Leftists' dreams die hard in Egypt

It's hot like it is in the day, but it's night at a cafe where cats wriggle underfoot and young men huddle over laptops while intellectuals snap open newspapers and a man named Taher, bald and mysteriously not sweating, riffles through a wad of bills, checks the tables and announces:

"The seasoned leftists have not yet arrived."


Leftists prefer the late hours. So you wait, order a tea, grab a seat at the Borse Cafe, a bohemian haunt of peeling orange paint simmering beneath bowed balconies just off Talaat Harb Square. Girls in yellow and peach head scarves play whisper, whisper, glowing in cellphone light, and waiters, quick and chattering, brush spilled sugar from silver trays, and someone turns up a radio that hits like a jab in the dark until it's shushed.

Kids race through the alley breeze. All of the city is out, strolling, eating, playing backgammon, stealing kisses beneath broken street lights, the ones the British empire left, but that's another dusty era, one best left to the past. Then he comes, the first of the old leftists. His mustache is darker than his bristly white hair; his linen shirt is the color of a storm cloud. The soliloquy confirms it.

"The government is squeezing us. I don't have time to read or think. It's a catastrophe. It's torture, really. I feel schizophrenic without books and thoughts. But we're kept too busy just surviving. We don't have time to think."

Ibrahim Hamouda was a leftist long before his first shave. That means this: He believed in the great socialist, pan-Arab dream of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the army officer who in the 1950s won independence for Egypt and became its president.

Nasser's vision failed, and then came the assassination of President Anwar Sadat over his peace treaty with Israel, and then the police state of current President Hosni Mubarak, who has chased leftists, Islamists, liberals, nationalists and other political opponents into jail cells or obscurity.

"Nasser let us believe that we could push Israel into the sea. He made us believe that we were a great nation," Hamouda says.

"But it all turned out to be a big lie."

Leftists have exacting memories. Hamouda grew up in the poor Cairo neighborhood of Sayyeda Zeinab, where as a boy and young man he collected garbage, taught literacy classes, attended a university, read Karl Marx and marched in anti-government rallies, helping leftist leaders escape through the crowds as police closed in. Hamouda was arrested four times, the first on the eve of bread riots in 1977.

"I used to go into hiding a lot," he says. "You know, it wasn't the information age back then. You had to read a lot of books just to get a tiny bit of detail."

It seems romantic now; streets gauzed in tear gas, the clang of the prison bars, but the belief that change, no matter how fiercely opposed by the military men who became politicians, was possible.

He doesn't feel that way these days. And it's not just from being older. While he speaks, one of Cairo's main independent newspapers is going to press with a story that Mubarak's National Democratic Party is considering a new media law that would clamp down on free expression on the Internet, TV, fliers, radio, Facebook, and even anti-government messages sent via cellphone.

"Mubarak has crushed political activity," says Hamouda, who owns an electrical company with eight employees. "He has divided society between rich and poor. This is the worst era of all. It won't get any worse. Mubarak has kept us so distracted by trying to earn a living that we have time or energy for nothing else. We've lost a younger generation of leftists."

What to do? Stew in the humid night, laugh, remember the days as a young man when the world seemed more malleable. His hands move slowly, as if pulling words closer to him and then releasing them into the smoke of his shisha pipe. It's not yet midnight, the moon is half full, but bright. The cafe is busy, shoeshine boys swarm, a baby wails.

"When I used to run from the police, I'd take my books with me," he says. "If I didn't, the police would come into my flat and confiscate them."

Hamouda doesn't run anymore. He is easily found, around this time, at a table, waiting for friends, old comrades, and the breezes that blow up from the Nile.

chahine

Youssef Chahine, an Egyptian filmmaker whose work over nearly five decades made him a renowned figure in Arab cinema, died Sunday at Al Maadi Military Hospital in Cairo. He was 82.

Chahine fell into a coma last month after suffering a brain hemorrhage and was flown to France in critical condition for treatment. According to Egypt's official news agency, MENA, he was returned to Cairo for further treatment.


In more than 40 films and documentaries, Chahine sought to recapture and defend the spirit of multicultural tolerance against the forces he saw undermining it -- fundamentalism, dictatorship and imperialism.

Chahine was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the 1997 Cannes Film Festival. His "body of work [is] as full and satisfying as that of any Hollywood auteur," critic Dave Kehr wrote in Film Comment. "Like many of his American studio counterparts, Chahine seemed to thrive on his interaction with the system, tackling an impossibly wide range of genre assignments and managing to impose his unmistakable signature on each one."

Since the early 1990s, his sometimes politically controversial films began to draw opposition from Islamic fundamentalist elements in Egypt. In 1994, his film "The Emigrant" was banned after a fundamentalist lawyer objected that its plot was based on the story of Joseph, found in the Bible and the Koran. The depiction of prophets is banned under most interpretations of Islam.

Chahine was born to a middle-class family in Alexandria, Egypt, on Jan. 25, 1926. His attorney father was of Lebanese heritage, and his mother was Greek. Five languages were spoken in his home as he was growing up, and Chahine was educated at private schools, including the elite Victoria College, an English-language institution in Alexandria.

From an early age, Chahine was fascinated by the theater and began staging plays at home. After a year at Alexandria University, Chahine persuaded his parents to let him study in the United States. Between 1946 and 1948, Chahine studied acting at the Pasadena Playhouse.

He made his first film, "Father Amine" in 1950, and his second film, "The Nile's Son," was released a year later and earned a good response at the Venice Film Festival, which gave his career a large boost. In 1953, he cast Omar Sharif, then a relatively unknown actor, in "Struggle in the Valley." In 1958, Chahine cast himself as the lowly train station newspaper vendor Kennawi whose love for a co-worker drives him to murder in the movie "Cairo Station."

His early films were considered classics of social realism. Some critics view his 1969 work, "The Land," which told an epic story of peasant farmers and landowners struggling over land in the Nile delta, as his finest film.

His work started receiving serious attention in the West after French writer Jean-Louis Bory began organizing Chahine screenings in Paris.

"Many people in Europe thought that all we could do was make light comedies -- with belly dancing scenes, obviously -- though some of us were working hard and making more worthwhile films, often on shoestring budgets," Chahine recalled in an interview with the UNESCO Courier.

After suffering a heart attack in the mid-1970s, Chahine reexamined his career and returned to the screen in 1978 with the first installment of his well-received autobiographical trilogy, "Alexandria . . . Why?" which won a special jury prize at the Berlin Film Festival that year.

The trilogy recounted his childhood in Alexandria, his love of Hollywood and his ambiguous feelings toward the U.S., which he was drawn to but also saw as an overweening power. "I have a problem with America, you call it a dilemma," he once told an interviewer. "I use to love it very much, I studied there, my first love was there. . . . I don't hate America as some think . . . but it is difficult to sympathize with it."

The trilogy broke with the realistic style of many of his earlier films, bringing in Fellini-esque scenes of wild fantasy, musical numbers and surrealism. The first installment also raised eyebrows by telling the story of two taboo love affairs -- one a homosexual relationship between an Egyptian man and a British soldier, the other between a Muslim man and a Jewish woman. His last movie, 2007's "This Is Chaos," was a sharp criticism of the Egyptian government's crackdown on democracy activists and depicted a corrupt police officer who takes bribes and tortures detainees.

Chahine had no children. He is survived by his wife, Colette.

Alexandrian Embassy in Cairo

Due to the huge numbers of the Egyptian citizens that requesting the Alexandrian Visa , so the Alexandrian Ministy of Forgein Affairs decided the following .

The Egyptian Citizens who are applying for Alexandiran " Chinckl " visa , they must prepare the following .

1- Fill in the Application of requesting the Visa
2-100 Alexandrian Dollars which equals 12,000 L.E
3- 8 Complete pictures for you ( face , and back )
4- Invitation from Alexandrian citizen who has 2 alexandrian parents
the invitaion must be in original , no faxes or printed emails will be accepted )
5- A valid passport for 1 year after going back from Alexandria.
6- Life time Insurence
7- Bank Account approves that you have not less than 100,000 American Dollars or its equal in Alexandrian Dollars
8- Certificate of " TOAFL " ( Test of Alexandrian as Foreign Language )
9- Copy of Plane ticket , as the Land ports of Alexandria will be exclusive for the Alexandian Citizens only .
10- coverage letter from the work distination.
The process of issuing The Visa takes 2 Lunar Months and the primarly accepted Applications will be Interviewd.

Important Remarks for applicants :
A - Alexandria Air ports are only open for the Egyptian Citizen from 10 AM to 11:30AM , after this times they have to wait to the second shift in the second lunar day.
B- No cameras, Mobiles, Electronic watchs or Laptops will be allowed either on board or to entre to Alexandria . ( Handbags are not allowed on board).
C- Egyptian Citizen are only Allowed to come to Alexandria through the Following Air lines companies other wise they will not be permitted to
get in,
1- Air France ( el faransawy beta3 damanhour tanta banha transit )
2- Iberia ( el aspany fi menno transit fi tanta bas )
the most important airline is :
3- S 7 M Airlines mother company ( S 7 M ) Safer 7atmoot Ma7rook which is landing in ( Sidi Gaber Airport ).

Egyptian Citizens are strongly restricted to get on any plane of the Alexandrian Air Ways planes
D- Marriage between Egyptian Citizens and Alexandrian Citizens are strongly forbidden and Any Egyptian Citizen is seeking to Marry any Alexandrian Citizen will be immediately arrested

New Mubarak means same old problems, say opponentsEgypt's 77-year-old president faces his first competitive election today - but the result is in litt

Brian Whitaker in Cairo The Guardian, Wednesday September 7, 2005 Article historyOld habits die hard, especially in Egypt. When President Hosni Mubarak launched his election campaign, the party faithfully declared their support in traditional fashion. "With our souls, with our blood, we will sacrifice for you," they chanted, but the president was not pleased and asked them to stop.
Those are the words that Arab crowds have parroted for decades, pledging eternal loyalty to Saddam Hussein and Yasser Arafat among others, but in the new world of Egyptian politics they are seriously off-message - the equivalent of singing The Red Flag at a Labour rally in Britain.

Today, after 24 years in power, the veteran Egyptian leader will face the first competitive election of his presidency, against nine challengers. Drawing a discreet veil over the past, posters hail him as "a crossing to the future". The president has been repackaged, rejuvenated and remarketed: he is New Mubarak.

Though 77 years old, he looks remarkably youthful in all the pictures - testimony, perhaps, to the effectiveness of Grecian 2000, stage makeup, judicious lighting and Adobe Photoshop.

His speeches have a softer tone, he has taken off his tie to acquire a more relaxed look, he sips tea with peasants and is seen less often with his sunglasses ("dictator glasses", as the spin doctors call them). In tune with the times, he has a website in Arabic and English (mubarak2005.com) where anyone can apparently send messages direct to the president.

The creation of New Mubarak is largely the work of the president's son, Gamal - a regular observer at party conferences in Britain - and Muhammad Kamal, the campaign's media coordinator. Mr Kamal has a PhD in American politics and, judging by his smooth performances, has spent hours practising the techniques of White House spokesmen.

The readily digestible New Mubarak package comes with promises of economic progress and political reform which - for the president's opponents - raise the question of why he did so little about them during his first four terms.

Egyptians to assemble and yell pro-Mubarak chants:

al-Araby’s inimitable Gamal Fahmy has a heartbreaking rumination on these folk this week, ending his column with a tragic, painful image only a sentient writer of his sagacity can observe and retell.

I don’t doubt that many others were pained and outraged last week by the busing in of poor Egyptians to shout stock slogans against Kifaya and “for” Hosni Mubarak: “Ya Mubarak doos doos, ehna ma’ak min gheir fuloos!” (Oh Mubarak step on them step on them, we’re with you without any money!) Gynecologist and Gamal Mubarak crony Hossam Badrawi reportedly dispatched his henchmen to collect idling men at ahwas and poor women from shantytowns and deposit them across the latest Kifaya demonstration. They lure them with a promise of a fuul sandwich and £E20 that whittles down to £E16 after the go-between takes his cut (read Gamal Fahmy on this poignant detail).

Cairo’s poor take center stage only when there’s an armed attack or the regime needs last minute constituents to parade in front of the world. Then they’re pulled out of their lairs of invisibility and dragged in front of the cameras for “social experts” to dissect. Witness the sick voyeurism with which journalists and “poverty experts” descended on Shubra al-Khayma after the Sayyeda Zeinab and Tahrir bombings, wringing their hands at the poor’s lack of privacy, paved roads, water, education, nutrition, what have you. What colossal levels of willful ignorance, atrocious taste, and abuse leads ostensibly enlightened Egyptians to pretend that they agonise and care about the poor in their hovels? It makes me physically ill to hear respectable “social scientists” pontificate about a culture of poverty and “obscurantist extremism” that feeds conservatism and social violence. Everyone wanted to advance his or her own brilliant theory, everyone scrambled to test the latest “explanations” parroted slavishly from whatever fourth-rate textbook they could get their hands on, everyone competed to violate these people once again in the carnival of commentary that erupted after the bombings.

As for the regime, there is nothing more sickening than Suzanne Mubarak’s “inauguration” of a community center in Ezbet el-Walda in Helwan last week, an event redolent of Marie Antoinette’s games of dress-up and let’s-pretend-to-be-poor. That Empress was at least open about her blithe “let them eat cake” attitude, but Suzanne Mubarak seriously aspires to appropriate the rights of citizenship as a token of her personal benediction. How revolting the sight of the president’s wife surrounded by her servile officials and latest posse of ladies who lunch as they gaze down superciliously at one of the most impoverished corners of Cairo, venal state television cameras there to capture it all and bring us the good tidings on the 6 o’clock news.

How deeply painful the disingenuous, incongruous sight of kindly, modest Egyptian mothers forced to hold aloft posters of Hosni Mubarak and shout ugly, belligerent slogans alien to their sweet natures and reflexive kindness. Just when we think it’s impossible for this regime to stoop lower in its cynical manipulation and abuse of all citizens, but especially the poor, it reveals a diabolical knack for grabbing at anything to ensure its own miserable survival. Most tragic of all is the double exploitation of Egypt’s poor: those garbed in black and armed with truncheons encircling those dressed in rags and armed with “Yes to Mubarak” posters and cheap drums. The wretched stand shoulder to shoulder with the duped, separated by years of fear, pauperisation, and the systematic theft of their basic human dignity.

But Hosni Mubarak says, “Don’t ever believe that anyone goes to bed without supper in Egypt, with the difference being that one person eats meat and another eats fuul. Personally I like to eat a fuul sandwich. Egypt is the land of peace and prosperity and no one goes hungry here.”

To erase from my mind the false sight of poor Egyptian women carrying Mubarak posters or forced to pay deference to his wife, I think of them as I see them: at the mouth of Sharia Qasr al-Aini selling tissues and plastic combs; in Midan al-Gami’ chopping carrots and shelling peas to sell to pampered housewives; in the Metro selling trinkets and hairpins; in the markets hawking gebna arish and legumes; outside the Sa’d Zaghlul Metro station good-naturedly haggling with homebound government clerks over bunches of sun-wilted dill and knobby potatoes; in the miserable latrine of Alexandria’s Mahattet Masr train station, permanently hunched over to wipe the floor with an ancient, drenched rag; outside Metro Market offering up clumps of baladi mint and juicy lemons; at the corner of Sharia al-Kneesa in Alexandria selling newspapers and magazines; wandering the draughty corridors of Detainees’ Affairs in the courthouse on Sharia al-Gala’, seeking the whereabouts of their imprisoned sons; clutching their babies as they try to cross the deadly Autostrade near Manshiyyet Nasser; making the long trek from al-Marg and el-Gabal el-Asfar to clean the homes of the upwardly mobile; and stealing a few moments in the refuge of al-Azhar, quietly murmuring words of supplication before walking back out into a chaotic world indifferent to their sufferings. Listen closely to their anodyne prayers, before they waft up to the ears of angels.