Taha el Shazli took part in the demonstrations throughout the day and at the last minute was able to escape as the Security forces at the Israeli embassy started seizing students. Following the plan Taha went to the Auberge Cafe in Sayeda Zeinab Square where he met up with some of the brothers, among them Emir Tahir, who presented a review and evaluation of the day’s events. Then he said in a sad voice, “The criminals used tear gas grenades as camouflage and then fired live ammunition at the students. Your brother Khalid Harbi from the Law Faculty achieved martyrdom. We resign ourselves to God’s will for him and ask Him to forgive him all his sins, enfold him in His mercy, and reward him generously in Paradise, God willing.”
Those present recited the Fatiha for the martyr’s soul, all feeling fearful and oppressed. Brother Tahir then explained the tasks required of them for the following day — contacting the foreign news agencies to confirm the martyrdom of Khalid Harbi, tracking down the families of the detainees, and organizing new demonstrations, to start from a place the Security forces did not expect. Taha was charged with the task of writing wall posters and putting them up early in the morning on the walls of the faculty. He had bought for this purpose a number of colored pens and sheets of sturdy paper, and he shut himself into his room on the roof and devoted himself to his work, not coming down to the prayer area to pray the sunset or evening prayers, which he performed on his own. He designed ten posters, wrote them out, and did the drawings for them, finishing after midnight, at which point he felt extremely tired. He told himself that he had a few hours ahead of him in which to sleep, since he was supposed to go to the faculty before seven in the morning. He prayed the two superrogatory prostrations then turned off the light, lay down on his right side, and recited his customary prayer before sleeping: “O God, I have raised my face to You, placed my back under Your protection, and entrusted my affairs to You, in desire for You and in awe of You. There is no refuge from You or escape from You but through submission to You. O God, I believe in Your Book that You sent down and in Your Prophet that You sent.” Then he fell into a deep sleep.
After a little, thinking he was dreaming, he awoke to confused noises, and, opening his eyes, could distinguish shapes moving in the darkness of the room. Suddenly the light was turned on and he saw three huge men standing by the bed. One of them approached and hit him hard across the face. Then the man seized his head and turned it violently to the right and Taha saw for the first time a young officer, who asked him jeeringly, “Are you Taha el Shazli?”
He didn’t respond, so the goon struck him hard on his head and face. The officer repeated his question and Taha said to him in a low voice, “Yes.”
The officer smiled challengingly and said, “Playing at being the big leader are you, you son of a bitch?”
This was a signal and the blows rained down on Taha. The strange thing was that he didn’t protest or scream or even protect his face with his hands. His face remained expressionless under the impact of all these surprises, and he submitted totally to the blows of the goons, who took a firm grip on him and pulled him out of the room.
Of the dozens of customers who fill the Oriental Restaurant of the Gezira Sheraton, you will find very few who are ordinary citizens such as might accompany their fiancees or wives and children on their day off to eat some delicious kebab. Most of the patrons are well-known faces — leading businessmen, ministers, and present and former governors who come to the restaurant to eat and meet, far from the eyes of the press and the curious. As a result, police details were everywhere, as well as the private guards who come along with any important personage.
The kebab restaurant at the Sheraton has come to play the same role in Egyptian politics as that played by the Royal Automobile Club before the Revolution. How many policies, deals, and laws that have left their mark on the life of millions of Egyptians have been prepared and agreed to here, in the Sheraton’s kebab restaurant, at the tables groaning beneath the weight of grilled meats! The difference between the Automobile Club and the Sheraton’s kebab restaurant accurately embodies the change that the Egyptian ruling elites underwent between, before, and after the Revolution. Thus, the Automobile Club perfectly suited the aristocratic ministers of the bygone epoch with their pure Western education and manners, and there they would spend the evenings accompanied by their wives in revealing evening gowns, sipping whisky and playing poker and bridge. The great men of the present era, however, with their largely plebeian origins, their stern adherence to the outward forms of religion, and their voracious appetite for good food, find the Sheraton’s kebab restaurant suits them, since they can eat the best kinds of kebab, kofta, and stuffed vegetables and then drink cups of tea and smoke molasses-soaked tobacco in the waterpipes that the restaurant’s management has introduced in response to their requests. And during all the eating, drinking, and smoking, the talk of money and business never ceases.
Kamal el Fouli had asked for a meeting with Hagg Azzam at the Sheraton kebab restaurant. The latter came a little early with his son Fawzi and they sat and smoked waterpipes and drank tea until Kamal el Fouli arrived with his son Yasser and three bodyguards, who looked the place over. One of them then said something urgently to El Fouli, who nodded his head in agreement and said to Hagg Azzam, after embracing him in a warm welcoming hug, “Excuse me, Hagg. We have to move. The guards object because the place is too exposed.”
Hagg Azzam agreed and he and his son rose with El Fouli and they all moved to a distant table picked out by the guards in the farthest part of the restaurant closest to the fountain. They sat down and the bodyguards settled at a nearby table at a distance calculated to permit them to protect the other table without allowing them to hear what was said at it. The conversation started with generalities — mutual inquiries as to each other’s health and children and the usual complaints about how exhausted they were from work and increasing responsibilities. Then El Fouli said to Hagg Azzam in an affectionate tone of voice, “By the way, your campaign in the People’s Assembly against indecent television advertising is excellent and has struck a chord with people.”
“All credit to you, Kamal Bey — it was your idea.”
“I wanted people to get to know you as a new member of parliament. Praise God, all the newspapers have written about you.”
“God grant us the capacity to repay your favors!”
“Think nothing of it, Hagg. You are a dear brother to us, God knows.”
“Do you think, Kamal Bey, that the television will respond to the campaign and forbid these disgusting advertisements?”
With “parliamentarian eloquence,” El Fouli roared, “They will respond whether they like it or not! I told the minister of information at the meeting of the Political Bureau, ‘This outrage cannot go on! It is our duty to protect family values in this country! Who can accept his daughter or sister watching the dancing and shamelessness that go on on television? And where? In the land of el Azhar!’ ”
“Those girls who appear half-naked on television, I wonder what their parents think they’re doing? Where is the father or the brother of a girl like that, that they allow her to appear in that filthy way?”
“I don’t know whatever happened to self-respect. Anyone who lets his womenfolk go about naked is a complacent husband and the Messenger of God — God bless him and grant him peace — has cursed the complacent husband.”