Writer and political activist Alaa al-Aswany talks to MARY FITZGERALD, Foreign Affairs Correspondent
NO NOVELIST has captured the deadening impact of the Mubarak regime on ordinary Egyptians as well as Alaa al-Aswany.
The characters whose lives make up his best-selling novel The Yacoubian Building– from the frustrated doorman's son who drifts into militancy to the impoverished rural migrants struggling to eke out a living in an unforgiving Cairo – could easily be among the protesters that have thronged Egypt's cities and towns over the past week.
A Cairene dentist turned writer, Aswany is also a long-standing political activist and a veteran of pro-democracy protests in the Egyptian capital. But nothing compares to what has unfolded this week.
For days Aswany has braved water cannon, tear gas and gunfire to join what he calls “the Egyptian Spring”. He has addressed protesters in Cairo’s landmark Tahrir (Liberation) Square; witnessed demonstrators fall under a hail of bullets; and watched as the regime’s hired thugs ran rampage in the city’s streets. Speaking after taking part in a rally in downtown Cairo yesterday, Aswany said the protesters would not back down until the Mubarak regime collapses.
"They are very, very determined. They want Mr Mubarak to resign and they don't want to hear about anything else," he told The Irish Timesby phone. "I have written in the past that the Egyptian people are like a camel. A camel can be annoyed once, twice, three times, many times, and he doesn't react. But when the camel becomes really angry there is nothing you can do to calm him down.
“This is a revolution by definition, it is not a protest. It is happening everywhere in Egypt, and it involves millions of Egyptians. They are demanding to get rid of the whole system. They want to build a new country, with a new concept and a new spirit.”
Last night speculation grew that a heavy crackdown was on the way. “Threatening the protesters is futile because these people have faced everything already, and will do so again,” Aswany said. “They have no fear. When people standing near me at the protests were shot dead, not one single person around us stood back or left.
“I told the protesters that even the toughest dictator on earth does not have a machine strong enough to oppress all of the people. Fear is what keeps a dictatorship in place. When the people overcome their own fear, that is the end of the dictator.”
Aswany said the protesters were a microcosm of Egyptian society – young and old, male and female, the well-off and the poor. “Half of those on the streets are women, and many of them have brought their children.”
Poverty was only one element of the frustration that prompted the protests, he said. “People want freedom and they want to be treated with dignity as human beings. They want to be able to freely express their political ideas and to choose their president and representatives in a clean, free election like any other people.
“The dictatorship is the disease in Egypt, and poverty is just a complication of that disease.”
Aswany was scathing over Washington’s dithering as the protests against Mubarak, a long-time ally, escalated over the last week. “They talk about democracy yet they support the worst dictators on earth and Mr Mubarak is a good example. This situation is coming to a head because Mrs Clinton and Mr Obama now see their best ally, whom they know is a terrible dictator, refused by his own people in such a way.
“I think it is time for the American administration and for all western countries to finally take a side and to decide whether they are with the Egyptian people or the dictator.”
As to what might follow if Mubarak is ousted, Aswany played down the potential role of the Muslim Brotherhood, which, he argued, was used as a bogeyman by the regime. He said Egypt’s Nobel laureate Mohamed ElBaradei, who has become something of a figurehead for the protesters, could play a major part. But whatever the protesters’ political leanings, there is one thing everyone agrees on: Mubarak must go.
“The regime in Egypt is a one-man show and there is no way to change without having Mr Mubarak out.”