Sissi finally decided to run for dictator-in-chief. The people who’d shied away from the word coup were now proudly telling us, “Yeah, it’s a coup and we like it; it’s a dictatorship but we need it.” But when people like us, who openly opposed Sissi, called it a military dictatorship, we in turn were called traitors. Many people lost their jobs in the media for merely suggesting what we all knew deep down to be true.
The religious authorities in the Coptic Church and Al-Azhar Mosque were already giving their official seal of holiness on Sissi.
High-ranking Muslim scholars in Al-Azhar made parallels between Sissi and some of the Prophet Muhammad’s disciples, and sometimes they elevated him to the same level as prophets.
“When Sissi visited the church, it was like Jesus himself came,” the head of the Coptic Church said.
“Sissi is mentioned in the Old Testament, the signs are clear,” another priest said.
The Grand Pope of the Coptic Church sent his priests to America when Sissi was visiting the UN to herd the Copts there to rally in solidarity with Sissi, to show America how much he was loved. Most of the Copts who came out had been living in America for decades after filing for political asylum due to religious persecution under the military regime. The same regime they were supporting now. The same military that crushed those twenty-six Christians in front of the TV building only a couple of years ago.
Stockholm syndrome much?
What is wrong with us Egyptians, seriously!
At that time Sissi’s pictures were plastered everywhere. On bridges, covering buildings, on cars. It is said that the number and size of a leader’s photo are inversely proportional to the freedom of a certain country.
One paper had his photo with the headline: CHRIST THE SAVIOR. Isn’t it cool to have a president who, if assassinated, can rise from the grave three days later?
You would think that any self-respecting media figure would criticize the fact that we were turning a blind eye to what was happening. Hell no. As a matter of fact, one of the most popular talk-show hosts admitted that he had no problem whatsoever with the deteriorating state of the country under Sissi. “Yes, I was on Morsi’s case when we had power cuts and economic meltdowns. But under Sissi I am willing to ignore this because we support him for a much higher cause. Morsi wanted to sell off the country, he was a traitor. But Sissi is a patriot. We are willing to withstand the harsh economic conditions under him.”
Out of nowhere, serious television anchors and talk shows were hosting mystical readers and fortune tellers to talk about the signs laid out by the Zodiac. According to these whack jobs, Sissi was going to be the next president. Considering everything that was happening in the country, you really didn’t need any special skills to tell you that he was the president already. Hours and hours of footage were spent on these fame seekers out there to tell us about the “signs.” One of them claimed that Sissi was mentioned in an old parchment that was three thousand years old.
The young people who were once at the front line of the revolution were now the black sheep of the pack. The same anchors who earlier had hosted those young people on their shows and glorified the “new young Egypt that was reborn in the hands of these young people” were now openly attacking the youth, asking for the old and senile to rule us because the young just fucked up. A particular journalist who’d been on the front line of the revolution and who pushed for young people to take over was now openly contemptuous of the youth, calling them stupid and in need of proper reform. The same journalist who’d criticized the military for adopting the conspiracy theory talk became one of the regime mouthpieces promoting the idea that the young people were used as tools in those conspiracies.
I couldn’t help but recall when the owner of my old channel told me that Egypt didn’t need me anymore. Following the media, it seemed that Egypt didn’t need its young people either. After all, the “Savior” was here. The regime announced that there would be elections and Sissi announced that he would be running an actual campaign. But it was a campaign that didn’t really campaign for anything. He didn’t need to. There was no program, no plan, and no fucks given.
“He doesn’t need to promise us anything, he is enough”—this was an actual statement from a talk-show host.
“How dare you ask the president for a program? He doesn’t need us, we need him,” another host said.
I was playing these videos on my show and people were laughing. But in the media I was accused of ridiculing Egypt’s only hope. Maybe I was harsh? Maybe I shouldn’t have associated Sissi with his groupies? Maybe I was wrong? I might have thought so if he himself hadn’t gone into an interview saying, “I didn’t want to run. The masses asked me to. They pressured me to do it. You can’t come now to ask me for any promises. I have none.”
The trickery of his language was absurd. Making it sound like he was some hapless man on the street whom the people just happened to propel through the ranks because he was such a martyr for them was insane. He bullied his way into this position of power and now he was acting like someone who forcefully fucked you in the ass and demanded that you be thankful. And somehow the people were fucking thankful! I was beside myself with disbelief.
Two years later I was at a Trump rally in a little town in Georgia. The mayor of the town was at the podium warming up the people for the arrival of the Donald. He was shouting and cheering, but he said one thing that brought back those painful memories of Sissi’s absurd campaign. He said, “If Donald Trump didn’t do anything but build this wall would you still vote for him?” And the people just roared.
With Sissi, he didn’t even promise us a fucking wall.
Sure, we still had our interim president, but he was like a ghost. Even for social events that were held under the auspice of the interim president, women came up to recite poetry calling Sissi the future “groom” of Egypt.
These women, who were supposed to be poised and respectful, were dancing outside polling stations chanting Sissi’s name and carrying his picture like he was Justin Bieber or some other teenage heartthrob. At the same time they were sticking their tongues out at their own children for “beating” them and proving them wrong. Many of those women turned into hateful, horny fifth-grade bullies.
It was a mystery to me how hate, fear, and absolute infatuation could coexist. Then I read this passage from 1984 that explained why members of the Party were allowed to get married only when the Party had proof that there was absolutely no sexual attraction between the couple involved:
When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn about anything. They can’t bear you feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All that marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you are happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and the rest of their bloody rot?
So, as Orwell said, there is an intimate connection between chastity and political orthodoxy.
Could all those women have miserable sex lives?
If so, it seemed that all of their sexual frustration was being directed toward the biggest love of the country. It didn’t matter if what he said in the interviews didn’t make sense or some of his solutions were comical. His lovers saw a superhero, whom we were blessed to have. Faith trumps reason. After all, Sissi was the Savior.
Maybe my idea needed to be expanded. We needed male prostitutes wearing Sissi masks to come and secretly pleasure the women into a reason-inducing stupor. Then and only then would the country be ready for a true democracy.
But again, Jesus only walked on water and raised the dead. Our Savior did much more. He cured AIDS!
Don’t worry, I’ll explain.