Once Upon a Revolution (39 page)

The two sides appeared determined to hold a collision course rather than negotiate, dooming Egypt to a destructive showdown. The Tammarod people wanted to erase Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood from Egyptian politics, going further than Mubarak ever had. Morsi and the Brotherhood, meanwhile, branded their opponents as traitors. In his last opportunity for conciliation a few days before June 30, the president dismissed those protesting his reign: “We will deal with them decisively, and there will never be a place for them among us.”

It would be either them or him.

On June 30 anti-Morsi demonstrators clogged every major square in Egypt. The military made absurd claims that twenty million or even thirty million had joined the protests, a number that would have been physically impossible. But the Tammarod protest was the largest ever in Egypt, larger even than the Tahrir Square demonstrations that had toppled Mubarak. Almost every demographic was represented, including some Salafis and religious folk who had voted for Morsi before turning against him. There were tried-and-true revolutionary youth who had braved the regime's bullets, and there were veteran reactionaries who had never displayed a trace of sympathy for the uprising. The crowds were jubilant and diverse, and included vast numbers of government employees and first-time demonstrators from the lower, middle, and upper classes. Revolutionary protest mania had finally reached even the pro-stability crowd and the
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. Women in bouffant hairdos and pricey jewelry joined their husbands and children to demand the fall of Morsi. Some of them had complained about past protests disrupting traffic and business, but this time they were willing to make an exception. Unlike the ragtag, improvised protests of the past, Tammarod had high production values, thanks to its well-heeled backers. Everywhere were glossy signs that read “Irhal!” in Arabic and “Go Out!” in English. Military helicopters flew overhead, dumping flags on the people. Green laser pointers flickered everywhere. Men kissed policemen and danced in circles around them, welcoming them back into the fold.

Again and again when I asked people what they hoped for, I heard the same refrains: “We have to ask the army to intervene.” “The Muslim Brotherhood is brainwashed; it is not part of Egypt.” “Morsi is an idiot. Morsi is a criminal.” Several told me they hoped the Brotherhood would be outlawed once again. The demands were almost careless. “I don't care who will lead the country. We just want Morsi to leave,” said a lady in a fine tailored dress, sipping tea on a terrace near the presidential palace on a break from chanting. Many of the first-time protesters who joined Tammarod sounded remarkably similar to the
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supporters of the Horreya Party whose revival I had attended nearly two years earlier. A police officer, his white uniform freshly starched, announced that as soon as the Brotherhood was banished from the palace, the police would finally
start doing their jobs again. “We can reestablish security overnight,” he said with a grin.

Basem led a march of thousands from his old parliamentary office in Shoubra to the Ittihadiya Palace. To Basem, however, this day of rage felt no different from the first dogged parade from the pastry shop on January 25, 2011. Both were products of careful preparation and spontaneous popular anger. “God willing, we will liberate Egypt from the Muslim Brotherhood's occupation!” he shouted, as if Morsi and his cohorts were foreign invaders. He didn't mind that elements of the old regime, along with the army and the police, were overtly backing the June 30 protests. To Basem, that only highlighted the justice of this latest popular revolt: it had animated the powerful and the armed and the privileged as well as the disenfranchised and dispossessed. Moaz approached the edges of the protest to get a sense of its size and composition. He saw thousands of regular people, but he also saw among them the police and bureaucrats of the old regime. A knot tightened in his stomach.

Egypt under Morsi had reached an impasse. Some of the millions who filled the streets on June 30, 2013, believed they were continuing a popular revolution that had begun two and a half years earlier. Most of them didn't see any legal or constitutional way to thwart Morsi's budding repression and religious dictatorship. And those who could imagine other ways to challenge the despot didn't think it was worth waiting. Basem, for instance, had come to believe that the Muslim Brotherhood was incapable of respecting freedom, the law, and anyone who opposed its project to transform Egypt into a backward caliphate. He thought any delay in stopping the Brothers could be fatal for secular Egyptian democracy. Tammarod dangerously twinned two inaccurate dictums from Egypt's revolutionary period: that vast crowds outweighed the authority of a ruler, and that the people's will would restrain the military from resuming the history of abuse and incompetence that had continuously characterized its role in Egyptian life since 1952.

The next day, July 1, the defense minister issued an ultimatum to President Morsi: Address the demands of the protesters, or else the military would issue a road map for a “transition to democracy.” The ultimatum didn't come from the young Tammarod leaders or from the civilian
politicians on the June 30 Committee. It came from el-Sisi, who theoretically served at the pleasure of the elected president to whom he was giving forty-eight hours notice. Until now the general had been almost a complete unknown, but now he appeared on television in oversized aviator sunglasses, looking every bit the military strongman. Basem was euphoric. He believed that el-Sisi and the other generals were bowing to the will of the crowds on the street. It never occurred to him that the military might have promoted the Tammarod protests behind the scenes in order to step into the breach and assume direct power once more.

The Brothers had initiated their own counterprotest at Rabaa al-Adawiya Square in Nasr City, a quiet neighborhood of middle-class government employees that wasn't a natural Brotherhood stronghold. The men and women in Rabaa were incredulous. They supported a leader who, for all his shortcomings, was the country's legally elected civilian president, a man who had been in power for only a year, and who had contended the entire time with obstruction or outright rebellion from the most important branches of the government that he supposedly directed. Morsi's supporters reflected the president's cloistered worldview. They saw none of the Brotherhood's guilt, only the hypocrisy of its critics. They didn't recognize or acknowledge that the Brotherhood had trampled on pluralism, ignored the rights of secular Egyptians, and also displayed contempt for justice, accountability, and rule of law. Now, as the confrontation climaxed, they also hinted at violence.

“There will be an Islamic revolution,” a man from the Gamaa Islamiya told me. He was a forty-nine-year-old construction worker named Taha Sayed Ali, wearing a hard hat and carrying a wooden pole. “I am not here for Morsi, I am here for legitimacy,” he said. “If they threaten our legitimacy, everybody will pay.”

Everyone was waiting for Morsi's response. As soon as General el-Sisi had imposed a deadline, Moaz understood that a military coup was under way. He saw only one way out: for Morsi to fire the insubordinate defense minister but at the same time admit his own mistakes and resign, effective once a new parliament was seated. But he knew firsthand the arrogance of the Brothers. He spent the day phoning every Brotherhood official he knew.

“What's your plan?” he asked. “Your time in power is finished. Find a way to avert a coup.”

“God is with us,” one assured him. “Things will be fine.”

After midnight, Morsi finally came on television. He rasped and ranted and shouted about his legitimacy. He didn't relent an inch. It was the speech of a man who planned to go down fighting. It was a speech that comforted the men and women in Rabaa al-Adawiya Square who expected martyrdom. Moaz watched at a Brotherhood hospital with one of Morsi's advisers.

“It's all over,” the adviser said. “There might have been a way out, but not after this speech.”

“You know how a chicken keeps running around after you cut off its head?” Moaz remarked. “Morsi is like that.”

After that, the coup proceeded clinically. The deadline passed, and Morsi had not stepped aside, so the military took charge. Soldiers arrested the president and took him to the presidential guard barracks. One by one, senior Brotherhood leaders were also taken into custody. Brotherhood television stations went off the air. Late in the afternoon of Wednesday, July 3, el-Sisi appeared on television, in uniform, sedately presenting his road map, flanked by leaders who should have had every reason to stand against the military and for the revolution: the Coptic pope, the sheikh of Al-Azhar, and Mohamed ElBaradei. The top judge from the Supreme Constitutional Court would serve as a figurehead interim president. A new constitution would be written, and then a parliament and president elected. It was the original order of operations that ElBaradei had sought after January 25, along with Basem, Moaz, and many other activists. This time it came with a military guarantee that religious forces would be kept in check.

The Tammarod crowd went wild. Fireworks, screaming, dancing, mob euphoria. Hundreds of green laser pointers followed the choppers overhead, draping them in an eerie green glow. At the moment of the coup, only a few Morsi critics still had the presence of mind to realize that a crime had been committed against democracy in the name of revolution, and the vast majority of them were ex-Islamists. Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, the ex-Brother and presidential candidate, had supported
Tammarod but instantly decried military rule, in any form. So did the young ex-Brothers in al-Tayyar al-Masry. And so did Moaz. Perhaps their history made them sympathetic to the Islamist movement they had left, or perhaps their religious convictions reminded them to concentrate on the injustice in play. But their voices were lonely. Around them Egypt celebrated, while the deep state swiftly encircled the Brotherhood and began to dismantle it.

The next day, Basem strolled down Shoubra's central avenue. Everywhere there were victory parties in the street. Ultras beat oversized drums and sang football songs. Men and women stopped Basem to kiss him or shake his hand. His phone rang nonstop with calls from well-wishers. There were no speeches, and it was a few days before the street would be plastered with banners of el-Sisi beside his model: Nasser.

Only one man in the entire crowd wasn't grinning. I'd seen him before; he was one of the activists at Tahrir who had gradually drifted away from the scene. “Don't celebrate too much,” he muttered in the direction of the celebrants, although only I could hear him. “This scar on my face: I got it from the SCAF, during the cabinet clashes. I don't forget.”

A woman stopped Basem and gripped his elbow. “Thank God the Brotherhood is gone,” she said. She told him she looked forward to voting for him again the next time he ran for parliament.

“Thank you,” Basem said. He smiled. “Long live Egypt.”

Basem didn't think it was right to pursue all members of the Brotherhood and all its media outlets; he thought it would be enough to arrest those who had committed crimes. “We must do everything according to the law,” he cautioned his constituents.

“What do you think?” he asked, turning to me. “Was it a revolution, what happened on June 30, or was it a coup?”

“Whether you support or not, it's a coup,” I said. “There can't be any debate about that.” I was wrong; the semantic debate raged for months, because supporters of el-Sisi and the military's status as final arbiter couldn't countenance the unvarnished truth that military rule was inimical to democracy. So they had to hide it in circumlocutions. Basem didn't mind one silly term that was making the rounds: “popularly legitimate coup.”

“It's a revolution, not a coup,” Basem replied. “The military didn't
remove him. The people asked Morsi to go, and he said no. Only Morsi's people think it's a coup. He lost his legitimacy.”

He explained that legitimacy came from the people and could be passed like a baton. The people had withdrawn this coveted legitimacy from Morsi, Basem went on, and had bestowed it upon the June 30 Revolution. “We have returned to square zero of our revolution, to start it again in the right way.”

“What about the Islamists?” I asked.

“If we make a new country without including them in the system, it will be a great way to make sure this country collapses,” Basem said. He was sure the Muslim Brotherhood would be integrated into the new system, one way or another.

“Aren't you worried about the military's power?” I asked. “You saw what they did the last time.”

“They've had this power the whole time,” Basem said. “We need a long time to change the mentality of the military and the people.”

“How can you trust the military now?” I asked.

“There is no guarantee,” Basem answered with his habitual ambiguity. “The guarantee is the people. El-Sisi said he will not enter politics or take charge. People learned very well the lesson from the SCAF the first time. We will be in the streets again if el-Sisi tries to take charge.”