Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany: “When you live under a dictatorship, you become sick”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In 2006 the Egyptian novelist Alaa Al Aswany published The Yacoubian Building, which followed the lives of Cairo residents struggling under the dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. It was a bestseller in Egypt and became a successful film. It was translated into multiple languages and worldwide sold one million copies. On 25h January 2011, Al Aswany joined the anti-Mubarak protestors in Tahrir Square, and has been a keen observer and participant in the Egyptian revolution—his newspaper columns from the last four years have just been published in English. Prospect Books Editor Sameer Rahim spoke to Al Aswany about why even though censorship is worse now than it was under Mubarak, he still believes history is on the side of Egypt’s revolution.

SR: Let me take you back to Tahrir Square in 2011. What was it like being involved in the protests?

AA: It was a great moment in my life. I’m very proud I had the opportunity of participating in our revolution. I became another person. I learned many things including the meaning of the term “the people.” I had used it many times before in my writings, but this was the first time I understood its real meaning.

SR: Your novel The Yacoubian Building shows the pressures exerted on all levels of Egyptian society. Do you feel it predicted the revolution?

AA: I’m probably not the right person to answer that question, but many critics have said there was a kind of vision in the novel that pointed to a turning point or revolution in Egypt. From 2008, I have given interviews saying that there would be a big change in Egypt that would surprise everybody. Why did I feel that? Because I knew the people were suffering and that at some point there would be a revolt.

SR: In your new collection of newspaper articles, Democracy is the Answer, you write that “Dictatorship spreads like cancer from the Presidential Palace through the whole of society”. What do you mean by that?

AA: Dictatorship is not only a problem in politics: dictatorship is a pattern of life in Egyptian society. It’s like a disease, and the infection goes through the political domain through society, including private and family life and relations between men and women. When you live under dictatorship, you become sick. You are deprived of your basic rights to express your political views and participate in decision-making. Under a dictatorship, it’s very rare to find somebody who is in good shape as a citizen.

SR: Does Egypt’s revolution have to be social as well as political?

AA: Absolutely. I believe revolution requires a human change in all domains. Political change can be achieved through a coup d’etat and a government will fall. But only through a revolution will the vision of the people change—from social issues to women’s issues.

SR: What about the role of religion?

AA: We have our own Egyptian interpretation of religion, which was formulated in 1899 by a great thinker called Muhammad Abduh. He presented a tolerant interpretation of religion, which was why it was never a problem in Egypt. This continued until the beginning of the 1980s with the oil boom, when a different interpretation arrived. We had the Wahabbis—a very tough, enclosed and aggressive interpretation of Islam. For 30 years we have had a conflict between the tolerant Egyptian understanding of Islam and the Wahabbi interpretation. I believe the revolution is a victory for tolerance—and a victory for the Egyptian interpretation of religion.

SR: But of course after Mubarak resigned it was the Muslim Brotherhood that took power. Was there a unity between liberals and the Brotherhood?

AA: On 23rd January 2011, two days before the Tahrir protests started, the Muslim Brotherhood stated that they would not participate in the demonstrations because they didn’t trust the people organising them. They disappeared and only on 29th January, when it became clear that the revolution would be triumphant, did they join us. A few days later their leaders sat down with Mubarak’s vice-president Omar Suleiman, and made a deal with him and tried to convince the protestors to go home—in taking that step they betrayed the revolution.

SR: The Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Morsi was elected president on 30th June 2012, but was ousted by a coup a year later. What went wrong?

AA: I didn’t vote for Mr Morsi, but I believed that he had the right to stay in power for four years. I respect the fact that he was elected by the people. (Although there are rumours about the fairness of that election). But he was the one who violated the rules. On 22nd November 2012, Morsi passed a decree cancelling both the law and the constitution. I wrote at the time that he was no longer the president because he had violated democracy. We didn’t have any arrangement for impeachment. So we gathered on 30th June 2013 on the streets of Alexandria to demand a presidential election. We gathered 22 million signatures asking for an early presidential election (Morsi was elected by 16 million votes) and 40 million Egyptians went on the streets all over Egypt asking Morsi to resign.

SR: On 3rd July the army took over.

AA: The army intervened because we were close to civil war. We had tens of thousands of armed Islamists ready to fight; on the other side you had millions of Egyptians determined to get rid of the president. Read the Amnesty Report of August 2013, and you will find it describes killing and torture by Morsi supporters. I believe the intervention was justified and so do most Egyptians. However, I disagreed with many things that have happened afterwards: over 1,000 Brotherhood supporters were killed, which I felt very sad about.

I didn’t vote for Abdel Fattah el-Sisi [the current president] in May 2014. I think that those presidential elections did not fulfil democratic criteria. Since then I have been horrified by the return of the police state, police brutality, judging people before military courts etc. I am absolutely against that.

SR: Are conditions now worse or better than under Mubarak?

AA: The question should be more specific. We didn’t have freedom of expression under Mubarak. You couldn’t write an article accusing a minister of something or say that a minister should be brought to justice or should resign or whatever. But what we had under Mubarak was the freedom of talk. The deal was: you say whatever you want, and Mubarak will do whatever he wants. Now we don’t even have this. It’s hard to find the opportunity now in the media or in the newspapers to express opinions that criticise the president. I stopped writing my weekly articles six months ago because no newspaper in Egypt could tolerate them anymore.

SR: So there’s more censorship?

AA: Yes but here it is not really legal censorship. You don’t need an official government censorship for it to be enforced.

SR: Is Egypt’s revolution over?

AA: Not at all! My friends call me a chronic optimist. I believe in the people, and in the millions of Egyptians with whom I spent 18 days during the revolution. I believe the revolution will overcome, will achieve its goals. We have history on our side—the  old regime was against history and the future is ours.

SR: On Sunday 1st February, a jihadi group carried out a terrorist attack in Sinai, killing 30 people. What’s your response to that?

AA: I disagree with the current regime on many things, but I must express my full solidarity with the families of the Egyptian soldiers who were killed by the terrorists. I believe that terrorism should be absolutely condemned by all human beings.

Democracy is the Answer: Egypt’s Years of Revolution by Alaa Al Aswany is published by Gingko Library