By Jack Shenker
Jadaliyya
[4 December 2012, protesters spray graffiti on an abandoned Central Security Forces (CSF) truck: "Revolution Rules". Image originally posted to Flicker by Hossam el-Hamalawy]Egyptians, as the past two and a half years have shown, are giddyingly liable to take to the streets and provoke a crisis in whatever elite settlement is being foisted upon them. Right now, amid an almost fascistic excess of hyper-jingoism, the prospects seem dim for a revolutionary struggle against authoritarianism, one which rejects false binaries and articulates the slogans of the currently tiny Third Square movement—"No Mubarak, no Morsi, no SCAF" (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces). But absurd idealism, not just in Egypt, but in cities across the globe that have been at least partly inspired by Egypt’s turmoil—from Rio to Athens to Istanbul—has astounded us all in recent years. Those hoping that the conditions of audibility have been broken forever should not rest easy in their beds.
In reading some of the moving, melancholic words written by Egyptian friends in the past few days as they reflect on what is happening to their country and mourn the murder of so many, one common theme struck me: The pain of feeling like something ineffable was being robbed from within them. Activist Moataz Attalla once spoke beautifully of Tahrir enabling people to taste a different language, to taste possibility; I think that is what Yasmin el-Rifae is referring to when she writes of how the revolution dislodged her cynicism—and how the current “flaunting of our cruelty as a source of pride” has summoned it back. Likewise, Omar Robert Hamilton recalls how transformative it was, that “belief we all shared, for a moment, in each other.” He goes on: “In an eternity of disappointment and greed and malice that moment, that moment in which being human was finally worth something, in which having a community was preferable to being alone with a book, had a value that will never be lost.”
They are right to acknowledge how much has been shattered and stolen by this bloodshed, and right as well to believe that this is not the end: Whatever has been robbed can be taken back. For now, those fighting for a better Egypt in Ramlet Bulaq, in Qursaya, in Suez and in a thousand other communities across the country may have been quietened, but they will not remain silent forever. And when they do speak out, they will find that this regime has nothing but bullets and binaries with which to answer them. That will not be enough, and so the revolution will continue. As the Sheikh of Tahsin told me, “I will not live as a third-rate citizen anymore. I have withdrawn my acceptance of the status quo. This is the fruit of 25 January, and there is no turning back.”"
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