Interview with Sara Naguib

Sara Naguib

“For the first time women are being active tackling their own problems”

Sara Naguib is an activist, blogger and amateur photographer. She is involved with women rights and is also a member of the Socialist Alliance Party

A long time activist, Sara was out of the country when the revolution started on January 25 but rushed back to Cairo within days. She shares her insights into the events, aftermath as well as the origins with a knowledge of how social media was used.

Twitter : @sara_sedrak

Interview

Interviewed in English in Cairo on 26-March-2012 by Tatiana Philiptchenko.

Q:Where were you on January 25th 2011?
I was in Doha, Qatar visiting my brother. I was angry because of this invitation circulating on the Internet for the revolution. I thought there would be a demonstration but no revolution. I heard the news on TV about the demonstrations on the 25th of January. At the end of the day it became more violent, police was shooting the demonstrators and I saw people coming to Tahrir Square. For the first time in Egypt there was so many people participating in demonstrations. I tried to get back to Cairo but there were no seats available on the flights for the 26th and the 27th. And then the phones lines and the Internet were cut. I was watching TV all the time. I decided to help from my place with a network of friends located in many cities: we translated the revolutionary statements in many languages and passed on the documentation to many organizations and unions.

Finally on February 4th 2011, I got back to Cairo. I have been demonstrating since 1994. I studied sociology in university and belonged to a leftist group. In 2004 and 2005 I joined the Kefaya movement.

When I entered the square February 4th 2011, I lost my voice, I never thought that this will happen. I never saw so many people demonstrating in Egypt. I discovered that all the Kefaya slogans were repeated in Tahrir Square. It was just that before this moment Egyptian people didn’t feel the Kefaya movement was strong enough for them to join. But when they joined, they remembered the slogans that were stored in their memories.

I started to record everything because I have a very bad memory and I didn’t want to forget anything. I wanted to record why people went to the streets. People who never joined any political groups since the old regime destroyed most unions and political groups. Suddenly people discovered they were not alone. People found thousands of people that were preoccupied by the same things. So people told me things. People stopped me in the Square and started to ask me that they wanted me to record what they had to say. There were so many women amongst them. Some of the women were leading and were very liberal. I felt very guilty because I left the country at the start of the revolution. I didn’t have a tent but I stayed in the Square. All my friends and myself were going everywhere, talking with everyone. I met Salafis, Islamic people, very poor women and young girls who left their homes (that was very strange because in Egypt you are not allowed as a girl to sleep outside your home) one has to think how those girls took the courageous decision to stay outside their homes. I recorded some of these things. Now I look at the footage and photography and it looks very romantic. I really felt like I was in the Bolshevik revolution during this period of time. On some photos you can see that people are very poor but they are communicating for the first time in their lives.

Q: What has the revolution changed for you one year after?
It changed my life. 2008, 2009,2010 were very hard years for Egypt. At that time it looked like the regime won the battle. They were killing protestors in the streets. It looked very depressing. In 2009, on the 31st of December: we had a very big explosion in the church in Alexandria and hundreds of people were killed just like that. It was so depressing. I thought the Egyptians would keep their lives like this. It looked that our lives won’t change. It looked that the corruption controlled everything: even the souls of the people.

On the 25th January 2011, we became alive again. I don’t want to be very romantic but we suddenly had this hope: we came from 7 miles out of the ground and we came out to the ground to the zero point. People were aware they were in a problem and they thought they could change it and they took the first step to make a change. That was like a miracle happening to us. For me it’s a change of life. For many years: I never thought the Egyptians would move.

Even after the revolution, many thought that they went to the square and got Mubarak to go: that meant the regime was going to change. They had this wrong idea.

But, let’s not forget that for 60 years the army was controlling the whole country. And the media never talked about the army because it’s a taboo subject. And for a few months, people thought they did change the regime and give control to the army. They started to break this taboo and the idea of the people started to evolve and they started thinking about a civilian regime.

It’s a twist in the destiny. We were going down in the hole and now we have a chance to get out of the hole.

Q: Do you think or hope what you recorded & photographed will make a difference?
Yes, of course. The memory is very important for people to go forward. To remember what people wanted when they went to the streets. And to document it with their voice so it will never die. I started only photographing in the beginning but then after I decided to tell the stories of the photos. I felt I needed to report their voice and get the people to tell their stories. At that time the media was in the hands of the regime for 60 years. So social media was very important to have this other way to reach other people. Social media was an important part of the revolution. We never changed what we said but the new media revolution helped us to communicate. It is very important to use this media and record what people had to stay. So it is not about me, I just help carry the message.

Q:How bad or good the situation of Egyptian women is now? Is it worst or better than before the revolution?
It is worst and better at the same time. It is better because it is the first time we see the Egyptian women moving around and not thinking so much about all the social rules and they do it in a neutral way. And they are moving from one point or another.

In the square you see women everywhere, they are doing important jobs working as doctors and nurses in the clinics. That is not an easy job. Clinics are the most dangerous place in Tahrir Square and are also a depressing place (the clinics). After the first strike, people started having their own political groups, one of them called like “No to military courts” most of the leaders and activists in this campaign were young women who were in a political campaign for the first times in their lives. And it was very radical and it was a successful campaign.

After this there was a successful campaign called “Liars”, “Military liars”… where citizens running the campaigns put big screens to run the videos of the trials run by the army. These videos were showed all over the country. Most of the organizers were women, very strong women. The slogan of the campaign was: “we will not hide”. It was very dangerous to do that because in the poorest areas it was quite easy for opponents to hire thugs to beat the organizers or create chaos.

(continued on the right)

The Islamists in the parliament-started saying that they wanted to cancel some of the laws. Many women started to be active and opened some Facebook pages and they even went to gather in front of parliament. Women demonstrators moved to Al Azhar too, and demonstrated there. They were obviously worried to have their children taken away from them (if there was going to be a change in the local divorce law)

The army are using the Islamists to scare the people in the streets and they target Egyptian women women with this message.

There’s no regime in Egypt so far that was interested in women. They use women only to get their votes because there were never interested in a civil and equal society.

The old regime of Mubarak used to try to control women’s rights organizations. They used to label the feminists as “crazy women”.

Q:What is the greatest danger for Egyptian women now?
The military and the Islamists agendas. Both agendas are violent against women. Islamists are preventing women going to the streets for supposedly traditional religious reasons and the military killed women in the streets. You know, the virginity tests were done by the military. The whole situation of insecurity in the streets is a problem for women. The economic and social violence against people in the streets, when they prevent people having bread, gas or electricity: this is again direct violence against women.

Now the feminists are worried about the laws discussed in the parliament. The first laws they started negotiating were laws against women. This is worrying.

Q: When did you start using social media? For what purpose? as an Egyptian woman what are social media bringing to your life?
I started using social media years ago (around 2001). On Mountadayet (it is a discussion board) on the Internet (Nadi al Fikri Arabi) where we used to post articles . I posted political articles. Some about the Kefaya movement. We exchanged information and our experiences this was around 2003. Then we started having blogs. Blogs started being famous in Egypt at the same time that the Kefaya movement emerged. All the bloggers were interested covering the activities of the movement. They started by being not only people who watched the revolution but they covered it and like this ended up joining the movement itself. This is what moved it from an intellectual small isolated group of crazy people (saying: down to Mubarak) to these ideas being spread everywhere to very large groups. The bloggers started having competitions on who was going to cover more events and who was going to analyze the information better. They were like a bridge between the whole blogosphere and us. They were connected to bloggers in different countries. They started spreading the ideas and Facebook at this time turned to be a political space and tool to spread the ideas of change. After that, we started to have pages on Facebook about people tortured by the government. That was the most important issue. Everyone knew there was torture in the police stations. Photos & videos of torture of citizens in police stations were disseminated this way too. We also had in 2007 The 6th of April group (some of them were from the Kefaya movement), which was the first young people movement whom used the Internet in a very different way. They knew how to use the Internet, and asked the people to click on Facebook when they wanted to join a demonstration, it was easy for people to click and they were able to evaluate how ideas were spreading and how many people supported them. Eventually they started to collect themselves and moved to the streets.

Then Started the page about: «we are all Kaled Said» which was a very important page. This page started to collect all young people around the country to do something on the street in their own way.

Q: Do you and other Egyptian women feel you have equal rights when you are using social media?
When I started reading blogs, I noticed that some of the women bloggers were from far away regions. Some of these blogs were amazing; their female authors came from conservative families. Women could hide their identities and say many things about their lives. This is still the only space where some women feel they have a freedom to move. This gives courage to other women (when they read blogs like that) and women start discovering themselves. I had a blog myself, first I was hiding but then after a year I started feeling strong and courageous and I will tell people it was my blog. Being on the Internet gives contacts and connections. I met some people on the Internet and made friends with them on the blogosphere. Eventually some became friends in real life too.

If you create a page on Facebook about: women suffering from Military violence for example, people will join the subject and eventually one can organize events and this creates a network.

Q: Do you feel it is harder for you to be taken seriously as a woman?
This is a tricky question. Because of the security issues I don’t feel safe. Violence is something really bad and effects women in the beginning of everything. In a direct and in an indirect way, in all ways. If you face a thug: if you are a woman he will not only beat you but sexually harass you or kidnap you. It’s harder for me because now I have to face all these situations. Sometimes you are in the street and something happens. The whole society doesn’t talk so much about women problems and that women issues are important. For example: they had statements about it, when the military virginity tests happened, no one made a campaign of the case. When we had a demonstration about it, men were surrounding women demonstrators to protect them. This was a reactionist idea. People think in a traditional way about women. Even if you have the courage to go to the first lines and fight you will find someone who will tell you: you are a women go back to your home and do something that is safe.

Q: How do you see the future?
Sometimes it looks very dark. This is the revolution. That between being very optimistic and very depressed there might be two minutes. I have contradictory moods.

I believe that there are kids and teenagers that saw the revolution and know what is happening. Even if we faced a very big stone that stopped the wheel for a while that doesn’t mean the wheel won’t turn again. The wheel moved again and already so many things have changed. We still have 100 of unfinished steps to do to move forward. It depends on the will & courage of people. But people still go to the streets even if the fight becomes harder and harder and they know they might not come back home if they go on the streets. And every time there’s a percentage that doesn’t get back safely home, there is more people in the streets and many women too so I believe there’s hope.