FROM BURNING BODIES TO BURNING BOOKS: EGYPT IS BECOMING A "HOUSE OF DUST"

from FPRI:

FROM BURNING BODIES TO BURNING BOOKS:


EGYPT IS BECOMING A "HOUSE OF DUST"

by Raymond Stock



December 26, 2011



Raymond Stock, former visiting assistant professor of

Arabic and Middle East Studies at Drew University (2010-11),

lived in Cairo for 20 years before being deported by the

regime of Hosni Mubarak in December 2010, apparently due to

his 2009 article criticizing then-Culture minister Farouk

Hosni's bid to head UNESCO in Foreign Policy Magazine. He

has published widely on the Middle East and translated

stories by many Arab writers, including seven books by

Egyptian Nobel laureate in literature Naguib Mahfouz, whose

biography he is writing for Farrar, Straus & Giroux in New

York.



Available on the web and in pdf format at:

http://www.fpri.org/enotes/2011/201112.stock.houseofdust.html



FROM BURNING BODIES TO BURNING BOOKS:

EGYPT IS BECOMING A "HOUSE OF DUST"



by Raymond Stock



German poet Heinrich Heine famously warned, "Where they have

burned books, they will end by burning people." But the

December 17 burning of Cairo's Institut d'Egypte on the

first anniversary of the self-immolation of the Tunisian

vegetable vendor, Mohamed Bouazizi, which sparked the Arab

Spring, stands the oft-used dictum on its head. In Egypt,

especially, what was billed as a triumph of liberal

democracy over dictatorship has rapidly morphed into an

Islamist Spring feeding on the tumult of permanent

revolution. After roughly a thousand deaths in protests

since January (with many thousands more lost in surging

crime), the dissolution of most of the nation's police, the

dismantling of the formerly ruling National Democratic

Party, the elimination of the State Security agency

(replaced by a smaller, less-efficient National Security

entity), and the virtual closing of the Israeli embassy, the

January 25th Revolution has now, alarmingly, claimed its

first intellectual institution as a casualty.



Founded by Napoleon Bonaparte during the French Expedition

of 1798-1801, and set on parliament's grounds (not its

original location) next to the American University in

Cairo's former campus on Tahrir Square, the 200,000 volumes

in the Institut d'Egypte represented one of the oldest and

finest collections in the country, though it suffered from

neglect. Foreign scholars who perused its high shelves on a

tall, rickety ladder had an affectionate Anglo-Arabic

nickname for the place, "Dar al-Dust" ("The House of Dust)."

As then-fellow graduate student Bruce W. Dunne wrote for a

survey of Egypt's libraries that I put together in 1996 for

the American Research Center in Egypt:



"The Institut houses an extraordinarily rich and eclectic

collection, including (i) rare books (e.g. the Description

de l'Egypte, 2 copies); (ii) hand written memoirs,

particularly with respect to the French Expedition; (iii)

first editions of 17th through 19th- century art, travel,

medical the legal books and treatises; (iv) 19th century

scholarly journals; (v) the Institut's archives of

membership records and members' correspondence; (vi)

Egyptian government documents, and (vii) unpublished

manuscripts. There are also reasonably complete sets of the

Institut's two series of Bulletins and two series of

Memoires, some of which, or extracts therefrom, may still be

purchased."



Sadly, they may be perused or purchased no more.

Reportedly, a Molotov cocktail (one of many thrown at

security forces in the last week of renewed demonstrations

around Tahrir) landed within the two-story, Belle Epoque

structure, setting it alight. While it is unclear if the

fire was deliberate, an Egyptian newspaper published a

picture on its website of protesters allegedly expressing

their joy at the sight of the venerable old establishment as

it burst into flames, and the military has produced another

showing a protester attempting to incinerate a parliament

building. Yet many demonstrators rallied to battle the

blaze until fire trucks arrived, once again displaying what

many have praised as the "Spirit of Tahrir"--first shown in

the human chain formed by protesters to stop the looting of

the Egyptian Museum in January. And there is now an

organized effort under Dr. Mohamed Ibrahim, the new Minister

of Antiquities (replacing Dr. Zahi Hawass) to collect books

and manuscripts rescued from the library. (It is claimed

that some 30,000 works have been recovered and brought to

the National Library--Dar al-Kutub--for restoration, though

most of these appear to be little more than badly charred

fragments. Water damage, of course, is also a serious

problem.)



In fact, there has always been more than one "Spirit of

Tahrir." From the start of the mass demonstrations against

President Hosni Mubarak that led to his resignation on

February 11 (with a crucial assist from the SCAF-the Supreme

Council of the Armed Forces), alongside the peaceful,

disciplined liberals that got most of the press' attention,

was a large group of hardcore

football hooligans, known as the Ultras. Supporters of the

Ahli ("National") Club, the most popular in Egypt, the

Ultras had built a formidable record of intimidation against

the fans of rival teams before the uprising began.



According to Amr Bargisi and Samuel Tadros, two Egyptian

liberals with a long record of opposition to Mubarak writing

December 9 in the online Jewish magazine, Tablet, Ultras

were busy attacking the police from the beginning. Whatever

their possible role in provoking the wave of police-and-thug

violence that claimed so many lives in those days, the

Ultras' actions automatically raised the level of mayhem the

number of fatalities with it. Their assaults on police

stations helped lead to the general breakdown in law and

order during and after those famous eighteen days of

demonstrations as Mubarak held on. It was the Ultras who

many have said led the charge in the sacking of the Israeli

embassy in September, and again during the bloody clashes in

Tahrir that erupted just before the first round of

parliamentary balloting in late November. And given the

firebombs and other objects being hurled in the protests in

Tahrir that began earlier this week, it appears that they,

and/or others like them, are at it again.



In local news media and on Facebook, some are blaming the

incident on the military, which kicked off the latest round

with a massive clean-up operation against the tent city set

up in Tahrir. The army did the same with the members of a

group called Occupy the Cabinet, that has tried to stop the

government of interim prime minister Kamal al-Ganzouri (who

once held the job for Mubarak), from meeting in his office,

as the country struggles to complete the next two rounds of

elections (that are being soundly won by Islamists,

sometimes in protest votes against the chaos) in the midst

of the most serious economic crisis in decades. (At a press

conference earlier this month, al-Ganzouri tearfully

lamented that the country's financial condition is "worse

than anyone can imagine.")



So far, the majority of Egyptians appear to be backing the

SCAF in its suppression of the seemingly insatiable

revolutionaries--who want them all to resign immediately,

which would leave a vacuum that only the Muslim Brotherhood

(MB--whose gradualist strategy masks a radical purpose) and

more blatantly militant Salafis (who have done surprisingly

well in the polls) could fill. Not even a video distributed

last weekend that features a veiled woman being stripped

half-naked as soldiers stomp on her chest (and pummel a

young Christian man who tried to help her), along with

several other youths being savagely beaten, has bought the

protesters sympathy. If anything, the burning of the

Institut d'Egypte (also known as the Institute for the

Advancement of Scientific Research, or the Egyptian

Scientific Institute) serves as a dramatic and symbolic

milestone in the ever steeper descent into disorder over the

past ten months.



In a statement, al-Ganzouri condemned the attack as "arson

committed by the protesters," who showed no desire to

protect "the symbols of the historical civilization of this

nation." He added that among the losses were the original

manuscript of Description de l'Egypte-the seminal survey of

Egypt conducted by Napoleon's savants (though actually there

are thought to be eleven others held elsewhere)-and a number

of "irreplaceable maps and historical manuscripts preserved

by many generations." Other sources say that the United

Arab Emirates and France are working together to help the

Egyptians restore the building--which the rescue committee

set up by Ibrahim ordered evacuated on December 22, fearing

its imminent collapse--and its collections. A number of

Egyptian construction firms reportedly have offered to

conduct that work for free.



Meanwhile, Bargisi and Tadros warn against the "complacency"

in believing that the Islamists "will either be moderate or

fail to deliver,"and that "the very possibility of next

elections is dependent" on avoiding anarchy now.

Ironically, it is the heavy-handed SCAF, with its own

Islamist leanings and callous use of violence, that probably

provides the only bulwark against the even more ruthless and

anti-democratic Islamists, who will use the machinery of

democracy to finally seize power, the MB's goal since it

founding in 1928. And it was Mubarak that formerly stood--

albeit inconsistently--not only in the same position against

the MB and its allies, but also against the military's

completely naked use of force, before he was ousted by the

very *organization from which he arose.



Though there is still some chance of an Algerian solution

(i.e., the military, which is allied with the MB but wishes

to retain control, however covertly, would act to halt the

Islamists' electoral victory, which itself could end the new

democracy), that remains unlikely. Or perhaps-and much less

probably--some other, unforeseen events will intervene. In

any case, the (slightly) secular Egypt that lingered under

Mubarak--itself a feeble echo of the brief liberal period

that existed under the British before the Free Officer's

coup of 1952--is vanishing, perhaps forever. And after what

to many had seemed a blooming spring of freedom and rebirth,

the whole country now appears firmly on its way to becoming

a vast "House of Dust."



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