Egypt protests, when Mubarak 'met' Madonna
Twenty years on and the jokes about President Mubarak seem to have worn very thin – Egyptians are at last saying it all. Channel 4 news Foreign Editor Ben De Pear blogs about his memories of Cairo.
Channel 4 News Foreign Editor Ben De Pear recalls his time based in Egypt.
In 1993 I went to Cairo to teach English and I hoped, to learn Arabic. I had a class of 40 adult students. In the first few weeks when I asked a question the men who all sat at the front would shout out the answer and normally get it wrong. The women invariably knew the answer but would have to be asked directly to give it to the whole class.
Some of them wore head scarves, others who were more influenced by the new Lebanese TV shows on Egyptian TV wore western clothing. The men in the class were divided as to the proper dress for women.
My flat was next to the main Heliopolis-Cairo road, and every morning we were woken early by shouts of “God is Great!” from the scores of prisoners in a procession of wire caged army trucks driving past en route to a military court house. Mass military trials of dozens of alleged Islamists were held for three years From 1993-1995 in Egypt and were a nightly feature on the TV news. Hundreds received extremely harsh sentences, with over 70 sentenced to death. Even those acquited were often re-arrested and held under emergency powers.
As well as the trials, Egyptian TV followed the president’s every move. If he was visiting a new factory, or government housing estate, the footage was shown uncut of his drive to the site, his emergence from the limousine, the tour of the factory. My neighbours who invited me round for dinner twice a week called it the Hosni-vision. Most Egyptians then, as now and in fact for the past 50 years, would rather gather to listen to the replays on TV and radio of Umm Kulthum‘s concerts, and on particulary popular nights you could walk the streets of Heliopolis and hear her voice coming from every window.
Mubarak was also everywhere as he still is, and after a few weeks of teaching he made his own appearance in the class. At the end of very long lessons there was a game we played in which we would stick up well known faces on the blackboard next to a picture of a telephone, and then construct imaginary phone conversations between them to practice everyone’s English. On this occasion one of the brightest women in the class stuck up a picture of Madonna on one side, provoking giggles and nudges all round. And then one of the boldest male students took down the official picture of Mubarak and placed it on the other side.
There was a collective gasp around the room. A couple of the students asked to leave, most of the others were joined in a collective fit of giggles.
The made up conversation (I took suggestions from those with their hands up, and then the whole class just started to shout), went something like this;
MADONNA: Hello, is that Hosni ? (absolute pandemonium and laughter)
MUBARAK: Yes, it is Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt.
MADONNA: Hello Hosni. This is Madonna.
MUBARAK: Oh. Hello Madonna. would you like to go to dinner ?
At this point people fell off their chairs as the class descended into a riot of laughter and incredulity. The student who had put Mubarak’s portrait up got up to put it back in its place and wiped the board just as the school principal entered the room. From that class on Mubarak became the constant caller; he called Bill Clinton, Margaret Thatcher, Michael Jackson, Omar Shariff and Maradona.
I managed to keep the class under a degree of control as these conversations were best kept secret from the school authorities, but a fascinating picture of how the class felt about their president emerged. They would gently mock him as an old man, and whilst there was trust for him from some in the class, there was outright hostility from others, with the ongoing Islamist trials being the clearest dividing line.
With Clinton and Thatcher they mocked him as toadying, obsequious. With women he was always, hilariously to the class, asking them out on a date. With Michael Jackson and Maradona, he was desperate to appear youthful. It was hard to have an open debate about the president but these made up phone conversations gave the class an opportunity to say things indirectly they were unwilling to say openly.
Twenty years on it seems the joke has worn very thin, and Egyptians are at last saying it all.