The Republic of False Truths by Alaa Al Aswany

Author:Alaa Al Aswany [Alaa Al Aswany]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780571347629
Publisher: Faber & Faber
Published: 2021-06-14T16:00:00+00:00

35

My darling Mazen,

Yes, I love you. I’m no longer embarrassed by my feelings. I feel liberated. I’ve become a new person. I shall never forget the moment when they announced Mubarak’s resignation and you hugged me in front of everybody. I wasn’t embarrassed. I felt your body shaking with excitement, and your tears wet my face. I shall never forget the millions of people shouting and singing and crying with joy, all over Egypt. I shall never forget how, the day following Mubarak’s fall, the young men and women swept the streets and repainted the pavements. See how smart and civilised our revolution is! Did it ever happen before in history that the people rose up, overthrew the dictator, and then swept the streets? I spoke with a lot of the young people who were doing the sweeping and they told me, ‘Egypt is our country now, and it has to be clean.’

I shall never forget those tremendous moments, Mazen. How lucky I am, in you and in the revolution! Can you believe I even found my mother was happy? She kissed me and said, ‘Mubarak was a tyrant. He went too far and got what was coming to him. Enough said.’

Even my father, who used to avoid me altogether so that we wouldn’t quarrel, phoned me from Saudi Arabia and said, ‘Congratulations, Asmaa! It’s over, right, and Mubarak’s fallen? Please, think about your future now.’

The big surprise was at the school. Do you remember the journalist, Hisham, who did an interview with us at the Enough! movement building and published it in Al-Ahram? They’d read the interview at the school and seen my picture with our colleagues. On the first day after the half-term holiday, I went to the school and was amazed at the excitement and joy. The moment I entered the classroom, more than one of the girls said, ‘Congratulations, Miss Asmaa!’

I started explaining the lesson, as usual, but I felt that there was something new about the girls, as though they were taking in what I said in a different way, as though they’d been weighed down by chains and were now free, as though they wanted to talk about what had happened but were waiting for me to start. I found myself asking them, ‘What do you think about the revolution?’

They began calling out and competing with one another to tell me how glad they were that Mubarak had fallen. Then I asked them, ‘Which of you took part in the revolution?’

A quarter of the girls raised their hands, exactly the same percentage as the revolutionaries among the rest of the people.

I told them, ‘Each one of you who took part in the revolution should be proud and tell their children that they shared in the building of a decent, clean, new Egypt.’

The moment the first class finished, the janitor came to summon me to the headmaster’s office. There I found Mrs Manal, who hugged me and kissed me, while Mr Abd El Zaher welcomed

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