It was the Saturday morning after the comeback episode was aired. I went for my morning run at the Gezira Club, the upper-class venue full of army supporters I told you about. I didn’t know what to expect. Twitter and social media were buzzing all night with reactions to the episode. There was a general sense of confusion. It was the first time in four months that someone in mainstream media had been anything other than a total asswipe for Sissi. Ultra-pro-Sissi people on social media didn’t lash out at me yet. They were more disappointed because I hadn’t just come out and made fun of the Islamists as they were used to me doing previously. They wanted me to be “more supportive of the nation as we were fighting terrorism.”
On the other extreme, Islamists were attacking me because I hadn’t made enough fun of Sissi.
But a good majority of the Internet comments were actually celebrating the episode. Many people were waiting to see if I would have the balls to say anything about the current regime. The hidden jokes, the insinuations, and the innuendos I’d made might be much more subtle than my “in your face” remarks during the Morsi era, but given the mass hysteria, many of those silenced by the new regime considered that episode a lifeline.
Going to the club the next day was my first encounter with the real world after the episode. People began to notice me, and many waved and flashed a thumbs-up sign. Okay, this is going well! People actually came over and approached me as I was warming up. “We are proud of you,” they said. “We didn’t expect any less of you.”
I was pleasantly surprised. There were people of all ages—young, middle aged, and even a handful of older people—who came to tell me how delighted they were with the episode. However, I couldn’t please everyone. Some older people in their fifties and sixties weren’t very happy, and they wanted to make sure I knew it. They were still cordial, but expressed their disappointment in how “out of line” I was.
In general it was a good morning, but things were about to change.
That night, the talk-show cycle in which I was the main topic of conversation began. Many of the hosts viciously attacked me, saying that I was “insulting the army” and “insulting Egypt.” The phone lines were open on many of these shows so people could freely curse me.
Over the next two days it got worse, much worse. There was nothing else in the media but people attacking me. A week later one of the programs that specialized in reviewing the press discovered an interesting statistic. In just one week there were more than 740 articles written about me and that “rogue” episode.
One article suggested that I was a “mole” planted in Egypt a long time ago. The author of the article, who was a parliament member with known ties to the army, said that I was chosen by the CIA to be trained by Jon Stewart to use satire to destroy the country! To make the story look credible, the author stated that the CIA officers were training me in a certain apartment in one of Cairo’s districts, and he even gave the address of the place. That was the address of our production company! If Jon was the CIA’s pick as a recruiter, America would’ve been in deep shit a long time ago.
It was insane. There was an elaborate spread in the pages of one popular newspaper with more than twelve articles focused just on me. Half of them ripped me apart and the rest were either mild in their defense or reminded people that I was the same guy they carried on their shoulders a few weeks ago, when my jokes were appropriate enough.
Suddenly, my jokes became a threat to the values of the “Egyptian Family.” My bleeped “profanity” under the Islamist regime was celebrated as a form of resistance, but now everyone was a fucking prude. The shift in public opinion led by the obviously biased media was now becoming apparent. I went back to the club just a few days later; the same people who’d politely disagreed with me one day after the episode were more aggressive when they spoke to me now. The episode they had watched seemed to have morphed in their minds into some sick exorcism. The media were succeeding in making me out to be a monster. “You can’t insult the army,” they would say. I would ask them how I had insulted the army but no one could answer. It was the same thing that had happened months earlier, when pious Muslims accused me of insulting Islam but when I asked them what exactly I had said to insult Islam, they couldn’t answer.
My network issued a statement distancing itself from the content of the episode. The statement said that the network couldn’t be part of something that would “insult and degrade the foundations of the nation and the general manners of the public.” Motherfuckers!
They basically threw me under the bus. Despite the fact that the network’s owner had, during our last episode, been sitting right there in the front row, giggling, clapping, and howling at every joke.
Now the owner sent the manager of the network and one of his prominent anchors to talk with me.
“The owner wants to know if you thought the thirtieth of June a revolution or a coup,” they said.
I felt that I had traveled back in time to the Spanish Inquisition. “Why is this important?” I asked.
“This is the most important issue here,” they answered. “If you think it was a revolution, many of our differences could be resolved easily, but if you think it is a coup, that would be a fundamental difference.”
Of course I had to say it was a revolution; at least part of me was still believing that it was at that time. But I really didn’t like the fact that it had to be pressured out of me like this.
I told them that what they did issuing that statement was totally out of line. It was a stab in the back.
“Oh yes, about that, the owner doesn’t want you to speak about this statement,” they said.
“Hell no, you fucked me in front of the whole nation, I will be opening the next episode with that,” I answered angrily.
“He will not be very happy,” they said.
“Well, he knew what he was getting into when he signed me a year ago,” I answered.
So . . . that didn’t go very well, but things were getting even worse right outside my theater.
Protestors gathered there for the next three days. They were burning my photos; they were cursing me and my family; they were accusing me of the usual shit of being an operative and a spy.
The theater was literally under siege; we had to go in and out using a back door. These “protestors” were the same thugs we had seen since the beginning of the revolution. They were known to be “rented heads” by the intelligence service, to give a false sense that this mentality was the will of the people. We had seen these thugs in videos supporting the army on many occasions.
There were people outside the theater threatening to kill me. They had posters of me with a large X on my face, calling me a Zionist dog. (Why does it always have to be someone’s dog?) They were harassing anyone coming in or out of the theater. Some of them were talking to the media outside, saying that they wouldn’t mind killing me and sticking a knife in my heart if they saw me because “the army was above all.”
We were supposed to somehow write comedy under these conditions.
Some of my young researchers and producers were getting calls from their parents, who were pleading with them to leave the theater and come back home. Some of them had daily fights with their parents over the next few weeks as they tried to leave home to go to work.
As we sat down to write the next episode I insisted that we should start it by making fun of the statement the channel had issued. It was easy since the same channel who was now saying they cared about protecting the foundations and the manners of the “Egyptian Family,” and couldn’t tolerate anything that might offend the beliefs and traditions of the Egyptian people, had broadcast a Ramadan series that was full of profanity during the holiest month of the year.
We taped the episode as usual. I traveled to Dubai right after that to catch up with Tarek, who was scared to go back home after the arrest of his dad. We were out having dinner as the time came for the episode to air. My brother called me and was flipping out on the phone. The channel had issued another statement saying that it had suspended the program for the time being. My phone was ringing off the hook, with many of my friends and even celebrities asking what was going on.
This was a shock to everyone. Ours was the most successful show in the history of Arabic television. There was no way this suspension was a business decision; this came from high up the food chain.
We didn’t know what to do. I returned to Egypt and set a meeting with the owner. When I met him and his lawyers, he told me that he had suspended the show to respect the will of the people.
We both knew the “people” were a handful of thugs, a bunch of expired old men and women, and the assholes in the media who prostituted themselves to any kind of authority. Will of the people, my ass!
“The country is in a critical condition now and I can’t allow my channel to be part of this,” the owner told me. “We are thankful for what you have done in the past; your contribution to enlighten people against Islamic fascism will not be forgotten. But Egypt doesn’t need you now.”
I told him I was not doing this because of a political agenda. I was doing it because it was the right thing. I couldn’t be a puppet in the hands of authority to mislead the people. We were living in strange times. The people of Egypt thought they had gotten rid of fascism, but they were in denial; they had only replaced religious fascism with military fascism.
The owner tried to offer more money and better conditions under the contract to convince me to agree to his agenda. “Why not change the show a bit? Why not adopt a late-night-show format where you play games with celebrities, you know, like Jimmy Fallon? People are tired of politics now.”
What he was really saying was that they didn’t want anyone to question politics now.
Instead of me making jokes that really mattered to the people, they wanted me to become a big joke. A glorified, highly paid court jester.
I couldn’t do it.
I left the meeting with the owner’s words echoing in my head: “Egypt doesn’t need you anymore.”