Egypt's political cartoonists were paid to show Hosni Mubarak the way he wanted to be seen by his people. When I studied Arabic in Cairo in the late 1990s, our teachers used to enjoy giving us these cartoons to translate, knowing the surreal silliness would inspire us to keep working to the end.
My favourite showed a football match. Arab leaders made up one team and Israeli leaders the other. Bill Clinton and the foreign secretary at the time, Madeleine Albright, were the referees. Mubarak was the muscular, square-jawed goalkeeper. In the middle of the match, the Israelis trip up the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, a small but quick forward with spirit but little strength. The cheating referees not only ignore the Israeli foul, they award them a penalty. Mubarak clocks their deceit but decides not to protest. He steels himself and stands in front of the vulnerable Arab goal. Benjamin Netanyahu, with fangs, takes the shot. The Indians, Africans and South Americans in the crowd gasp, some unable to look. But Mubarak simply eyes the ball rocketing towards him and at the last minute raises a clenched fist that deflects it. The crowd roars. But, predictably, the evil referees are dismayed.
In Alaa al Aswany's novel The Yacoubian Building, a senior government official tells one of the characters: "We have studied the character of the Egyptians. We know what the people want." The Mubarak of the cartoon was the leader Egypt's rulers knew the people wanted. He was on the side of the Palestinians. He was strong and vigilant. He symbolised an Egypt leading Arab affairs. This was a leader Egyptians could take pride in.
In the 10 years I spent living in Cairo, it was plain to see the gap between rich and poor growing. Corruption and personal connections ruled every facet of life from the hospital of your birth to the location of your grave. At the same time, the state was increasingly absolving itself from the responsibility of providing services. Tragedies caused by a mixture of official neglect and corruption were becoming increasingly common. When relatives of victims arrived at badly run hospitals and started agitating for information, or just plain dignity in their grief, the official response was meted out by the riot squad of State Security at the end of a truncheon.
Egyptians, it seemed, were caught between casual neglect and heavy-handed authority.
Journalists, political analysts and even many Egyptians thought the spirit of resistance had been extinguished by five decades of military rule. The hundreds of thousands of ordinary Egyptians who have raised their voices and risked their lives in Cairo and cities across the country have proved that assumption wrong.
The truth is that for most of his rule, Mubarak didn't try to crush the spirit of his people; he tried to coerce and subvert it. To do so, he found that guile worked better than force. And the most effective tool at his disposal was the Egyptians' own sense of national pride. This is not unusual. Politicians of all stripes routinely exploit a sense of lost pride to draw supporters to their cause.
Since Egypt signed a peace agreement with Israel in 1979, its rulers have had to square a problematic circle. The men who rule and claim to know Egyptians faced a problem. How could a regime established in the name of national honour, self-determination and the greater Arab cause also be a Washington ally, a US aid recipient and Israel's first official friend in the Arab world? Subterfuge and force, they decided, were the answers. They calculated that they would be assisted in their efforts by the Egyptians' own sense of pride. The people of Egypt, they thought, as hungry and frustrated as they might be, wanted to believe Egypt was a major power on the world stage with influence over US foreign policy and strength as a bulwark against Israel's more aggressive impulses. They created a balance between Egyptians' anger and their sense of dignity. At the centre of this state-run effort at mass hallucination, sat the image of Mubarak, portrayed as the embodiment of Egypt's pride.
For many years, a carefully orchestrated campaign utilising the tools of censorship and state control of the media along with powerful incentives and punishments aimed at potential challengers kept the veil in place. When I was a student, three of my friends from Cairo's rough working-class district of Imbaba did not know - and refused to accept - that Egypt took aid from the United States. Later, as I spent time in other countries in the Muslim world, I found that in every place I visited people felt the sting of their societies' subjugation to foreign interests.
Mubarak's undoing started slowly. Economic liberalisation policies created a bigger cultural as well as economic split between the haves and have-nots. But Mubarak wasn't seen to be to blame for the corruption and the state's increasing incompetence. The buck was made to stop elsewhere; ministers, corrupt officials and, often, the Israelis.
This changed in 2003 as the Americans moved warships through the Suez Canal in preparation for the invasion of Iraq. State television pretended it wasn't happening. Al Jazeera on the other hand stationed a crew on the bank of the canal and broadcast each passing boat. Egyptians wondered why their warrior president was helping the United States attack another Arab state. As murmurings grew, Mubarak came on television to explain that the Suez was an international waterway and Egypt could not block its use. "However," explained Mubarak, "it would be different if they were attacking me."
Mubarak's spin doctors tried to create the illusion that Egyptians, under their glorious president, had achieved independence, strength and respect. The illusion lasted while people believed it. The spell was broken when the harsh light of reality struck the Egyptian government's make-believe world. Mubarak's regime had mastered the manipulation of print and television. But like men in their sixties, seventies and eighties the world over, they had no idea how to shape the emotions of a much younger audience suddenly exposed to new sources of information on the internet and through mobile phones. In time, police brutality, state incompetence, corruption, economic injustice and Egypt's sidelined position in the world became obvious enough to most Egyptians to fatally fracture the compact between Mubarak and his people. Misrule and poverty were less tolerable if they were not being suffered for the greater cause of Egyptian pride and glory.
Whatever the outcome of the struggle taking place now in Egypt, it is clear Egyptians have won back their dignity. In Pakistan, where I live now, a people who are also frustrated with their rulers, have been watching in awe, and perhaps a little envy, as ordinary Egyptians battle for their freedom. Looking at comments online, the actions of Egypt's people are inspiring millions across the Middle East and beyond.
Dignity and pride cannot be bestowed on a people. And from now on, no leader will be able to convince Egyptians they should tolerate incompetence and brutality in the name of either.
Amil Khan is a former Reuters Middle East correspondent and author of The Long Struggle, published by Zero Books. He blogs as Londonstani at www.cnas.org/blogs/abumuqawama, and tweets as @Londonstani
