Imagining Otherwise In Egypt

Ishaq shared the almost delirious optimism of others at that moment, the sense that the inviolable red line underpinning the government's prestige had been erased. Lacking popular support and the legitimacy of past ideologies such as Arab or Egyptian nationalism, the government now depended for its survival, the activists believed, on the president's Pharaonic stature. As that fell apart, so would the state.

Qandil thought the government might begin to crumble if 100 people poured into the streets; others suggested it would take 1,000. Ishaq was similarly convinced of the state's frailty. "Give me the TV for 24 hours, and I will change Egypt completely," he said then. "The door of change is open, and no one can close it again. Never."

The Movement Flowers

The months that followed in 2005 represented a flowering of Egyptian dissidence unlike any in a generation. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's oldest Islamic movement and, by far, the largest if also quiescent opposition group, began organizing protests; in a rare move, the Brotherhood and the largely secular Kifaya began reaching out to each other, shattering a long-held taboo.

Ayman Nour, an opposition party leader who had been arrested in January, was released from prison in March (only to be convicted and, ailing, imprisoned again in December 2005). Egyptian judges pushed for judicial oversight of Egypt's notoriously rigged elections. Every few weeks, a new group seemed to emerge: Youth for Change, Lawyers for Change, Writers and Artists for Change and, at one point, Peasants for Change, all of them seizing ground from Egypt's coterie of ossified, co-opted and long ago legalized opposition parties. Banners cluttered the colonnaded marble facade of the Press Syndicate building. "No political reform without freedom of the press," one declared.

At demonstrations, some invoked Sheik Imam, a blind, beloved protest singer who died in 1995: "They live in the latest-style home, while we live 10 in a room!" Others spoke more dramatically: "My country, you need a revolution."

But even in those animated months of 2005, as U.S. officials pressured the Egyptian government to reform, activists began to worry. Why weren't the protests -- the 100 people Qandil hoped for -- drawing bigger crowds?

Some admitted that a paradox had begun to emerge in a country seemingly depoliticized by decades of slumbering civic life: The more freedom activists had, the more their lack of popular support was exposed.

The Brotherhood, with a far greater ability to bring out numbers, was almost condescending, even as it tentatively took part. "People think about their livelihood before they think about freedom," said Ali Abdel Fattah, a Brotherhood leader. "If there was hope protests would bring something, they would have been protesting a long time ago." Even Ishaq, the Kifaya leader, acknowledged the challenge. "Our people are naive," he said.

Said, the secular activist and writer, was more direct. "A crisis is looming," he said at the time. "We communicated the message, we expressed the mood, but that's far from saying people support Kifaya and engage in the struggle in any real numbers."

Tomorrow: The movement fades.