10 Years On

I’ve been meaning to write a lengthy text marking the passing of 10 years since the eruption of the Arab uprisings, particularly Egypt’s edition. I’ve been meaning to write on it, not just as a global historical event, but as one that has greatly affected me as a person over the past years; on my position from and in relation to it. On that front, writing about the revolution, the “best and worst of times” involving both boundless hope and intense violence, to me personally is an act of restitution. This is a front in which soul searching towards personal reckoning is in operation. Just as i was personally dismantled in the years after the coup (2013-2015), my writing about this event would necessarily tie both the global picture (of the historical event) to my own subjective experience of it. 

Through writing, i also also wish to address the historical event, where we are at the moment, or rather, how we see it in retrospect; how it is talked and written about a decade after. So many ghosts and shadows are still perched over the memory of the revolution denying us from seeing it clearly. We are still within a fog that we need to pass and get out of in order to address this event with objective clarity. For too many among its participants, myself included, the revolution embodied a dream whose sky is the limit. We thought we were changing the world (and in a way we did), but among the effects of such an idea is that nothing among its resulting outcomes were enough to deem it successful. We wanted too much to the extent that whatever happened was never enough. 

For example, too many among the discourse and talking points of (tone-setting) major news outlets on the anniversary reveled in judgements on whether the revolution failed or succeeded, and if it was worth it in the first place. This is wrong. The revolution was a massive social and political event that has literally affected and intersected with every aspect of our lives. What do we mean when we say that the revolution failed? Which aspect exactly do we address when we say “the revolution”? For example, the musical scene only flourished since. The several Me Too movements that took place over the years addressing harrasment and sexual violence were a positive outcome not unrelated to the revolution. Nothing before January 25th remained the same after, only very few things remained in place since. 

This discourse, then, is not helpful. It obstructs us from being able to sort things out and understand where and how things have changed since, aside from the massive crackdown by the millitary on speech and bodies, public space, political organization and its de facto control of the state, media and economy. Yes, the revolution was defeated on the ground, but this defeat is not permanent and it certainly doesn’t represent the full import of how the revolution changed and continues to transform our reality. 

One example of this is narrative. Major news and political outlets still talk about July 2013 unashamedly as a coup d’etat (unlike, for example, the July 1952 revolution/coup). It’s not a matter of debate. The world knows (although perhaps this is too simplistic to state) that what happened in 2011 was a progressive wave by the people of the region to overturn the grim conditions that were set by our past, from which we thought there was no escape. Another example of this is memory, a recurring talking point during this anniversary, triggered obviously by the regime’s early attempts to erase the memory of the revolution post-2013. But by now, we know with certainty that they haven’t been able to do so. Social media channels still retain a depository of archival material that demonstrate how impossible it is for the regime to rewrite the past. Despite the regime’s might and technological reach in terms of censuring voices and detaining dissidents, we continue to mourn every year, and remember. We continue to converge as masses, albeit in virtual squares. The material and archival history of the revolution was not and cannot be erased.

It is not uncommon for revolutions to suffer such seeming defeat. A friend of mine recently pointed out how the Russian revolutionary forces in 1905 were entirely wiped out, on a scale not unlike 2013, before the Bolshevic revolution, 12 years later, toppled and eradicated the regime in 1917. One among the best commentaries i read on social media, shared by a friend, that “10 years is enough time for us to bury the dead.” It referred to Marx who quoted Jesus urging one of his followers who asked for time to mourn and bury his father, urging him to come instead and “let the dead bury their dead.” 10 years after, we are still mourning our dead, unable to see how the revolution lives on.