The Egyptian uprising is like the Nile in flood. It cannot be kept back with barriers and uniforms
On Monday, as the 508 newly elected representatives of the Egyptian people were being sworn in, thousands of Egyptian people marched towards the parliament building from different points in the city. Workers marched from the trade union headquarters just across the road. "No to Military Trials for Civilians" marched from the supreme court. "Just Retribution [for the killers of the martyrs]" marched from the Martyr Abd el-Menem Riyad Square. Artists marched from the opera house. I was one of them.
We were maybe a thousand strong. We crossed Qasr el-Nil bridge singing "Creativity! Freedom! Social Justice!" Bystanders and people on buses liked us; we didn't look threatening and they recognised some film and TV stars among us. The Central Security Forces – suddenly back on the streets as the "Anti-Riots Troops", with brand new visored helmets and longer, more supple sticks – opened barriers and let us pass through their Holy of Holies, the street that runs between the American and the British embassies.
The marches criss-crossed the downtown streets but none of them could get to within a stone's or a flower's throw of parliament because the military have constructed a varied and inventive series of barricades to protect it from the people. There are walls made of great stone blocks, there are coils of vicious-looking barbed wire, there are sturdy iron railings with pointy tips, and there are hundreds upon hundreds of men in uniform, their personnel carriers stationed strategically at their backs.
They know what pressure parliament will be under, but again they mistake the nature of the pressure. The Egyptian revolution is like the Nile in flood: try keeping that back with barriers and uniforms. The revolution, which began a year ago on 25 January, has gone everywhere. It has raged and tiraded through some spaces, flowed steadily through others, and seeped into yet more. There is nowhere, nothing, nobody who has not been affected by it.
As the People's Assembly convenes and the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) plots, the revolution continues along the pathways it has created and carves out new ones.
The campaign against SCAF has gained huge traction over the past three weeks. Inspired by anger at the mid-December killings of protesters in the parliament area, young revolutionaries held a press conference called Kazeboon ("they lie"). It was a packed and emotional meeting. They screened a film by the Mosireen Collective that showed the generals making statements – and the actions that belied them. A young woman gave an impassioned speech holding up a piece of fabric soaked in the blood of a protester: Rami Hamdi. The film ended with the camera slowly tracking the trail of blood that had poured out of the young man as his friends tried to carry him to safety. On each side of the blood the pathway had been marked with small stones. At intervals there were young people sitting by the trail. Kazeboon is now a countrywide campaign where young people screen footage of the military's deeds in streets and squares and universities – despite intimidation, and often violence.
And besides direct action, there's the fight through the law: the court cases being brought against the military, against the police, against the purveyors and profiteers of corruption in business and industry. And some of the courts – notably the administrative court – have been handing down brilliant, reasoned, historic judgments. For example, to return fraudulently acquired companies to public ownership and allow workers to run them. But there's no police to enforce the judgments. And so there are the strikes.
The labour movement has been of tremendous significance both in the long run-up to and the actual success of the 18-day revolution. And it continues and broadens, encompassing hospitals, newspapers, schools, academia; it gathers strength, it proposes new forms of ownership, of unionisation.
And this new parliament has – at the very least — given the revolution another point to apply pressure on, another pathway: the political one.
It was because of the great injustices that had become standard in our country that the revolution happened. Nature acts to redress an imbalance that has become dangerous. Only this time nature was human: a flood of people who left their homes and walked peaceably into the squares of their cities to say "no more". No more military rule whether clear or hidden, no more emergency or repressive laws, a restructuring of the police and the security apparatus, the freedom of political prisoners and civilians subjected to court martial. The cleansing of the judiciary. No to corruption. Yes to human rights. And a rearrangement of the economy to privilege the majority.
Parliament, as the elected legislative body, can start delivering on a lot of these. If the military allows it. Or if it gets rid of the military. What will become clear over the coming few weeks is how far parliament – or sections of it – will align itself with the aims of the revolution. Will it allow itself to be used as cover or window-dressing for the old regime to carry on as usual under the generals? The Islamists are in the majority now. Will they realise their strength and use it for the good of the country? Or will they remain true to form and handcuff themselves where they perceive power to be?
All of us who defended the Islamists' right to stand, to be counted, to be voted in if that's what the country wants, will now keep up the pressure on parliament. We will insist that now they've been elected they have to represent not only the people who chose them but their entire constituency. As I write, I note my MP speaking in the chamber, insisting that SCAF and the armed forces must be tried for killing protesters. And now a friend posts a picture: a student in the naval academy has written in his exam paper, which she's correcting, "Down, down with the rule of the Generals!"
When the Nile recedes after the flood it leaves the land renewed, energised, fertile. We're still flooding, but we already see green shoots.
© Ahdaf Soueif, 2012. Ahdaf Soueif's Cairo: My City, Our Revolution is published this month by Bloomsbury