In recent years, book vending booths and bookstore shelves have become crowded with cynical titles that carry the president’s name and cartoonish covers that mock his persona–a development that attests to the erosion of a decades-old taboo.
“Criticizing the president and his son is no longer a red line,” says Gamal Eid, executive director of the Arab Network for Human Rights Information.
Titles condemning President Hosni Mubarak, anticipating the demise of his regime and attacking his family have been landing safely on the shelves of bookstores in Egypt for the last five years. In these explicit releases, words are not the only means of expression; graphics have risen as a new tool to convey rising disenchantment with Mubarak’s long reign.
Some covers depict the 82-year-old president as a cartoonish figure with a flabby, wrinkled face, as a king sitting on a throne covered by spider webs, as an amputatee military general, or as a fissured Roman statue.
“These books did not emerge because the government is more inclined to respect freedom of expression,” adds Eid. “It is because now we have brave writers who are more willing to defend freedom of speech.”
Abdel Halim Qandil is one of those writers who spearheaded the phenomenon of anti-Mubarak content.
“I began the campaign against the president in June 2000 right after I became the editor-in-chief of al-Arabi,” recounts the 54-year-old journalist.
“The main motivation was what happened in Syria after the death of and the rise of his son as president. The paper came out with the headline ‘We are against turning republics into legacies’.”
Since then, the defiant journalist has written extensive articles against Mubarak and his son in the Nasserist party mouthpiece, seeking to mobilize a wider opposition that would resist alleged attempts to groom the 46-year-old former banker.
And in 2004, Qandil moved from rhetoric to action. With tens of activists, he co-founded the famous “Kefaya” movement which took to the streets shouting: “No to an extension of Mubarak’s mandate! No to hereditary succession!”
For the first time, the president’s persona was openly attacked in the public space.
In the midst of this unprecedented street mobility, Qandil was kidnapped, beaten and left naked in a remote area. Back then Qandil accused the government of using violence to intimidate him.
“I decided to publish the first book against Mubarak after this incident,” says Qandil. “I realized that if my articles remained in newspaper archives, they would eventually go with the wind. I decided to [compile them] in books to record this unique campaign that will be remembered as a landmark in the history of the Egyptian press.”
Eventually, his first book came out in 2005, under the title Against the President.
In the same year, his colleague Mohamed Taima from al-Arabi paper hit the public with his book Mubarak’s Dynastic Republarchy.
“The title is clear,” says Taima. “It combines republicanism that was instated by the [1952] revolution, and the monarchism that Gamal is trying to bring back.”
For three years as a journalist, Taima had scrutinized the ascendancy of Gamal within the ranks of the ruling National Democractic Party until he realized that his reporting would provide enough content for a fully-fledged book. Yet, finding a publisher was not an easy endeavor.
“I had a hard time finding a print house,” says Taima, who eventually settled for a small print shop in the poor neighborhood of Imbaba, but the mission had to be accomplished in full secrecy.
“I sponsored the first edition out of my own pocket. The print house owner used to turn off the lights at the front yard of his shop and work at the back,” remembers Taima, whose book is expected to go into its fifth printing soon.
While Qandil’s and Taima’s books adopt a sensational journalistic style based on anecdotes and highly opinionated assumptions, Ahmed al-Naggar, an economist with Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, has chosen a strictly academic approach in dissecting Mubarak’s economic performance throughout his 29 years in office.
His book, titled The Economic Deterioration in Mubarak’s Times, examines multiple layers of Mubarak’s economic policies, dismissing them as amenable to a slow growth rate, corruption, a flawed taxation system and skyrocketing poverty rates.
Substantiated with figures, tables and charts, the first printing of al-Naggar’s book, which came out shortly ahead of the 2005 presidential poll, made an explicit plea against the re-election of Mubarak.
“We should not remain under the same regime and ruled by the same president. The extension of his rule would only lead to more social injustice, poverty and unemployment,” says al-Naggar.
According to Eid, these writings began to flourish in the wake of the fall of Baghdad to the Americans in 2003. The quick demise of Saddam Hussein’s regime emboldened the Egyptian opposition to challenge their presidents.
“The fall of a dictator within very few days proved that he was not as strong as he claimed and made people feel that they could push for democracy themselves rather than wait for [foreign] tanks to bring it,” adds the human rights advocate.
This development coincided with the boom in independent papers and satellite channels and the exploration of new cyber venues such as blogs and Facebook, which all served as platforms to channel political and social discontent, explains Eid.
Nevertheless, this abundance in outlets did not guarantee the erosion of all taboos. Tackling the military remains a red line, contends Eid.
Qandil has tried to test this ceiling in many of his writings, though. In his book The Last days, Qandil raises the question as to what would happen if a military general succeeds Mubarak. This chapter did not go unnoticed, according to Qandil. He claims the military summoned him and suspended the book, demanding it be revised. The publishing house sent copies for examination but defied orders to stop printing and released the book in 2008, adds Qandil.
“The military could have acted outside the law and referred me to a military tribunal, but this did not happen,” he says.
“The military seemed as if it was not concerned with the matter, or liked my criticism of the Gamal Mubarak scenario,”adds Qandil, who has just released a new book titled The Alternative President, in which he tackles the role of the military in the post-Mubarak scenario.
Strangely enough, none of these books have been banned and none of the authors have been arrested–in a country with a poor human rights record.
For Taima, this attitude attests to the fragmentation of Mubarak’s regime. “The regime is not capable of extending its control anymore to tighten this margin of freedom,” says Taima.
On the contrary: Tolerating such incendiary content is a well-calculated decision, contends Eid.
“Egypt is very smart. It does not ban or suspend books, unlike Syria and Tunisia,” says Eid. “Such moves would make these products more popular. It lets these things appear, but continues to chase and harass their creators.”
