Part 1: 1919 Revolution to Nasser

Part 2: Egypt’s 1968 and the aftermath

Part 3: The 1990s and early 2000s – Palestine provides a spark for the Egyptian Left

Part 4: The early 2000s – Rise in class struggle

Part 5: The Arab Spring in Egypt

UPDATE: I was honored to speak with the author of the study, in a Zoom meeting.

I had to go yesterday to do some paper work at the Nasr City registrar, and as usual the procedures included photocopying my ID and every single document. I went into one of the small shops surrounding the registrar, where two women, in the beginning of their 30s I’d say, were actively attending to customers who were waving their papers, ID cards, passports, impatiently wanting them to be photocopied.

At some point, a man in his 60s came into the shop, wearing a galabiya and a traditional peasant hat, stuttering. Both him and some other man were talking to the two women workers. I wasn’t focusing, but suddenly I heard one of them shouting with humor at the women saying: “You are the post-war generation, the peace generation, what do you know?”

“Hahaha, yeah, we came in the quiet times,” replied one of the women. “No wars. Too much relaxing, eih?”

And that’s when the man in galabiya suddenly barged in, stuttering: “I think your time now is worse than the time of the war. During the war, the kilo of meat was 47 piasters. How much is it today? And who said the war is over? The real war only started. Look at the poverty, corruption and hunger. It’s an internal war. It’s worse than the war with Israelis. May God bless you and give you strength. Your generation is at war. It’s a disaster, a bigger disaster than our generation faced.”

Today, I took a cab to Ramses. The driver was silent till he found out I was a journalist. That’s when he exploded:
“May God burn down this regime. This country is going on fire soon, very soon. We can’t take it anymore. Why is everyone blaming the Nazif government? Nazif is nothing. It’s Hosni Mubarak himself who is responsible for this situation we have reached. Why aren’t you talking about Mubarak? Journalists and people on TV talk about Nazif this and Nazif that. But they never mention Mubarak. They are cowards. They should say Mubarak is bad. Mubarak is responsible…. There will be another bread initfada, like that of 1977. And this time we will burn the country down. We will not burn the cars, buses or shops. These are ours. No no. We will burn them. We will burn this government. We will burn down the police stations.”

On my way back from Ramses, also in a cab, the driver started complaining about hassles from the traffic police, and about the “scam” fees imposed on taxis by the Finance Ministry. He said he was talking with his friends about having a parade with their cabs, raising banners protesting the government. “But we have to contact the media. If there are no cameras, the police can make us disappear. They are scared of cameras. We’ll contact Al-Jazeera, Dream, Mehwar and even CNN to ride with us while we protest.”

There is something in the air in Egypt. It could be Mubarak’s Autumn of Fury, as I and increasingly many people around me sense. Not a day passes without reading or hearing about a strike. No one knows when the explosion is going to happen, but it seems everyone I meet or bump into today feel it’s inevitable.

The National Theater in Downtown Cairo is on fire, as I’m writing now. Nile News is reporting the fire has broken out in the main hall shortly before iftar. There are ten fire trucks, according to the channel, present in the scene trying to control the situation and prevent the spread of fire.

UPDATE: 6:40pm: Police General Sherif Goma’a told Nile News that the fire was put under control, and there were no human casualties. The extent of material damage is still unknown, according to the General.

UPDATE: 6:57: While General Goma’a suggested the fire might have resulted from electric shortcut, Maher Selim, the Culture Ministry’s Undersecretary is blaming the street vendors and “junkies” who smoke cigarettes on their roof tops!!! A7a!

UPDATE: 7:50: Blogger Kareem el-Beheiri is near the scene. He says the Central Security Forces are cordoning the area.

UPDATE: 8:00: It looks like the army has arrived! Army officers are spotted. Still it’s difficult to determine the number of troops as non-govt newspapers journalists are not allowed into the scene.

UPDATE: 8:10pm: The fire hasn’t ended yet. Two halls have been destroyed, four have been injured. The fire, which has been going on for at least two hours and half, now extended to the second floor and to the neighboring Puppets’ Theater, according to Al-Jazeera.

UPDATE: 8:25: Nasser Nouri of Reuters says he and other photographers were assaulted by the police while trying to photograph the fire.

Those in their 40s+ I speak usually make references to 1977 and increasingly 1981. The Upper House catches fire.. The National Theater follows.. Houses are collapsing in Duweiqa and elsewhere.. Trains are colliding.. Two bread riots this year.. Inflation striking at 25%.. Citizens storming police stations in slums over deaths in custody.. Medical graduates are driving microbuses for a living.. Desperate youths jumping on boats battling sea waves to reach European shores looking for jobs they couldn’t find at home, Workers striking in a fashion unseen since WW2.. There is a general sense of deep frustration, disillusionment, and fury, coupled with withering of fear vis a vis the powers of the state.. We are watching the apocalypse of a rotten regime..

Note a couple of things:
1- The case is yet another proof of the “privatization of torture” in Egypt.
2- Incidents like these (citizens storming police stations following deaths of detainees, or clashes in the neighborhoods triggered by police brutality) are being repeated almost routinely over the past couple of years… exactly like in the years of 1975-76, in the run up to the 1977 intifada.

Kamal Khalil, recalling the 25 November 1976 Cairo University march which he led as an Engineering graduate student and a communist organizer:

The Nasserists and the Communists were due to march on that day. But there were divisions in every faction.. both among the Nasserists themselves and the Communists. The Workers Communist party activists had announced they were not joining the march. My group’s cell leaders back then, the “Communist Party-8th of January,” voted 3 to 2 against joining the march. I decided to break the organizational orders, and agitate for the protest by noon. We had drafted together with the Nasserists, the “November Progressive Document”, where we stated the demands of the student movement against the reconciliation with Israel, the repression of the opposition and the “Open-Door” Policy [Sadat’s neoliberal reforms]. The original plan, before the student leaders started hesitating, was that we were to mobilize for a march on the parliament, and hand the “Document” to the parliamentarians. The march started by only 200 students, but soon swelled to more than 3000 and those who were hesitating, ended up joining when it became clear the Central Security Forces were not going to obstruct the march.
We camped outside the parliament, at el-Qasr el-Eini. Back then it was two-way street. One thing I’ll never forget was a bus driver who was on the opposite direction. We started chanting: “El-Ta’ayeed el-Tam el-Tam, li Edrab el-Na’l El-‘Am! [Our full solidarity for the transport workers’ strike]”. The bus drivers in Cairo had gone on strike earlier in the summer, bringing the capital to halt. The bus driver stopped his bus, and leaned out of the side window, to hug the demonstrators and kept on honking. A student delegation went up to deliver the “Document” to the parliamentarians. Of course their response was “sure we’ll look into that”.. but nothing happened. In less than two months, the intifada broke out.