Photo Gallery: Five Decades in Egypt
Egypt's Blight A Correspondent Reminisces on 56 Years in Cairo
Volkhard Windfuhr, 74, has been living in Cairo since 1955. He joined SPIEGEL as its Middle East correspondent in 1974. Since then, he has reported on the major crises in the region and met and interviewed nearly all Arab leaders, including the three Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. In an essay for SPIEGEL, he describes the changes that have taken shape in Egypt in the decades he has spent in the country.
I am among the oldest in the crowd to cross the Nile Bridge and enter Tahrir Square this Wednesday morning. I have lived in Cairo longer than nearly everyone else who strolls along peacefully beside me: women, men, young people, old people, educated and less educated, workers, preachers and engineers. We talk about this and that. I know their language. I know their jokes. It is also my language, and they are my jokes, too.
But what befell us three hours later, seemingly out of nowhere, shattered my image of this country in which I have lived for the past 56 years. This was not the country I know and love.
"Al-Maut lil-Kilab!" shouted two young men who suddenly appeared in front of the Sudan Air offices on Talat Harb Street, with their fists flying: "Death to the dogs!" One wielded a butcher knife, the other started beating up a demonstrator. "Down with the regime" it said on the cardboard sign that he tore from the man's hands. At first, I didn't understand what was happening. What did these people want? Where did this aggression come from?
But then people started to scream, horses and camels galloped across the square, and it slowly dawned on me: This was a gang of thugs sent to break up a peaceful demonstration. They tore off women's blouses and headscarves, knocked over people in wheelchairs, and even kicked children aside.
I fled to an archway and took a closer look at them: They were, without a doubt, men who belonged to the regime -- some had even sewn onto their jackets the emblem of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). I know that this government doesn't tread lightly when it breaks up demonstrations -- but having such a mob rush a crowd like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? I have never experienced anything like it. An older man, a law professor who had been hit on the back of his head, fled with me into a small side street and said: "I don't understand my people anymore." They were my thoughts precisely.
I feel ashamed of this country, which I see as my second homeland. How could the government allow something like this to happen? How does the tank commander feel who is not allowed to prevent the massacre? What higher standard allows soldiers to look away who only one day before were hailed as the people's protectors?
A Uniquely Disarming Open-Heartedness
I have experienced tumultuous crowds in Egypt before -- also in Palestine, Lebanon, Sudan, Iraq, Algeria, Tunisia and Iran. But the emotions of my fellow Egyptians were always different: softer, less aggressive. When the Iraqis overthrew their monarchy in 1958, they killed their 23-year-old king and dragged his body through the streets of Baghdad. In 1952, the Egyptians sent off their last ruler, King Farouk I, from the port of Alexandria with gun salutes and military honors. And when the man detested by the putsch officers died in exile in Italy, al-Ahram, Cairo's largest daily newspaper, appeared with mourning borders around the front page. Syrian and Iraqi friends teased me as a "friend of the Egyptian wimps." I took that as a compliment. Perhaps it is the Egyptians' uniquely disarming open-heartedness that has made it so easy to settle down here.
"Family and religion are what the Egyptians value most of all," Mubarak's predecessor Sadat once said. He could have put at the top of the list their sense of community, which has shaped the rhythm of life here since the age of the pharaohs and, based on a neighborly division of labor, allowed them to refine their irrigation systems.
Feb. 2, 2011 represents a decisive and rupturous departure from this tradition. It contradicts everything that I have experienced in this country to date. I remember the helpless rage of the Egyptians in late October 1956. I was riding on a tram from my neighborhood in eastern Cairo to visit a schoolmate on Zamalek, the big Island on the Nile, where large numbers of foreigners had always lived and had their schools -- including the German school that I attended back then. It was dark, and the streetcar halted at a stop in front of the Lutheran Church on Gala Street, flanked by the publishing houses of the two large daily newspapers, al-Ahram and al-Achbar. Then the tram started to move again, but shuddered to such a lurching stop again that I fell to the floor.
Then I saw it: Red, blue, green and yellow flares burst in the sky. I screamed, but the attendant had a smile on his face as he pulled me back down to my seat. "Alaab," he said, "fireworks". A strong blast of air, glaring flashes of light and earsplitting detonations ensued. The British Royal Air Force had launched air strikes on Cairo, marking the beginning of the Suez crisis.
Polite and Always Ready to Lend a Hand
During the Suez War, the Egyptians remained -- just as I was also to experience them later time and again -- polite and always ready to lend a hand. And although there was a great deal of anger toward the British and the French, foreigners were left alone.
When US President Dwight D. Eisenhower ended the war, the British and the French withdrew in humiliation and the founder of the state of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, had to retreat from the Sinai, which his forces had overrun right up to the Suez Canal. It was the first time that the Americans intervened in the Middle East. A new era had begun.
The Americans are by no means as hated as they are often portrayed to be. Not even Nasser wanted to break with Washington. "They don't understand that we have thrown out the British and taken the Suez Canal away from them," he said. "They don't understand that we want to be independent and refuse to be told what to do again by a foreign power."
'Stay with Us, You Are One of Us'
When I worked for Radio Cairo in the 1960s and was asked to act as an interpreter for a conversation between Nasser and East German leader Walter Ulbricht, the Egyptian president firmly gripped my shoulder and said: "Make this precisely clear to your listeners -- that's something people simply have to understand." The eldest of Nasser's two daughters even studied at the American University in Cairo, in the midst of the Cold War.
Nasser didn't woo the people -- he had already won their hearts. Despite the undeniable brutality of the dictatorship that he imposed, and the darkness of his torture chambers, he conveyed an undisputed sense of self-esteem to the barefoot masses. "Irfaa rasak, ja achi," -- "Lift your head, brother!" is how he began his speeches.
Nothing could dent his charisma, not even the most brazen lies told by his administration -- nor the devastating defeat in the Six-Day War. When I left my apartment at 9 a.m. on June 5, 1967, and stepped onto the street, marching music and a special news report droned from the loudspeakers that were installed everywhere in the city at the time. "The Zionist enemy attacked Egypt early today. But we are prevailing. We have already shot down 186 Israeli aircraft." We believed what was said that morning, even I did.
But towards noon we knew that Israel had destroyed all of Egypt's airbases, overrun the Sinai, taken tens of thousands of soldiers prisoner, and was marching toward the Suez Canal. It was the end. Egypt wept. Four days of mourning and dismay.
On June 10, a broken Nasser addressed his people. "I assume full responsibility and shall resign." Everyone ran into the streets, people hugged each other, then they chanted: "Maalisch," "It doesn't matter" -- I can't find the right words to accurately translate this sentiment here -- "Stay with us, you are one of us."
That was the big-heartedness of the Egyptians. That was Nasser. When he died three years later, some people were so distraught that they took their own lives.
Peace with Israel
His successor Sadat was loyal. For years, he had his own presidential portrait hanging next to an oversized picture of Nasser. Sadat didn't come into his own until 1973, when, despite the heavy casualties that this entailed, he launched a successful attack across the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. Sadat had plans for this victory. Negotiating from a position of strength -- he wanted to broker peace with Israel. And he was successful. I accompanied him on his trip to Jerusalem and reported on his speech to the Knesset.
Sadat was a visionary, a talented speaker who could win people over. And when he finally turned his back on Nasser's failed pan-Arabism, when he made Nasser's "United Arab Republic" into the state of "Egypt" once again, the Egyptians cried. These were tears of pride. With this move, he struck a fundamental chord with his people: We are the descendents of mankind's oldest culture.
Initially, the peace accord with Israel was very popular. Although the stern Syrians and the defiant Iraqis threw Egypt out of the Arab League, the Egyptians believed that peace had now been brought to the Middle East. Even the Palestinians believed that at the time. But the peace process came to a standstill. Sadat's good friend Menachem Begin annexed Arab East Jerusalem -- and humiliated the "hero of the war and the peace," as the Egyptian leader was known.
Bread Riots and Political Islam
That wasn't, however, what alienated Sadat from the Egyptians. It was the fact that he lost touch with his people. It was his thoughtless privatization of over 6,000 state-owned enterprises, a move which benefited the fat upper crust of society while the poor went hungry and the first bread riots erupted in 1977. And it was political Islam, which he, like most US allies at the time, gave free rein to in a bid to counter the communist menace.
In the last interview of his life, he vehemently denied that he was under threat. "No, the misguided youth know that I am their father. Sons don't kill their fathers," he said four days before he was assassinated. On Oct. 6, 1981, during a parade to celebrate the eighth anniversary of his victory in the Yom Kippur War, six men left the military procession, approached the stands, and shot down Sadat. His vice president, who threw himself on the ground to avoid the hail of bullets, survived: Hosni Mubarak.
A Man Who Has Failed to Speak to the Hearts
The third president of modern Egypt had neither Nasser's charisma nor Sadat's visionary strength. I have interviewed him on a number of occasions, and no matter how disappointed I am with him today, I cannot help but give him credit for his accomplishments. Mubarak stabilized the peace that was brokered by Sadat -- in fact, he kept his predecessor's word with a degree of reliability that is uncommon in the Middle East. He expanded tourism to make it the largest source of income, and he improved the infrastructure. I had to wait 12 years before I received my first telephone connection in the late 1960s; it took four days for my first cell phone to be activated in 1996.
But in his 30 years in office, Mubarak hasn't managed a single time to speak to the hearts of his people. He lacks this ability. He is not a national hero. When he nevertheless tries to adopt this posture, as he did during his speech last Tuesday, it seems phony and rehearsed. The air chief marshall has always remained an officer -- a commander who is concerned with discipline, calm and stability -- which eventually led to stagnation. Egypt was always the most vibrant of the Arab countries, but a blight has descended on this state during Mubarak's 30 years of rule.
Mubarak no longer saw the suffering and the lack of freedom that spread under his rule. When I once called him "pharaoh" after an interview at his farm on the Mediterranean coast, west of Alexandria, he was annoyed. "What do you mean by that?" I reassured him: "The pharaohs were the backbone of Egyptian culture. Even your predecessor Nasser allowed himself to be portrayed as a pharaoh." This prompted only a brief smile.
Nasser gave us Nasserism; Sadat left behind an agreement that brought his people peace and earned him the Nobel Peace Prize -- but Mubarak has failed magnificently. It is bitter, also for me, that he will depart with a question that has no answer: Why doesn't he step down in a manner that is worthy of Egypt?
