The Quiet Before by Gal Beckerman

Author:Gal Beckerman [Beckerman, Gal]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2022-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

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IT’S HARD TO KNOW what would have happened next if the spark that set off Tunisia’s shocking revolution had not turned into a conflagration. The self-immolation of a fruit seller, Mohamed Bouazizi, which quickly led to the fall of Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, the country’s ruler, kicked the feedback loop into overdrive. No longer was it a fantasy to believe that an authoritarian leader could be deposed by his people, could be forced to apologize and flee in fear. Besides respect for those who took to the streets in Tunisia, the dominant feeling on the We Are All Khaled Said page was shame. “If Bouazizi had burned himself in Egypt,” read one comment, “admin would have organized a silent stand.” A decision had already been made to mark January 25 with a protest. That was Police Day, the annual holiday meant to honor the country’s security services. Now, after the fall of Ben Ali, they had to do more. Despite all the V for Vendetta playacting, Ghonim didn’t want to put anyone in harm’s way. But his younger, more radical co-admin, Mansour, convinced him that this was the moment. On January 15, Ghonim changed the name of the event to “January 25: Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption, and Unemployment.” An uprising was now scheduled on Facebook.

It wasn’t exactly inevitable. Tunisia provided the push, but there were only two possible roads for a movement that had been built on social media: either We Are All Khaled Said would soon fizzle out, incapable of sheltering a nuanced assessment of means and ends, or it would rally at a massive event—one that, ideally, could be captured on film and fed back to the page. Despite the name of the planned revolution, there was no real consensus yet about the way forward. Ghonim did post a long message titled “I Wish” that was a list of his own desires, some political (“I wish I had a real voice in my own country”), but most so dreamy as to be practically meaningless (“I wish teachers would establish in the hearts and minds of students a genuine love for knowledge and learning” and “I wish we could love one another”). Another document posted on the page written by a more hardened group of leftist activists made explicit their four objectives for the protest: ending the Emergency Law, confronting the problems of poverty in Egypt, firing the hated interior minister, and putting a two-term limit on the presidency. These were specific, concrete demands, but there was no time to discuss them or gain support for them because the scheduled revolution was hurtling toward a single overarching goal: the ousting of Mubarak.

For Ghonim, the stakes of what he had set in motion were suddenly apparent. Like so many others who had proclaimed as much on the page, he now felt ready to die for the change he was seeking. He booked his ticket for Cairo. The invitation to what quickly became known as #Jan25 was seen

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