Revolution 2.0

One of the decisive moments for me was meeting Dr. El-Mostafa Hegazy, who owns a strategic consulting firm, in his office. He invited me, Dr. Hazem Abdel Azim, and other activists to talk about change in Egypt. He was against the idea that political change should be personified or reduced to a single person’s campaign for presidency. His opinion was that it was critical at this phase to focus on change as a goal in and of itself. He wanted to establish the notion that Egyptians owned their country. It would inspire resistance to injustice and corruption across the board. I remember this meeting vividly. I was arguing that promoting ElBaradei was in essence promoting change. But I also agreed with Dr. Hegazy’s opinion — before ever meeting him — that positioning ElBaradei as a savior might end up hurting the real cause. After the meeting, the words “This country is our country!” rang loudly in my ears, and they continue to do so to this very day. I wanted every other Egyptian to shout them out as loudly as they could.

A few days later we received an e-mail, in English, from Dr. Abdel Azim apologizing for not being able to continue with the political campaign for change.

Dear All,

I am very sorry to inform you that I will not be able to be engaged in any political activity related to our hope for change. My position is extremely sensitive as a senior government official.

Although this is known from the beginning, but there was a miscalculation from my side. I was having a very firm position in the last weeks that I would like to continue in this initiative, and I can and willing to resign from my job any time to be free, and actually I prepared the resignation.

Yet the equation was not that simple and my issue was very highly escalated to the extent that I heard signs of real threats of different sorts, on my well-being and on my family.

It was sad to see Dr. Abdel Azim renouncing the efforts to bring about change in Egypt, but none of us could really blame him. We knew that these threats were very serious. Witnessing this firsthand only amplified my conviction that it was very important to work anonymously as much as possible. I kept contact with Dr. Abdel Azim, and occasionally we would chat online and share our thoughts on current events.

Meanwhile, my frustration at the campaign’s pace mounted, and I finally decided to send a message to Dr. ElBaradei through his brother. I expressed dissatisfaction with the progress of his campaign and my hope that he would move faster. The movement for change needed to be more flexible and dynamic. He had greatly raised our aspirations, but now we were hungry for actual change on the ground. I expressed my astonishment that we did not meet regularly and that our communication was limited to messaging through his brother. I mentioned that I spent long hours every day promoting his ideas online and that I thought it would be fruitful if I spent at least an hour a week with him, discussing the campaign’s strategy. He responded one day later via e-mail, again through his brother. He said he understood my feelings and explained that we were living under exceptional conditions. He was doing everything he could, in spite of the legal restrictions and media assaults he regularly faced. At the time there was no legal framework for our work together, and therefore he preferred to keep our communications indirect. I saw his point, but I believed that the regime could harm us if it wanted to, without the need for legal justifications. Later I settled for meeting Ali ElBaradei in person to deliver my point of view more thoroughly.

When we met, Ali ElBaradei defended his brother. After all, Dr. ElBaradei had stated from the start that he was not a savior. We, the young people, must work harder to collect signatures for the petition, Ali argued. Although the meeting added no tangible dimension to my overall strategy, I once again felt partially relieved after expressing my opinion.

My performance at Google declined significantly during this period, but my manager was still happy. Before I got busy with ElBaradei’s Facebook page, I would sometimes spend up to fifteen consecutive hours a day finishing a project, or finalizing a marketing plan for a new product, or simply brainstorming with fellow employees on new ideas for the region. Understandably, my quarterly performance reports at Google always stated that I needed to improve my work-life balance.

Yet my wife was incredibly supportive. From the very beginning, she had known that she was marrying a workaholic who was addicted to living online. Occasionally she would remind me that I needed to give more time and attention to my family. I tried from time to time to improve, but I must admit that no matter how hard I tried, I would always relapse.

The state’s campaign to control ElBaradei’s growing popularity became fierce. Security authorities had previously issued orders that banned ElBaradei from appearing on Egyptian media. Now private television channels that had previously besieged him for interviews also kept their distance. Coverage in the print media was not as bad as on television, but ElBaradei’s news was now featured a lot less than before. Public opinion fell victim to this campaign, particularly as ElBaradei did not make a habit of refuting baseless allegations. Many Egyptians didn’t know about the media ban. The only remaining outlet was the Internet. The Twitter account was his favorite channel on which to vent, even though his follow count did not compare to the number of followers of traditional media outlets.

As the situation reached this dire point, I got an idea, inspired by a popular Google product that had been utilized by election campaigns in other parts of the world. Google Moderator is a tool that gives the user the ability to solicit questions from an unlimited number of other users and subsequently to rank these questions based on popularity votes so that they can be answered accordingly. What a cool way to democratize feedback!

I presented the concept of Google Moderator to Ali ElBaradei and explained what it could mean for the campaign. Using this service to hold an event would reach a vast number of Internet users, the majority of whom would be young people whom the NDP had never communicated with in any genuine way. Dr. ElBaradei welcomed the idea and said he was ready to implement it as soon as he came back from a trip abroad.

The initiative was announced on his Facebook page in mid-May 2010. It was called “Ask ElBaradei.” The number of fans on the page had now reached 150,000, of whom more than 2,700 participated. They posted 1,300 questions that received about 60,000 votes. It was an astonishing outpouring. Ironically and in contrast, Gamal Mubarak’s team had initiated an Internet dialogue shortly before this and asked interested people to send their questions before attending the event. Of course, it was all scripted in advance and the questions were carefully selected.

I wondered what would happen if President Mubarak were to receive questions from Internet users. Would his aides be able to accept clear and direct questions without the usual politicking and deception? The answer was obvious.

The questions for Dr. ElBaradei were profound. Many of the questions that received the highest number of votes revealed anxiety about the follow-up to the signature-collecting campaign. The most important questions were: How will the signatures collected be useful? What is Plan B, if the regime refuses nonviolent change after we collect a large number of signatures? How can we reach rural parts of Egypt to spread awareness about change? Will you take Egypt toward secular governance? What is your position on the second article of the constitution, which states clearly that the Islamic Sharia is the nation’s main source of legislation? What are the priorities of your presidential agenda? Finally, Do you eat kushari? (Kushari, made of rice, lentils, and pasta, is a very affordable and popular daily meal for many Egyptians.) It was clear that many people simply needed reassurance that ElBaradei was “one of us.”

Together with other coordinators of ElBaradei’s campaign, we filtered the questions and began searching for an interviewer who would address these questions to Dr. ElBaradei. Our search was not easy. Everyone we asked refused to play this role; some attributed it to personal reasons or prior commitments, and others said they were afraid of the consequences. In the end, we decided that the campaign’s own Mostafa al-Nagar should be the interviewer. The interview was viewed by more than 100,000 online users.

Dr. ElBaradei tried to remain optimistic in his responses. Instead of appearing frustrated at the limited number of signatures and blaming people’s passive attitudes, he spoke about proactivity and the importance of joining forces for the sake of Egypt’s future. The man was inspiring in his presentation of a better tomorrow. The regime cannot resist the people’s demands for long, he said.

Dr. ElBaradei was blessed with optimism. Every time things seemed dark, he beamed with hope and asserted that change was coming. One famous opposition journalist, known for his sarcasm, commented, “He must know something that we do not.” And it turned out that he obviously did.

ElBaradei had it right all along: we did not need a savior; we had to do this ourselves.

3

“Kullena Khaled Said”

ON JUNE 8, 2010, while browsing on Facebook, I saw a shocking image that a friend of mine had posted on my wall. The picture linked to the official Facebook account of Dr. Ayman Nour, the former presidential candidate who was a political activist. It was a horrifying photo showing the distorted face of a man in his twenties. There was a big pool of blood behind his head, which rested on a chunk of marble. His face was extremely disfigured and bloodied; his lower lip had been ripped in half, and his jaw was seemingly dislocated. His front teeth appeared to be missing, and it looked as if they had been beaten right out of his mouth. The image was so gruesome that I wondered if he had been wounded in war. But by accessing Dr. Nour’s page I learned that Khaled Mohamed Said had apparently been beaten to death on June 6 by two secret police officers in Alexandria.

My first reaction was denial. I could not believe that anyone could actually inflict such brutality on someone else. The victim was a twenty-eight-year-old from Alexandria. According to eyewitnesses, some dispute had erupted between him and the two officers, leading to their physical assault on him, which claimed the young man’s life.

I felt miserable, frustrated, and outraged. This was all the result of a political situation that rendered security forces loyal servants of an oppressive regime. Some of our law enforcement personnel had mutated into vicious monsters who were immune from punishment and prone to committing atrocities. They abandoned the Egyptian ethic of goodness that has pervaded our society for centuries.

My memory of that day is vivid. I was sitting in my small study in Dubai, unable to control the tears flowing from my eyes. My wife came in to see what was wrong. When I showed her Khaled Said’s picture, she was taken aback and asked me to stop looking at it. She left the room, and I continued to cry over the state of our nation and the widespread tyranny. For me, Khaled Said’s image offered a terrible symbol of Egypt’s condition.

I could not stand by passively in the face of such grave injustice. I decided to employ all my skills and experience to demand justice for Khaled Said and to help expose his story to vigorous public debate. It was time to lay bare the corrupt practices of the Ministry of Interior, our repressive regime’s evil right hand.

The logical first idea was to publish news of Khaled Said’s murder on Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei’s Facebook page, whose members exceeded 150,000 at that time, but I reasoned that doing so would exploit an event of national concern for political gain. I discovered that a page had been launched under the title “My Name Is Khaled Mohamed Said.” I browsed among the posts on that page. It was evident that the contributors were political activists. Their discourse was confrontational, beginning with the page’s headline: “Khaled’s murder will not go unpunished, you dogs of the regime.” From experience I knew that such language would not help in making the cause a mainstream one.

I decided to create another page and to use all my marketing experience in spreading it. Out of the many options I considered for the page’s name, “Kullena Khaled Said” — “We Are All Khaled Said” — was the best. It expressed my feelings perfectly. Khaled Said was a young man just like me, and what happened to him could have happened to me. All young Egyptians had long been oppressed, enjoying no rights in our own homeland. The page name was short and catchy, and it expressed the compassion that people immediately felt when they saw Khaled Said’s picture. I deliberately concealed my identity, and took on the role of anonymous administrator for the page.

The first thing I posted on the page was direct and blunt. It voiced the outrage and sadness that I felt.

Today they killed Khaled. If I don’t act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me.

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33 Comments

In two minutes’ time three hundred members had joined the page:

People, we became 300 in two minutes. We want to be 100,000. We must unite against our oppressor

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I wrote the first article on the page: “You People Deprived of Humanity, We Will Extract Justice for Khaled Said.” It was an emotional, spontaneous piece of writing. I vowed that I would not personally abandon the fight for Khaled until his attackers were punished. The response was instant, and within a single hour the number of members climbed to three thousand.

Egyptians, my justice is in your hands.

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39 Comments

I spoke on the page in the first person, posing as Khaled Said. What drove me, more than anything else, was the thought that I could speak for him, and if even a single victim of the regime could have the chance to defend himself, it would be a turning point. Speaking as Khaled gave me a liberty that I did not have on ElBaradei’s quasi-official page. It also had greater impact on the page’s members. It was as though Khaled Said was speaking from his grave.

Even though I was proficient at classical Arabic (al-fusHa) from my school years in Saudi Arabia, I chose to write my posts on “Kullena Khaled Said” in the colloquial Egyptian dialect that is closer to the hearts of young Egyptians. For the generation born in the eighties and nineties, classical Arabic is a language read in the newspapers or heard during news reports on television and comes across as quite formal. By using colloquial Egyptian, I aimed to overcome any barriers between supporters of the cause and myself. I also deliberately avoided expressions that were not commonly used by the average Egyptian or that were regularly used by activists, like nizaam, the Arabic word for “regime.” I was keen to convey to page members the sense that I was one of them, that I was not different in any way. Using the pronoun I was critical to establishing the fact that the page was not managed by an organization, political party, or movement of any kind. On the contrary, the writer was an ordinary Egyptian devastated by the brutality inflicted on Khaled Said and motivated to seek justice. This informality contributed to the page’s popularity and people’s acceptance of its posts.

The number of responses, and the incredible speed with which they came, indicated that administering “Kullena Khaled Said” was going to take a lot more time and effort than administering the ElBaradei page. I definitely needed help, and my experience thus far with AbdelRahman Mansour made him the perfect choice. I added him as the page’s second admin. During the first few weeks AbdelRahman was quite busy with school and other commitments, but he tried his best to help whenever needed.

I closely monitored news on the case and found the prosecutor’s report that acquitted the police force. I wrote:

The prosecution issued a preliminary report that the cause of death was drug overdose. Not only have you murdered me, but you also want to stain my reputation? God will reveal the truth and repay your lack of conscience.

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112 Comments

Mostafa al-Nagar, ElBaradei’s campaign manager at the time, had written a moving article on his personal page entitled “We Are the Murderers of Khaled Said” after he visited Alexandria to verify the story. I published the article on my page without mentioning the writer’s name. I did not want people to make the link between al-Nagar and the page and eventually identify the anonymous administrator.