Late afternoon on 18 November and Ali sits at the entrance to his bakery on Mohamed Mahmoud Street observing developments with unmasked apprehension. For two years now Ali and other workers in the many nearby stores and cafés have had to close suddenly to avoid being caught in the middle of clashes between demonstrators and police. The most dramatic of those clashes occurred in November 2011 when 46 unarmed demonstrators were gunned down. Ahead of the second anniversary of the carnage official quarters were in overdrive as they attempted — unsuccessfully — to pin responsibility for the deaths on the Muslim Brotherhood. “The reaction to statements made by the Ministry of Interior was very negative. They provoked rather than soothed. The mercy of the Almighty is what will spare us,” says Ali, who fears the incendiary atmosphere could easily spill over into violence. Hana Mohamed is “infuriated, to say the least” by a statement that was “pre-emptively issued by the spokesmen of the Ministry of Interior” earlier this week. “I really don't understand what they mean when they say they pay tribute to those killed and wounded during the Mohamed Mahmoud demonstrations. Are they trying to tell us that it was not them who killed and wounded us? I saw the police officer shooting demonstrators in the face with my own eyes and had I not been lucky I would have lost my eyesight too. I suffered very serious head injuries.” In her early 20s, Mohamed's first introduction to politics was in the early days of the 25 January Revolution. She says she is willing “to reconcile and move on but for this to happen — for reconciliation between people and police to be meaningful” justice has to be done. “After two years justice is absent. It is being deliberately thrown away. I hate the Muslim Brotherhood — they betrayed the nation and the revolution over and over again and I am not willing to see them back to power no matter what it takes — but I am not willing to see them blamed for something that I know was done by someone else, by forces that want to resume the kind of coercion for which the Ministry of Interior is lobbying hard.” Mohamed will not, however, be going to Mohamed Mahmoud Street. “It is depressing to say it but I will not be there. The reason is very simple. When you demonstrate you do so for a clear cause. When we demonstrated on 25 January we wanted to end police brutality and involved ending the Mubarak regime. Later we went to Mohamed Mahmoud to demonstrate against the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces' attempts to extend the transition and to confuse it through illicit deals with the Muslim Brotherhood who kept a distance from the demonstrations and blamed us for being there. They called us thugs,” says Mohamed. “Today we have to examine the situation and carefully plan our next move. We have to avoid being exploited by the Muslim Brotherhood who are now trying to soft-speak to the revolutionaries, and by the army and police who are trying to use us in their war against the Brotherhood”. For Mohamed 19 November 2011 “was perhaps the most important day in the history of the revolution so far”. “It was the day when it was all made clear — the real role of the army that saluted the revolution but actually worked around its calls, and the Muslim Brotherhood that hesitated in joining the revolution and then did so only to replace the regime.” Ahmed Samir, who protested on Mohamed Mahmoud Street two years ago, argues another thing was made clear in 2011 — “the power of revolutionary forces with or without the Muslim Brotherhood or the army or the police”. “Before Mohamed Mahmoud every single large demonstration had depended by and large on the presence of the Muslim Brotherhood but following Mohamed Mahmoud and up until the 30 June that has not been the case. We were alright without the Muslim Brotherhood and even against the Muslim Brotherhood,” he says. Samir will be back in the street: “Our cause is still valid and our strength, even if challenged, is to show this,” he says. “What started on Mohamed Mahmoud Street and which has been unfolding since is a revolution that is still being challenged by forces that have a vested interest not to deconstruct the set up that reigned. We are continuing our battle.” Samir, in his late 20s, wants transitional justice but prioritises the demands of the 25 January Revolution: dignity and freedom. “We are still very far away from the dignity and freedom. We are almost exactly where we were on 23 January 2011.” Like Mohamed, Rami Shukri was on Mohamed Mahmoud in 2011, and like her he will miss the second anniversary. It was not easy to remove the Muslim Brotherhood, he says, and in the end they were ousted because they fell out of favour with the army. But the fact is, he adds, “we don't have a ready alternative and might end up in a much worse situation than the rule of the Muslim Brotherhood if we pursue tactics that are not carefully thought through.” Shukri has no doubts about “the weak position of Copts and other Christians”. “Under the rule of Mubarak, then the army, then Morsi we have been attacked and killed. We need to think where the country is going and where we as Christians are also going.” Doaa Hamed claims she knows where the country is heading. Buying chocolate to give away upon her arrival in Al-Gammaliya district “to join the crowds of celebrating the birthday of the greatest man in Egypt [Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi]”, Hamed said that “Egypt will be moving beyond the havoc caused when the Muslim Brotherhood used ‘assumed revolutionaries' to remove Mubarak and find a way to take over the country.” Now, she says, people know “this so-called revolution was a farce and that the mistakes were rectified on 30 June under Al-Sisi.” As Hamed began distributing chocolate on Monday to mark Al-Sisi's birthday the men and women she qualified as “assumed revolutionaries” were toppling a tasteless memorial to the martyrs that had been inaugurated earlier by Prime Minister Hazem Al-Beblawi. A memorial, they said, was an insult in the absence of transitional justice and action on the demands of the 25 January Revolution. “We cannot be fooled by a memorial, just as we were not fooled by the praise of the Supreme Council for Armed forces two years ago. We took to Mohamed Mahmoud then, just as we are now. If the state and the army want to stop us taking to Mohamed Mahmoud then they have to start working on transitional justice and on honouring the demands of the 25 January Revolution,” said Adel Sabri as he picked up a piece of the broken memorial. “Mohamed Mahmoud was about a cause and the cause has yet to be fulfilled.”
