sphinx wui

First scene,


June 7 1963

Letter from Egyptian president Gamal Abdel Naser to president Kennedy;


������.
������.
������

�You might know that I used to have personal relationship with king Saud, I knew that such relation is in direct conflict with the reality each one of us represent and despite this fact I was very keen on this relation for many reasons not all of them emotional ones. I knew the nature of the Saudi royal regime and I knew that it was in direct conflict with the nature of time itself and I hoped that my friendship with him may direct his attention gradually to attitudes more suitable to the modern time that we are living in and god witness that I did my best to advice him for his own good and his country. All that I wished is that he can extend his vision to the horizon and to be a head of the inevitable progress and pave the road for it and not to expose his country and family to inescapable fate if things goes as it was going.

Unfortunately, the king didn�t listen to me but instead he rushed to block the progress in the whole region and from here came his troubles and the troubles of every regime trying to walk away from the ambitions of his people.

I believed and still believe that the best those people who can�t get along with progress is to leave and not try to block its inevitable path.
They- by their effort to block progress-may delay it for a while but they expose themselves to real dangers����������..end of translation


This was my translation of the letter I found in a book called �years of boiling� first edition, 1988 by Heikal, M, Hasanien.

The letter was a try from Nasser to persuade Kennedy to stop his support to Saudia Arabia in its effort to bring back the Imam of Yemen after they overthrew him and declared Yemen as a republic in 1962.



Second scene, voice of a narrator,

The story began in Sep 26, 1962 when some Yemeni officers overthrew the Imam of Yemen and declared it as a republic. Until 1962 in Yemen there was not even one school in Yemen either for boys or girls, no newspapers, no radio or TV, no movie theatres simply nothing. The only educated people in Yemen during this time received their education in Egypt and those are the ones who started the revolution. If you compare the regime in Yemen to Taliban you will find that Taliban is a highly progressive regime comparing to them!!!!

When the revolution started, Egypt recognized the new regime in Sep 28 1962 but Saudia Arabia had another opinion about it. They felt threatened by the new changes in neighboring Yemen and started to realize that they are next if they didn�t interfere and they started to contact some tribes in Yemen and supplying them with money and weapons to harass the new regime. Knowing this, Nasser sent one special force battalion to Yemen to show support for the new regime and that was the opening scenario of a protracted conflict in Yemen for over 7 years in which Egypt lost the golden cover of its currency (during this time one Egyptian pound= 3$!!!! now 1$= 5 Egyptian pounds!!), 100,000 Egyptian soldiers stationed in Yemen in major cities but has little control over the mountainous part of the country which coast Egypt heavy price in June 1967 war with Israel, causalities were around 15,000 and accusations from the Saudi against Egypt that the Egyptian air force used chemical weapons against the rebels stationed at Saudi- Yemeni borders.
Which side the leader of the free world took in this conflict? The USA military and intelligence stand fast with their sister democracies in Saudia Arabia and the Hamid Eldin family in Yemen!




Flash back,

1840, Egyptian army under the leadership of Ibrahim basha invaded Heigaz,now Saudi Arabia cause there were gang of fanatics called wahabis made an alliance with another gang called Saud family and started to harass Muslim pilgrims on their way to Mecca and claimed that no real Muslims in the world except them and all the rest is infidels!!! Ibrahim destroyed their capital which they called it Alderia and withdrew from there and still this accident shapes the attitude of the house of Saud towards Egypt to this day.




Third scene, post October war, 1973



Oil prices were sky rocketing cause of the oil embargo (which was an Egyptian idea put together by eng. Mostafa Khalil which became later on the prime minister who negotiate Camp David peace treaty with Menachim Begin) and Egyptian economy was in bad shape after the war and the �oil exodus� started with millions of Egyptians went to work in the gulf region and unfortunately beside the hard earning money they got from over there they started to bring strange ideas from those countries.
In mid seventies long beards started to appear in the streets followed by the robes and their fellow women start their own veil campaign followed by the burko (nikab). Some started to speak in a different slang and vocabulary than the Egyptian one while discussing very important issues like can we pray if we kill a mosquito and spill its blood on our robes? What about music and singing, the righteous �rich� people in sand and oil cities told us it is from the devil, what about tooth paste in Ramadan? But the hot question was always the relation between Adam and Eve and how if both gather together in a closed space the devil will inevitably come to tell them to do some bad stuff!!! And to avoid this unwanted guest they went in a campaign in universities to separate between girls and boys in lecture rooms, first by advising them in a nice way_as allah told them- but if it didn�t work, be it, declare Jihad on their asses!! And all this for sure happened after destroying the TV sets at their homes and buying big cassette recorders to listen to their beloveded Sheikhs in their sandy sound advising them about the best ways to handle the infidel Egyptians and this is how their disciple �Shokrey Mostafa� started his journey by founding �Altakfir o Alhegra� meaning declaration that the society is bunch of infidels and to immigrate from this society to any other place. They did the first part and no body noticed but in the immigration part they kidnapped the minister of religious affairs!!!! And took him with them in their puritanical journey, may be for some religious dialogue which for sure went deadly when disciple Mostafa told the court in his trial that he shot the guy in his left eye cause this was the place from where the devil entered the minister�s body!

October 6 1981,
assassination of Sadat who by the way used to call himself �the faithful president� trying to give impression that Nasser was unbeliever. The assassination was �peaceful� comparing to the operations that followed in late Eighties and early nineties. They only targeted Sadat and any body else got killed was not intentional. They had the chance to shot every body beside Sadat but they chose not to, but later they changed their minds in operations to come.

All of this was a precursor to the real stuff in eighties and nineties which manifested itself many times in a militant way but also they started a new inquisition in Egypt in courts, professional syndicated and universities.

News from nineties papers:

Sheikh Youssef Albadri sued the ministry of culture to ban the publication of �one thousand night and night� cause it contains sexual stuff which offend the believers.

Assassination of Farag Fouda, secular writer in many newspapers after Fatwa by group of Sheikhs including the wonderful Albadri (see above) declaring that he is an infidel.

Youssef Albadri sued a movie production company, an actor and actress cause they kiss each other in a movie while they are not married which offended his feelings (I don�t know why the mother fucker watched the movie in the first place)

Naguib Mahfouz, now 95 years old, Egyptian Novelist, Nobel Prize winner in literature in 1988, survived an attack when an eighteen years old guy stabbed him in his neck which left him to this day with paralysis of the whole right arm. When they asked the guy in the investigations and later during the trial why he did it? he told them cause he is infidel, did you read any of his works?NO!! Who told you this? I heard it in one of the audiocassettes coming from Saudia Arabia, what is your Job; I am working in a chicken store!

Bunch of fundamentalists sued university professor Nasser Hamid Abu Zeid and asking the court to separate between him and his wife cause he is not a Muslim any more after he wrote his book �the Quran, study in the concept of the text� and Abu Zeid left to Netherlands with his wife to escape death threats against him.

Fundamentalist Sheikh asking the department of Philosophy in Cairo university to stop teaching the materialistic philosophy or any thing related to Karl Marx.

Fundamentalist newspaper went in a campaign against department of literature in the American university in Cairo to cancel from the curriculum a novel written by a Moroccan novelist called � the bare feet breed� which claimed that it contains heresy and inappropriate sexual behaviors (this is how they refer to homosexuality)

Riots in Alazhar University in Cairo after a fundamentalist newspaper wrote in its first page, who will fight with us to the death� in objection to a novel published by the general institute of books for a Syrian novelist called Heidar Heidar under the title � a meal for the sea herbs� which they considered blasphemous.

Riots in the Coptic church in Cairo cause one of the newspapers published a story about a Christian monk in a famous ministry in south Egypt used to manipulate females with infertility telling them he has the ability to make them pregnant through miraculous stuff.He used to video tape his procedures during his miraculous treatment after medicating his �patients� with narcotics and then blackmailing them with the tapes to get money from them, when he got arrested they found hundreds of tapes, 20 kilogram of gold from his victims other than the cash.The government kept this case secret cause they don�t want to embarrass the Coptic church and they consider it �politically incorrect� until a journalist put his hand on the story and published it. The riots were not against the church or the monk but rather against this newspaper accusing it of defaming Christianity and asking the government to close this newspaper and to put this journalist in jail, which happened few months later. Egypt now is an�equal fundamentalistic opportunity� country.


Samples of books on newsstands during nineties;

How they will torture you in your grave?
How they will torture you in the Day of Judgment.
How to avoid bad eye by using Quran?
�The proof that it is not allowed to shave your beard� (written by Saudi author who declared that he is the first one in the world to write a book about the beard!!!)
�The ethics of Funerals�
How to get ride of demons.
The miracles of Pop Kyrolos � former head of Coptic church�



finally, Egypt succumbed to Saudi influence, 95% of book sales in Cairo international book fair were religious books from mid eighties until now, comparing to only 10% in early seventies.



Flash back,

1920, Kasem Amin published his book �the new woman� asking for liberation of women in Egypt and giving them the right to vote in elections, which happened shortly after.
p.s. Saudi woman can�t drive a car to this day in Saudia Arabia.

1937 the publication of �why I am atheist� by Dr. Ismail Adham, which became a smash hit and the author went under criticism from the religious circles but was endorsed by most of secular and academic circles.

In mid thirties, Taha Hussen, nick named, Den of Arabic literature and later minister of Education to become the first blind person to reach such position - published 2 books one was about pre Islamic (jahilia) literature and the other was �the future of culture in Egypt� In the first he denied any historical credibility of the so called holy books saying that �if the bible and Quran telling us about Ibraham this doesn�t mean that he was a real person� and in the other he was asking to send all �old books� to the museum. One of his infamous quotes was �education has to be free like air and water� and he implemented it for the first time in Egypt by making education free until the high schoo

In forties, Sheikh Ali Abdel Razik published �Islam and basics of statehood� advocating separation between religion and politics and denying any religious interference in public affairs although he was a graduate of religious school and Sheikh.

sphinx wui

fourth scene, Dec,1979

The Russians invaded Afghanistan and it was pay back time for the Americans cause of the Russian support to North Vietnam.

The three musketeers were America, Pakistan, which found itself facing the red army in its northern border and Saudi Arabia which realized that the old strategic dream of the Russian Empire to reach �the warm water� is now in action. Egypt, acting now as a puppet for Saudis and Americans joined them in supplying arms to the Mujahedin(freedom fighters) and later recruiting fighters from universities and sending them to Afghanistan.

America didn�t want to be on the scene in the beginning and wanted to supply the Mujahedin with Russian weapons and Egypt became the source of those weapons.

Egypt wanted to do Americans and Saudis a favor and started recruiting campaign all over the country but it had its own agenda also, they wanted to get rid of the problem inside by exporting it to Afghanistan hoping that who will go will never return. Most of the people who went in the beginning were fundamentalists but later the recruits became more and more regular students who got infuriated by watching the scenes of Russian tanks rolling over Afghani civilians, which were all over the place in the media.

The war ended with a humiliating defeat to the Russians followed by collapse of their �empire of evil� and the freedom fighters began to return to Egypt for the surprise of the Egyptian government which thought that it got ride of them for ever.
If they went to Afghanistan in their twenties without finishing college and without any military background what so ever, they are now in their thirties without a career but with 10 years of military experience fighting the Russians!
The Egyptian government panicked and started to arrest any body coming back from Afghanistan which led the majority of them to stay in Afghanistan and to direct their guns to new targets.


Media coverage during this period,

In 1984, a writer in the communist newspaper in Egypt Al Ahali �the people� went to Afghanistan to see for him self what is going on there and after he came back he wrote a series of articles about this war claiming that those Mujahedin are nothing but drug dealers and they are just defending their financial interests while using Islam as a camouflage and asked the government to stop the propaganda and the recruitment in the universities but every body accused him that he is a Russian puppet!

Ronald Regan praised the Mujahedin and their fight after meeting with Abd Rab Alrasol Saiyaf in the white house.

Time magazine published a report about the freedom fighters in Afghanistan and spoke about a young Saudi millionaire fighting over there and called him �god fearing James pond� his name was Osama bin Laden!


Some news from Egyptian newspapers,

1990, assassination of the head of Egyptian parliament with his security officers.

1991-1997: assassination attempts against the following:
-prime minister Sedqi which led to the killing of 6 years old girl going to school cause they put a bombed car near her school, the prime minister survived.

-minister of inteior, survived but with permenant damage to his right arm and later to lose his job in another successful operation ended by killing of 58 tourists in Luxor temple including some Egyptians and destroyed the tourist industry in Egypt for 2 years.

-minister of information

-president Mubark in Ethiopia while he was on his way from the airport to a conference there and he survived.

-Huge explosion in the Egyptian embassy in Pakistan killing all the staff over there.

-news of shoting and killing police officers became a daily routine in newspapers.


Until late eighties, no body has the right to carry a gun in Egypt except police officers who graduated from police academy which is a law school plus a police school, i.e if you graduated you can be an officer or you can be a lawyer if you like after working for the police for 5 years to pay them the expenses of the school. There was only one restriction against them, their 9mm guns don�t have magazines or any kind of ammunition, it was a camouflage. If an Egyptian officer told you that he would shot you in the eighties, you have to report him to his superiors to check his mental status, Police assistants can�t carry guns (graduated after 1 year of training after high school) police volunteers, people who volunteered to work for the police and don�t have enough education can�t carry anything but a whistle, police soldiers, who spend their draft years in the police instead of the army, people consider them legible for charity! This picture changed dramatically in nineties, police soliders carrying now loaded AK 47 while hiding behind bullet proof barriers in front of every governmental building, check points on the roads and highways became regular to check your papers (my father never recall any body asking to check his driving license since he got it in sixties till late eighties) for the first time in Egypt, private security companies started to appear on the scene to declare a new era with its slogan �you are not safe until you pay us� and asking every body to stop speaking about �those old good days� and to be ready for the action, the government did its best in propaganda and patriotic songs but after declaring emergency law and the country changed for ever and for sure to the worse.


Personal hallucinations;

I was in America watching a channel called E story telling the story of a woman they called her �Hollywood Madam� and her actual name was Heather something, and the narrative started to speak about how police started to harass her in her business so she transferred big chunk of her prostitution business to another areas in the world. She started to speak about aeroplanes filled with girls from allover the world flying to the gulf area and especially where the family of the Guardians of the 2 holly shrines of Islam are! She stated that it was more profitable for both her and the girls, Hollywood stars used to pay the girls in thousands but generous Saudis used to pay in tens of thousands and some gave millions if they liked the stuff.

I switched to MSNBC to find a spokesperson for the Saudi royal family called Adel Algobier speaking about the relations between America and Saudia Arabia and when the interviewer asked him about women rights he started to speak about how the Saudi treat women wonderfully according to Islam and �Hollywood Madam� jumped into my head and I got no problem in believing him in this part but the thing that bothered me actually when the interviewer asked him about the 15 hijackers from Saudi Arabia and he told him it is just a co incident and the 15 hijackers were just foot soldiers but the real bad guy in his side of the story is the Egyptian Mohamed Atta.

I switched to HBO to find a movie called �the path to war� about the American involvement in Vietnam and I liked the guy who played �Robert Mcnamara� the secretary of defense in L. Johnson administration, he has a quantitave answer for every single question, how many civilians will be killed in this air strike, 47! You think we will win, sure by the end of this year if we increase the force by such and such numbers, what is your expectation of American casualities, 13!
I think the same guy was around when America took the decision to support Saudi Arabia against Egypt in Yemen, which became our own Vietnam. I wish I could see him to tell me about how he thinks now.


Few days later I was watching Richard Murphy in an interview over Aljazerah TV responding to an accusation coming through the e mail claiming that America never had good intention towards Muslims, Murphy listed all the good deeds of America towards Muslims (Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan !!!) but number one on his list was how America supported Saudi Arabia the heart of the Muslim world!! against the Egyptians,the infidels
in the sixties!!!


Last scene,Sep, 2002.

I checked in a hotel called divine Tracy hotel in Philadelphia, PA. 20south 36th street, after they refused to admit me in the international house for students there, this divine tracy thing is managed by weird people, I called them American Talibans, they don�t take credit cards and you have to pay cash, after they checked me in, they gave me a paper with the instructions about how to behave in their divine Hotel, no smoking, no alcohol, no girl friends or even wives! The second floor is for women and the third for men and you can�t approach the� sweet� second floor cause they put an old lady there to watch the elevator, no blasphemous or vulgar words,you have to leave the key at the front desk if you are going out for even 1 second and for my luck I got the last room there with little problem, no rest room in it! So I have to go to a public one in the third floor and I had no choice but to take the room. As I am smoker, I kept giving them the key every time I went outside to smoke a cigarette and one time while I was waiting to take the key back there was a guy in a military uniform in front of me, the woman kept telling the guy that he has to move his stuff from his room to another room cause they have to fix something in the rest room and the guy doesn�t answer verbally but kept pointing to his watch! This scene lasted for about 3 minutes, I thought that the guy is deaf but how comes while he is in the military! When I first checked in I tried to chat with this women trying to ease some of the restrictions specially smoking or at least to let me keep the keys but she refused. she asked me about my nationality and religion and when I told her that my name is Omar from Egypt she started to call me Omar Sherif. when she saw me behind the military guy she started to speak with me telling me � would you please Omar Sherif explain to your fellow Egyptian what I said now� what fellow Egyptian you are speaking about? I answered her back; she told this guy and pointed to the military guy. I started to speak in Arabic with the guy,( O= Omar, M=military guy)

O: Are you Egyptian?

M: oh thank god, finally some body will understand me here. What this crazy woman wants from me?

O: she wants you to move your stuff to another room cause they need to fix the restroom.

M: that is it?

O:that is it! By the way, why you kept pointing to your watch?

M: I want to tell her that I am busy so she will leave me alone.

O: what are you doing here and what is this stuff that you are wearing just for curiosity?

M: I am an officer in Egyptian military intelligence and I am here for a training course about polygraph testing and other intelligence stuff.

O: what? Training! You can�t even understand what the women was telling you, how you will understand any thing in this training program or how you will pass the final exam, I think you stole this military uniform from somewhere and making up this story about intelligence and training thing.
(We started to laugh and he asked me to come to his room cause he wants to speak with me and I agreed and went with him)
M: listen, the story that I told you is true but I have a problem, they gave us some books to read and stuff like that, I want you to translate it to me until I can understand it by myself.
O: what is your level in English? You know basics or you have to start from zero.

M: unfortunately I have to start from zero!

O: who is the motherfucker who sent you here, they can�t find any body over there with good English to send! And what about this polygraph and lie detection stuff, is this all we need now in Egypt! We don�t need lie detectors in Egypt; the whole country is lying from the president downward.

M: the same thing that I said after they told me about this training program, but this is not the issue now, this program is part of the American aid to Egypt and the Americans paid the expenses including my pocket money and I need this money urgently so please help me with the translation.

O: but this stuff is intelligence stuff and some of it will be classified information and you will put your self in trouble if they discovered what you are doing? By the way, how you trust me while we just met 10 minutes ago? You are stupid or what?

M: no, I am not stupid asshole but I feel that I have no other option and God send you to me to save my ass and I need this money desperately.

O:listen, I am here for few days only, I can help you with some words but definitely I can�t translate all those books for you, I am very busy ��������.end of the dialogue.

-Few days later while watching Bill O�rely , he was speaking about Egypt and the financial aid to it claiming that it is a disgraceful that there are Anti American demonstrations over there.

By night, in PBS, there was Charlie Rose interviewing Thomas Friedman who said that part of the anger against America is because of its support to dictators with money and military equipment to oppress people over there, I remembered my fellow Egyptian officer in Divine Tracy hotel!


p.s. Egyptian proverb, � reasonable enemy is better than ignorant friend�

Egyptian �street� proverb � don�t fuck an idiot and don�t allow an idiot to fuck you�

Any comments about my documentary?

Omar

John Hancock

Search CounterPunch
March 24, 2003
Baghdad is Key to Control of the Middle East
Iraq's Liberation in Perspective
By AHMAD FARUQUI
Iraq--the cradle of civilization and fabled seat of the Abbasid Khalifa--is about to be liberated for the second time in less than a century.

Martin

PalestineChic19

your documentary was great. thorough, decisive, and interesting.
When I lived in Saudi, I remember hearing a lot of bad things about Egypt and the Egyptian people (infidels, unbelievers, even up to Ibn Harams sometimes!!) when in reality, their government is much more liberal than Saudi's (well, that's a good thing in my mind...but the Saudis were not fond of it!)

the hotel in your story, sounds like one I stayed in when I was in San Francisco for some NORML function of some type. I was not allowed to go higher then the 3rd floor, because the top floors were for men, and we were not to socialize with them. no credit cards (which turned out to be a good thing in the end because I stole the room key! [by accident, I swear!]) the people who worked there were all very weird, and needless to say, I didn't spend much time in the room, and ended up checking out after 2 nights and moving to the regular Marriot.

martin-it seems odd to me too that we had to "liberate" Iraq twice! there has to be another issue in there that the government just isn't letting us know of.

-Samirah

John Hancock

-Samirah

martin-it seems odd to me too that we had to "liberate" Iraq twice! there has to be another issue in there that the government just isn't letting us know of.

I didn't have a link handy so I was trying to point out plagiarized source of this thread's origin. I'd only saved a little of it as text file for historic exploration jumping off points.

Martin

sphinx wui

Martin wrote;

I didn't have a link handy so I was trying to point out plagiarized source of this thread's origin. I'd only saved a little of it as text file for historic exploration jumping off points.




If you want to trace the so-called jumping off points and I call it �stream of consciousness� you can read Virginia Wolf or James Joyce plus some psychedelic elements from Allan Ginsberg. The style of my post I actually got it from an Egyptian novelist called Sonala Ibrahim in his novel �That� where he started to mix the characters of his novel with news from the newspapers and I think this novel was translated to English and you can get it from the net. Is this means in your definition that I plagiarized them? by the same token any body using this style now in his writings is plagiarizing Virginia Wolf and James Joyce!!!

I never heard of Ahmad Farouqui let a side reading some thing written by him. If you want to accuse some body of plagiarism you have to bring your evidence forward. If you don�t have the link, would you please put the text files that you have and let the readers judge by themselves?

Please be careful before accusing any body, you didn�t even bother yourself to discuss any point that I mentioned in my post.

Samirah,
You lived there and you know exactly what is going on inside the Saudi society, I like to hear more comments from you about my post.

Omar

sphinx wui

by the way martin,

the title of my post i got it from an English play written in the fifties by an author called John Ozborn ( i am not sure about the spelling of the name)


Omar

Sakpo

Look Back in Anger, John Osbourne.

lpetrich

The "Hollywood Madam" was Heidi Fleiss.

And that's very interesting stuff, sphinx-wui.

John Hancock

Don't care much for Joyce like the implementation of stream of conscience by John Dos Passos but style aside. Much of what you write of is sourced in Ahmad Faruqui's article. you offer no sources.

Martin Buber