OCTOBER 25, 2013
I can’t remember a time when I was more terrified, and we had been living in terrifying times. I was in my dressing room making small talk with the hairdresser and the makeup lady, but I wasn’t really aware of what the hell I was saying. My mouth and tongue were making the movements while I was totally disconnected from reality.
It had been four months since I was last onstage. I didn’t know what was waiting for me out there. What kind of a crowd would it be? Would there be angry people willing to boo me if I made jokes about the current regime? What were they expecting from me? Crew members passed by me all day and patted me on the back and said, “Good luck, Bassem,” which, to me, sounded like Dude, you are doomed.
I took a few strides to the backstage area and waited. I was contemplating calling the whole thing off. Maybe I could come down with a bad case of diarrhea. Wouldn’t that be a way to escape? I stood there thinking about how people would look back at my time on television: Well, he was this hilarious guy, really good at hosting his show—but then he had one epic shit and his career was all over . . . Thankfully it was too late for me to rewrite my destiny: I heard the credits, the opening music, and then the countdown in my earpiece. In slow motion, I took the stage and the people cheered. Then for a moment that felt like eternity, I was silent. I went with Jon’s advice and decided to tell them what I felt, and by doing that I tapped into what everyone was feeling in that moment.
I went into a monologue that echoed everything that was going on in the country. Every single phrase that was running across people’s lips, every fear and doubt, every suspicion and frustration that entered into our minds. I put into words the torn reality we were all living—a mishmash of conflicting emotions and opposing thoughts. It’s like how you in America on any given day will throw out phrases like minimum wage, police brutality, Black Lives Matter, Obamacare, iPhone’s wireless headphones, and Trump is an asshole. But my rant was the rant of a scared, terrified man. A man who was broken and not sure what to do next. That was the state of the country and people connected with it.
At that time no one was allowed to show confusion or have second thoughts. There was a set of rules you needed to follow in the media, and if you didn’t you would be crushed. How could you show confusion in this time of war? The only accepted narrative was: it was a revolution—don’t even think the word coup—and everyone is conspiring against us.
Yet I went on to joke about whether what had happened was a coup or a revolution. Questioning that at that time proved later to be very costly. The word coup was considered blasphemous.
For the first time we didn’t make fun of the Islamists. I directed my sarcasm at the “liberal” media now. I always felt it was my job to keep whoever was in power in check—and even though these people used to root for me and against the Islamists back in the day, they were now the ones fueling hate and racism. On that night whatever friends or supporters I had in the media were lost.
The popularity of Sissi was soaring. Criticizing him was considered career suicide. People celebrated the fact that Sissi’s photo was on everything: gold chains, wedding gifts, and even pants sold in the flea market. Shit, they even had his face on cupcakes and chocolates so you could bite his head off. We came up with the slogan: “A taste that is irresistible, you can’t resist it, even if you wanted to, resistance is futile!” So instead of criticizing his new, god-like status, we embraced it and even asked for more. Sarcasm is a blessing in disguise.
The episode finally came to an end. This was one of the most intense days I had ever been through. When I went home and collapsed in my bed and tried to fall asleep, I received a very disturbing call. It was Tarek.
“They arrested my dad,” he said.
One hour after we finished taping, the police had gone to his house and arrested his father on charges of “hate incitement” and “funding terrorist activities.”
His father was sixty-seven with a heart condition and diabetes and he seldom left the house. Although an Islamist, he’d instructed all his family members that no one was to go to the Islamists’ sit-in.
Of course the charges were a bunch of bullshit but he was detained anyway.
His lawyer told Tarek that someone in the prosecutor’s office had told him that these were bullshit charges but they came from high above to pressure me.
Tarek had been living this ongoing Greek tragedy since my show started. It was not just that his dad was angry at him because of my show during the Morsi era. Tarek’s brother, who joined Morsi’s staff, was arrested the day they arrested Morsi. Tarek’s father kicked Tarek out of the house, blaming him for what happened.
For the next year and a half, Tarek’s brother and father remained in jail for no apparent reason, under no logical charge, until they were released because of health problems.
Tarek was lucky enough to be in Dubai when his father was arrested. He never came home to Egypt because he was afraid that he would be arrested just because of the association with his family. A year later I would be escaping from Egypt to join him.