Gen Z & the Revolution| Reckoning with the rot

I am 22 years old now, which means that during the January Revolution I was eight. I still remember my father’s astonishment as he sat in front of our small television, clapping enthusiastically. I remember, too, his jubilant shouts when a police station in Alexandria went up in flames.

On Jan. 28—known then as the Friday of Rage—my father went to Alexandria, the closest major city to ours, Rashid, the city of resistance. He wore a red shirt, the color of blood. After the revolution, he said he would keep that shirt as a memento of the country’s liberation.

Newspapers were my pleasure. My father used to reward me for reading them. The following Friday, he bought Al-Ahram from Uncle Shaltout, the newspaper vendor, and my prize for reading it was a copy of Maged comic book.

I was burning with curiosity to see what they would write on the sports page. I took the paper from my father and found a photo of a citizen holding a cardboard sign that read: “Leave, so the league can come back.” At the time, what mattered most to me was the return of the football league—and my own return to training. I was a youth player at Haras El-Hodoud Club and dreamed of trying out for Al Ahly.

On Feb. 11, Mubarak fell—or so my father said. I did not understand what that meant then. I just grabbed my ball and kept running with it, thrilled that I would get to play again, because life before that day had felt suspended.

I will never forget how, for two days or more, television channels kept airing the same recycled statements from artists. I remember among them the Egyptian actor Mohamed Henedy, who would later make a controversial move to Saudi Arabia in 2024.

My father told me that things were still unclear. Some time later, I returned to training. For the first time, I saw things that were strange to me and hard to grasp: political seminars, debates, my father talking politics freely in the streets.

At the mosque, I would repeat my father’s words and what I read in the newspapers to my friends, trying to sound like the adults. I parroted phrases I barely understood, memorized a few key dates and used them to impress my peers. On the school radio, I would recite a passage from the Quran and read the news. I woke up at five in the morning to wait for Channel One’s news bulletin. My mother and I would write it down together. On the way to school, I would rehearse it aloud as she corrected my mistakes and fine-tuned my delivery.

To the ballot boxes

My first relationship with the ballot box came during the parliamentary elections that followed the revolution. I went with my mother to the Al-Mujammaa School so she could cast her vote, and I was immensely proud. I did not know who we were voting for, nor did I care. All I wanted was to dip my finger in ink so I could brag about it to my friends.

It was an exhausting day. A long line of people stretched on and on. For two hours, I listened to debates: an Islamist candidate? Al-Nour? Al-Wafd? An independent? I understood nothing. I saw no good in anything except what my mother would choose.

Then came the presidential election campaigns. At first, we wanted the prominent Islamic thinker Mohamed Selim al-Awa. Later, my father changed his mind and leaned toward Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, believing he had better chances. Al-Awa’s campaign came to our city, Rashid. I saw him up close at Abaza Cafe, but I was upset that he did not greet me.

We sat listening to his speech. Campaign volunteers passed around sheets of paper for us to write our questions.

At that moment, my heart raced with excitement. I felt responsible, as if it were my duty to speak about my city’s problems. But my words scattered, as though I had forgotten how to write.

I thought for a bit, then wrote about football problems, borrowing my father’s words. I waited throughout the conference for Al-Awa to read my question. He did not—as politicians often do—and I was deeply disappointed. Still, what stayed with me was a sense of responsibility, and a feeling of belonging to my city.

When our family shifted its support to Aboul Fotouh, I memorized the “Strong Egypt” platform. I watched the announcement speech so many times that I could recite it by heart. We joined the campaign in a beautiful march. Our neighbor Amal was part of Aboul Fotouh’s campaign team, brimming with hope, like so many children of January.

Aboul Fotouh lost. We moved on to the runoff between Mohamed Morsi and Ahmed Shafik—both bitter choices. I will never forget my father’s phrase about the bitterness of choosing: “I’ll mark the paper while turning my face away.”

My father watched the scene from a distance. The Muslim Brotherhood, in his view, did not listen to anyone. They saw themselves as better than the rest of Egyptians.

And yet, I loved January. I loved Egypt. I began to understand—if only a little—what a homeland meant. What it meant to be handed a piece of paper and allowed to write whatever I wanted on it.

I listened to revolutionary songs and felt a sense of responsibility. I loved Bassem Youssef and imitated him. I was happy with the freedom of the media.

Before the revolution, my father used to say the news was not truthful. After it, he left me free to choose which newspaper to read. I loved Al-Masry Al-Youm. It became my favorite paper.

It was a beautiful year. I loved the hope in my father’s eyes—and even the fear in my mother’s voice.

The revolution taught me that dreams have a remainder. I inherited those feelings, and I will pass them on to those who come after me, until God wills what is already written.

Fifteen years of wandering

I grew up in the womb of the counterrevolution, witnessing the burial of everything that once felt January-like. The counterrevolution succeeded—at least temporarily—in aborting every possible path to change. Its leaders, and those who backed them, achieved what the January generation failed to do: fulfill the goals of their own revolution, even as they fought among themselves and clashed over direction.

And yet, January did not die. Anyone who revisits the history of revolutions knows they do not succeed overnight. Perhaps the goal was never immediate victory, but rather to pave and ease the way for a distinctly Egyptian experiment—one that allows the sons and daughters of this country, in all their diversity, to take part in building it, to make mistakes, to learn and to try again.

The people’s demand was clear and unambiguous. We were cursed with foolish politicians.

The wandering imposed on the January generation was the result of its fragmentation. Every group wanted to seize power for itself, forging alliances against those who had once stood beside it in the square, treating them as enemies. Everyone dodged the single truth: this people rose up for one clear, unmistakable demand—“Bread, freedom and social justice.”

The people did not rise up to ban alcohol for tourists, nor to stage endless mass protests in front of the radio and television building. But we were cursed with foolish politicians.

The marginalization imposed on us—the view that Generation Z is not yet ready for public life, and our exclusion from any form of collective action—is sometimes deliberate, pushed by certain actors.

Most of this generation has lost faith in everything that came before it and now wants to forge its own experience. But it lacks the tools to do so, and that is an ill omen.

Putting dots on letters—naming things plainly—is decisive in sustaining a revolutionary moment. Romantic compromises, more often than not, do not protect a revolution. Their cost can be far higher, even uprooting the revolution from its roots.

Change in the Egyptian context requires knowing friend from foe. Coexisting with rot is impossible. When rot had its chance, it tore you apart—leaving you imprisoned, wounded or forced into exile.

Rot has layers. Some can be drawn in and unified within the revolutionary ranks. Others can be neutralized in pursuit of shared interests under the pressure of a revolutionary moment. And there are those for whom nothing works but firmness and force—for deterrence, and to ensure the success of the revolutionary experiment.

Any crack in the revolutionary ranks signals the end of the revolutionary condition itself. That is why we do not want party flags or factional banners, and no partisan chants. Egypt—and only Egypt.

Change is possible. If an opportunity arises, we must keep in mind the experiences of the Arab Spring and the counterrevolutions that followed. We should not see the world in black and white. Every revolutionary experience deserves respect, even if it does not appeal to us.

This experience should not be dismissed as “Islamist” and thrown into the dark column, nor that one labeled “liberal” and crossed out—or vice versa. What is required is a real awareness of the necessities of this moment.

Egypt needs all of its sons and daughters—before the rot reaches its peak.