Democracy Is the Answer

For years before the Egyptian revolution in January 2011 Alaa Al Aswany, author of the bestselling novel The Yacoubian Building, had been a critic of the Mubarak regime. When the revolution broke out he was among those in Tahrir Square calling for democratic reform and demanding that Hosni Mubarak stand down. Since then he has continued, through his popular weekly column for the newspaper Al-Masry Al-Youm, to propound the ideals of the January 2011 revolution, embodied by the young protestors that risked everything to occupy Tahrir by his side. In his many columns over the ensuing three years - collected and translated here for the first time - Al Aswany confronted the crucial issues of the day head-on as an increasingly stratified and divided country sought to agree a constitution and elect a democratic government. His journalism gave him an opportunity to call out the instances of corruption, brutality, police negligence, and judicial and religious interference that were commonplace and plagued the everyday lives of the Egyptian people. These 150 columns provide a comprehensive chronicle of the post-revolutionary years of turmoil and are a portrait of a country and people in flux. Divided into three parts - the chaotic aftermath of the revolution; Mohamed Morsi's election, tenure as President and overthrow; and the election of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi - each column is introduced with a brief description providing the background of the events described in the article, footnotes and a glossary: the information necessary to allow non-Egyptian readers to place the columns in context. The result is a definitive reader of Egypt's years of upheaval by one of the Middle East's foremost political voices.