Egyptian stars in Detroit: One eye on the ball, the other on Cairo (the Michigan View 1.30.11)

Posted by hpayne on January 30, 2011

Five Egyptian pro squash players are in Metro Detroit this weekend playing in the Motor City Open – but their hearts are back home with their countrymen and the Egyptian uprising. Egypt produces the best squash players in the world – eight of the world’s Top 25 players are from the Mideast nation – an elite corps of athletes that travel the globe carrying their country’s flag and playing the sport they love.

For years they have tasted the democratic riches of the United States, Europe, and Japan. But with the advent of CNN, the Internet, and Facebook, Egyptians back home in Cairo and Suez and Alexandria also know what they are missing. As in Tiananmen Square and Tehran and Tunisia before it, the Egyptian Revolution is being fed by the communications revolution.

“The people are fed up,” says Tarek Momen as he keeps a close eye on CNN between matches at the Birmingham Athletic Club, Michigan’s premier squash facility and the host of the Open. At 22 years-old, Momen is ranked #25 in the world. Nearby his countrymen – twenty-somethings Mohamed El Shorbagy (#9), Omar Masaad (15), and Mohd Ali Anwar Reda (27) – are glued to the TV as well.

“This uprising is being led by the educated classes,” continues Momen. “We need to get voting rights. Mubarak’s government held an election in December and got 99 percent of the vote. It’s a joke.”

A graduate of the prestigious American University in Cairo with a degree in electrical engineering, Momen’s English is flawless. An ambassador to the world for Egypt – where top squash players, not unlike U.S. tennis players, are national figures – he says that the Egyptian Revolution is a true populist revolt. Fed by Facebook and Twitter, the revolution has no clear leader but has exploded spontaneously since an uprising in nearby Tunisia upended that corrupt government.

Momen is not politically-involved, but his young peers in Cairo are driving this revolution. “We were all getting messages that the people should do something on the 25th,” he said referring to the first day of mass protests.

We talk about the Tea Party in the U.S. – a grass-roots American uprising against single party Democratic rule in Washington the last two years and itself grounded in America’s iconic Boston Tea Party revolutionary beginnings against a corrupt king.

He nods at the similarities of citizens taking to the streets to reclaim their government. But he points to an important difference in Egypt: under one-party Mubarak rule, the streets have no allies in government. In Washington, the Tea Partiers have natural allies in Ryan, Bachmann, and Armey; in Michigan they have Snyder and Amash and Benishek in Michigan.

In Egypt, they have no friends in the government. It is a country of crony pols and crony capitalists where the few hold power against the will of the majority.

“Here in the U.S., you have the right to vote. In Egypt, you have no real right to vote,” says Magdy Talaat, an Egyptian-born U.S. businessman in Lake Orion who has befriended the Egyptian players here.

A big squash fan, Talaat became a U.S. citizen in 1982 but still returns to Cairo every year. He says Cairo is a bustling metropolis like New York or Washington, DC – but the mood changes when it comes to politics. “You don’t talk politics,” he says. “You know that once you cross that line, the police will come and get you.”

“The United States has the best democracy in the world,” says Talaat. But with that title comes responsibility. He is outspoken when it comes to U.S. support of the Egyptian street. “Most Egyptian people have admiration for America. But they are against U.S. government policy toward Egypt because it supports dictatorship. We need regime change. The best thing for Egypt is for Mubarak to leave the country.”

Both he and squash player Momen dismiss concerns that the extremist, Iranian-backed Muslim Brotherhood is a threat to take power in Egypt – a distasteful prospect for Americans that holds echoes of the Iranian Revolution in 1979 that brought radical Islam to power under Ayatollah Khomeini.

“The Muslim Brotherhood is overrated,” says Talaat. Momen says the Brotherhood is no danger and has no influence on his young friends back home.

“Obama should support democratic change,” says Talaat, pointing out dictatorship is a breeding ground for extremists that will ultimately work against U.S. interests. “The U.S. is still a leader that has influence more than anyone can believe.”

As Mubarak has cut off Internet access, TV, and texting communications in Egypt, Momen says that he has become a source of news for his family back in Cairo (telephone landlines are still open and cell phone service has been restored – but without texting privileges).

Momen also points to the Mubarak government’s perverse strategy to apparently destabilize city neighborhoods by withdrawing police. In the last 24 hours, his family has watched from their windows in downtown Cairo as the police have disappeared and the streets have descended into chaos. The government has released hundred of inmates from jail, flooding the streets with looting hoodlums.

Momen says Mubarak is fueling instability – giving Mubarak an excuse to clamp down with his police and forcing the population to choose between the government and chaos. “The police have been replaced by thieves,” he says. “They are destroying shops and Mubarak wants us to believe that we still need him to protect us.”

As he and his mates watch CNN just a few feet from the squash courts, they worry about their families but are optimistic that this is the Egyptian flowering of the universal human desire: democracy.

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