We are not amused

‘I just don’t care about the Royal wedding’ is the standard dinner party line of early 2011. Expressing a contemptuous, or at least weary, indifference towards the upcoming wedding of Prince William to his uni girlfriend Kate Middleton has become an article faith among enlightened British society. In neat conversational shorthand, the speaker establishes his or her liberal, cosmopolitan, freedom-loving credentials, lest it be doubted by their liberal, cosmopolitan, freedom-loving friends. Above all, it lays down the gaping intellectual chasm that separates them from the Daily Mail-reading ‘plebs’ who find meaning and emotional sustenance in the expensive marriage of a hereditary toff to a presumably vapid brunette.

At times like these, the liberal elite is given the chance to demonstrate its superiority over the ignorant, bigoted, unclean masses who rush out to buy Wills’n’Kate tea-towels – and they seize on it greedily. A similar rhetorical stunt is at work among those who, in the summer of 2010, declared their heroic lack of interest in the football World Cup, and among those who profess to be mystified by the appeal of Top Gear. They, you see, are not like ‘them’ down below on the social ladder; their thoughts are set on an altogether higher plane, and they would much sooner be practicing the piano or reading an Ian McEwen novel than poring over Hello photo-spreads of the newly engaged couple.

This pseudo-cheeky iconoclasm, itself a modern secular orthodoxy set against a make-believe Royalist consensus, is at play in the commentary pages of Britain’s broadsheet newspapers. ‘I’m afraid I just can’t get excited about the royal wedding but, unfortunately, if [the] media frenzy is anything to go by, it seems I am in the minority,’ writes journalist Molly Lynch. In the Guardian Tanya Gold pipes in, ‘I am going to be tried for saying this, but a Royal wedding will make idiots of us Brits.’ Quite who this embattled minority of far-sighted opinion-makers is going to be ‘tried’ by is not altogether clear. But never mind: the liberal commentariat could not care less about the big Royal do, and they are ever so keen for us to know this. They intend to ignore the coming wedding, and so write endless column inches on the necessity of ignoring it (the irony having blissfully escaped them).

Yet this trendy republicanism is not as embedded as one might think – something attested to by the formidable commercial and critical success of The King’s Speech, which was showered with gongs in the recent Bafta awards ceremony, and received favourable reviews in the very same papers that declared their noble disdain for the Royal wedding. This handsomely made film is so staunchly and persuasively monarchist, you’d be forgiven for expecting to discover Prince Philip among its executive producers. Not only is the shy, impenetrable historical figure of King George VI successfully ‘humanised’, but his role as a pillar of historical continuity and a repository of national sentiment, given a fresh lease with the advent of World War Two, is not left in doubt.

The film's defence of the Royal office is made partially through a simplified, although narratively satisfying, division between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ Royals. Edward VIII, or ‘David’, as played by the Australian Guy Pearce, is a ‘bad’ Royal. His irresponsible playboy lifestyle, and churlish insistence on wedding the American divorcee harpy Wallace Simpson, precipitates his early abdication – a travesty of the kingly virtues of duty and self-sacrifice which George VI, or ‘Bertie’, as played by the ever-sympathetic Colin Firth, comes to embody as he masters his stammer and delivers a rousing speech to the nation on the eve of world war. Bertie is the very archetype of the ‘good’ Royal.

This good/bad distinction – analogous to the similarly vapid distinction between ‘good’ (moderate) and ‘bad’ (extreme) Islam insisted on in debates over multiculturalism – nonetheless neatly captures the schizophrenic attitude of the chattering classes towards the monarchy, the half-baked radicalism which can never quite rouse itself into a genuine political movement. Our Queen Elizabeth, for instance, is unanimously deemed a ‘good’ Royal, carrying out her ‘job’ as head of state with a dignity and sense of duty she is said to have inherited from her dad, the protagonist of The King’s Speech. Even the shoutiest republicans find it impossible to work up an appropriate rage about the dear old lady. How could anyone?

The Crown Prince Charles, however, generally sits on the ‘bad’ half of the divide. He is considered fair sport by journalists on both the left and right, who find bottomless good copy in his publicly vented opinions on modern architecture, environmentalism, and the evils of foie gras. Veteran political commentator Christopher Hitchens, for instance, known for his appetite for taking on the big issues – contemporary warfare, international diplomacy, God – threw himself into a baffling rage over ‘the prospect of a morose bat-eared and chinless man, prematurely aged, and with the most abysmal taste in royal consorts [becoming] head of state, head of the armed forces, and head of the Church of England.'

This contempt is shared by many in Britain today. The ascension of a ‘bad’ Royal to the head of the nation will likely overturn the British public’s affection and tolerance towards hereditary ‘rule’, bound up as all ceremonial posts are with personality. The sudden appearance of Charles’ ‘bat-eared and chinless’ visage on our pennies and five pound notes could prove the point where festering republican angst develops into an organized campaign with mass support.

The monarchy, politically impotent as it is, rests on the mercy of public opinion, and it is hard to see how it could withstand any kind of popular, coordinated opposition. With an elderly Queen, we might well be within the twilight years of the British monarchy. It’s abolition in the next decade cannot be ruled out, ushering in a slew of name changes among our public services and forces (the Royal Mail, the Royal Bank of Scotland, the Royal Air Force, to name but a few), and the installation of a presidency, or something like it. Remember, it’s happened before.

Reflections on the revolution in Egypt

I was in Egypt during the revolution. 23rd January till 4th February – just a couple of weeks spent seeing ancient temples, photographing mosques, traversing the Nile and eating kebabs: so we thought to ourselves before embarking on our early morning Easy Jet flight to Sharm-el-Shark-Attack.

We left Sharm with its teeming Russians immediately, arriving in Dahab that evening in order to see Mount Sinai (of Ten Commandment and Burning Bush fame) and St Katherine’s Monastery (the world’s oldest inhabited Christian monastery, thereby rather holy) the next day. Both were well worth the slog into the interior, especially the views from the Mount: the vast emptiness of the Sinai desert stretched out under beating sunlight. At the top we were met with a mean brick chapel, a teenage Bedouin flogging tea and tepid Coca Cola, and a tour group of middle aged Koreans conducting a Mass, their faces turned to the sunset, drinking in the UV light of Jesus. For our part, the climb earned us heaps of religious merit, which would serve us well for arrival in Cairo the next day, the 25th: National Police Day – coinciding, auspiciously enough, with Burns Night, that ebullient Scottish vigil to boiled offal.

‘Tahir Square, let’s go there,’ we told ourselves after depositing our bags in Amin Hotel – a multi-storey dive festooned with sawdust, cracked paint, and a lift poised on the grassy verge of death. First we had a round of Stella beer – an Egyptian brand, over a hundred years old; not the famous Belgian wife-disciplining nectar – in Hurrea, a thirties-era bar with a large open floor plan, decked with smudged mirrors and limp stationary fans. A piece of drunken theatre played itself out: a Russian traveller, from a group of three with a mess of half-drunken bottles on their table, stood up and began to chug on a 500ml Stella bottle, much to the delight of the chubby bearded waiter who cheered him on. Half of it coursed over the Russian’s beard, but the bottle was emptied. After slamming it on the table he teetered a moment, then crumpled sideways onto the sticky floor – out cold. A few slaps from his friends were enough to rouse him; he sat back down and re-commenced drinking. That, boys, is how it is done: the message was clear.

Refreshed, if a tad unnerved, we proceeded onwards to Tahir Square, the city’s heart-chamber, from which wide colonial roads radiate out into downtown Cairo. Large green-painted trucks filled the kerb-sides, and all along the pavements lolled riot police with helmets, shields and batons. Their numbers thickened as we reached the square – a staggering show of force, outnumbering the protesters which we now glimpsed in the centre, waving signboards and chanting feverishly. Much of them were of student age; word had it there was some grievance about rising tuition fees, of all things.

In unison they derided the elderly despot who for the last thirty years had presided over a military dictatorship in Egypt: Hosni Mubarak, who keeps his grey hairs at bay with liberal coatings of black hair dye, just as he was known to keep his political opponents down with energetic campaigns of violent intimidation, electoral fraud, and torture, among other displays of manly virility becoming of an Arab dictator in the tradition of the still-revered Gamal Abdel Nasser (who was known to suspend political prisoners upside-down and dip them in boiling excrement, which betrays a certain ingenuity and willingness to experiment). Inspired by the recent revolution in Tunisia, many were prepared to brave overnight stays in the police ‘special room’ in a concerted demonstration of popular will – unprecedented in a country where protests are illegal, owing to ‘emergency laws’ that have been in place ever since the assassination of the former president, Anwar El Sadat, in 1981.

The scene was an exciting one that first night in Cairo. Over the streets and squares hung a mood of collective purpose, and collective promise. The crowds in Tahir Square were awed at the force of their own numbers: the din they were capable of making, the gravitational pull they were exerting on thousands of their fellow Cairenes, and the unholy numbers of riot police that began to amass conspicuously around them. But violence was just as conspicuously absent (even if, in a fit of democratic exuberance, a stuffed effigy of Mubarak had been hung from a lamppost in the centre of the square).

The riot police for their part appeared relaxed, even bored, presiding over the protest like a patient mother keeping watch over the boisterous birthday party of her five year old son, to make sure no one gets hit with Lego. Many were nonchalantly tucking into crisp packets. Yet what struck me most was their youth; some looked scarcely over sixteen. There was a grim irony in witnessing these boy-police, drawn largely from the ranks of the urban poor, being ranged against a crowd whose centre was comprised of middle-class, well-educated student activists, presumably fighting in the former’s best interests. But such is the way with oversized, unwieldy governments in search of legitimacy – buying out the masses with schemes of mass employment in the civilian and military forces.

We soon left Tahir Square, for food and further bottles of cheap Egyptian beer. During our meal in a brightly lit ‘family’ restaurant, we were approached by a young Egyptian man in international student costume: grubby jeans, Converse trainers, and a t-shirt with writing on it. In graceful tones and immaculate English, he regaled us with the efforts of his comrades at the nearby protest, ‘fighting against the police because they oppress us’. And would we three Britishers like to join them in this noble cause, in a demonstration of international student solidarity? ‘If white people are present, the police won’t be violent; they don’t want a fuss,’ he claimed as the indispensible contribution we would make to this nascent revolution. We nodded a great deal and stated our enthusiasm and sympathy towards their cause. But we declined the opportunity to be human shields, doubting that the niceties of international diplomacy would be foremost in the minds of teenage riot police during a stampede. The young man thanked us for our time and returned to his table, there to talk with his friends about the moral cowardice of the imperialist races, or the motif of the voyeur in the films of David Lynch.

We returned to the protest to find it bigger and louder. The police had grown visibly edgy, and were no longer munching on multi-flavoured crisps. They had begun to restrict numbers entering the square, and officers with over-sized coats were strutting around shouting orders. Something was about to happen; we braced ourselves and readied our cameras, like the shallow tourists we were. Soon enough trails of smoke fell in smooth arcs over the crowd; their ranks collapsed immediately, and protesters ran screaming and flailing into the outer streets. A tear-gas barrage was underway. The square was now a swirling, foggy chaos. Suddenly a line of riot police surged into the square, in a stampede to oust those that remained. Frightened protesters continued to pour past us as we stood on the square’s edge, pondering our proximity to numerous guttering tear-gas shells.

The boy-police had reclaimed Tahir Square, but the protesters regrouped and began to march the wide pavements of central Cairo, chanting anti-Mubarak slogans and waving whatever signboards remained legible. They still had the rest of the city to play with. The police fell into phalanx formations, in the manner of ancient Pharaonic warriors, and began stamping and chanting and heaving – a psychological training exercise, it appeared, aimed at bracing themselves for violence and intimidating others, which immediately brought to mind the fearsome ‘haka’ dance performed by the New Zealand All Blacks before rugby games. But thankfully they refrained from going all Spartan on the protestors with their batons and shields, and instead fell to blocking off certain roads. With remarkable composure they faced down the jeering and gesticulating of protestors who brushed up against them. (The police weren’t quite the ‘violent brutes’ described in Western broadsheet news stories.) We witnessed one elderly man with a white moustache and grey suit, shrieking heated invective and flapping his arms at a line of riot police hiding meekly behind their shields. He was clearly having the time of his life.

We retired eventually to our dingy room with its leaking tap, and stationed ourselves on the balcony with glasses of the gin we had bought on the Easy Jet flight (ten quid for a litre; back of the net) mixed with Sprite. A thick line of protesters continued to coil itself around the main arteries of downtown, and lines of riot police stood in ghostly, watchful lines across junctions and roads, keeping their silent vigil well into the night. Cairo wouldn’t burn just yet, so we took to sleep.

Over the following two days we remained in Cairo, and saw the sights untroubled: the exquisite mosques and madrassas of Islamic Cairo, dizzyingly plentiful in what was once known as ‘the city of a thousand minarets’; the Pyramids and Sphinx at Giza, an obscure collection of monuments you probably haven’t heard of; and the churches of the Coptic quarter, the oldest existing part of Cairo – a testament to Egypt’s pre-Islamic Christian heritage and sizeable Christian minority (between fifteen and twenty percent at present), which in recent months has come under attack from Islamic terrorism, in a spate of bomb attacks on Christian sites (a reminder to any of those well-meaning commentators who insist that Islamist groups are ‘not a problem’ in Egypt but merely a ‘convenient distraction’ for anti-democrats).

In the evenings the crowds re-gathered in Tahir Square, and the shouting and signboard-waving continued afresh. The only disruption caused was the closure of Tahir’s metro station; otherwise Cairo continued as normal: shops stayed open, the traffic remained dreadful, and old men still sat in shisha bars grumbling to each other. We left on Thursday evening, the 27th, taking an overnight bus ride to Luxor in Upper (southern) Egypt, which proved a bitter trial indeed. A posse of Egyptian ‘lads’ played hideous Arab pop music from their 3G phones – much as a tracksuited chav would on a British train – while an over-head TV with burnt-out speakers beamed out primary-colour Egyptian TV programmes throughout the night.

Despite the dire rigours of the journey, we had left Cairo at a good time. According to a know-it-all American student we met in the same Hurrea bar, ‘the shit’s really going down on Friday; people are pouring into Cairo from elsewhere; the activists are planning something huge.’ The smart-arse yank proved correct. From Luxor we caught snatches of Arabic news reports on TVs in cafes, in which footage of tanks patrolling the streets of Cairo neatly summarised the breakdown of police discipline and the handover to the army. We heard that thousands of tourists were mobbing Cairo airport, trying to leave the country. This was sobering news to hear just five days into a two week trip, but there was no question of our forsaking our travels. Besides, we felt relatively safe in Upper Egypt. There were only small-scale protests in Luxor and Aswan: mostly a bit of shouting and signboard-waving in central locations, although we did witness another tear-gas barrage and a spot of arson in Luxor. Civilisation as we knew it appeared to have the upper hand.

The real problem turned out to be, not the protests themselves, but the repressive response of the (clearly terrified) Egyptian government. On Friday the 28th, the internet was shut down, and remained so until the penultimate day of our trip. It was hard to know precisely what was going on; all we had to go by were occasional glimpses of news reports in Arabic, and rather over-heated predictions from friendly Egyptians we met: for instance that, ‘tomorrow we will be free and everything will be okay, promise’ – heard repeatedly throughout the trip from various different people. We had little idea that Egypt was front page news around the world for the duration of our time there.

What was worse, all banks were closed from the 30th, after a bank was looted in central Cairo. The mist of panic descended: we had run out of money, we had no means of getting any more, and we very far away indeed from Sharm-el-Sheikh, our point of departure. We were saved only by the apparition of a Barclays ATM in Aswan, the first we’d seen in Egypt (the government couldn’t close down international banking outlets, of which there were precious few). A bloody good thing we had climbed Mount Sinai and communed with the Bush in the monastery, then.

The train network was shut down soon after the banks, to prevent futher protesters travelling to Cairo or other major cities. We had planned originally to travel from Aswan to Alexandria by train, and then onto Sinai for our flight home – but that proved impossible. After much pacing about and Hamlet-like soliloquies about the cruel hand fate had dealt us, we decided with the grimmest reluctance to try for the bus from Luxor – which we returned to, by bus, after our three days in Aswan, witnessing a couple of burning police stations on the way – all the way to Sharm-el-Sheikh.

We had heard of such a bus – which took a truly gross journey of some 1,500 kilometres, from the Nile Valley up the Red Sea coast till Suez and down through Sinai – but we were sceptical of its existence; surely it was just a figment of some backpacker’s lurid nightmare? But it proved to be all too real, and made the ten hour ride from Cairo to Luxor seem like a wistful Sunday ramble in Kensington Gardens. The Luxor-Sharm journey would normally have taken 16 hours. What with the relentless military check points, where AK-47-sporting soldiers stepped on board and demanded to see our passports and sometimes the contents of our luggage, it took 21 hours. This, for us, was the greatest hurt the Egyptian ‘emergency’ inflicted on our trip. I still haven’t fully recovered. Occasionally I wake up in a cold sweat with the ghost of an Egyptian service station before my eyes.

We took our scheduled flight back to London, surrounded by half the rabble of Moscow. We reflected that, aside from Alexandria and a second visit to Cairo on the way back to Sinai, we had done pretty much everything we had intended to do. We had seen Mount Sinai, Islamic Cairo, the Pyramids at Giza, Karnak, the Valley of the Kings and the Theban Necropolis, Philae, a good length of stunning Nile scenery, and more besides. Furthermore, we had demolished about eighty pints of Egyptian Stella and a litre of Gordon’s Gin; not at all bad in a predominantly Muslim country. And, if anything, the ‘emergency’ added an extra level of excitement and interest to our trip. We had many fascinating conversations with Egyptians, who were keen to communicate their frustration with the 30-year-old ruling regime, and some not-so-enlightening but still enjoyable instances when random men (it was invariably men) pulled us aside and bellowed ‘Mubarak no!’, lest we should think fondly of the dear old man. We left Egypt content that we had witnessed a turning point in world history.