DAYS 21, 22 EGYPT- MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD / FINAL DAYS AND FINAL IMPRESSIONS

Hello friends and family,

I can’t believe this is my final travelogue email to all of you…This last month has been both a whirlwind and a lifetime of memorable experiences. Thank you so much for following us along our journey and participating in our experiences through these long winded ‘letters’…We’ve barely scratched the surface in many ways, but feel we have gotten enough varying perspectives to make this trip count…Zach will be taking the reign from here when he’s in Iraq next month and has promised to write as I have been (because he’s embedding with a marine unit, I’m not “allowed” to go because I’m a girl…hmmm, seems like similar double standard to the Muslim Brotherhood doesn’t it?)

But I couldn’t have gone anyway since we have so much work ahead of us and we need to multitask…while he’s overseas, I’ll be working with our motion graphics team, our editor, our animation team, the archival footage team, and will be in pre-production mode on all the state-side interviews we have left to complete the piece…Now comes the fun part of pulling out all the stories from the hundreds of hours of footage and piecing the puzzle together…We’re looking forward to the process actually, lots of coffee pots ahead of us…:)

So to complete our journey, yesterday was another very long day. First, we went to the American University of Cairo (AUC) campus to do another “Man on the street” segment like we did in Beirut at AUB. The campus was gorgeous with palm trees and fountains but was in the middle of the desert, in a very remote part of Cairo…We went there to ask students about whether they were happy about Obama’s election and if he gave them hope, and also asked them about the “democracy” in their country and whether it worked for them…Every single student was hesitant to talk about anything related to Mubarek because they were scared to, and said they wouldn’t be voting in the next election since there was absolutely nothing they could do, and Mubarek was going to be elected anyway since the election was rigged. They said they also didn’t want to speak up because they didn’t want to go to jail or be “beaten up”…There were several outspoken students who felt change was coming, but most of them said, “what can we do?”

I think fear breeds apathy until pushed too far and a revolution results. To give the “balloon” example Zach likes to give, Mubarek inflates the balloon to the point of breaking, but before it breaks, he lets a little air out…(He throws a bone to his people to contain them from revolting). He also enforced a rule that any group over 5 people had to get written and authorized permission from the government to get together and protest or gather..unbelievable that he gets away with it, and more unbelievable that we support and protect him.

We met all sorts of students, most of which wanted to leave Egypt to pursue work or continuing education…they felt Egypt didn’t offer any opportunity with the current regime and that all the educated, motivated Egyptians were leaving as a result…One student said that their generation was fed up and that a revolution was coming…I thought to myself, “With the 5 million radicalized illiterate Egyptians coming back from Saudi Arabia, and with education on the decline, this revolution may be another Kefaya ralley with 200 students involved and no real impact”…But I was excited that there was still fighting spirit in Egypt…Another 18 year old student said that Mubarek was purposefully trying to prevent a middle class from emerging since he would have a harder time controlling them if they were too educated which was why the schools were getting worse and worse..The mature insight of these teenagers we’ve met all over the middle east is remarkable.

We then headed over to meet with a pharmacist who was also a member of the Kefaya movement and saw her friends being beaten, dragged by the hair, derobed and publicly humiliated by “thugs” sent by Mubarek during a rally…she was also arrested a dozen times..Even though she had experienced all that, she was jovial and optimistic and also felt change was coming. She said “optimism is a necessity”.

As jovial and positive as she was, the stories of human rights violations here are endless and so disheartening. How could a President do this to his own people and look himself in the mirror?

Where are the prolific leaders today?

We then rushed to Kentucky Fried Chicken (of all places) to meet with the Facebook blogger, Esraa Fatah,  the young woman who started the Facebook Group, “April 26 movement” where hundreds of thousands of kids and adults stayed home and silently protested many of their grievances with the Mubarek regime and all wore black on that day. They had 70,000 members at their peak in the group…Esraa, the veiled, pleasantly plump, 29 year old who wore rimless glasses, was so filled with conviction and said proudly that on that day, where Cairo was usually a hub of activity, it was a total ghost town. When we asked her if it had made any difference in the long run, she said, “that was not the aim of this protest. The aim was to gauge the interest among the Egyptians to see how many would actually go through with it and support this idea. This was just a case study to see the level of apathy or involvement, and the results were very encouraging. This is just the beginning.” I was so impressed. Thinking three chess moves ahead. I liked it and I thought about the student we had met at the AUC campus that said that their generation would make some changes. I was feeling more optimistic..

After we said our goodbyes, we headed to meet with a supposedly more moderate Muslim Brother. We waited for two hours in the waiting area to meet with him since he was at a town hall round table meeting where dozens of leaders of smaller organizations had been gathering once a month to see if they could consolidate and form one powerful organization and combat the Mubarek regime. Given that it was in arabic, we didn’t understand anything, but they were very passionate to say the least. One older lady who looked in her 80′s with a walker next to her and veiny arms was shouting while giving her two cents, and I asked Magdi, our fixer, to explain. She said, pointing to a photo she had pulled out, “60 years ago, this woman lived downstairs from me, and we were great friends. She was Jewish from Israel. I miss her, and she left this country. Our problem isn’t the Jews and Israelis, it’s the Zionists that we have a problem with..”

I started realizing that there are a lot of people in Egypt who aren’t apathetic and want change. Their presence is just either silent at the moment or quickly eliminated by the regime, but what Mubarek doesn’t realize is that his tactic won’t work eventually. People are too resilient and when they want change badly enough, change will happen. Again, Obama, case and point.

The Muslim Brother we met ended up only giving us five minutes of his time and also seemed irritated by our questions and said Islam is the only way but that they would accept every denomination should they be elected into government…Same party line quotes. He didn’t seem very interested in talking with us…I walked away feeling the same about the Brotherhood…skeptical of their ability to recognize the current decade and really opening their ears to listen while we were trying so hard to open ours. We plan on meeting with other Muslim Brotherhood academics in the US who know their platform as well to get even more perspectives. But I think I’d hold my stance in saying that religion has no place in government nor could Shariah law ever be “democratic” with their current interpretation of the Qur’an.

We then went to a typically Egyptian restaurant where Magdi said we could eat a big meal for one dollar! (To prove to Zach who was skeptical that any family could subsist on a dollar a day that it was possible). He was right. Zach and I both had our meals together for one dollar and it comprised of rice, beans, noodles, fried diced onions and tomato sauce! As the penny pinching producer, Zach said he had never seen a smile so big on my face when the bill came. It was actually delicious too. It’s called kochery.

We headed back to the hotel, our bellies full, and packed for our journey home.

Today, Zach and I went back to the Pyramids as tourists to do a camel ride around the dessert. It was the one thing I had wanted to do while I was out here that we hadn’t already done and so we headed into the biggest sandstorm I’d ever witnessed to fullfill that final check on my list of things to do while I’m in Egypt. I have to say, even with the sand lodged in every orifice of my body, the air in the dessert felt so much cleaner than Cairo’s. I’ve never been to a city as polluted as Cairo actually. Not New Delhi, not Bombay, no where was as bad at Egypt…Something should be done about their environmental regulations too, I think. Baby steps though…

We then left the barracks of the Flamingo Hotel (It was actually a nice hotel), headed to the airport and said “Shukran” (thank you) to the Middle East for opening their doors and our eyes. And that’s all she wrote.

So we’re sitting in Doha Qutar now on an eleven hour layover on our way back to New York. I can’t wait to be in my flannel PJ’s opening up Christmas presents with my family and arguing about who gets to open their presents first. I think this Christmas will be especially special since I can truly appreciate just how fortunate we really are. I hope for these kinds of warm family moments for everyone, including the once-migrant farmer in the Thar Desert who just became sedentary because of drip irrigation, for the residents at the low income housing project in Lahore, for the Palestinians who live in the refugee camps in Beirut, for the citizens of Egypt living in cemetaries and earning less than a dollar a day under an oppressive totalitarian regime.

I think we’ve ultimately found that democracy doesn’t seem to be the answer. The US has a place in the world we still firmly believe, but again, our focus should be less on the macro and more on the idea that “are people better off because we were here?”.

Again, it’s about the deliverables. Education, Infrastructure, Free Press.

As Den Xiaoping wisely said, “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, as long as it catches the mouse.”

Have a wonderful holiday and I’ll be sending emails in the new year updating you on the progress of the film.

I’m delirious as I write this since we’ve been up for almost 24 hours…

Look forward to hearing from you and thank you again for all your amazing emails and words of encouragement.

With love and respect and wishing you the best in 2009,

Radha

Final Side note: As the plane was taking off a few hours ago on our way to Doha, Zach was looking out the window in the distance, and a few minutes later turned to me and asked, “Radha, do you think we have a film?” I looked at him, and smiled. I think the reason I started working with Zach on the film to begin with is for the very reason he asked the question.