Remembering a Massacre: Maspero as I witnessed it

At a time of seemingly endless massacres, Al Manassa remembers the brutal killings of protestors outside the state television building, Maspero. Shot or crushed by the very institution to which the people had held out its hand in 2011: the Egyptian armed forces.

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On Oct. 9, 2011, I headed to the headquarters of the Egyptian Social Democratic Party on Mahmoud Bassiouny Street, downtown Cairo, for a meeting of the committee responsible for shaping the party’s political platform ahead of the parliamentary elections.

The cramped headquarters was abuzz with activity and conversations. Our room wasn’t free yet, so I waited for colleagues who hadn’t arrived.

While chatting with my friend and comrade Ahmed Fawzy, then a senior party official, and with Ashraf Helmy, secretary for organization, our phones began buzzing. Text after text said the army had dispersed a protest outside Maspero, the state television building. At first, reports spoke of injuries. Within minutes, the news grew darker—crushed bodies beneath armored vehicles, live rounds fired, and many dead in the street. Helmy, doubtful, murmured, “Hard to believe it’s gotten that bad.”

Ten minutes later, a few new members burst into the office. Their clothes were stained with blood, their faces blank with terror. They were letting out terrified, disbelieving screams, their words disjointed, barely comprehensible.

I tried to steady myself. I remembered a conversation I’d had online a couple of hours earlier with a colleague who said Coptic protesters had set out from Shubra. Old-regime thugs were already stirring, spoiling for a fight. The protesters, he said, were shouting all the radical chants of the moment: “Down with military rule;” “Revolution until victory;” “The people want the execution of the field marshal;” “This is our country.”

More people arrived at party HQ, and their accounts began to align. Tamer El-Meehy and Emad Gad, who had been at the protest, described how armored vehicles of the armed forces drove directly into the demonstrators. It looked to them like a deliberate trap.

We held an emergency meeting. I urged everyone with media contacts to reach out to them immediately. Anyone capable of carrying out such a massacre would surely try to deny it—or worse, to blame the victims. Which is exactly what happened.

I was tasked with writing a statement based on the verified reports and testimonies that had reached us. As I began drafting, we heard a growing commotion in the street and angry voices moving closer. Fear gripped me. It felt as if we might be attacked. One colleague, who had been following the events all day, said state television was actively inciting people against the protesters.

It was a surreal and tragic moment: to imagine dying at the hands of an enraged fellow Muslim, swept up in sectarian violence, while sitting at a desk writing a statement about the massacre outside. What a wretched, humiliating way to end.

The sounds outside eventually faded. I finished the statement, and then Tamer El-Meehy, Kamel Saleh, and I stepped cautiously into the dark street. The liquor store at the corner of Mahmoud Bassiouny had been trashed, its contents looted. Groups of young men roamed the area as if conducting patrols.

One of them approached us and asked, “Peace be upon you. Where are the Christian shops around here?” Kamel tried to reason with him, but Tamer pulled him by the arm, saying, “Let’s go, Kamel. I’ll get you home first.” In sordid moments like that, one remembers who is Muslim, who is Christian, and what that distinction can mean.

We reached Tamer’s car in Abdel Moneim Riad Square. The situation there seemed calm, little damage apart from the windshield of his car, which was shattered. After dropping Kamel off in Mohandeseen, we headed for Heliopolis. From the October Bridge, we looked towards the Coptic Hospital in Ghamra, where we saw more chaos. Later we learned there had been an attempt to attack it.

Tamer turned to me and said, “Here’s how it is. You’ve got a military authority that can eat thirty or forty people for dinner, then go home and sleep peacefully.” I replied, “Yes, and if this goes unpunished, the fear is thirty or forty will become three or four hundred next time.” Tamer shook his head. “You’re a gloomy and depressing man.” I smiled weakly. “Sorry. You’ll have to put up with me.”

We fled the terrifying heart of Cairo.

A mere two months later, when the appetite for killing had become open and unapologetic, I turned on the television. There was Maj. Gen. Adel Emara of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, the same man who had held a press conference on the night of the October 9 massacre. Now, after the Cabinet killings, he was back again, wearing a green beret and showing the same unrepentant face.

“We didn’t kill them,” he said. “They’re the ones killing us. We never kill our people.”

But what I heard was something else entirely: Look into my eyes. Be afraid. Know that this criminal lie is only the beginning of something worse. As if to ask: What will you do? Do you have a tank like I do?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00t-0NEwc3E&rco=1

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(*) A version of this article first appeared in Arabic on Oct. 9, 2016.