Karl reMarks Summarizes the Arab Spring

A short, pre-emptive history of the Arab Spring

Karl Sharro ("Karl reMarks") offers us "A short, pre-emptive history of the Arab Spring."

A short, pre-emptive history of the Arab SpringKar

He explains:

As anyone who has ever read one knows, history books can be very tedious. They are also full of speculation and guesswork because they’re normally written many years after the fact. Having lived through the ‘Arab Spring’, or the Arab Spring as it is sometimes known, I decided to spare future generations the ordeal of figuring out what precisely happened between 2011 and 2017, which is when the Arab Spring, or the ‘Arab Spring’ officially ended. To that end, I wrote this short, pre-emptive history that will render all future speculation about the subject entirely useless and leave future generations with more time on their hands to figure out what the point of Stonehenge was.

 Read the whole thing.

Nostalgia to Start the Week: King Farouq Marries Queen Farida, 1938

I used to end the week with a nostalgia post; let's start this week with one: a newsreel of King Farouq's marriage to Safinaz Zulfiqar, renamed Queen Farida in 1938. (Farouq's father, King Fuad I, liked his own initial so much he gave all his children names beginning with "F"; Farouq not only did the same with his four children but even renamed his first wife. His second wife would keep her birth name of Nariman, however.) Farida bore Farouq three daughters; he divorced her in 1948 and married Nariman Sadek in 1951. She bore his son and heir, Ahmad Fuad, to whom Farouq abdicated at the time of the 1952 revolution. The infant Fuad II was technically the last King of Egypt until the monarchy was abolished in 1953.

The march music providing the soundtrack of this video is the Royalist National Anthem of the era, in use from 1936 until about 1960 (with changed words after 1952), and one of at least four, perhaps more, tunes that have served as Egypt's national anthem. This one has a bit of notoriety since the large number of British troops in Egypt during World War II heard it played at the end of cinema presentations and put their own words to it. words unflattering to Egyptians, to Farida and Farouq, and also grossly obscene, sexist, racist, imperialist, and offensive in other ways, not to mention carrying lèse-majesté to new heights. (Typical soldier stuff in other words.)  I won't mar the wedding festivities below by quoting them here (that's what Google is for: search for "The Ballad of King Farouk and Queen Farida," or similar titles). And don't say I didn't give you fair warning how many ways it's offensive. Perhaps a post for another time.

Embedded from the Misr al-An wa Zaman ("Egypt today and in the past") nostalgia Facebook site. Not sure if the link will work if you don't have a Facebook account, but let's give it a try.

Post by ‎مصر الان وزمان/ اهل مصر زمان اول صفحه للصور النادره ع الفيس بوك‎.

Algerian Power Struggle: "Toufik" said to Prefer Firing to Retirement

The confrontation between Algeria's President and its most powerful intelligence official (see yesterday's post) continues: this report claims sources close to General Mohamrd Mediene (known by his revolutionary nom de guerre as "Toufik"), would prefer to be fired to being retired or resigning. Even the picture with the story is debatable since, as I noted yesterday, there are no verified photos of the man, so if you don't even know what he looks like, how can you verify the source? What's clear is the escalation continues apace.

Let the Games Begin: But Remember Those Who Were There First

Kizbech Tuguzhoko

Kizbech Tuguzhoko (also Tuguzhoko Kizbech), the fellow at left, may prove to be a specter haunting the Sochi Olympics. A member of the Shapsug tribe of the Circassian or Adyghe people ("Circassian" also applies to speakers of the related Kabardian language), he led the resistance to Russian expansion into Circassia until his death in 1840. A generation later, the conquest was complete, and in 1864 the Russian state began the systematic expulsion of most of the Circassian population. That was in 1864, 150 years before the Olympics will open in Sochi, the Russian town that arose in the old Shapsug territory. Most Circassians settled in the Ottoman Empire; many Shapsugs settled in Amman, Jordan, which has more Circassians today than Sochi does. Perhaps 1.5 million people were relocated from various parts of the Caucasus when Russia conquered their territories. In Turkey, Jordan, and other former Ottoman lands, some members of the Circassian diaspora have protested Sochi as an Olympic venue, as I've noted previously. But Sochi has also led to a revived consciousness of Circassian identity elsewhere, as in this article on Circassians in Turkey.

Now, no one really expects the Russians to promote the Sochi Games as "The Sesquicentennial of Circassian Ethnic Cleansing." But I also will be surprised if today's opening ceremonies even show any hint of those who were pushed out 150 years ago. Some in the Circassian diaspora have even claimed that the Olympic site is built over the site of a mass grave from the Russo-Circassian War, but I do not know if that is the case. What you're unlikely to see at the opening is a lot of Circassians.

P.N. Grunitzky, The Mountaineers Leave the Aul*

The Adyghe can be traced back as a continuous culture more or less to the Neolithic, but after a 100 Years War from the 1760s to the 1860s, those left alive were transferred by the victorious Tsarist Russian regime to the Ottoman Empire, which had at least a tenuous theoretical sovereignty over the region. (Though as Russia has learned in nearby Chechnya and Dagestan, mountaineers in the Caucasus are hard to control effectively.) (* Picture note: An aul was a fortified village.)

There is still an Adyghia Republic within the Russian Federation, but it does not include Sochi. There are still many Circassians in Russia, but not on the Black Sea Coast where Sochi stands. The size of the diaspora is hard to estimate, due to intermarriage and the fact that the Arabic and Turkish words Tcherkess, variously spelled, is sometimes used to refer to Chechens and other Caucasians speaking unrelated languages.

Unsurprisingly, the biggest population is in Turkey, the nearest part of the Ottoman realm to Old Circassia; in the Arab Levant, Jordan has the biggest population by far, but there are significant populations in Lebanon, Israel, Syria, and to a lesser extent Iraq, the Arabian Peninsula, and even Egypt. One still meets the occasional red-haired and blue-eyed Turk or Arab who is stereotypically Circassian, but most aren't that distinguishable from their neighbors. But they remember their past.

This CBC article looks at the way indigenous culture was handled t the 2010 Vancouver games and quotes:

Canadian scholar John Colarusso argues that Russia should take a similar approach to the Vancouver Olympics in its opening ceremony – prominently embracing and showcasing indigenous culture.

The 2010 Vancouver Games marked the first time in the Olympics history that indigenous people were recognized as official partners. Four First Nations bands also played prominent roles in the opening ceremony.

Well, yes, but British Columbia's history of treatment of its indigenous people, whom it now calls First Nations, is very different from that of Russia in the Caucasus, or for that matter a certain neighbor of Canada's to the south. (Hint: where did Sitting Bull go after the Custer battle? Canada, of course, which took him in.). It would be wonderful if Sochi emulated Vancouver. And if Vladimir Putin rode at the head of the opening parade on a unicorn. I don't expect we'll see either.

Next fantasy? We can, however, remember that Sochi was built on land which until just 150 years ago (again let me emphasize the 150th anniversary is THIS YEAR, which particularly offends Circassians).

Old Circassia around 1740: (this and all other pictures in this post are from Wikimedia Commons.)

Bouteflika-"Toufik" Dispute Intensifies in Algeria

The increasingly open feud between Algerian President Bouteflika and the longtime head of the DRS Military Intelligence Service Gen. Mohamed Mediene (known as "Toufik") seems to be heating up and perhaps heading for  showdown. After FLN Party Secretary-General Amar Saadani recently said that Mediene had failed in multiple crises and should step down, the General's defenders  have been hitting back. One wing of the FLN Party now says it will no longer recognize Saadani, and parts of the press have been widely critical of Saadani's comments.

But nobody believes that Saadani was speaking for himself only; sine late last year, Bouteflika has sought to reduce he influence of the DRS, which is a key component of what Algerians refer to as le Pouvoir and Westerners often call "the Generals." "Toufik" is widely believed to oppose Boiuteflika's running for a fourth term, and the DRS has gone after some Bouteflika allies for alleged corruption; since last year there have been reports that Bouteflika has reshuffled the intelligence community to reduce the power of the DRS, which Mediene has headed since its founding in 1990 (and headed its predecessor before that)..

Appropriately for a figure who works in the shadows, even the exact looks of the General are disputed (link is in French) and many published photos are disputable at best.

Now there is growing speculation in the French media that Bouteflika may intend to retire not only "Toufik" but many other senior DRS officials (link in French); like the President the General is in his 70s and a law permits the President to retire officers over age 66 with 42 years of service; Mediene has been in the military since independence. Whether Bouteflika can succeed if he tries is not so clear; the fact that Mediene, or those he controls and influences, are fighting back does seem clear, though. Presumably the move would come soon, as Bouteflika must declare by early March if he is in fact running in the April Presidential elections. At least one report says the decision has already been made (link in French).

Turkish Parliament Passes Controversial Internet Law

Turkey's Parliament has passed a controversial bill that includes new controls over the Internet, despite criticism from Turkish journalists, the political opposition, and the European Union. It would give the country's telecommunications agency the power to block access to specific Internet content within four hours, with no court order required.

Critics claim that the bill is in response to revelations published on social media pointing to government corruption, and that the intention is to block further revelations.

OK, Who Saw This Coming? Sisi Reportedly Says He Will Run.

Well, if this surprises you you haven't been paying attention: Sisi reportedly tells Kuwait's Al-Siyasa that he will run for President.

Ahram Online is quoting it, and it's not clear why he'd tell the Kuwaitis first (well, maybe it is on reflection), but even if it's still not official, no surprises here.

[UPDATE: The Army is denying it's official. Sort of, anyway.]

Sheikh Khalifa's Health

Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed, President of the UAE and Ruler of Abu Dhabi, is recovering well from his January 24 stroke, according to Crown Prince Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed,, who yesterday described the Ruler's health as "stable and reassuring."

It had previously been announced that Sheikh Khalifa underwent surgery immediately after his stroke last month.

Just When You Feared Egyptian Democracy was Becoming a Farce, Sama ElMasry is Running for Parliament

So you were basically right. Not only are they jailing journalists for "damaging Egypt's reputation" (hint:  jailing journalists damages Egypt's reputation more than journalists possibly can), but now Sama ElMasry has announced she is running for Parliament, and will "expose" the Muslim Brotherhood, which seems to have more than enough troubles already. (History repeating itself as farce yet again.)

Sama's the One on the Left (Facebook)

You may remember Sama, usually referred to in the foreign media as a "famous Egyptian belly-dancer," but who is better-known as a self-promoter, satirist and foe of Islamists than for her dance. (She is famous though, and Egyptian, and dances, but that's not why she's famous.) She first came to the world's attention in 2012 in what may be the best headline the original Egypt Independent ever ran: "'Nose Job' MP Files Complaint Against Belly Dancer Who Says She's His Wife." That link is apparently dead now, but I blogged about it here. In 2013 she rose considerably above her limited fame as a former news presenter who tried to make it as an actress and belly-dancer/singer, appearing in three films and releasing three songs, none of them hits. But then she began a series of satirical YouTube videos making fun of Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood and, in her most viral video of all, skewering President Obama, Ambassador Anne Patterson, and America as pro-Morsi. I dealt at some length with the phenomenon here.

But she's ready to heed her country's call in its hour of need. She's going to run for Parliament. She's already started a new show on a new channel explicitly calling itself Fallul ("remnants," the term for the old regime supporters of Mubarak), in which she attacks the Brotherhood. She's a Sisi supporter and plans to run in Sharqiyya Governorate, Morsi's home province.

I don't know why she receives so much attention, but then I can't figure out what Kim Kardashian is famous for, either. It will draw media attention, which otherwise might be concentrating on all those jailed journalists.

A Roundup of Egypt Links

Thursday and Friday I was pretty much hors de combat with a virus of some sort, so I'm playing catch-up a bit. Here's a quick few links on Egypt:

• Don't miss Joshua Stacher's "Can a Myth Rule a Nation?" at Foreign Affairs. Josh fully recognizes the apparent inevitability of General (excuse me, Field Marshal) Sisi, but he also sees the narrowness of the base and the shallowness of the program. When the man on the white horse dismounts, how does he solve Egypt's problems?

•  Amid rumors that Mohamed Heikal may advise the Sisi campaign, Zeinobia unearths a piece by Heikal about an interview he had in 1967 with Field Marshal Montgomery of Alamein about Abdel Hakim Amer and "political" Field Marshals, on the eve of Amer's disgrace and suicide: "The political Marshal is about the naked Emperor."

• Bad news:  "Minister of Antiquities Reveals Full Account of Damage to Museum of Islamic Art." (Daily News Egypt). Pretty bad indeed.

• Still more bad news on the heritage front:  "11 Recent Cultural Disasters in Egypt." (CairObserver).  (Even worse news: this list is nowhere near complete.)

• A little lighter: "Lexicon of a Revolution's Insults." (MadaMasr). "Insults" is the wrong word here, since some are compliments: more like the vocabulary or jargon of the Revolution, from the obvious Fallul to "lime-squeezers" (عاصري الليمون) for secularists who voted for the Muslim Brotherhood. (Really a citron more than a true lime, but let that go for now.)

Umm Kulthum Left the Building 39 Years Ago Today

A lot of Arabs, and pretty much all Egyptians, agree that Umm Kulthum was the greatest Arab singer of all time. Her death on February 3, 1975, 39 years ago today, did not dim her fame, and her music remains popular. Her funeral procession rivaled Nasser's; her former home is marked by a statue, and there is a museum (bearing her title Kawkab al-Sharq, "Star of the East") displaying her memorabilia. Like Elvis, her fame has survived her by decades, though neither they nor their music otherwise resemble each other.

All her performances were lengthy; in this one the singing doesn't begin for some time.

Barry Rubin Has Died at Age 64

Prof. Barry Rubin, head of the GLORIA Center and prolific author on Middle Eastern subjects, has died of cancer at the age of only 64.  Though Barry and I rarely if ever saw eye-to-eye on political issues, I have known him since we were both in grad school at Georgetown in the 1970s, and I respect him as a scholar and as a strong advocate for the issues he believed in, even when I did not share them.

American-born and educated, Barry eventually chose to relocate permanently to Israel (with occasional visiting fellowships in the US), where he made a career as both an academic and political commentator; in more recent years he has developed a following among US conservatives.

My condolences to his family and colleagues. The Jerusalem Post obituary here, JTA's here, and The Washington Institute here.

UPDATE: A nice tribute by Lee Smith at Tablet Magazine.

As More Endorse Bouteflika, New Attacks on "Toufik"

I'm over my virus and back to normal blogging, I hope. Algerian President Bouteflika still hasn't officially said if he's running agin in April, but he keeps piling up the endorsements; in additiion to the two major ruling parties, the FLN and the RND, he's also being endorsed by a raft of smaller allied parties.

Another sign that the Bouteflika forces are flexing their muscles: an apparent new round in the ongoing power struggle between the President's allies and the powerful military intelligence chief. You may recall that last year in a reshuffle of the security forces, Bouteflika reportedly reduced the power base of the powerful DRS military intelligence service and its chief, Lt. Gen. Mohamed Mediene, usually known by his nom de guerre Toufik, Now, FLN Secretary-General Amar Saadani is quoted as saying that Mediene should have resigned after a string of what he characterized as "intelligence failures." He also criticized the continuing influence of the DRS. Whether Bouteflika does run himself or is merely preparing the ground for a successor,t appears that the power struggle with Mediene may be coming to the fore again.

Geneva 2 Ends

The Geneva talks on Syria have ended with mutual accusations and recriminations, though some limited ceasefire agreements have allowed some aid to get through; and there's another round due February 10, but it's not clear if the regime will attend.

Meanwhile I'm still wrestling with a bug and not very creative. I'll blog when I have something.

Winter

I've been hit by some kind of unpleasant winter bug, and may not have much to blog today. Stay tuned.

The Bonapartist Temptation, The Man on the White Horse: But is Sisi Napoleon I or Napoleon III?

The Original (Wikimedia Commons)

Several months ago, I noted that despite the tendency of many of General Sisi's critics  to misuse the word "fascist," for the mix of populist enthusiasm and yearning for a strong military leader we see in Egypt today, "Bonapartist" was probably the more appropriate term. At that time, one of my commenters suggested that if Gamal Abdel Nasser was Napoleon I, General Sisi was likely to be Napoleon III.

Indeed, there is a big difference between Napoleon I, the victor of Austerlitz who conquered most of Europe, and his nephew Louis Napoleon, the loser at Sedan who lost Alsace and Lorraine for half a century.

Juan Cole takes up the theme in a post brilliantly titled (paraphrasing Karl Marx), "The 18th Brumaire of Gen. al-Sisi in Egypt." That of course is a reference to Karl Marx's famous "The 18th Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte," analyzing Napoleon III's accession in the wake of the failed revolutions of 1848 ("18th Brumaire" refers to the coup in which the original Napoleon overthrew the Directory in 1799). (That is also the work that begins with Marx's famous lines, "Hegel remarks somewhere that all great world-historic facts and personages appear, so to speak, twice. He forgot to add: the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.") Cole:

Marx, who saw the government as a managing committee for the business classes, viewed the accession to power of Napoleon III after the failed revolutions of 1848 as an investment of power in dictatorship by threatened entrepreneurs and financiers.

The anointing of al-Sisi as the candidate of the officer corps and his popularity with the Egyptian wealthy points to a similar configuration. He is a symbol of order and authority at a time when the foundations of society have been repeatedly shaken. But above all he is the great hope of the social classes that had gotten wealthy off the public sector and off of government licenses. They had been deeply threatened by the revolution. Al-Sisi’s function from their point of view is to continue to shore up the public sector companies, protect the wealth of the government-tied entrepreneurs, and attract more foreign investment and Gulf rent.

The Fallul, to use a non-Marxist term.

Masrawy (via Zeinobia)

You may also have seen  the controversy over pro-Sisi demonstrators holding military boots on their heads at the Morsi trial, a highly dubious choice of symbolism indeed; Zeinobia posted many of the pictures and like other observers she was reminded of Orwell's line at the end of 1984 "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — forever " 

I suspect these young Sisi enthusiasts have read neither Marx nor Orwell, but the be-careful-what-you-wish-for rule should be kept in mind. Napoleon I, even in defeat, made a comeback from Elba for 100 days; but not all Bonapartes are the same:

Not his Uncle: Napoleon III (left) with Bismarck after the Surrender

Smithsonian: First Photos of Jerusalem, 1844

Smithsonian Magazine's website has a piece on the first photos taken of Jerusalem, dating from 1844 and taken by pioneering French photographer  Joseph-Philibert Girault de Prangey. Take a Look.

Another Memory of Pete Seeger

Thanks to MEJ Managing Editor Jake Passel for this as we all remember Pete Seeger: Pete Seeger, that other great folksinger Theodor Bikel, and Palestinian-Israeli poet Rashid Hussain sing about peace in Hebrew on Seeger's Rainbow Quest show in 1965. The song is "Hineh Mah Tov," meaning "How good and pleasant it is to sit as brothers together" (taken from Psalm 133). Unfortunately its audio only.

Pete Seeger and Israel

Pete Seeger has died at the age of 94. Besides being one of the founding fathers of the American folk music revival of the mid-20th Century, he was a lifelong activist even during the depths of the McCarthy Era, and an avid advocate for peace, opposing the US wars in Vietnam, Central America, Iraq and Afghanistan. As various Israeli and Jewish appreciations of his career are noting, however, his views on Israel remained somewhat ambivalent. As Ha'aretz notes:

Three years ago, Seeger came out in support of a boycott against Israel, according to a press release from the Israel Committee Against House Demolition (ICAHD).

He later clarified his position, telling JTA that his position on Israel was constantly evolving.

Seeger told JTA by phone in 2011 that he “probably” made comments that supported a boycott of Israel, but added that he was still learning a lot about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and his opinions wavered "with each piece of information.”

Seeger also took part in a 2010 online peace rally “With Earth and Each Other,” in support of the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in southern Israel.

The Times of Israel also notes Seeger's shifting views.

He seems to have been attracted to the socialist ideals of the early Israeli state, but opposed to the occupation after 1967.

Ironically, as Richard Silverstein reminds us, one early 1950s hit by Seeger and his group The Weavers was an Israeli song, Tzena, Tzena, Tzena; there was subsequently a court battle over the rights in which the original Israeli author was vindicated. It was released as the flip side of Good Night, Irene, which rose to the Number One hit in the US.

Seeger (second from left) and The Weavers:

Today Marks Five Years of This Blog

Five years ago today, on January 28, 2009, I posted my first substantive post on this blog, about Hisham Melhem's interview with president Obama. I posted two other posts that day, one of them about ‘Omar Suleiman, who's still making news posthumously. (Strictly speaking I put up  a "placeholder" "Watch This Space" announcement on January 27, so I could have marked five years yesterday, but the January 28 posts were the first with content)

In those five years, if I'm adding right, I've posted 4,080 posts; this one is number 4,081.

I know some readers are very loyal and others just drop by now and then, but thanks to all of you, and thanks for the many compliments, including those quoted in the right column under "kind words from others." And thanks to the Middle East Institute for giving me the opportunity. Somehow I sill haven't run out of things to say, so stick around and see what comes next.

Sisi Promoted Field Marshal; SCAF Approves Run

Things are moving quickly. Sisi has been promoted to Field Marshal, though historically that rank was reserved for generals who had seen combat; and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) has approved his running for President.

Is the Sisi Bandwagon Starting to Roll?

Adly Mansour (Ahram)

Now that the Egyptian Constitution has passed, giving the Interim President (Adly Mansour, if you've forgotten, as I frequently do) the power to decide when to schedule the first Parliamentary and Presidential elections, Mansour has announced that he has been told decided to move Presidential elections ahead of Parliamentary elections, after "several dialogues with political groups, which saw a majority in favour of holding presidential elections first." This departs from the "roadmap" announced last July, and most observers think it would lead to an opportunity for the new President to entrench himself in power before having an elected Parliament to deal with.

The decree said that "procedures" for the polls must begin within a minimum of 30 to a maximum of 90 days of the adoption of the Constitution, which means February 17-April 18; an Ahram Online report assumes the vote itself will take place within that window.

Assuming General Sisi plans to run for President himself, which isn't exactly a daring assumption, all this guarantees an election while he is still enormously popular and before the growing violence can get out of control.

Meanwhile General Sisi, whose only job at the moment is Defense Minister and head of the Armed Forces, is performing such normal command functions as meeting with Coptic Pope Tawadros II and a senior delegation of Coptic bishops on the occasion of the third anniversary of the January 25 revolution.

At least he took off his sunglasses. Looking for the Coptic vote? Or asking the Pope for military advice? You decide.

Shulamit Aloni, 1928-2014

Shulamit Aloni (Wikipedia)

It's been a busy weekend in the Mideast and I have some catching up to do.On Friday, Shulamit Aloni died in Tel Aviv at the age of 85. Her passing will get a lot less attention than the death two weeks earlier of Ariel Sharon, and that is, in my definitely biased opinion, too bad.  The inveterate warrior for peace will be less remembered than the warrior with arms. May her name be a blessing.

This veteran political leader of the Israeli Left and advocate of peace with the Palesinitans had good Zionist credentials: in 1948 she served with the Palmach in the battle for Jerusalem and was taken prisoner by the Jordanians. Elected to the Knesset as a Labor MK in 1965, she left Labor in 1973 to form the Citizens' Rights Movement (Ratz). She opened dialogue with the Palestinians and in 1992 Ratz joined with  Mapam and Shinui to form a new Left/Peace Bloc known as Meretz, and held several ministerial posts in governments in the 1990s, including Education and Communications. In 1996 she was replaced as leader of Meretz by Yossi Sarid. She retired from the Knesset but remained an active advocate for peace.

Tunisia Has a Constitution at Last

More than three years after the fall of Ben Ali, Tunisia's Constitutional Assembly has adopted a new constitution, hammered out with difficulty and compromise among the major political parties, including hard bargaining between Islamists and secularists. Unlike Egypt's recently adopted charter, this was hammered out by an elected constituent assembly chosen in November 2011.

The Assembly voted overwhelmingly to adopt the Constitution; if the vote had not been by two-thirds majority it would have gone to a referendum. The vote was 200 yes, 12 no, with four abstentions.

Collateral Damage: Islamic Art Museum and Old Dar al-Kutub Damaged in Police Bombing

Museum Facade Damage (Ahram)

Today's massive car bombing at Cairo's Central Police Headquarters in Bab al-Khalq also apparently did significant damage to two key repositories of Egypt's heritage across the street: the Museum of Islamic Art and the old building of the National Library and Archives (Dar al-Kutub), shich houses many of the Library's rare manuscripts and papyri. (The Library has another building along the Nile.)

[Update: This photo gallery at Egyptian Streets suggests the damage to the recently renovated museum is really devastating. More as it becomes available.]

Ahram Online:

TV footage showed wrecked floors of the multi-storey building and a damaged facade of the nearby Museum of Islamic Art. The minister of state for antiquities told journalists in a statement after touring the site that some artefacts and items inside the museum had also been damaged. He said the 19th-century museum building, which was recently rennovated in a multimillion-dollar project, will need to be "rebuilt." Photos show that the building's roof has caved in, floors are covered with shattered glass and wood debris, and the display cases housing the museum artefacts have been smashed.

Library Damage (Ahram)

Another Ahram Online piece on the Dar al-Kutub:

The car bomb which gutted Cairo's central police headquarters early on Friday morning has also caused severe structural damage to Egypt's National Library and Archives (NLA), located across the street from the security directorate targeted in the blast.

Minister of Culture Saber Arab told Ahram Online that all the NLA's lighting and ventilation systems were completely destroyed, while the decorative facade, representative of Islamic architectural styles, had collapsed. He added that all showcases and furniture inside the building had also been badly damaged.

NLA head Abdul Nasser Hassan told Ahram Online that seven unique manuscripts and three rare scientific papyri had also been damaged. Hassan estimated that the losses will cost the government at least LE50 million in repairs.

Let me also share a memory from back in the late 1970s of the Police Headquarters building at Bab al-Khalq. I spent a lot of time among Cairo's medieval monuments on foot, and whenever I was headed to the Bab Zuwaila or Darb al-Ahmar areas, I would walk via Bab al-Khalq, passing right by the fortress-like police station. I remember that the rear of the building contained high, barred windows and apparently contained holding cells; there would always be wives out back, shouting up at their jailed spouses. Later visits to Cairo never took me back to Bab al-Khalq, I don't think.

On a Bloody Morning: January 25, 1952 (Police Day), 2011 (the Revolution) and Now

The latest car bombing in Cairo, at Police Headquarters in Cairo's Bab al-Khalq neighborhood,  which augurs no good, reminds us that Saturday is January 25. It is Egyptian Police Day, the 62nd anniversary of a landmark day in Egypt's struggle against the British, and also the third anniversary of the beginnings of the Egyptian Revolution of 2011 (inspired by the Tunisian Revolution, Egyptian protesters deliberately chose Police Day to launch their protests).

The original Police Day celebrated the Police confrontation, not with Egyptian protesters, but with the British. As I noted in last year's post:

The Anglo-Egyptian Treaty of 1936 had provided for British withdrawal of its troops from Egypt, except for bases in the Suez Canal Zone for the protection of the Canal, but with the outbreak of the Second World War, Britain had invoked a clause allowing it to reoccupy Egypt. After the war British troops did withdraw to the Canal Zone, but kept force levels well above the 10,000 troops allowed in the treaty. After the Wafd Party, Britain's traditional nationalist rivals, won the 1950 elections, the Egyptian government in October 1951 unilaterally abrogated the treaty and demanded that Britain negotiate for its withdrawal.

The Cold War was in full swing and Britain (and behind it the US) were already engaged in a struggle with Iranian Prime Minister Mossadeq over Iranian oil, and now faced a challenge to the Suez Canal. The Wafd, and its other traditional rival the King, were both losing influence in Egypt to growing social and economic dissatisfaction and the growth of movements with their own disciplined and sometimes armed militias, including the Muslim Brotherhood, Communists, and others.

The Egyptian government decided to sanction the creation of "Liberation" squads, recruited from vlunteers (many from the Brotherhood), who began a guerrilla war against the British in the Canal Zone. The British responded with proactive moves against the "terrorists," and on January 21 entered Egyptian quarters of Ismailia seeking to uproot the Liberation squads. After coming into conflict with Egyptian police, on the 25 the Lancashire Fusiliers surrounded the Ismailia police headquarters.

The Egyptian Interior Minister, Fuad Seraggedin Pasha (who would survive to head the New Wafd in the 1970s and 1980s), ordered the police in Ismailia to resist the British Army, a dubious decision which, after a six hour siege, left some 50 policemen dead. This video, apparently a British newsreel (there's no sound at least in this version), shows aspects of the British operation, including rounding up prisoners:

Let me also rerun that video:
The next day, the 26th, was Black Saturday. More on that later today or perhaps Monday.

Why is a Taboo Word Taboo? The Curious Case of أحا (a7a)

I've been thinking for some time about writing about one of the most distinctive words (or interjections, or expressions, or inarticulate grunts) in colloquial Egyptian Arabic, which most Egyptians consider profane at best and obscene at worst, but can't really explain why, since it has no clear etymology in any language. This is the word أحا (aḥa in the most common scholarly transliteration, a7a in the popular Internet form): the Arabic  ح , a pharyngeal "h", should not be confused with ه (equivalent to simple English "h") or the fricative خ kha guttural kh like German Bach or Scottish Loch. ح is a raspier "h" in between these two. You can hear examples below.

Arabic, for all the social conservatism prevalent in society today, is a language rich and full of linguistic profanity and obscenity. But the vast majority of those are of obvious meaning, usually relating to damnation, sex, or bodily functions, and most stem from Classical Arabic (one or two from Persian or Turkish). But not this word. It's sui generis.

As Adel Iskandar put it in an article in Egypt Independent, "Egypt's Deafening Three-Letter Yell,"

Yet the term, whose etymological roots are very difficult to disentangle, remains a salient part of Egyptians’ expression of disdain, shock, agony, anger and a plethora of other hyperbolic emotional states. Whether it is a verb, noun, adjective or onomatopoeia is inconsequential because its meaning is understood.

In a personal conversation with writer and blogger Ahmed Nagy back in February 2008, he lashed out against the culture of conformity and the high premium paid to those who speak in polite euphemisms about the state of their lives and country. “So what if I say a7a! It is how we speak in this country! We hide behind politeness and accept what is happening around us!”

But the term is not a newcomer to the Egyptian vernacular. Anecdote and testimony suggest the masses pleading with former President Gamal Abdel Nasser not to abdicate after the humiliating defeat of 1967 shouted “Aha, Aha, la tatanaha!” (A7a, a7a, don’t abdicate!). Since the revolution, it has been used publicly to reflect on the deterioration of the country’s political arena, from songs like “Aha ya thawra” (A7a, oh, revolution) by Ahmed al-Sawy to songs by the Ultras football fans.

Historically, the fissures between socioeconomic classes in the country were maintained not only by access to authority and power but rather through the admonishment of the masses, on the grounds of what is often described as “vulgarity.”

A7a was once the explosive, screeching, unnerving, alarming and deafening yell of the “vulgar” poor. But as class consciousness was shaken to its core under the feet of a mass revolutionary movement, so has its vernacular. A7a now permeates all social classes with fervor, shattering social norms and elite mores.

UPDATE 2/26/14:  documenting the "a7a! a7a! La tatanaha!:" anecdote: a photo from the 1967 demonstrations against Nasser's resignations, with the chant clerly spelled out on the sign (right).


Here's the song "A7a ya thawra" he mentions, in Arabic of course:



Though أحا is not clearly profane since no one knows what its origins are, most efforts to explain it in English, even in scholarly dictionaries,  do resort to profanity. As a result I will issue one of my rare language warnings here since we'll be venturing into NSFW four-letter territory a little bit here.

I had been collecting notes on this for a good part of the past year, but I was moved to finally write about أحا  (for simplicity, hereafter a7a) this past weekend while watching Jehane Noujaim's wonderful The Square on Netflix. Like any film of ordinary Egyptians under stress "a7a" occurs frequently. The folks who did the English subtitles, who seemed quite good, treated it many different ways. I wasn't taking notes so this is unscientific, but I think they may have ignored it a time or two, and after that translated it (in roughly ascending order of objectionableness) as "damn!," damn it!," "shit!," "bullshit!," "fuck!," "fuck it!," and "fuck [insert name, subject, or situation here]." There may have been other translations. And yes, the subtitles are NSFW if you watch the movie. Whether the Arabic is also objectionable depends on how offensive you find a7a.

I thought all those translations were dead on in terms of conveying, in English, the meaning of the Arabic expletive in various differing contexts. A7a is that kind of word. But it doesn't mean, in the sense of semantically equate with or translate, any of those words. So what does it mean?

Answer: nobody knows.

Of course, when nobody knows, folk etymology takes over, so there are plenty of self-contradictory explanations. Among them:

• It's the sound women make during orgasm. This is the only folk etymology that comes remotely close to explaining its taboo nature; the others are pretty anodyne. But does anyone believe this? Though some women may make similar sounds in ecstasy, why then use it as a sound expressing disgust? Does anyone believe this, though it's the most often cited?

• It's short for أنا حقاً اعترض or "I truly oppose," said to date to the Fatimid era. Acronyms as etymologies are always suspicious and usually folk creations: "posh" does not come from "Port Out, Starboard Home,"; "wog" does not mean "Wily Oriental Gentleman", and surely you know that "fuck" comes from neither "Fornication Under Consent of the King" or "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge."  Arabic is even less fond of this kind of thing than English, except in modern political movement acronyms.  There's a rather encyclopedic literature on the Fatimid and Mamluk eras. One source, just one, would be really nice. No one cites any. In fact, I'm having trouble locating my own source for this factoid! I saw it on the Internet so it's obviously true ...

• Article in Al-Ahram: "The most believed theory of the origin of the word was that during the Fatimid era in Egypt the word "to object" (Ahtag) was banned, so Egyptians started using the word "A7ta", which later turned into "A7a."" أحا (a7a) Most believed by whom? I've never seen this anywhere else. Why would the Fatimids ban "I object"? Huh? And why does everything get attributed to the Fatimids? They're pretty well documented, and no one has a source.

I have one comment on all the etymologies, after due scholarly consideration:  أحا 

So what do the lexicographers say? Well, there aren't that many dictionaries of Egyptian colloquial to begin with, and many of them don't touch it. The go-to authority, Martin Hinds and El-Said Badawi's A Dictionary of Egyptian Arabic, Arabic-English (1986) is the ultimate authority; when I was in Egypt for the first time in 1972, work on the dictionary was dominating attention at AUC's Center for Arabic Studies, and the team helping Hinds and Badawi included such later familiar names as Humphrey Davies (translator of The Yacoubian Building and much else). The late Martin Hinds was a fine historian and El-Said Badawi was (is, as I hope he's still around) a fine Arabic linguist; he was also a nice and gentle man, but Hinds and Badawi have to resort to a four letter word to explain it in English:
To "Fuck that!" you might add the American "fuck this shit!" and just plain unadulterated "Fuck!" or "Fuck it!" as an expletive/interjection. But there's no obviously sexual context in a7a, though the same may be increasingly true of "fuck!,"which rarely refers these days to sex. But you can't translate a7a as "fuck" or "shit" or anything else without the context.

The other possible lexical reference in English I could locate is in Socrates Spiro's An Arabic-English Dictionary of the Colloquial Arabic of Egypt (about 1895) offers a definition of a word it spells with a خ kha instead of a ح ha, and which it spells without the final vowel,  but which otherwise seems to be in the right semantic territory.

But this may be just a simple interjection. Ach!

We;ve already seen several examples of its everyday use. Let me offer several more, from the artistic to the humorous to the vulgar.

First, the artistic. In March of last year a Cairo gallery did an exhibition of photographs centered around photos of people saying a7a, apparently intended to more or less gentrify the word. It was written up in Al-Ahram  and also and more pretentiously on art critic sites:

Offensive words’ social stigma often have no known origin. The meaning and acceptability of linguistic expressions evolve together with society, however, and new uses appear. In Egyptian colloquial Arabic, the word A7A, a common transliteration of the Arabic letters alif, haa, and alif, is prohibited from being broadcast, published, printed, or distributed in any formal way because of its perceived vulgarity. But for a generation questioning social norms, socio-economic hierarchies, and political passivity, this word commonly meant to evoke a sense of objection, frustration, and contempt is being used more than ever. 

There's also a video of the exhibition. (You can set the closed captioning for English, if you don't mind computer translated approximations.)

The name Hor-Aha

On the lighter side, it has long been known that one of the earliest kings of a united Egypt bore the Horus name of Aha, or Hor-Aha. Some think the king was the unifier known as Menes or Mina; some think it was his father Narmer. Hor-Aha means Horus the fighter and has nothing to do with the modern expletive. And King Aha has been known since the 19th century.

Last year, however, the BBC wrote up a popular account of a new finding from the Royal Society. The BBC report is no longer online, at least the link is dead, and in typical popular journalism form it presented the new findings as if everything in them, including the names of the kings, was new, when in fact the only new thing was the precise dating. The Royal Society abstract, which is still online,is "An absolute chronology for early Egypt using radiocarbon dating and Bayesian statistical modelling."  (Aren't academic titles so enticing?)  The BBC report, now seemingly gone, made it seem as if  everything in the story was new. The Egyptian Twitterverse, assuming King Aha was a new discovery. had a lot of fun (and need I remark that #a7a is a popular Twitter hashtag among Egyptians?); this selection only from the English tweets:


So a7a is pervasive, increasingly transcends class, and has been the subject of snooty art gallery exhibits. But it's also still a one-size fits all vulgarity to express anger, disgust, rage, and the like.

So I will end this by quoting a decidedly not-safe-for-work rant by a columnist for the online site Cairoscene (a sort of what's-on-in-Cairo English language site with a Yuppie/hipster feel and a definite attitude). Their columnist Sally Sampson writes a column called "Bitch," so you may guess this isn't going to be an exercise in scholarly linguistics, but I do feel it gives a real sense of the versatility of a7a. Last March she launched a rant, "Swear it all over again," arguing that women should be allowed to cuss as freely as men. It is both elegant and profane as hell, and it's impossible to extricate the a7a examples from the other obscenities without doing great violence to her message, so here is an extensive quote; very NSFW:

I’m not supposed to be vulgar or crude. I’m not supposed to know these words, never mind speak them. My mother looked at me yesterday and screamed, “If your grandmother were alive and she had heard the things you say, she would’ve taken off her slipper and hit you in the face with it!”

I get it…It’s considered impolite and of course, there is a time and a place for everything, but surely, societal codes of conduct should apply to everyone equally! There shouldn’t be a certain lee-way granted to specific persons by virtue of their genitalia! I mean, why are we cutting slack for the dude, jumping out of his car screaming “A7A!!!’”at the microbus driver when the thought of a woman doing the same thing is enough to send tremors and mini-convulsions shooting through our bodies?

And BY THE WAY, I like the word A7A! In fact, I fucking LOVE IT! In Arabic, NOTHING, in my opinion, is more expressive of frustration!

When that car cuts you off: A7A!

When the prices go up: A7A!

When the President goes on live television and publicly scratches his balls: A7A, A7A, A7A!

Why can’t I say A7A when someone fucks me off? Why do men get rights to that word in Egypt, without sharing that privilege with women who have just as much of a reason to let off steam?! Why must we be eloquent and recite sonnets when we’re aggravated by something or someone?I don’t have time or patience when a car cuts me off to be like, “Truly, kind sir, you have indeed wronged me. For your ways are an abomination of sorts to the overall order that has been set in stone before the foundation of our civilisation to ensure that we may co-exist harmoniously together!”

NO! I’m gonna scream:  “A7A! FUCK YOU, MOTHERFUCKER!” and then it’ll be over and out of my system. To try to channel my inner Jane Austen, however, when I’m about to ‘bust a cap in someone’s ass’ as 50 Cent, 2Pac, Snoop Lion (formerly known as Dog) and all my other ‘homies’ would say, is almost criminal!

And I can't really think of any way to follow that in explaining the usage of a7a, except to offer the warning I would give to any learner of another language: never use profanity unless you are utterly sure of its meaning, of the attitudes of those around you and even nearby, and whether or not they are drunk and/or carrying bladed weapons.

The National Gets Nostalgic About Alexandria

Abu Dhabi's The National has a piece about Alexandria which indulges a lot in the "good old days were better" nostalgia that city often inspires: "Alexandria, once a glamourous seaside resort, now a crumbling city."

It starts by lamenting the city's present problems, which are real enough:

Together they can tell stories of a once-multicultural city that was considered a jewel of the Mediterranean until it gradually degraded into the overpopulated, anarchic cement sprawl of budget holiday flats, slums, cement high-rises, exposed sewers, regular power cuts and – since the 2011 Revolution – 27,000 new buildings, the majority of them illegal.

But then it goes into full-blown Lawrence Durrell/Cavafy nostalgia:

Indolent days were spent on beaches populated by beautiful women in two-piece swimsuits or riding the tram from San Stefano to Ramla on a double-decker carriage where “you’d hear spoken every language in the world: English, French, Armenian, Greek ...”

In the dying days of Alexandria’s heyday, the tram would pass dainty patisseries frequented by the poet of Alexandria, C P Cavafy, and raucous bouzoukia joints where Greek captains danced with plates in their mouths. His archival photographs contain candid, personal pictures of princesses of the Egyptian royal family at play. The only remaining trace of his family’s villa by the sea is a grainy black-and-white photograph of a substantial neoclassical building with a columned portico.

Of course, as many have noted, one element that stands out about the romantic cosmopolitan Levantine society of The Alexandria Quartet and similar portrayals is the near invisibility of ordinary Egyptians, except as servants. Look at that quote above again:  “you’d hear spoken every language in the world: English, French, Armenian, Greek ...” No Arabic in Egypt's second city?

The author's name is Iason Athanasia.

I do think Egypt lost something of real value when the Greek and Italian and Lebanese and Jewish communities were dispossessed in the Nasser era, but that was itself a reflection of a nationalist sense that the old Alexandria of Levantine cosmopolitanism was in, but not part of, Egypt. It may well have been a delightful place if you belonged to the elites, but it's also worth understanding why it was swept away with the monarchy that reflected it so well.

Sisi Watch: On the Brink of an Announcement?

General Sisi seems poised to run for President. Egypt Independent, citing al-Hayat, claims "Sisi will Resign within Days," [from the Army, to run as a civilian].

Meanwhile, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Egyptian Prime Minister Hazem El-Beblawi said of Sisi:

“Sisi is under popular pressure to run. This is like De Gaulle, like Eisenhower,” he said, referring to the French and US war heroes who later took political office.

“Those that are pushing Sisi to run are not the military camps, they are people in the streets, women in the first place,” Beblawi said. 

“Don’t forget he is a handsome man,” he added.

Meanwhile, Interim President Adly Mansour was telling a Police Convocation gathered for Police Day that "The Police State is Over." That may come as news to Amr Hamzawy, Emad Shahin, Alaa Abdel Fattah and other critics now jailed or facing charges.

Tunisia Completes its Constitution

Tunisia's National Constituent Assembly has finally voted on each of the articles of the new constitution, completing the draft document, including the much debated Article 6 on religious freedom. It still must vote on the overall document as a whole, and must be adopted by a two-thirds majority to avoid going to a national referendum, which might prove divisive.

The constitutional process has been long, but one which saw much compromise between secular and Islamist parties, and has produced a document genuinely hammered out through negotiation, in contrast to Egypt's newly-adopted charter.

You can find an English translation of those articles that had been adopted up to a couple of days ago here.