An Incurable Past: Nasser's Egypt Then and Now

Conclusion: “What Revolution?!”

Conclusion “What Revolution?!” Cairo, years ago. I asked the grandmother of a friend of mine,who lived all her long life right behind King Faruq’s 'Abdin palace:“Tell me about the revolution . . .” “The revolution? What revolution?!” She answered earnestly. There were tanks, and he left, and that was it. As for the revolution, she did not see it coming. Nothing new really happened after either. And that was almost all she had to say. Port Said, some years ago. Ahmad 'Awad had just put an end to our interview about Port Said, the Limby, the 1950s . . . I had once more bored him to death with my questions. Poet-barber, witty and beautiful mind . . . no ordinary man, he was. All in elegant prose and rhyme. God have mercy on him. He never spoke politics to me.Yet once, just after our interview, as we were walking by a crate (or was it a casket?) manufacturer, he said:“Nasser had a police called the‘police of the dawn.’ Many of the people they arrested were never to be seen again. Only their coffins.” The Nasser years were a countercynical age that yielded much cynicism. Indeed, the times themselves generated hope among many people throughout the world,outside the likes of my friend Karim’s sharp and caustic grandmother . But Ernesto “Che” Guevara now appears on T-shirts, car stickers, and in Hollywood movies. Fatima Ibrahim “Umm Kulthum” al-Biltagi inspires kitsch coffee shops and home décor. Nasser appears in the graffiti of the 25 January Revolution (figure C.1). Mao Tse-Tung is best known for his cherubim-like, acidulated silkscreen portrait as illustrated by Warhol. Che, Umm Kulthum, Nasser, and Mao are mass-market commodities, for these figures as well as the times they mimic are dead and buried. They have entered pop culture and prosthetic memory. Nasserian things past are largely Conclusion: “What Revolution?!” | 217 mythical. Their function is often cynical. Their reality is intangible. Most Egyptians today have not experienced the mid-twentieth century. “Bread, freedom, and social justice” The 2011 events rekindled domestic discussions about the legacy of the Free Officers. Some people have been busy reviving the memory of the ’52 Revolution and its utopia. Others have been keen on reminding the nostalgically inclined of the unbearable burdens of the Nasserian past. Nasserists argue that the spirit of Nasser was behind the spring of 2011. Social justice . . . revolution . . . freedom . . . these were ideological dicta in the 1950s. Political scientist Huda 'Abd al-Nasir thus recalls that during the January 2011 events, she mulled over writing a book titled“Jamal 'Abd al-Nasser, a presence-absence.” She reflected upon the “profound revolutionary heritage” binding the July and January revolutions. On 25 January, as on 23 July, she wrote, the youth Figure C.1. Graffiti of Nasser on the side of a public building in Qena, 2012. The Arabic translates as“The people are the leader and the teacher.” Photograph by the author. 218 | An Incurable Past: Nasser’s Egypt Then and Now instigated the revolution—the difference being that in ’52, it was“the officers’ youth [that] was the revolutionary avant-garde.”1 Colonel Nasser’s daughter thus reproduced in January 2012 a Nasserist cliché,that is,the idea that the army represented but also acted for the benefit of the people,a people that then followed in the army’s footsteps.Accordingly, 1952 was like 2011 a popular revolution. As discussed in this book, the army ideologically enforced the revolutionary Jacobinic principle of fusion among government, state, army, and people. In contrast, state institutions were separate from government under British and Khedivian rule, during the thirty years or so of constitutional monarchy that preceded Nasser’s coup. Jacobinic principles could explain the feeble indignation of many citizens in Egypt after the deaths of Maspero and Muhammad Mahmud Street in the fall of 2011. People did not react much except for incidents relating to female dignity. They stood behind the army because the army was the state. The collapse of the army would result in the collapse of the state. At best, its political demotion would endanger the sacrosanct stability of the country since civilian institutions have not yet been built.People thus legitimized army and police use of lethal force. Many people did not question the veracity of main media accounts, which cast aspersions on civilians and baltaga (thugs), and which claimed, as in...