwoman was flanked by three of her female colleagues on each side. The lead singer carried the day, as much with her inimitable expressions as with her scorching vocals. It felt like Green Day with a slap of femininity across the face.(The promoters of Idiot tell us that you don't have to like Green Day to like the musical. I'm the wrong person to test that theory on, but there appeared to be many people aboard the Intrepid who didn't know "Basket Case" from "Brain Stew". The idea to expand Broadway from the teeming Theater District to the shores of Manhattan was a hit.)

The Periscope has a seat at Monday's performance of Idiot on Broadway. Your correspondent expects the energy he saw at Fleet Week to be magnified on stage.