Issandr El Amrani's Blog, page 14

Go see "Rags and Tatters" (if you're in Cairo)

Ahmad Abdalla’s third feature film, “Rags and Tatters,” follows an unnamed convict who escapes from prison sometime during the uprising against Hosni Mubarak -- or rather is allowed to escape from prison: Some jails were allegedly opened at that time by the Ministry of Interior itself, in an attempt to foment chaos. 

The man, played by Asser Yassin, is a sympathetic everyman, with dark and feeling eyes. He needs to be someone we like to look at, because his quiet, registering face is the focus of the film. As if tired of all the talk of the last two and half years -- of all the words that have been worn thin -- Abdalla has written a film with almost no dialogue. Actors’ conversations are often inaudible, no higher then a mumble. What exchanges we do hear are the most basic everyday stuff: “Cup of tea,” “God bless you.” When a young would-be revolutionary harangues his friends in the neighborhood about the need to go to Tahrir, a nearby motorcycle engine drowns out his words. The only music are some beautiful Sufi songs: unaccompanied male voices singing of holy love and yearning. 

The movie is also unusual for what it shows and what it doesn’t show. It never portrays the protests in Tahrir. Instead, it is set in the streets and homes of Cairo’s poor neighborhoods. It does something radical simply by focusing closely on these environments of extreme deprivation, on their crumbling staircases and bare rooms, broken windows and peeling paint. A man’s whole life here fits in a duffle bag: a few old ID cards, some tools, a windbreaker. 

Abdalla’s “Heliopolis” was a study of stasis, a day in the life of characters who go nowhere: a police conscript stranded in his guard post; and engaged couple stuck in traffic; a young man who dreams idly of emigrating. His follow-up, “Microphone,” which focused on the underground music scene in Alexandria, was seemingly quite different, full of kinetic energy. But all the eager young voices in the film still faced the stagnation and repression of Mubarak’s Egypt, and couldn't figure out how to make themselves heard. 

This movie is Abdalla’s darkest and most powerful. It shares with his previous work a penchant for naturalistic acting; an under-stated social and political engagement; and an ambitious, creatively uncompromising vision. 

This movie is like an inoculation against official propaganda and romanticization of the January 25 uprising. In the Q&A after the film Abdalla corrected someone who introduced “Rags and Tatters” as a “revolutionary” film.  “This film isn’t about the revolution,” he said. “It’s about the conditions we lived under, and still live under.” It will only be showing in Cairo for one week, starting today.

Podcast #44: Just how bad is it exactly?

On this podcast, journalists Ursula Lindsey and Ashraf Khalil speak to Human Rights Watch's Sarah Leah Whitson about the greatest threats to human rights across the region, and about how to defend human rights in the midst of Egypt's "war on terrorism" and its crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood.  

Show notes: Obama administration's deliberations on intervening in SyriaSyrian refugees detained and coerced in Egypt The report on deaths of protesters that Morsi commissioned and buried

Mohamed Mahmoud anniversary

One minute of video -- courtesy Mosireen -- sums it all up: the lame attempt to give the anniversary of clashes between protesters and police a disingenuous official veneer, and the inevitable reaction. 

The banner read: Brothers, Military and Felool Not Allowed

Qatar's ambitions and American universities

I just published an investigation into American universities in Qatar in the Chronicle of Higher Education. The piece is behind a subscription wall, but here is the intro: 

Sixty years ago, Doha was little more than a trading post along a barren coast. Today the capital of Qatar is a giant construction site, its building frenzy a testament to the tiny Persian Gulf emirate's outsized ambitions and resources.

Under the emir, Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa al-Thani—and now his son Tamim, who took over in June—Qatar has become a regional power broker and a deep-pocketed patron of culture, science, and education. Doha's curving seaside promenade boasts an Islamic-art museum designed by I.M. Pei. The city is building a new airport, an elevated train line, and air-conditioned stadiums to play host to the 2022 World Cup in the simmering summer heat.

As another part of its bid to make Qatar a global player, the al-Thani family has recruited an important ally: American higher education. On 2,500 acres on the edge of the desert here, the ruling family has built Education City, a collection of modern buildings, each home to a branch of a well-known university, including Carnegie Mellon, Georgetown, and Northwestern. Those institutions are crucial to the emirate's goal of becoming "a modern society with a world-class education system at its heart," writes Sheikh Abdulla bin Ali al-Thani, who directs several of the higher-education ventures, in an email.

Yet some observers wonder if Education City, like many other attention-grabbing ventures here, is intended to do little more than bolster Qatar's international "brand." While professors say they are free to discuss sensitive topics in the classroom, outside the luxurious walls of the campus, speech is censored and political activities largely banned. Sometimes overzealous customs agents hold up shipments of books to the campus. Security authorities have even detained a foreign researcher who asked discomfiting questions.

Allen Fromherz, a historian who taught at Qatar University, which is not part of Education City, believes that the emirate's welcoming of foreign universities is intended to introduce only limited change. In his bookQatar: A Modern History, he says the emirate cultivates an image of modernity and openness but that Qatari society is still largely tribal, with power concentrated in the hands of a very few.

"How do you transform into a nation without also transforming the traditional, monarchical, patriarchal system?" he asks.

As the small but natural-gas-rich country emerges onto the world's stage, this and other questions are unavoidable: Are the American universities actors in the country's future or merely props? Can they teach students to think critically about the contradictions and changes in Qatar while under the patronage of its ruling family?

The Life and Death of Juliano Mer-Khamis: A Death in Jenin

Juliano was the founder of the Freedom Theatre. He was an Israeli citizen, the son of a Jewish mother and therefore a Jew in the eyes of the Jewish state. But his father was a Palestinian from Nazareth, and Juliano was a passionate believer in the Palestinian cause. He would often say he was ‘100 per cent Palestinian and 100 per cent Jewish’, but in Israel he was seldom allowed to forget he was the son of an Arab, and in Jenin he was seen as an Israeli, a Jew, no matter how much he did for the camp. Among the artists and intellectuals of Ramallah, however, he was admired for having left Israel to work in one of the toughest parts of the West Bank, and was accepted as an ally. Since its founding in 2006, the Freedom Theatre had been under constant fire: local conservatives saw it as a corrupting influence, even a Zionist conspiracy; the Palestinian Authority resented what Juliano said about its ‘co-operation’ with Israel; and Israel saw him as a troublemaker, if not a traitor. 

In a must-read piece in the London Review of Books, Adam Shatz portrays a complicated, compelling man and artist, and delves into the mystery of his murder. 

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Ranking Arab Women

Last week, Thomson-Reuters put out an annual poll ranking women's rights in various Middle Eastern countries. The surprise this year: Egypt was ranked the worst country in the region (followed by Iraq and Saudia Arabia) and the Comoros Islands were ranked the best (followed by Oman and Kuwait).  

The methodology of this poll is very odd. It consists in asking anonymous gender experts from the region to "respond to statements and rate the importance of factors affecting women's rights across the six categories." (The categories are: violence against women, reproductive rights, treatment of women within the family, their integration into society and attitudes towards a woman’s role in politics and the economy.) The experts' responses "were converted into scores, which were averaged to create a ranking." So the poll isn't based on any analysis of data or legislation; it measures how 336 unidentified gender experts feel about women's rights. In which case, I'm not surprised Egypt came out on top this year: it's a reflection of the extreme disappointment and indignation over women's exclusion from the political process, their lack of security, their targeting for terrible sexual violence in the middle of street protests. It also probably reflects the preoccupation of women-right's advocates over the rise of Islamist political groups that clearly did not believe in gender equality. 

What facts the report then quotes to contextualize or bolster its ranking are often wrong. Women in Tunisia were shocked to be told, incorrectly, that poligamy is legal and abortion is prohibited in their country (it's the exact opposite). With regards to Egypt, the report mentions "a rollback of legal rights since the 2011 revolution." Which rights would those be? Islamists may have wanted to revoke khula' divorce or lower the age of marriage, but they fact is they didn't. The only thing I am aware of is the language of the Islamist constitution, which enjoined the state to help women balance between work and their family obligations (a balance men were not tasked with finding). 

Last week in Egypt in TV

A new occasional feature from our contributor Nour Youssef, who watches a lot of TV.

Earlier this week on Al-Nahar TV, political activist Ahmed Harara, who lost his vision to police rubber bullets in protests, became perhaps the first non-Islamist to openly attack Gen. Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and the military.

After making Mahmoud Saad read the names and ages of all those who died in the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes, he briefly explained to Saad why El-Sisi's army is no different from Tantawi’s. First, el-Sisi was a member of the hated Field Marshal Tantawi’s Supreme Council of the Armed Forces that injured and killed protesters -- he justified the virginity tests and had Tantawi seated next to him in the Oct. 6 celebration last month.

Calmly, Harara moved on to note the militarization of the state, mentioning the general secretary of the cabinet who is an army general and the 17 new governors as an example. Even the police general, Samy Sedhom -- the man who called in on Al-hayah TV to clarify that the police forces in Mohamed Mahmoud only had plastic shields to injure the outlaws posing as activists, and conveniently lost phone reception when asked to explain the number of eye injuries that occurred -- is now the deputy governor of Sharqiya. (It is worth noting that his retirement age was reportedly  extended and he was promoted to head the Supreme Council of the Police under Morsi.)

“[The military and the police] who still arrest and torture people till now...they are going to make the memorial service for the people they killed?” Harara asked. “Do they want to provoke us so we would go down to the streets for them to kill us?”

By far, the most interesting bit of the interview was when Harara asked a silent Saad how drugs and weapons are smuggled into Egypt when the strong army is standing there supposedly protecting them. Saad then asked him what he thought of the war in Sinai, to which he said he owes the army nothing, since it is their job to fight terrorism, and that in order to evaluate their performance there Saad should go to Sinai and asks the people there.

(Harara did say that the MB was a terrorist group and that 30 million took to the streets on June 30. I will forgive the latter because of his eye condition, but we seriously need to agree on a definition of the word terrorist.)

On el-Mehwar, talkshow host Reham al-Sahl told us that when people denounce religion and ask for their rights in the constitution, we must stop and talk about it.

By talk, she meant get an atheist and demand to know why he is an atheist -- Could it be because he has psychological problems? Financial problems? Was he given bad interpretations of the Quran? Was it the bad MB sheikhs? Where are his parents? It's the psychological problems, just admit it. 

Ismail Mohamed, the atheist, came on the show to explain what he wants from the constitutional committee, which is to respect minority rights and decriminalize talking about atheism outside one's home. Instead, he got an interviewer who said astaghfir allah (i.e I seek forgiveness from Allah) out loud every single time he said something contradictory to Islam because she doesn't have an inner voice, apparently. 

In addition to the host's scorn, Mohamed received angry phone calls from viewers reminding him that it is illegal for him to talk about atheism and "cause strife" in society. An Al Azhar theologian pointed out that talking about not being a Muslim implies that something is not right in Islam and t amounts to defaming religion -- a crime according to article 98 of the penal code.

There was one call from his own mother who blamed the combutar for his condition and said his siblings were too upset to look at the TV right now.

At one point, el-Sahly asked him why he was being nice to his mother at all since bir al-walidyan (kindness to parents) is a Muslim concept entirely alien to 5.4 billion non-Muslim humans on the planet. She later called a psychiatrist to tell him about this case of a young man who doesn't believe in God and when asked why, says he is free to believe whatever he wants.

Then a viewer called to praise the TV host for her intelligence in detecting the implicit link between the atheist and the Muslim Brotherhood, who obviously recruited him to become living evidence of the secularization of the country and prove that the ouster of Morsi and the crackdown on his supporters is, indeed, a war on Islam. That was just one of the many people who accused Mohammed of being a foreign cell, or at least part of one. When he apologized to his friends for being unable to speak and present their point of view, el-Sahly asked if they were inside or outside of Egypt. Where all the Jews are.

Alternating between glancing sideways and silence, the theologian, Dr. Badr Zaki, spoke to announce the refutation of the theory of evolution by, you know, "all of the people who work in the sciences of embryology and humanities," with the confidence of one who thinks no one will google what he says.

(Just for the record, evolution is mentioned, just like Mohamed pointed out, in schools here, but in stride. Universities are not exactly crawling with the Dawkinses and Gervaises of Egypt. Professors almost always introduce the subject as an obsolete, wrong theory, misrepresent it and then conclude with things like: Why are monkeys still around if we came from them?)

Another dead atheist-theory, Dr. Zaki enlightened us, is psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud, who like Charles Darwin was an ex-Jew, as is everyone who makes up such theories.

In the end, el-Sahly essentially kicked Mohamed off her show (he said he was going to withdraw from the discussion, or their idea of it, but wanted to say a last word and she refused) and was criticized by a judge on the phone for irresponsibly spreading his ideas by giving him precious airtime.

"We are not spreading his (way of) thought. We reject his (way of) thought. And I think this was obvious from the beginning of the episode," she defended herself. And rightly so.

The reaction that sums it up best for me was my neighbor's: "The kid (Mohamed) said there is a book that says God is dead! May God burn his house the way he burned his mother's heart. Did you hear her cry?" (She didn't.) "Reham was good though. She's got a pretty face" (She doesn't.)

Meantime in sports, el-Ahly’s football star, Mohamed Abu Terka, and his teammate, Ahmed Abdel-Zaher, are still under attack. The former for failing to accept his medal from the current sports minister, which people took as a rejection of the government the minister is part of, and the latter for flashing the Raba’a sign in a match. Abdel-Zaher said he only did in solidarity with the martyrs and not as a political statement, but he got suspended for fourth months (and may be traded away) nonetheless. Much like Kung Fu Mohamed Ramadan who was banned from playing after wearing a t-shirt with the Raba’a sign on it.  Abu Treka, on the other hand,  was reportedly fined 50 thousand pounds although the exact reason why he wasn't on stage is unknown. Ibrahim el-Manisy, editor of al-Ahly Magazine, says he was not on stage because he went back to the locker room to get a shirt that had the number 72  to honor the Port Said martyrs.  

It is worth noting that sports clubs don't have actual written laws regulating political statements or promotion during games (because it never happened before) and that these punishments are arbitrary, according to the minister of sports.

However, to avoid future confusion, the Daqahlia board of referees suggested never giving 4 minutes over-time in a soccer match because then they would have to do the four-finger sign and it might be mistaken for condemnation of a massacre. Instead, referees can just give 3, 5 or any other less potentially controversial number of minutes. If it is absolutely necessary to give 4 minutes, it is  presumably acceptable to make two victory signs -- or a three-finger sign with one hand and a one-finger with the other (provided it is not a middle finger, lest that should be misconstrued as an objection to the new sign rule) -- and the players could just do the math. And in the lucky event that players are within earshot, a referee could always just flash a five-finger sign and shout "Subtract one."

No laughing matter

My latest for the NYTimes' Latitude blog is about the ongoing suspension of Bassem Youssef's hit satirical show El Barnameg ("The Show"). 

The first episode of the new season (in Arabic).

When the Egyptian comedian Bassem Youssef came back on the air late last month, everyone wondered whether he would have the courage to mock the army and its leader, Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, as he once did the Islamists and former President Mohamed Morsi — and whether he’d get away with it.

Youssef’s satirical news show, “Al Bernameg” (“The Show”), was off during Egypt’s bloody, turbulent summer. Youssef’s return performance, on Oct. 25, poked fun at the over-the-top jingoism that has followed the army’s ouster of Morsi. It featured a skit in which a baker selling Sisi-themed pastries pressures the presenter into buying more than he wants (“You don’t like Sisi or what?”). In another skit, Egypt, portrayed as a silly housewife, calls in to a TV show to talk about the end of her disastrous marriage to an Islamist and her new crush on a military officer.

That was it for Youssef’s show: It was suspended. On top of that, the public prosecutor announced that he was investigating 30 different complaints filed against the comedian for insulting the army.

You can read the rest here. 

Egyptian constitutions galore

Courtesy of the International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance (IDEA), a handy chart of Egypt's recent experiments with constitutions, including a partial draft of the current work-in-progress. Thanks to Zaid al-Ali for compiling.

 



English



Arabic



Commentary





Draft Constitution by the 50 member committee (C50)

 10
November 2013



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The 50 member committee (C50)'s rules of procedure
 
12
September 2013



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The presidential decree establishing a 50 member
committee (C50) to prepare a final version of the draft constitution
  
1
September 2013



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The proposed changes to the 2012 Constitution by the
10 member expert committee (C10)
  
20 August 2013



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The Constitutional Declaration suspending the 2012
constitution and establishing a new road map for the country
 
8 July
2013



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The 2012 Constitution 

  25 December 2012



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The March 2011 Constitutional Declaration
  
30
March 2011



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Egypt's ruthless logic

Political scientist Emad Shahin, quoted in a good Reuters piece on the narrowing room for moderates in Egypt:

"If you're against the coup, then you're with the Brotherhood. If you're with the Brotherhood, then you're a terrorist. And if you are for democracy, then you are a fifth columnist. That is how it's calculated."

Pretty spot on.

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