Once Upon a Revolution by Thanassis Cambanis Page A

Temple of Hatshepsut in Luxor in 1997, killing sixty-two foreign tourists and Egyptians. Mubarak’s police jailed radicals and dissidents of all stripes. As a warning to others, they sodomized detainees with bottles. Beatings and electric shock were a routine part of interrogation. The Islamist insurgency underscored Mubarak’s greatest selling point: stability. Nobody wanted to live in a war-torn Egypt, and Mubarak promised through his longevity and his security forces to keep the country safe. Given a glimpse of the alternative by the jihadis in Imbaba, many Egyptians preferred the president’s deal. By 1998, the insurgency was over, and Mubarak enjoyed a rare and final moment of popularity. Had he allowed fair and competitive elections at that point, he probably would have won. But he concluded that his state had beentoo lax, and he would never again permit an opening that might allow another challenge to his rule. He kept his new police force in place to balance out the military. That way, no single security branch could mount a coup.
    Back home in Cairo, Moaz immersed himself in an Egypt apart: Brotherhood Egypt. He went to private Islamic schools run by members of the group. They were segregated by gender and were ideologically homogenous: only Brothers and fellow travelers sent their children. These young Brothers learned to see themselves as an elect group empowered by their morality, their community works, their political program, and the inviolable links connecting their usra to the umma ; each Brotherhood “family” of a half dozen was connected in an unbreakable chain to the Islamic community, represented by an international confederation of Brothers under the supreme guide’s ultimate authority.
    The Brotherhood didn’t have its own high schools, however, so as teenagers, Moaz and his confederates began their encounters with the rest of Egypt. Some found the world outside the Brotherhood bewildering or offensive; Moaz found it intoxicating. He loved arguing, persuading outsiders of the Brotherhood’s views rather than discoursing comfortably with the converted. He found the presence of females pleasant rather than threatening. The world at large was a bigger stage than the Brotherhood. As a sixteen-year-old in a gargantuan public high school with nearly eight thousand students, Moaz discovered a knack for leadership and activism. He established a Muslim Brotherhood student group, which prayed together at lunchtime. He was elected vice president of the school-wide student union. It was the year 2000, and Palestinians had begun the second intifada. Anti-Israel sentiment often served as a proxy for opposition to Mubarak, who, after all, was one of the Israeli government’s most important allies. Moaz organized solidarity teach-ins about the Palestinian cause. He shared copies of Muslim Brotherhood magazines smuggled into Egypt from the Gulf. This was exactly the sort of personal political initiative that Mubarak’s regime was committed to rooting out.
    The school principal stopped Moaz one day. “One of our friends wants to ask you some questions,” he said.
    â€œWho is our friend?” Moaz asked, perplexed.
    â€œCome,” the principal said.
    They sat in his office, where a man named Khaled joined them. He was an intelligence officer from State Security Investigations, known colloquially as State Security or, in Arabic, Amn al-Dawla. The agency’s local office shared a wall with the school. It was the most important arm of the deep state for policing Egyptians.
    â€œI want to ask you,” the smiling officer said, “who among you prays the most?”
    The Brotherhood had coached Moaz for such an eventuality; he was to answer only “No” and “I don’t know.” With his natural affability, Moaz relaxed and threw himself with pleasure into the interrogation.
    â€œI don’t know,” Moaz said.
    â€œWhy do you support the