A Private Show in the Presidential Suite
by Alaa El Aswany
As soon as former President Hosni Mubarak felt a pain in his chest he was taken to the presidential suite in Sharm el-Sheikh International Hospital. He underwent all the necessary scans and tests, which showed a slight irregularity in his heart rhythm, but the doctors soon had it under control. At about seven o’clock in the evening the hospital director checked the president once again. He looked reassured as he took off his stethoscope. “Your Excellency’s in excellent health,” he said. “All you need is a day or two’s rest. “President Mubarak nodded and said: “Thank you, doctor.”
The doctor bent down and whispered respectfully: “I’ll leave Your Excellency to sleep now and I’ll see you in the morning. I’ll be up all night and there are two nurses at your disposal. If you want anything, just press the bell.” The doctor took his leave and departed. President Mubarak was lying in bed dressed in blue silk pajamas. His hair was dyed jet black as usual. He started looking around him. The place was elegant and luxurious, with every possible appliance installed: a refrigerator, a big-screen television and a laptop computer. There was a comfortable sofa and easy chairs for visitors . The wall opposite was bare, with beautiful house plants in tubs on the floor below. The lighting was soft and the president could adjust it with a dimmer switch fixed to the wall but he felt at ease in the dark. Contented, Mubarak thought about how the doctors and nurses in the hospital were treating him with love and respect. “These people are representative of the majority of Egyptians, who still adore me and recognize my services to the country … unlike the dubious characters who took part in the demonstrations on January 25. Those demonstrators were all working for foreign powers that want to destroy the country. They created chaos and called it a revolution. Now they want to put me on trial. Go ahead, put me on trial. I challenge you to find any bank accounts or assets in my name.”
The president sank into his bed, folded his hands across his stomach and started to stare at the ceiling. That was his habit before he fell asleep. Little by little his eyes began to shut, but suddenly he noticed something strange: blue beams of light swinging this way or that, as if from flashlights. Mubarak sat up straight and began to examine the moving beams of lights in amazement. Suddenly he heard a strange voice intoning loudly, “Hosni Mubarak.”
Mubarak looked around him but could not work out where the voice was coming from. “You can hear me but you won’t be able to see me,” the voice continued. Mubarak sprang up, reached out and pressed the bell to summon the nurse, but he found the bell was not working. “Don’t call help because no one will come,” the voice warned him.
Mubarak’s face now showed signs of worry. He looked up and croaked: “Who are you and what do you want?”
“It doesn’t matter who I am. I’ve came to talk to you about your coming trial.”
“I’m ready to go on trial. I trust the fairness of the judiciary, which will acquit me.”
“Of course you’re confident, now that your American lawyer has told you he’s got rid of all the bank accounts registered abroad in your name.”
“I won’t let you…” Mubarak shouted angrily.
But the voice continued: “Calm down and lower your voice. You won’t be tried just for the money you stole. You weren’t a bank manager. You were president of Egypt for thirty years and you brought the country to its knees in every way.”
Mubarak sounded on edge and irritated. “The whole world acknowledges what I accomplished for Egypt,” he said.
“I came here today to go over with you some of your great achievements. I’ve prepared a special presentation, just for you. Look there, look.”
The wall opposite had turned into a luminous screen with many faces side by side - the faces of boys and girls, children no older than ten. Their features varied but they were all staring deep into space as though they could see something we could not see. Their faces were very pale and many of the children had lost all the hair on their little heads. It was a scary and depressing sight.
“This is a sample of the thousands of children struck by cancer in your time because of the carcinogenic food your cronies imported for the Egyptian people to eat,” said the voice.
“I’m not responsible for that,” growled Mubarak.
“Are you still being stubborn? Don’t you know who imported the dangerous pesticides and who protected them from punishment?”
Mubarak looked away in disgust as though to say he would not answer back. “Look again now. The picture’s changed,” the voice said.
Instead of the children’s faces, many men and women appeared on the screen, their bodies bloated and their swollen bluish eyes staring coldly like corpses. The voice said: “These are some of the people who drowned in the Salam 98 ferry disaster, the ferry of death. Do you remember?”
“I didn’t cause their death.”
“Yes, you did, You’re responsible for all their troubles. You made the country so corrupt and oppressive that they went to work in the Gulf, where they were abused and humiliated, and when they came back your regime was responsible for their death. I think you know who the ferry belonged to, who his partners were and where he is now. When their families demonsrated to demand their bodies be recovered from the sea the riot police beat them barbarically.”
“Most distressing.”
“What’s distressing is that you didn’t sense the gravity of the disaster, and instead of going to meet the families of the victims, you went to attend a training session for the national soccer team and joked with the players without the least respect for the families. There’s a videotape of you making fun of the ferry disaster and roaring with laughter, as if those who died were not human.”
Mubarak bowed his head in silence. Then he said: “Please leave me. I want to go to sleep.”
“You must see the whole show. Look.”
The scene on the wall changed and the bodies of naked men appeared, hung by their feet like slaughtered animals, their backs scarred by brutal beatings. The voice said: “This is just a sample of the tens of thousands brutally tortured by State Security. Look to the right there.”
Mubarak looked and saw a group of policemen trying to strip a woman naked. The woman put up a desperate resistance and started screaming, but the policemen overpowered her and tore her clothes off until she was completely naked. Mubarak gulped.
“That’s how State Security acted in your time, abusing women in front of their husbands in order to break their male pride and force them to confess to whatever they wanted.”
Mubarak fell silent again, as if he knew there was no point in objecting. The voice continued: “Look. This is your last great achievement.”
The image of the torture victims disappeared from the wall and the faces of dozens of young men and women appeared, all in their twenties. Their faces and chests had been punctured by bullets. The strange thing was that they all had the same expression on their faces, a calm, contented expression, almost grateful, as though they had fulfilled their mission and were at rest.
The voice said: “You’re the first Egyptian president to kill Egyptians with live ammunition, and the first president to use snipers against his own people. One thousand four hundred people lost eyes from rubber bullets and close to a thousand people were killed. There are thousands of missing people, many of whom we will discover to be dead. These are your achievements.”
Mubarak did not speak, and the voice continued: “I just want yourself to put yourself in the place of the mother of one of these people. Think how she rejoiced at the birth of her son, toiled to bring him up and saw him growing year by year, proud of him when he completed his studies. Remember how she dreamed of a happy future for him. But you killed him, to stay in power and install your son in your place.”
“Shut up.”
“That’s the truth.”
Beside himself, Mubarak shouted: “Even if I made mistakes, I fought to defend Egypt.”
“You did your duty in the armed forces, no more and no less. That won’t make us forgive all the crimes you committed over thirty years. Anyway, you didn’t fight alone. Thousands of officers and soldiers fought alongside you, and many of them performed better than you. Do you remember General Saadeddin el-Shazli?”
“I’m not going to answer.”
“General Shazli was a national hero. He was chief of staff and the mastermind of the High Minarets plan that the army carried out in the 1973 war and that led to victory. What did you do with General Shazli? You deprived him of honors, banned the mention of his name and put him in prison, with no concessions to his honorable military record.”
Mubarak put his hands on his ears and started to scream. “I told you I don’t want to hear,” he said.
Suddenly the room lights came on and two nurses appeared, with the hospital director running after them, all of them in panic. The director rushed up and bent over Mubarak repeating: “Don’t you worry, sir.”
Mubarak heaved a sigh and muttered: “There are some pictures on that wall I don’t want to see, doctor. Please.”
The doctor turned to the wall and found nothing there. Then he looked at Mubarak and seemed to understand. He whispered to the nurse, who took a syringe from a drawer, had it ready in the flash of an eye and handed it to the doctor. “Sorry, sir. I’ve going to give Your Excellency an injection to sedate you and help you sleep.”
“I don’t want to see those pictures ever again,” said Mubarak.
The doctor smiled and said: “Rest assured, sir. You’ll never see them again.”
The doctor moved closer and slowly gave Mubarak the injection. Then he stood by his side, observing the effects of the sedative. Within minutes Hosni Mubarak’s body went limp on the bed, his eyes closed and he fell into a deep sleep.
Democracy is the solution.
email address: dralaa57@yahoo.com
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