Greater than the movies

Looking back over the recent weeks of demonstrations, events in Egypt outshone anything on the silver screen, finds Hani Mustafa

---

Click to view caption

Kingsley as Gandhi (top); peaceful protesters were brutally attacked -- some while praying -- with water cannons and teargas by police on Qasr Al-Nil Bridge, 28 January

Something about the scene reminded me of football matches. The crowds had gathered in Tahrir Square, chanting and waving Egyptian flags, just as they do when the Egyptian national team wins a crucial match.

However, this was Friday 11 February, the Friday of Victory, and the crowds were here to celebrate not a sports occasion but a turning point in Egyptian history. Many of the people who had come to celebrate were quite ordinary, perhaps in Tahrir Square for the first time since the revolution started.

They didn't look like the young men who had manned the barricades or the die-hard types who had camped in the square for over two weeks. But what was really new wasn't the people. It was the square itself, now free and triumphant, after 18 days that had changed Egypt.

In Tahrir Square and the surrounding streets, thousands of people were milling around in excitement, chanting and dancing. They were young and old, men and women, and from every walk of life, and they were going to celebrate till dawn. Cairo didn't sleep that night.

The celebrations started on Friday night, minutes after the terse statement by vice president Omar Suleiman announcing the end of the Mubarak regime. I was in the square celebrating with friends who had taken part in the revolution and had lost track of time. While we were celebrating, US President Barack Obama went on television to congratulate the Egyptian people on their peaceful revolution. He used a word the demonstrators had chanted many times the preceding day, selmeya, or peaceful.

Selmeya was one of the rallying cries of the demonstrations, one that was too often ignored by the police and the thugs hired by the ruling National Democratic Party. A friend of mine recalls that every time the demonstrators chanted this word, his heart used to miss a beat, since the demonstrators were often fired upon with tear gas and rubber bullets afterwards.

The most violent day in the confrontations came on Friday 28 January, the Friday of Anger. Young demonstrators were shouting, selmeya! selmeya! on Qasr Al-Nil Bridge leading out from Tahrir Square, their hands above their heads to show they were unarmed. But the riot police kept firing rubber bullets at them, aiming at their heads for full effect, which is why many demonstrators sustained eye wounds.

I was walking with a group of filmmakers on the bridge that day, and we also raised our arms in the air and shouted selmeya! It was like a scene out of Gandhi, the 1982 film directed by Richard Attenborough starring Ben Kingsley.

In the film, there is a scene where demonstrators confront the British soldiers. One line of demonstrators would advance, be attacked and fall down, and then another line would take its place, and then another and another. Until that Friday in Cairo, I thought these things only happened in the movies, but then it was our turn to do something similar.

I can remember an armoured vehicle using a water cannon in an attempt to break up the protesters as they responded with the mighty call of selmeya, selmeya. The following day, Saturday 29 January, police snipers near the Ministry of Interior upped the ante by firing live ammunition at the protesters, some of whom kept chanting selmeya! Others were content to just sally forth, burning police vehicles in the counter-attack.

In Burning Season, a 1994 film directed by John Frankenheimer and starring Raul Julia, there is a hint of the tactics we've seen recently in Cairo. The film is about a Brazilian trade unionist called Chico Mendes, who defends rubber plantation workers against big- business interests. The ruling elite responds by sending armed men against the workers.

I remembered this film that Wednesday, 2 February, when the mood in Tahrir Square turned sombre after a particularly infuriating speech by former president Hosni Mubarak. I saw one boy carrying a Gandhi banner, and I immediately recalled the face of Ben Kingsley saying, "first they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win."

Something was about to happen, something that would change the course of the confrontation for ever. That something was the National Democratic Party's decision to send in men on horses and camels against the protesters, an act of such mediaeval proportions that it sealed the party's fate.

Within minutes, the protesters had rallied, arranging themselves into groups. One group broke paving stones into fist-size pieces to provide ammunition. Another banged rhythmically on the metal siding used for a nearby building side, this too reminding me of the sound track for some kind of jungle war. A third group manned the frontline, throwing rocks at the assailants and driving them back.

Even days after the demonstrations were over, such scenes were still alive in my mind: the stone-throwing and the chanting, the rubber bullets and the celebrations. To me, this was a revolution that took the legacy of Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Chico Mendes, and then added something to the mix.

It was a revolution to remember, a reality that for once was much greater than anything at the movies.