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Summary
Summary
From the best-selling author of The Map of Love , here is a bracing firsthand account of the Egyptian revolution--told with the narrative instincts of a novelist, the gritty insights of an activist, and the long perspective of a native Cairene.
Since January 25, 2011, when thousands of Egyptians gathered in Tahrir Square to demand the fall of Hosni Mubarak's regime, Ahdaf Soueif--author, journalist, and lifelong progressive--has been among the revolutionaries who have shaken Egypt to its core. In this deeply personal work, Soueif summons her storytelling talents to trace the trajectory of her nation's ongoing transformation. She writes of the passion, confrontation, and sacrifice that she witnessed in the historic first eighteen days of uprising--the bravery of the youth who led the revolts and the jubilation in the streets at Mubarak's departure. Later, the cityscape was ablaze with political graffiti and street screenings, and with the journalistic and organizational efforts of activists--including Soueif and her family.
In the weeks and months after those crucial eighteen days, we watch as Egyptians fight to preserve and advance their revolution--even as the interim military government, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, throws up obstacles at each step. She shows us the council delaying abdication of power, undermining efforts toward democracy, claiming ownership of the revolution while ignoring its martyrs. We see elections held and an Islamist voted into power. At each scene, Soueif gives us her view from the ground--brave, intelligent, startlingly immediate. Against this stormy backdrop, she interweaves memories of her own Cairo--the balcony of her aunt's flat, where, as a child, she would watch the open-air cinema; her first job, as an actor on a children's sitcom; her mother's family land outside the city, filled with fruit trees and palm groves, in sight of the pyramids. In so doing, she affirms the beauty and resilience of this ancient and remarkable city. The book ends with a postscript that considers Egypt's more recent turns: the shifts in government, the ongoing confrontations between citizen and state, and a nation's difficult but deeply inspiring path toward its great, human aims--bread, freedom, and social justice. In these pages, Soueif creates an illuminating snapshot of an event watched by the world--the outcome of which continues to be felt across the globe.
Author Notes
Ahdaf Soueif was born in Cairo and educated in Egypt and England. She lives in London.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
What novelist and translator Soueif (The Map of Love; Mezzaterra) saw during the Egyptian revolution of 2011 was no less than the upheaval of an entire order of Egyptian society. Hailing from a generation that tried and failed to bring down the Mubarak dictatorship years before, Soueif rushed back to her native city from a literary festival in India on January 25, 2011, after she heard news of unrest erupting in Tahrir Square. She affectionately refers to the now world-famous square as the Midan (from its Arabic name: Midan el-Tahrir) throughout her diary of the decisive first 18 days, which is followed by accounts tracking later events during the year, such as the elections. Her grown children and nephews and nieces raced home, some from abroad, joining activist siblings, friends, aunts, and other relatives. They participated in spontaneous street demonstrations and provided aid to protestors, as well as setting up film and Internet stations. Soueif writes of her tremendous pride in the younger generation, who faced down government thugs, snipers perched on buildings, tanks, and security police. Many received beatings, or were imprisoned (her own nephew, Alaa, was jailed) or, in the case of 843 protesters, killed. The author captures beautifully her anguish at Cairo's degradation during the years of dictatorship and Mubarak's calculated sowing of division among the people. Yet with the recent violent eruptions in the country, Soueif's work as an eloquent witness is a work in progress. Agent: Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Soueif, author of the best-selling The Map of Love, provides a timely updated edition of her 2012 memoir, Cairo, My City, Our Revolution. Though the bulk of her eyewitness recollections understandably focus on the 18-day revolution that rocked Cairo in 2011, she also interweaves affectionate and peaceful memories of Cairo, Egypt, and her family into the fiery narrative. As an active participant and a keenly observant chronicler of the impassioned rebellion, her firsthand account offers insight into the heady days of the original revolution and its tumultuous aftermath. As Egyptian citizens continue to live the revolution, she provides a uniquely personal perspective on both the events of 2011 and the ensuing years. Contemporaneous food for thought in light of the current turmoil in the Middle East.--Flanagan, Margaret Copyright 2010 Booklist
Kirkus Review
A deeply personal, engaged tribute by the far-flung Egyptian novelist and journalist as she returned to witness the revolution in her hometown. When the conflicts broke out in Egypt at the end of January 2011, Cairo-born Soueif (Mezzaterra: Fragments from the Common Ground, 2005, etc.), having made her home largely in London since her marriage to the London critic and author Ian Hamilton (d. 2001), quickly returned to join the protests in Tahrir Square, as did her sons and many of her relatives. Tahrir is the Cairenes' "Holy Grail," Soueif writes, the locus for demonstrations against the government since 1972, when the author took part in protests against Anwar Sadat's oppressive regime. It has taken the next generation, her children's, to prevail, and Soueif declares gallantly: "We follow them and pledge what's left of our lives to their effort." Early on, the author offers an in-the-moment account of the crucial first days of street action, often messy, confused and involving violent clashes with the police, though undertaken by friends, family and strangers alike with heartwarming camaraderie. Then she moves to October 2011 to show how the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces hijacked the revolution without keeping President Hosni Mubarak's decapitated regime from "growing a new head." Soueif then moves back in time to the period of February 1-12. While being jostled in crowds, blinded by tear gas, harassed by the paramilitary thug militias, the dreaded baltagis, the author passionately evokes the spirit of the beloved city where she was born, through neighborhoods and buildings long-suffering and dear to her--e.g., pleading with police to cease torturing prisoners in the iconic Egyptian Museum. Soueif offers both an extraordinary eyewitness document and a sense of the historical import of the revolution.]]]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
FRIDAY, 28 JANUARY, 5:00 P.M. The river is a still, steely gray, a dull pewter. Small scattered fires burn and fizz in the water. We've pushed out from the shore below the Ramses Hilton and are heading into midstream. My two nieces, Salma and Mariam, are on either side of me in the small motorboat. As we get farther from the shore, our coughing and choking subside. We can draw breath, even though the breath burns. And we can open our eyes-- To see an opaque dusk, heavy with tear gas. Up ahead, Qasr el-Nil Bridge is a mass of people, all in motion, but all in place. We look back at where we were just minutes ago, on 6 October Bridge, and see a Central Security Forces personnel carrier on fire, backing off, four young men chasing it, leaping at it, beating at its windshield. The vehicle is reversing wildly, careering backward east toward Downtown. Behind us, a ball of fire lands in the river, a bright new pool of flame in the water. The sky is gray--so different from the airy twilight you normally get on the river at this time of day. The Opera House looms dark on our right, and we can barely make out the slender height of the Cairo Tower. We don't know it yet, but the lights of Cairo will not come on tonight. A great shout goes up from Qasr el-Nil. I look at Salma and Mariam. "Yes, let's," they say. I tell the boatman we've changed our minds: we don't want to cross the river to Giza and go home. We want to be dropped off under Qasr el-Nil Bridge. And that is why we--myself and two beautiful young women--appeared suddenly in the Qasr el-Nil Underpass among the Central Security vehicles racing to get out of town and all the men leaning over the parapet above us with stones in their hands stopped in midthrow and yelled "Run! Run!" and held off with the stones so they wouldn't hit us as we skittered through the screeching vehicles to a spot where we could scramble up the bank and join the people at the mouth of the bridge. That day the government--the regime that had ruled us for thirty years--had cut off our communications. No mobile service, no Internet for all of Egypt. In a way, looking back, I think this concentrated our minds, our will, our energy: each person was in one place, totally and fully committed to that place, unable to be aware of any other, knowing they had to do everything they could for it and trusting that other people in other places were doing the same. So we ran through the underpass, scrambled up the bank, and found ourselves within, inside, and part of the masses. When we'd seen the crowd from a distance, it had seemed like one bulk, solid. Close up like this, it was people, individual persons with spaces between them--spaces into which you could fit. We stood on the traffic island in the middle of the road. Behind us was Qasr el-Nil Bridge, in front of us was Tahrir, and we were doing what we Egyptians do best, and what the regime ruling us had tried so hard to destroy: we had come together, as individuals, millions of us, in a great cooperative effort. And this time our project was to save and to reclaim our country. We stood on the island in the middle of the road, and that was the moment I became part of the revolution. Excerpted from Cairo: Memoir of a City Transformed by Ahdaf Soueif All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.Table of Contents
| A Note on Spelling Arabic Sounds in Latin Characters | p. ix |
| Map | p. x |
| Preface | p. xiii |
| Revolution I Eighteen Days | |
| 25 January-11 February 2011 | p. 1 |
| An Interruption | |
| Eight Months Later, October 2011 | p. 49 |
| The Eighteen Days Resumed. | |
| 1 February-12 February 2011 | p. 101 |
| Revolution II Eighteen Days Were Never Enough | |
| October 2012 | p. 153 |
| Revolution III Postscript | |
| 31 July 2013 | p. 217 |
| A Brief and Necessary History | p. 227 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 235 |
| Notes | p. 237 |