BOOK REVIEW

Egypt before Tahrir – Nael Shama

A passionate, erudite review of Egyptian leadership’s moral turpitude  

        I have a policy of reading at least one book on a country’s culture before witnessing it firsthand, but ahead of my visit to Egypt in the summer of 2015, I had failed to find anything particularly gripping. Luckily, on my first evening in Cairo I stumbled across a delightful independent bookshop whose owner pointed me in the direction of this work, which had earned its own shelf by the store entrance. Once I overcame my skepticism of the satirical-looking cover, which bore an Arab despairing so fervidly I couldn’t be sure if the image was genuine or modeled, I was soon hypnotized by this collection of exceptional articles and ended up finishing it in just three days.

        A former journalist for Egypt’s Daily News, the author navigates a myriad of complex geopolitical and socioeconomic issues that led to the Egyptian revolution of 2011 and culminated in Hosni Mubarak’s resignation after three decades of leadership. Exquisitely written, the early pieces lend perspective on Egypt’s history of rule under military leaders Nasser and Sadat, juxtaposed with the power-hungry but politically lethargic Mubarak. It seems the nation’s citizenry has always harboured at least a mild antipathy towards its governing elite, a sentiment perhaps best explained by King Farouk’s nauseating proclamation in 1944 that, “The will of the people emanates from my will.” The public’s emotional buffeting reached an apex under Mubarak, in an era characterized by state oppression, social disintegration, economic misery and a police force whose prime leisure was practicing torture. The author posits that without the revolution, Mubarak would have succeeded in passing on the presidency to his pretentious son, effectively establishing a hereditary republic akin to that of a monarchy.

        The portraiture of pre-revolution Egypt depicts it as a jungle state, with rampant corruption in the judicial system and gangs operating in major cities, instilling their own extra-legal control over locals. The imagery is vividly grim, but I still found myself craving a finer balance between the heavy rhetoric the author employed throughout, charming as it was, and concrete examples. In the same way, my second critique is a yearning for solutions of realpolitik, given these were notably few in number. The author closes by mourning the moribund state of Egyptian influence globally, referencing the domestic envy of affluent and technologically-advanced Western powers such as the United States. He attributes this resigned abjection to almost all Egyptians and given the country’s current state of affairs, wherein several key revolutionary activists are behind bars under el-Sisi, his bleak outlook may well be justified.

-NP, June 2015