Five books -- five views about the collapse of the Mubarak dynasty -- bring to mind Akira Kurosawa "Rashomon". Which one is the truth, asks Gamal Nkrumah Only once is there a jolt of spurious simplification of history. Hosni Mubarak is out of office, but five of Egypt's most highly regarded authors and political writers vied with each other to bring forth five books about the Egyptian ex-president. Two, distinguished columnist Salah Montasser and the doyen of Arab political commentators Mohamed Hassanein Heikal, produced seminal works from a historical perspective. These two seasoned writers' works are considerably more expressively weathered, even though Heikal's detractors decry his triumphalist pretensions at the emotional climax of 25 January 2011. Heikal is Egypt's great man of letters, the eminence grise of pan-Arabism His Mubarak: His Time from the Nasr City Podium to Tahrir Square sets matters straight with Mubarak., though the weakness is Heikal's insinuation that the onus for Mubarak's failing as a leader is his accidental rise to power at the infamous podium. In effect, Heikal's main plaint is Mubarak is merely an perpetuation of the Sadat regime. There's much more to it than that. Salah Montasser, a prominent political analyst, is author of The Rise and Fall. "The difference between me and Heikal, my mentor," Salah Montasser told Al-Ahram Weekly, "is that he focuses on personalities and specific characteristics, the persona. I, in contrast and with all due respect to Heikal, analyse particular events. I expose the true story behind the sale of petrol and natural gas to Israel. I also examine the role of particular ministers in Mubarak's entourage." "Let us get things in proportion, and perspective. My study flashbacks to Mubarak's leadership heydays, to his delusions of infallibility in his old age. Many contended that the country cannot be run by embittered twentysomethings. The initial details of the Tahrir youths' proposals for regime change cheered many people at home and abroad. I insisted on getting to the fundamental groundwork that led to the story of the youth of Tahrir. I want generations to come to get a feel of what was happening in Tahrir. I wanted to know why the ex-president's men ended up incarcerated in Tora Prison," Montasser extrapolated. Montasser's The Rise and Fall describes in detail how Mubarak's henchmen and hangers-on were dispersed as if in a daze and how the regime's senior officials were disgraced and finally how Mubarak was carried into court humiliatingly in a stretcher. Mubarak's kamikaze absolutism towards the end of his three-decade iron-fisted rule was a disaster in more ways than one. The way these momentous days are remembered varies considerably from one author to another. Heikal and Montasser look at the historic 18 days of the revolution in the context of the past. Heikal's Mubarak: His Time from the Nasr City Podium to Tahrir Square is purely for posterity. Heikal zooms in on what he considers eye-catching occurrences and eye-popping eye-openers. Heikal's work is a reminder that there was once a time when making money was not everything. All this would be fine except that the fundamental dynamics of the Mubarak ethos is alive and well despite the 25 January Revolution, creating a mounting sense of frustration. In a country with structurally high unemployment the social impact of widespread joblessness could be devastating. Depressed because of the contraction of key sectors of the economy such as tourism, Egypt is struggling to get back on track. The empowerment of the underprivileged and most vulnerable groups in Egyptian society must be encouraged. During the Mubarak era the state failed to perform many of its functions. Providing adequate healthcare, education, security, justice and the right to participate in the cultural activities of his or her choice also must be enshrined in the constitution. A theme highlighted by the other three authors is the generation gap and its political implications. Ageism, though, is not necessarily the key story of The Army and the Revolution: From Tahrir Square to Victory by Mostafa Bakry, a most colourful member of Egypt's paparazzi who is accused of having flirted with the top notch politicians, tycoons and media moguls of the Mubarak regime. Mubarak, the octogenarian, is rendered dotty for dramatic purpose. He gets the public's pity by inviting it. "I defended the country in the battlefield, I secured peace and I will die in this land," Mubarak pontificated in an act of bathos, a plea of possessory passion. The locus of Bakry's book is the military establishment's role in rescuing a deplorable political situation. The army, according to Bakry, stepped in at precisely the right moment when chaos threatened to derail the revolution. Their timing was perfect and for their services rendered the people initially revered the soldiers, in sharp contrast to the public outrage at the police. Bakry's bombshell comes quick and fast, but there are interludes for reflection and retrospection. Still, a year after the revolution we know too little about the details of every flicker and foible that led to Mubarak's downfall. Egypt has been gripped by the power of the street. Abdel Qader Shuhaib's book The Last Hours of Mubarak's Rule begins with a chapter entitled "The two presidents" referring to Hosni and his son and heir-apparent Gamal. The younger Mubarak is portrayed as in the ascendant in the days leading up to the revolution. Shuhaib is decried by his critics as a "Witness Who Saw Nothing" (the name of a famous political satirical film). His book is the one that dwells at length with people's power. The writer, former editor-in-chief of Al-Mussawar, connects with the world of Tahrir emotionally. But it is Abdel-Latif El-Menawy's Tahrir: The Last 18 Days of Mubarak that has caused the most furore. He describes at length the antics of Mubarak's chief-of-staff Zakariya Azmy: "At that time, I believed that Mubarak only needed sympathy and so I suggested that he deliver an emotional speech, in which I included a reference to his participation in the 1973 War against Israel and an emphasis that he is not seeking re-election," El-Menawy seems to credit himself with the speech that apparently almost turned the tide. Overlook the hyperbole on Mubarak's comeuppance. Unlike in other Arab countries where the power struggle dragged on for ages, Mubarak's political exit was relatively swift. For the key players in the Mubarak regime those days were nerve-racking. Books tackling Tahrir tend to be terribly sincere or sincerely terrible. El-Menawy gets everything right, or so as an insider he claims. Fortunately those moments are few, for lest we forget, he served the regime well. The most problematic piece of information is whether or not Mubarak issued the order to shoot protesters in Tahrir. Optimists hope the badge of respectability of the authors will carry the day. Some suggest that the five books might even change the entire course of Egyptian history, being published in the heat of the "trial of the century". What the five books seem to suggest, however, is that during the last days of Mubarak's grip on power, he was drifting in and out of the d��cor designed to guarantee his political demise.
