Italian (Mis)Adventures: All Mark Twain's Fault

The French say: Man proposes, God decides; and in Muslim culture, every future tense is hedged with a precautionary 'God willing'. So it was that I had planned to spend the month of June at home in North Carolina, catching up with much that I wanted to do, when I received a phone call from London that had me on a plane to Heathrow 24 hours later in response to a family emergency. I had planned to return in a week, but had to postpone for another week in London; and at that point, finding myself on the European side of the Atlantic, a message from a friend in Tuscany tempted me to fly to Florence for ten days in Italy. I hadn't been in Italy in years; I had just visited India, the second of the Eat, Pray, Love trilogy; most of all, I happened to be reading Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, the Italian passages, specifically, when the impulse to revisit my own memories of Italy hit hard.
After cool, drizzly, civilized London, Rome airport felt like a third world country: stuffy, sweaty terminals miles apart, with no mechanized means of linking them. Arriving in Florence at night, found a taxi easily to the hotel I booked online for its location, steps from the Uffizi Gallery; an old-style place with lush velvet furniture in the spacious reception areas and a stunning view over the river and the Ponte Vecchio. Next morning, after a copious breakfast, walked all around town revisiting the bridges, the gigantic Domo, the Santa Croce, and touring the overwhelming Uffizi. It is so vast, and there is so much to see, and most of that is iconic works by the grandest masters; one reaches the saturation point within a couple of hours, whereas a single such iconic painting by Giotto or Raphael or Botticelli would have me enraptured for hours.
My friend Rebecca had come up to meet me in Florence from Greve, a nearby small town in Tuscany where she is staying. We had lunch; I ordered Vitello Tonnato, a dish a remembered nostalgically from a former visit to Tuscany, but it wasn't on the menu at one restaurant, and at the other, the chef accommodatingly offered to make it for me especially. It was disappointing but naturally I couldn't be so ungracious as to let that transpire.
Florence was a lively place that Saturday: a football (soccer) match in Renaissance costume, a race, and swarms of tourists. The French, of course, ubiquitous, but then the borough of Kensington in London, where I was staying, is colonized by the French; in Florence there were also American, German, and Israeli accents to be heard.
Next the (mis)adventures began. I was supposed to go back with Rebecca to Greve, where I had booked a hotel online in a hurry from London. It turned out that Greve is not serviced by trains, only the occasional bus from Florence. The occasional bus turned out to be a local if air-conditioned coach driven at a hair-raising pace down steep hills by a driver checking his email on his i-pad as he drove. But the real shock came when it turned out the hotel I had booked was not in Greve at all, but in a minuscule hamlet called Chiocchio fifteen minutes before Greve on the road from Florence. Faced with the prospect of being dropped off by the side of the road in this tiny place, and warned that this was the last bus to or from anywhere on this Saturday night, I got back on the bus and went on to Greve with my friend.
Next came the stress of trying to find a last-minute accommodation in Greve for the night, and to try to cancel the booking I had made in Chiocchio, paid ahead and forfeited according to the website's draconian policies. I found a room at a bed and breakfast right off the main road, and my friend took a taxi to her own residence up the hill.
I fully intended to turn around the next morning and head back to Florence, but the hotel I had stayed at there was fully booked. So I spent the night in Greve, and in the morning felt so tired, with a raging sore throat, that I decided it would be best to stay put and try to recuperate than to spend all my energy scrambling back on the bus to Florence. After all, the room was scrupulously clean, the air-conditioning worked, and the windows were double-glazed, both necessary, it turned out, as opening a window immediately let in the noise from traffic right outside.
The pensione- it hardly merits the name of a hotel- is run by two or three generations of the same family, who seem to run to unusually large size and dark hair: two sisters in their thirties; their husbands; two nonnas, or grandmothers; and two children, a teenage boy and a preschool girl, both of whom look well on their way to resembling their large, dark-haired parents. The whole family is eager to please, but voluble and loud, tending to general sans gene. Not to mention that none of them speak English, and that leaves me longing for the professional suavity of the reception desk staff at a proper hotel.
The little town of Greve is charming on a sleepy Sunday, with everything from a fruit-seller where all the fruit costs the same, by weight, or at least that's what I understood from his Italian; a newspaper shop that carries the Sunday telegraph, a piazza with ristorantes and galeterias and pasticerias galore, topped by a small church with unexpected works of art from Renaissance to Art Deco, on the walls. Not far are walks that take you into the surrounding hills.
Come Monday morning, the frustrations begin when I attempt to get an Italian sim card to make it easier to make local calls. I am directed to the post office, and duly go there. Italy must be the most bureaucratic country in the world! To begin with, to get a sim card your passport is photocopied, and to end with, after you have jumped through all sorts of hoops, the cell phone still doesn't work, and you are told that you might have to wait between an hour and 24 hours for it to work, and maybe never. And when you exclaim in frustration: 'How can that be possible?!' You are told, 'this is Italy, madam, not the United Kingdom!'
Luckily, my friend Rebecca comes by the pensione and picks me up in a somewhat battered borrowed car to drive to Siena, a glorious 40-minute scenic drive along vineyard-covered hills to one of my favorite Italian cities, Siena. Parking is a challenge, but once that is overcome, we walk along the hot dusty streets first to the San Domenico church, where St Catherine of Siena's head rests, and then to the massive Domo, like a smaller version of Florence's cathedral. The basilica guide does not know, any more than I do, why an elephant is used as a symbol of Rome on one of the marble floor carvings inside the Domo: Siena is represented by the she-wolf nursing Romulus and Remus, confusingly, as I had always associated that with Rome; while Florence, appropriately enough, has a lion. The small library in the Domo is easy to overlook in the middle of so much splendor, but it is worth visiting for its splendid frescos.
Not far from the Domo, along winding alleys enticingly lined with shops offering leather goods, ceramics, and regional specialties- Panforte di Siena, of course, but also my favorite Ossi di Morto ('bones of the dead', light crunchy nut meringue cookies)- close to the Domo, then, is the Campo, the square- or rather elliptical circle- dominated by its bell-tower, the clock of which does not seem to keep time but mysteriously, somehow, jumps an hour at a time when your eyes are turned elsewhere. We sat down at one of the cafes that line the square where, in a couple of weeks, the Palio horse-race takes place and the Campo is covered in sand and becomes a magical place of pageantry.
The next morning, off to Venice, leaving Tuscany behind. There is a long line at the ticket window at Florence's train station St Maria Novella, which is surprising, considering how simple it is to buy the ticket from the automatic machines. There are no seats available in any class on the 11:30 train, so I wait around for the next train. A comfortable 2 hour trip during which I doze for a good part of the time. Arriving in Venice's St Luccia, there is a bit of a scramble to figure out Vaporetto tickets, and the ride itself is noisy and long, as the Vaporetto or water bus stops every few minutes and docks with a lurching, bumpy motion. The vistas around every bend, however, are breath-taking: Venice, la Serenissima, the water, the cathedrals and palaces under a cloudless blue sky, the canals, the gondolas, the bridges; it cannot diappoint.
Getting off a station too soon for the hotel turns out to be a mistake, as, once on the ground, there are no land taxis, and one has to lug one's own luggage up and down tiny bridges and across vast sun-baked Piazza San Marco in search of the hotel. Hotels in Venice can be deceptive; location and price are not always a good indicator of quality. And in peak season, during the Biennale, no less, last minute reservations are not easy. Venice, la Serenissima, is anything but serene, hordes of tourists throng the square and the narrow side streets branching off from Piazza San Marco, 'calles' lined with top designer shops, Missoni, Chanel, Botega Veneta, back to back with smelly back alleys where the stench from the canals rises.
I put on a little Italian shift dress, a hat, and sit at a table at Florian's Cafe on Piazza San Marco. I order a cappucino, and spend an hour or two listening to the music and waiting for the heat of the day to subside, while the tourist parade back and forth, eating gelato and feeding the pigeons and the waiters chase away the gelato-eating tourists who plop themselves down in the cafe's chairs. Americans are overwhelming, and one also hears a good deal of French.
It's the longest day of the year, and at 9:30 pm there is a wait for an outside table at one of the restaurants close to the square. Fried calamari, steak pommes frites, unmemorable.
The next day, change of hotel, across the water on the Dorsodura side, close to San Salute church. This side of town is much quieter, far fewer tourist, more students, less damp and less noisy than the San Marco side. The hotel is quiet and family-owned, the rooms have astronomical names but not astronomical prices, at least not by Venicee in mid-season standards. The 'Libra' room we're in has an ancient beamed ceiling and French-style period furniture. At breakfast, you are offered a choice of caffe latte, cappucino or American coffee, croissants, yoghurt, dried fruit, pastries, cheese...
A pleasant way to spend the early evening, sipping limoncello at a courtyard table surrounded by gigantic hydrangeas with music playing in the background. For dinner, the recommended restaurant turns out to be disappointing: the calamari is too salty, the scalopini marsala are drowned in butter and the marsala is undetectable.
Third day in Venice finds us back near Piazza San Marco, at a much more satisfactory hotel, in a wood-panelled suite with sweeping curtains that open to a balcony overlooking a little footbridge under which gondolas glide. The visit to the Doge's Palace is interesting, and by purchasing the tickets from the tourist office, there is no waiting in a long line under a pitiless sun. But the tour itself is exhausting, since visitors are expected to go up and down marble staircases in a particular order, with shortcuts roped off. I don't make a habit of this, but this is one time when I ignored the ropes and simply stepped over them to take shortcuts when I needed to; it seemed inane to go down two flights of stairs just to come up again on the other side, not to mention that going down into the dungeons should not be mandatory for someone who is claustrophobic!
Another visit, to the Correo Museum, is very enlightening about the history of Venice and its grandeur as a maritime nation. As part of the Biennale celebration, a modern artist, Birhan Bassiri, has his 'meteorite', large-scale black sculptures, displayed in the middle of the white marble Roman busts and funerary stellas. Quite a contrast.
Now to hunt for a restaurant for dinner...
Next morning, it's a cool, windy, overcast day as we speed by water taxi to the island of Murano. Obligatory visit to the glassblower factories, and tour of the showrooms, all kinds of traditional Murano glass but also novelties like Klimt-inspired mosaic glass, etc. There is so much variety it overwhelms. Outside to the factories, Murano itself is a pretty little town with flowerbox windows overlooking a great many trattorias and glass-souvenir shops, selling articles very similar to those of the prestigious glass factories we visited, but at a third less.
Back in Venice proper, the sun is out as we enter Giardini, where the Art Biennale is taking place: in Venice's 150 year history, there have been 116 biennales, apparently. The Giardini gardens are spacious, airy and calm after the tourist frenzy of San Marco, and the Biennale's international pavilions are spread out. You hear more Italian than other languages, unusually for Venice. In the main pavilion, the largest hall is dedicated to three huge Tintorettos, but they attract less attention than the contemporary works, mostly installations of video, audio, etc, as well as a play-dough room in which viewers of all ages are encouraged to make their own contribution.
Egitto, Egypt, has a surprisingly prime location: the exhibit this year is heart-breaking, the work of Ahmed Bassioni, a young Egyptian, whose video of the Egyptian revolution and his own performance, 'Thirty Days of Running in Place,' is his legacy: he died during the revolution.
The US pavilion is not far; an upside down tank lies beached like a whale in front of its entrance. All the international pavilions seem to have political themes. The Danish pavilion, focusing on freedom of speech, is one of the more disturbing.
Down a shady, tree-lined avenue, and on for another twenty minutes walk, lies the second venue for the Biennale, Arsenale, where edgier works are displayed in the garden and inside. By the time we get there, it hardly seems worth the 30 minute walk, as we have to rush through the exhibits before they close at 6 pm.
Back to the hotel via Vaporeto; it's surprising how quickly one tires of that particular method of transportation, especially when the ferries are packed with tourists and the water is choppy. Hard to imagine what it must be like in winter.
We consider going on the web to book and print out our train tickets for the next day, for FLorence and Milan, respectively, but the reception desk assures us there will be plenty of seats available on a Saturday morning. It turns out to be a big mistake to listen to her.
I am discouraged from going online by the fact that the hotel Royal San Marco requires you to log in with your own credit card, at 9 Euros for half an hour. At the hotel we stayed in two nights ago, at 100 Euros less, the manager, Graziella, offered to print out tickets and boarding passes free, and graciously waived the 1.5 Euros I owed for internet access.
Dinner on our last night in Venice: insalata Caprese, lasagne de verdura, Orata (Dorade) and Scalopini Milanese con patate, espresso.
I decide to go early to the Ferrovia, the train station, since I don't have a ticket. So after a quick breakfast, I catch the 8 am vaporetto, on a sunny, warm morning and take a final forty minute tour of Venice from San Marco to the Santa Luccia train station. That's when the trouble starts. I head for the automatic ticket machine, and punch in FIRENZE for the 9:27 am train: sold out in both classes. I try the 10:27 am: sold out in both classes. And so on, until the 12:27 train, which would make me too late for my flight to Rome, from which I am catching a flight to London.
I start to panick. Then I think, I'll just take a train to Rome, and catch the second segment of my flight, Rome to Heathrow. I punch in ROMA: no problem, seats available in both classes on the 9:27 train that arrives in Rome at 13:13. I buy my ticket and rush to the platform, calling the hotel to put me through to my husband in order to warn him to leave immediately for the train station to buy his own ticket for Milan.
I ask several people- of course the information desk is closed- what the number is for directory assistance- I need to call Alitalia to let them know I wouldn't be checking in for the Florence flight, but going directly to Rome. The number for directory assistance seems to be quite a mystery. Luckily, by the time I have it, I realize that the train to Rome stops in Florence, in fact it is the same train, same number, same time, 9:27 am, that showed up sold out when I punched in Florence. So I decide to simply get off in Florence, and forfeit the rest of my train ticket, 33 Euros more for Rome than Florence.
On the train, I ask the conductor to explain to me what happened, but his English is inadequate to understanding my question.
Shortly after Mestre it turns out that I am apparently in the wrong seat; luckily the man next to me, a big Italian clergyman in white collar, helps me carry my luggage and installs me very kindly in my correct seat. A good Samaritan indeed.
At Firenze Santa Maria Novella station, I am told there no train to the airport but there is a bus, but since the information desk is closed, of course, and if you ask, you are directed to the taxi stand, so I take a taxi, although I have plenty of time, and I know Florence Peretola airport is so small that you don't particularly look forward to spending three hours there.

The automatic fast check-in machine works fine, but after that it's downhill. Impossible to get your luggage checked in, as there is a technical problem; you have to hang on to it. There is, apparently, a problem with a small plane that made a disastrous landing and the airport is closed till further notice. The Alitalia people tell you all this with wide eyes and dramatic shrugs, so different from the attitude an American ground crew would have taken: tight-lipped, uncommunicative, and for that reason, all the more alarming. As the delay extends, several flights of passengers are loaded onto buses to catch their international flights from Bologna or Rome.
I am still waiting. Florence Peretola is a tiny airport, and there is no place to sit, or even to stand at the lunch counter. I order gnocchi quatro fromaggio and eat it standing up, while a German couple hog two of the seats at the counter, alternatively spotting each other so that they keep both seats while one of them is free to go and come. National character does rather seem to affirm itself in travel. In contrast to Germans, Italians are relaxed, friendly, and helpful, saving a spot for you, watching your luggage, sharing information, entirely without the suspicious attitude fostered by constant "Threat Level Alerts" disseminated in American airports. On the other hand, when you sit next to an Italian in an airplane, there is no respect for private space: his elbows jostle yours on the arm rest, he leans over to read what you are holding, etc.
Finally, we are allowed to check our luggage and go through security, herded onto one of those antiquated buses to the plane, and from there to Rome. More delays in Rome, finally take off for London.
Ah, I think, civilized London, an end to chaos and heat. At Heathrow, there is a 2 1/2 hour queue for the non-UK, non-EU passport control, and no one seems to be able to tell me, or the hundreds of others perspiring in line, why there is such a back-up. Whether it is a go-slow by passport control employees, or simply too many flights landing at once, we are not to know. It feels like Dante's Inferno as the line snakes round and round. Finally out, there is a scramble for taxis, and I call for an 'unlicensed cab' service, as all the 'black cabs'- which these days can be any color- are taken. It is nearly two a.m. when I arrive at the London flat where I am a guest, and am greeted with the comforting welcome of the doorman there.

My third British Royal Wedding- why this time it was different

I had no intention of getting up at 5 am US East Coast time to watch the royal wedding, but my body clock had other plans. Up at five, I thought I’d just turn on the television set and take a peek: two and a half hours later, I was still mesmerized by the screen. It wasn’t just Westminster Abbey, or the hats- could the Queen’s have looked more like an iced cake?- or the electrifying moment when a Mohamed el-Fayed look-alike was mistakenly misidentified by Katie Couric. It was the small details, the telling human gestures you only catch live: Prince William awkwardly trying to smooth his sparse hair after taking off his cap when he first enters the Abbey, or fumbling with the button on his white glove before handing his bride into their carriage; Prince Harry looking for someone to relieve him of the program in a hurry and saddling a guest with it; Katherine licking her lips repeatedly in the carriage, as if she were thirsty. For all the commentators repeated how relaxed she was, she appeared to me strained, as if she hadn’t slept or eaten in a week.

The level of voyeurism reached new heights with this wedding. I watched my first British royal wedding, Princess Anne’s to Marc Phillips, in London as a homesick student; my second, Prince Charles’ to Diana, from Michigan, as a homesick new expatriate to the US. But William and Kate’s wedding was staged on an entirely different level, down to hairdressers and make-up artists waiting “backstage” to touch them up when they went to sign the registry, down to rehearsing camera angles for the famous balcony kiss. The uncharitable thought went through my head that William and Kate were perhaps the world’s highest paid actors. But then came the redeeming kiss: not the scripted romantic lip-lock, but a quick, discreet peck, asserting that there were limits, after all, to the role they were willing to play for the public. Good for them!   

The Glamorous Face of Tyranny: Young Arab Women

In February, Vogue magazine published a flattering piece on the lovely, elegant Syrian first lady, Asmaa al-Assad- “A Rose in the Desert”- gushing about the hyperkinetic first lady’s supercharged day, the accessibility with which she and her husband President Bashar supposedly live, and their hobnobbing with Brad Pitt, who apparently was astounded by the absence of bodyguards- in Syria, the country with perhaps the most omnipresent surveillance services in the world! The timing of the article was unfortunate, to say the least: it appeared in the midst of the revolutionary storm that was upending dictatorships from Tunisia to Egypt.

Only a few weeks later, Syria would be the latest Arab country to burst into revolt against decades-old bloody dictatorships. True, in Syria it was the father, Hafez al-Assad, during his thirty year reign of terror, who was responsible for most of the bloodshed, including the infamous Homa massacre of thousands of his own countrymen.

The son, Bashar Al-Assad, took over on the death of his father ten years ago. A strikingly tall, London-trained ophthalmologist with a gorgeous, skinny London-raised stockbroker wife, the young couple were soon embraced by the Western media as the new face of a kinder, gentler Assad regime in Syria.

Asmaa al-Assad’s fashion-plate status in the women’s magazines rivaled that of model-thin, designer’s dream Queen Rania of Jordan, the Palestinian wife of forty-something King Abdullah. At least the young Jordanian monarchs, at last count, still seem to enjoy considerable support and popularity among their people in spite of sporadic protests.   

But the mirror image of the Assads in Syria were the Gamal Mubaraks in Egypt: Gamal, the forty-some, tall, urbane son of Hosni, was a London-based businessman until he returned to Egypt to assume- with an air of aloof entitlement that alienated a broad base of the Egyptian people- the role of heir apparent to his aging father. He added the requisite family-man image to his portfolio by marrying a tycoon’s daughter, Khadija, a considerably younger woman with a taste for flashy outfits.

Gamal Mubarak is behind bars today, toppled out of power by the winds of an unstoppable revolution that no-one could foresee. Bashar Al-Assad, though, must have seen the writing on the wall, but when revolution fever spread to Syria, true to form, he cracked down on the protesters with an iron fist, while promising reform and even announcing the lifting of the emergency laws that had allowed him and his father before him to rule unchecked for forty years. Those same emergency laws had kept Hosni Mubarak in power for thirty years- until they hadn’t.

It’s ironic that the most appealing young Arab first ladies, the most modern and fashion-conscious, the ones who do the most to advance women’s rights or the most to seduce the glamour-conscious Western media, are also the wives of the most ruthless rulers.

It’s especially ironic that if you were to take women’s rights in isolation- and it’s my argument that you can’t- then the Ben Ali and Mubarak regimes were good for women- for that matter so was Saddam’s. They were equal-opportunity oppressors. Susan Mubarak, the ousted president’s wife and Gamal’s ambitious mother, used her influence to impose reforms to the laws regulating marriage and divorce, reforms in favor of women that would not have passed if put to a democratic referendum.

But favoring women’s rights does not make for a benevolent dictatorship, if women, as human beings and as citizens, are denied their human rights, their political rights, and their economic security. That is why there were so many women, young and old, rich and poor, veiled and bare-headed, of all walks of life and of all religious and political persuasions, united in protesting against the Mubarak regime in Tahrir Square and everywhere in Egypt.

And that is why the glamorous face of tyranny will not save the Assads today.

  

My Memories of Torah Prison: Mubarak in Jail

The idea of former president Hosni Mubarak behind bars is not met with unmitigated schadenfreude in Egypt, even among those who demonstrated to end his regime. The first time I stood with the million protesters in Tahrir Square, I saw, strung up on lampposts, a crude effigy I assumed to represent Mubarak. I shook my head.

“That’s not right, that shouldn’t represent the spirit of this movement,” I remarked to the strangers around me in the tight crush of protesters.

A woman in peasant dress, carrying an adorable red-headed, blue-eyed baby girl on her arm, looked at me.

“You haven’t walked in our shoes,” she told me, apparently making a judgment based on appearance, just as I had. 

“You don’t have to walk in someone shoes to feel for them,” I retorted. “But this revolution should stay peaceful. It’s enough to call for Mubarak to leave the country.”

“The effigy is just a symbol, that we want Mubarak tried and brought to justice,” a younger woman explained, bitterly.

But most people didn’t seem to go so far at the time: the banners, the chants, in Tahrir that day and every day until Mubarak finally resigned, only repeated the mantra: “Leave, leave.” “Your plane is waiting.” “Ben Ali is waiting.” “Saudi Arabia awaits you.”

But Mubarak didn’t leave the country after he resigned. He and his sons chose to stay in Egypt, in Sharm-el-Sheikh, no doubt hoping for a comeback, but in effect sealing their fate. Two months later, amid alarms of counter-revolution, and escalating public opinion pressure for bringing them to trial, the last straw was a defiant speech Mubarak broadcast on April 10, misjudging, as always, the moment and the national mood. The Supreme Military Council found itself with no option but to arrest the Mubarak sons and send them to Torah prison; the former president’s health, ostensibly, requires him to remain in hospital.

The sight of the urbane, aloof Gamal and Alaa Mubarak in Torah Prison- where political prisoners are sent- was shocking enough. The very word “Torah” was seared into my childhood memories; it was the word uttered with dread whenever my eldest uncle, or one of my other uncles and relatives, suddenly went missing. Under Nasser, and under Sadat, they were periodically picked up by the “dawn visitors”, the secret police that came in the early hours of the morning; days later, their families were informed where they were being held, usually Torah. Sometimes they were imprisoned for weeks, sometimes for years. One uncle was imprisoned for three years for walking in the funeral cortege of former Wafd leader Mustafa Nahas.

My eldest uncle, Fuad Serageddin, the party leader and statesman, told me once that he was imprisoned under everyone from the British and King Farouk to Nasser and Sadat.

“Which was the worst time?” I asked.

“The last time under Sadat, just before he was assassinated; no contest,” he answered. “For three days I wasn’t allowed to have my diabetes medication, or any food, except for inedible slops they served in a filthy bucket. I survived for those three days on three dried dates that one of the guards slipped me.”

He would have been seventy at the time, I calculated. When he noticed the shocked look on my face, he quickly added, with his usual humor: “Look on the bright side, I lost weight! Remember when I used to go to that weight-loss clinic outside London and they charged me an arm and a leg to starve me on half a grapefruit three times a day? Well I lost weight in Sadat’s prison for free!”

That was the last time my uncle saw the inside of Torah; under Hosni Mubarak, he was never imprisoned. In fact Mubarak tried to co-opt the venerable elder statesman my uncle had become in those later years, inviting him to lunch at Abdin Palace more than once to try to persuade him not to oppose Mubarak’s putting himself up for re-election yet again. Fuad Serageddin accepted the invitations graciously, but continued to oppose the Mubarak regime. When my uncle died, Mubarak even offered to give him a state funeral; the Serageldin family declined.

So I have no personal grievance against Mubarak. But it was not elder statesmen like my uncle who posed a threat to his regime; those who filled his prisons were a younger generation of dissidents of every sort, from Islamists to internet bloggers, and there is documented evidence of the torture and brutality with which countless numbers of them were treated. This was done in Mubarak’s name, and to protect his regime and ensure the succession to his son. These crimes cannot be ignored; there must be a day of reckoning.

But like many Egyptians, I fervently hope that the trials will be conducted as a model of the justice, transparency, order and dignity that the Mubarak regime denied its victims. There is no schadenfreude in watching the Mubaraks behind bars, only a tragic sense that they could have spared the nation this divisive and painful moment, if only they had heeded in time the chants of “leave, leave, leave!”

     

Radio interview this afternoon with Women's International League for Freedom

Radio interview at 5 this afternoon with the Women's International League for Freedom, WCOM 103.5 FM. If they ask about Mubarak and sons being put on trial, I think I will say the principle of accountability is important to affirm for future would-be dictators, but that I hope the trials are conducted with the fairness, openness and dignity that befits the highest ideals of the January 25th revolution. But there's so much else still going on I have to think about...

Interview with Frank Stasio for the State of Things on NPR

About Egypt, the revolution, Libya, the Western aerial intervention, and much more.

http://wunc.org/tsot/archive/Meet_Samia_Serageldin.mp3/view

Egypt's First Free Referendum: the High Price of Democracy

Yesterday saw Egypt’s first free referendum in sixty years, and the results come as a deep disappointment to the very revolutionary movement that made them possible- but that’s the price of democracy. Or rather, the price of democracy after sixty years of single-party dictatorship, during which the Nasser, Sadat, and most recently Mubarak regimes squashed all legitimate, secular opposition parties in favor of their own ruling NDP- leaving the only organized opposition to the underground, illegal, and religious movement: the Muslim Brotherhood.

Abolishment of the existing constitution, which gives such limitless power to the president, was one of the main demands of the January 25^th Revolution, and in response the army suspended the constitution. Yesterday, March 19^th, the Egyptian people were asked to vote for or against the re-instatement of an “amended” constitution, as opposed to scrapping this Mubarak-era document altogether and holding out for an entirely new constitution to be drawn up by a new, democratically elected body.

The proponents of democracy, represented by the various movements that had taken part in the revolution, as well as presidential candidates Mohamed Baradei and Amr Moussa- all lobbied for voting “No” to the amended constitution. Not only is the document deeply flawed, the democratic movements have not had the time to form parties, and the existing opposition parties, emasculated and hamstrung under Mubarak, have not had time to organize.

Only two parties lobbied for a “Yes” vote. Not surprisingly, they were the only two parties organized enough to take advantage of the early parliamentary elections that would follow upon adoption of the amended constitution: Mubarak’s NDP, shorn of its leadership but not of its country-wide privileges; and the Muslim Brotherhood, officially banned under Mubarak but highly organized and regularly fielding successful candidates as “independents.”

In the end, the “Yes” vote won. Put it down to fear-mongering about the instability inherent in continuing without a constitution; or to superior campaigning by the NDP and Muslim Brotherhood, particularly in the countryside, where voters vote for whom they know, rather than issues; or to exploitation of sectarian misunderstanding.

Whatever the reasons, the result is a heart-breaking lesson in democracy for the forces of democracy. And yet it should be a heart-warming one as well: 60% of the Egyptian population is estimated to have voted, waiting for as long as three hours in orderly lines- in a country where, for the past 60 years, election fraud was taken for granted and results favorable to the ruling party and president were a foregone conclusion. And the losers in this round of voting are accepting the results and promising to work with them, and try harder for the next round of elections. That is democracy. A beautiful thing to witness.

Last Day in Cairo

My last day in Cairo, there was an attempted coup d'etat, apparently, by Mubarak's Republican Guard. The four top men under the reviled former Minister of the Interior were arrested on charges of ordering the murderous horse-and-camel attack on peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir on the day that came to be known as "the battle of the camel". Various business tycoons/former ministers had their assets frozen; some were in jail.
Meantime, I was trying to find one of the crescent/cross pendants I'd seen worn as a symbol of Muslim/Christian solidarity. I tried several shops on my island neighborhood of Zamalek; many of them were closed, unusually, and there seemed to be unusual tension among the soldiers guarding the various embassies, particularly the Libyan on the next block. Following up on a tip, I went looking for the elusive pendant in a hole-in-wall shop down a tiny winding alley known only to a few Zamalek residents. It was eerily deserted, and I jumped when I heard a voice behind me; but it was only Ayman, a young carpenter who has done work for me. "Did you come looking for me?" he asked. When I explained my errand, he told me all the shops were closed.
The next day, on the long trip home to N. Carolina, you are met everywhere by references to the new Egypt. Boarding yet another flight in Paris, the security agent at the gate asks if I had been in Egypt for the events, and adds "shukran", (thank you in Arabic) as he hands me back my passport. The passport control agent at Atlanta remarks, "it must have been pretty hot in Cairo there for a while, but things have calmed down, haven't they."
I find a stack of magazines among the humongous pile of mail on my kitchen table at home, and as I flip through a Glamour magazine, I see that Egyptian women demonstrators have made it on the list of year's most glamorous under the heading: brave glamour.
But the threads of N. Carolina life must be picked up. I find a voice mail requesting a pre-interview phone call for Frank Stasio's radio program. And this morning, jet lag or no, I have to go to Duke to meet a French author whose visit I helped organize for Alliance francaise.
And the elusive pendant? I wasn't able to buy one before I left, but a friend who knew I was looking for it immediately insisted I take hers, and dropped it off for me before I left Cairo. That's Egyptians for you.

Revolution, Counter-revolution, and What I Wore.

The thing about revolutions these days, is that the exponentially accelerated, dizzying pace of change means that the stages through which, say, the French Revolution passed, are now compressed into days instead of months or years. It’s hard to tell what stage you’re in at any given moment. In Egypt today, the news comes fast and furious. During a two-hour panel discussion held at Shorouk Bookstore yesterday evening, the discussion was partly shaped by the tweets popping up on the speakers’ cell phones. The two floors of the bookstore were packed with about a hundred people, mostly young, come to take a crash course in Democracy 101 from author/activists who had been writing against the Mubarak autocracy.

Meanwhile, their peers outside the hall, on the university campuses in and around Cairo, were practicing their own version of “democracy”: an instant “off with their (figurative) heads” applied to university deans, dons, and anyone with ties to the former ruling NDP party. As the tweets came in, the speakers on the panel, from the vantage of their 30-40 years, warned against unreasonable demands, unrealistic expectations, and narrow interest group claims that, unchecked, could effectively overload and crash-burn the revolution before it properly got off the ground. They warned against a failed state.

As even more worrying tweets came in, about clashes between Copts and Muslims in the Mokkattam hills, about harassment of women protesters on a women’s march, the speakers warned against counter-revolution. The extremists elements in both religious communities had never signed on to the revolution or its spirit of religious and gender inclusion, and now took advantage of the  

security vacuum to create havoc. But an even more insidious threat of counter-revolution comes from the million-plus members of Mubarak’s NDP party, about to be disenfranchised, and his million-plus security and police services, taken off the streets and sent home in disgrace; both have every incentive to create as much instability and insecurity as possible, in order to stage a return to power.

But it isn’t only sinister forces who are expressing doubts about change these days. The Mubarak regime, and before him Sadat’s, had made the NDP the only patronage game in town for forty years; anyone who had business or political dealings had no choice but to deal with the establishment, and suffers accordingly today.

In addition, women in particular have concerns about security; my women friends exchange recipes for home-made pepper spray and carry it in atomizers in their purses, although none of them has actually faced a threatening situation. People still go out to lunches and dinners in restaurants- now sparsely frequented- but the women wear costume jewelry only; dress down; and forsake their large handbags for small pocketbooks. But Cairo is safe, everyone agrees, the incidents reported all take place outside of the city.  

Give the new prime minister and his cabinet time, the speakers plead. “Two months,” one girl kneeling on the floor with her backpack calls out. But two years seems to be the time frame most people expect it will take for things to calm down and shake out. Even the panel speakers at the bookstore seem to favor that timeline. But everything else is the subject of heated debate: parliamentary elections before or after the constitutional amendment? (As of now, the referendum on a new constitution is set for March 19.) What about presidential candidates? Our speakers label Amr Moussa, Arab League head, as “the candidate for those who want continuity with a changed face,” but my informal poll of taxi drivers and hair dressers brings up his name every time. The role of the military? It should lead to a handover to civilians as soon as possible, everyone agrees. But take them at their word, give them a chance, don’t withdraw your confidence in them just yet, the speakers warn.

In the end, speaker Mustafa Higgazi, elegant and aloof in his effect, made an impassioned plea in his unimpassioned manner: approach every situation, every problem, from this stand, he exhorted: “I am a free Egyptian human being.” If that is your posture, he affirmed, you will include all Egyptians, regardless of creed or class, as your brethren; you will include all humanity. You will make your decisions as a free man or woman, nor longer subject but citizen.

Before we broke up, someone warned that she had just received a tweet about disruption on the 6^th October flyover, the main artery of central Cairo; it was blocked, and everyone would have to find an alternate route home before curfew.

  

How Friedman Got it Wrong on Egypt's Revolution

Tom Friedman claimed, in a recent editorial, that the young Egyptians, Tunisians and other Arabs in revolt were inspired by democracies in the US, China, and Israel, among other countries. That conclusion would find few supporters on the ground inside Arab societies. In the case of Egypt, young people had their own history of home-grown democracy to look up to: in the thirties, forties and up to the military coup of 1952 that became known as the July 23^rd Revolution, Egypt had a secular, multi-party, parliamentary democracy with fiercely contested elections and intense popular engagement in the political process. A wildly popular television docudrama, “King Farouk”, riveted viewers in Egypt and the Arab world to their sets three years ago. The runaway success of this dramatization of Egyptian party politics in the 1930’s and 1940’s introduced entire generations to a history that the Nasser regime, and its successors, had tried hard to suppress.

Young people under forty watched, incredulous, as freely elected Egyptian Prime Ministers pre-1952 demanded accountability from King Farouk himself over his expenses, and contrasted that with the unaccountability of their current billionaire Pharaohs. As in the British system, the winning party’s leader was appointed prime minister and formed a cabinet from his party; the Wafd Party, with which my family’s history is associated, was by far the popular favorite. Egypt’s democracy was qualified by the power of the King and the influence- official or unofficial- of the British, and there was some corruption in the electoral system, but it was a very real democracy nevertheless. The miniseries “Farouk” opened the eyes of the post-1952 generations to their parents’ and grandparents’ legacy not only of democracy, but also of passionate patriotism, of a reverence for the very word “Egypt.” The revelation of their suppressed history created a sense of loss, a powerful nostalgia for that belonging, that legacy.

Almost exactly a year before the January 25^th revolt, there was a first inkling, a first expression of this diffuse longing to rally around the flag: when Egypt won Africa’s Football (Soccer) Cup, the outburst of national pride, the flag-waving, was out of all proportion to the catalyst. The Mubarak regime sensed the inchoate passion, and thought to co-opt it by putting Gamal Mubarak and his brother Alaa front and center in the football stadiums. This gesture backfired; it only proved that the aloof Gamal Mubarak seemed congenitally incapable of connecting with the crowd.

A few months later, the Tunisian example was all that repressed young Egyptians needed to mobilize and claim their country, their flag, their own history, their own legacy of democracy.