Events over the past two weeks in Egypt have been a lesson in the real meaning of a united nation, writes Mona Anis "I am sure he saw days like these, and couldn't believe his eyes, just as we can't," the poet Abdel-Rahman Al-Abnoudi said about the seminal author Tawfiq Al-Hakim (1898-1987), when I told him I could now understand the exact meaning of the Arabic term awdat al-ruh or "return of the spirit", used by Al-Hakim to describe the 1919 revolution in his classic novel of the same name. Al-Hakim was a 20-year-old law student when, following the exile of the great nationaist statesman Saad Zaghloul by the British, people took to the streets in unprecedented numbers demanding independence and demonstrating hitherto unsuspected political consciousness. It took him another 14 years to complete his statement on the revolution, writing through the eyes of a protagonist of the same age and social background as he was in 1919, who is bewildered to see his passive and disunited people suddenly revivified. Completed and published in 1933, the novel inspired young students of the time, among them two young men -- Gamal Abdel-Nasser and Naguib Mahfouz -- and contributed to nationalist fervour in the first half of the 1930s, reaching a climax in 1935, "he students' year". In 1935 dozens of martyrs like the ones whose pictures we now hold to our faces sacrificed their lives. With their bare chests they defied the live ammunition of the British army. The Head Policeman in Egypt during both the 1919 revolution and the 1935 student revolt was the notorious Russell Pasha (Sir Thomas Wentworth Russell, 1879-1954). On December 1935 Time magazine wrote: "Russell Pasha, hard-bitten Briton in charge of Cairo police, kept his men at work last week riding down Egyptian students of both sexes with their horses, beating them back with the flats of their sabres, firing into the air when shouts of 'Off with our British yoke!' grew too vociferous." "With eight Egyptians killed by Russell Pasha's forces a fortnight ago," the magazine continued "a scrimmage last week caused the police to shoot an Egyptian boy in the abdomen and gravely wound four others. Russell Pasha then changed his tactics. Police began firing charges of small buckshot directly into massed Cairo demonstrators. Correspondents, surprised to see how spunkily Egyptian girl students stood up to this kind of treatment, decided to call on 70- year-old Mme Saad Zaghlul." Among those killed by Rusell Pasha in 1935, two names remain with people of my generation: Abdel-Hakam El-Jarahi and Ali Taha, the latter, one of the main characters in Naguib Mahfouz's 1946 novel Al-Qahira Al-Jadidah (Cairo Modern), and the former a popular symbol among students of the 1970s protesting on campus. For the last 15 years this writer has lived in a downtown building, very close to Talat Harb Square. This building, more like a court, was once part of the Savoy Hotel, half of which was demolished following World War I when the area was developed by the Swiss entrepreneur Bahler, the other half being used as an apartment building. In that remaining part of the Savoy where I live, one can see the emblem "SC" for Savoy Chambers written above the entrance. It was in the Savoy Chambers that Russell Pasha lived and worked during the years of WW I. Going up and down the stairs of this impressive albeit run-down construction, I have always quipped with my 24-year old daughter about the ghost of Russell Pasha haunting the staircase. Over the past two weeks, while friends of my daughter stationed in Tahrir Square kept coming to our flat to use the bathroom or to have a hot drink before they went back to the business of occupying the square, I couldn't stop thinking of 1919, Russel Pasha's ghost and the students of 1935, who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of their country. On Black Wednesday (2 Feb, 2011), when some two hundred young people were killed less than a kilometre away from where I live, I broke down completely and screamed at my daughter to call her friends and tell them to run to our place as they were no match for those committing this massacre. The answer I received then was that these young people were determined to hold onto Tahrir Square, even if this was at the cost of their lives. They succeeded in standing their ground and teaching the whole nation a lesson in determination. On Thursday morning, I went to Tahrir Square to apologise to every young man and woman I knew for having been such a coward the night before; and ever since I have been spending more and more time in Tahrir, less to sacrifice my life than revel in Egypt's spirit regained.
