When the Iraqi poet and critic Sinan Antoon described the scene in Tahrir Square before former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down on 11 February as a “Cairo commune, ready to conquer the skies to achieve the legitimate demands of the popular revolution,” I thought he was employing rather liberal poetic license. Yet, it is this very poetic quality of the heroic struggle of “ordinary” people in “extraordinary” times that triggers the memory of past events in distant countries facing different social and economic conditions.The common denominator between such disparate events is the emotional energy they unleash, inspiring writers to depict the essential aspects of a certain age, together with its way of life and living emotions. Of all the upheavals that have taken place in modern times, the French Revolution, with its many victories and defeats extending over some eight decades (1789-1871), holds a special place in the collective memory of humanity, not least because of the wealth of material, both analytical and literary, that has been written about it. Over the past year, from the beginning of the Tunisian Revolution, swiftly followed by the Egyptian, and throughout the unfolding of what has been dubbed the "Arab Spring," certain events of the French Revolution have been invoked by commentators and cultural critics, among them the British historian Eric Hobsbawm. In an interview with the BBC this week, Hobsbawm said that the Arab Spring had reminded him of “1848 - another self-propelled revolution that started in one country and then spread all over the [European] continent in a short time.” At the outset at least, there is a comparison to be made between the revolutionary tide that swept the Arab countries in the winter of 2011 and what happened during the winter of 1848 in Europe, when, shortly after the February revolution in France, the Germans, Poles, Austrians, Hungarians and Italians all rose up against their rulers. As Hobsbawm noted in the interview, two years into the 1848 wave of revolutions that took Europe by storm, “it looked as if it had all failed. But in the long run, it hadn't failed. A good deal of liberal advances had been made. So it was an immediate failure but a longer-term partial success ― though no longer in the form of a revolution.” These should be consoling words for the young Egyptian radicals in Tahrir Square who have been trying against all the odds to stem the tide of counter-revolution, sometimes with their lives, especially over the past two months and during the many episodes of vicious street fighting. Much has been written in the domestic and international press on the two weeks of street battles that took place in downtown Cairo not far from Tahrir Square, the first in November and the second in December. While the episode on 19 November took place mainly around the Ministry of Interior building and involved riot police who wanted to clear the square, the episode beginning on 16 December outside the offices of the Cabinet saw military personnel beating women, children and the elderly, apparently undeterred by the news cameras transmitting the scenes around the world. The first battle ended with a concrete wall being built across Mohamed Mahmoud Street to separate the two sides, imposing a truce of sorts, and the second ended with another wall being built at the entrance of Tahrir Square across Qasr El-Aini Street. Those two weeks of bloody clashes left some 70 people killed and hundreds injured, with many maimed or blinded by security forces who had deliberately shot at head level, sometimes aiming for the eyes of the protesters. What could be called “Egypt's second revolution” in 2011 will now be incorporated into works of art and included in the historical record. More immediately, these episodes of violence and street fighting took place at the same time as millions of Egyptians made their way to polling stations in order to vote in the first parliamentary elections since the 25 January Revolution. Somehow the two sets of events seemed disconnected, as if they were taking place in two different countries. Last weekend, the results of the second phase of the parliamentary elections were announced, confirming the commanding lead of Islamists over all other political forces in the country. Of the 498 seats to be contested until the elections end by the middle of next month, the winners of 309 have thus far been determined, with the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Freedom and Justice Party (FJP), garnering 161 seats and the Salafist Al-Nour Party securing 82 seats. A smaller Islamist party, the Wasat Party (Centre Party), won seven seats, giving the Islamist forces an overall majority with approximately 80 per cent of the seats. Unless a dramatic change takes place between now and mid-January to stem the tide, a highly unlikely prospect, an overwhelming majority of this sort would theoretically allow the Islamists to introduce any legislation they wanted to bring the country into line with their ideological programme. This is one that is at odds with that of the young radicals in Tahrir Square, who insist that the revolutionary wave that once swept the country is now giving way to counter-revolution. That may indeed be the case for the time being, though the relationship between revolution and counter-revolution is never one-sided. Writing on the 1848 events in France, which were then unfolding, Marx noted that the “revolutionary advance made headway not by its immediate tragicomic achievements, but on the contrary by the creation of a powerful, united counter-revolution, by the creation of an opponent, by the fighting of which the party of revolt first ripened into a real revolutionary party.” Before closing, I would like to return to Antoon's analogy between the Paris Commune and the struggle of the Egyptian militants in Tahrir Square. In 1871, Marx wrote of the former that “working, thinking, fighting, bleeding Paris ― almost forgetful, in its incubation of a new society, of the cannibals at its gates ― was radiant in the enthusiasm of its historic initiative.” These words could just as aptly describe the struggle of the young Egyptians who sacrificed their lives on the barricades in Tahrir Square, both before and after the fall of Mubarak, for the ideals of the Egyptian Revolution: “Bread, Liberty, and Human Dignity.”
