Reliving Tahrir

Down the narrow alleyway that extends from Talaat Harb Square, past the cloud of shisha smoke and sounds of rolling dice from the makeshift street café, a crowd of people stand in disarray outside the performing arts theater Rawabet. They’ve all come to watch the first performance of ‘Hakawey Tahrir’ or Tahrir Monologues, a performance of real stories by the men and women of the January 25 Revolution — apparently the theater is already full, and without a second date of performance set yet, everyone is quite desperate to get in. A few minutes before seven o’clock, the scheduled time of the performance, a young, skinny man with long black curls comes out and announces that due to the high demand, they are scheduling an impromptu second performance that begins after the first curtain call. Relieved, the crowd begins to disperse, deciding on downtown venues to spend the next two hours. “We sort of felt that Rawabet wouldn’t fit everyone, but we didn’t think that we’d have to do another showing,” says Sondos Shabayek, director of Tahrir Monologues. “There were more people outside than there were inside, and I wasn’t going to tell them to go home, out of appreciation at least for them wanting to watch the performance.” It comes as no surprise that Shabayek knew exactly what to do; she has done this before but for a different cause. Shabayek is head of the Bussy Project, originally inspired by Eve Ensler’s play The Vagina Monologues and tells the untold stories of men and women on subjects related to sexuality, oppression, harassment and abuse. “I like the idea of collecting stories and I love monologues,” says Shabayek. “They have a power that’s different than a video or anything else you can do.” She recalls that following February 11, the day former President Hosni Mubarak stepped down, those with Shabayek in Tahrir Square during the revolution were thinking of ways to bring the spirit of Tahrir to people who may not have witnessed it or for those longing to relive it. Shabayek decided to rely on her previous experience of storytelling and called upon her Bussy team and other volunteers to help her compile some of the many experiences that unfolded in Tahrir Square. “It was a full team collecting stories through social networks and emails,” says Karim Ebada, a recent graduate of cinema and photography who co-directed the performance with Shabayek. “We even went out on the street asking people and police officers because we wanted all the different perspectives.” The Tahrir Monologues team managed to collect over 700 stories from all over the country: Stories of fathers, mothers, students, street children, those who were politically apathetic, others who never stopped fighting and even those of state security officers who were on the other side of the fence. Volunteers rather than professional actors performed stories, while some chose to tell their own story to provide the necessary raw feel to the performance. “It’s natural, it’s real, not fake or fabricated but coming from real people, that’s the thing I liked most,” says Ebada. And that was what attracted hundreds of audience members to the first showing on May 26. As soon as you walk through the rusty gates of Rawabet theater, you’re branded by the word ‘Tahrir’ — literally. They stamp it on your hand, and perhaps because it was the night before May 27 and the protests dubbed the ‘second Friday of anger’, the word had so much weight. Shabayek admits that the scheduling was a complete coincidence, but says that it gave them an extra push before and during the performance. The setting itself enclosed the audience in a space that resembled Tahrir Square with all its details, down to the barbed wire, rubble and stones, and even the famous ‘Pension El-Horreya’ or ‘Pension of Freedom’, the tent where Shabayek and a group of others camped during the 18 days of the revolution. The monologues were presented in chronological order, each set signifying the major events of the revolution. Starting with January 25, the monologues highlighted people’s decision to participate in the protests and their fear, or lack thereof, of the unknown. January 28 told the violent stories of people getting beaten, arrested and detained. One monologue shared the words of a girl wondering why she was still alive while the rest of her group all died in front of her. The performance even features the story of a state security officer who was injured during the violent clashes and transported to a hospital by revolutionary civilians. The audience themselves became part of the performance, as the actors handed out masks used to protect people from tear gas and onions for the eyes. For those who didn’t participate that day, it gave a small glimpse of the struggle and pain endured by the thousands of Egyptians who put their lives out on the line. And with most of the actors telling their own stories on stage, the audience was able to share an intimate moment with them as they peeled through their memory and opened up to complete strangers. The performance then took on an uplifting mood as monologues described the spirit of Tahrir Square with stories related to collecting garbage from the square, passing out food and the overall unity that came with being in Tahrir. There were also two monologues from Alexandria. The second speech given by former President Mubarak on February 1 was, and still is, quite memorable to most Egyptians, especially as it was followed by ‘Black Wednesday’ when horses and camels stormed and attacked the peaceful protests in Tahrir. The story of a medical doctor who was volunteering in Tahrir that day left the most impact on the audience; they were shocked to hear that he alone sewed 560 stitches on the injured following the violent clashes. The mood became celebratory when monologues shared the different reactions to the resignation of Mubarak after his 30-year presidency. The performance ended with the cast members gathered on stage, chanting the all too familiar slogans from the revolution in unison. With only 40 stories told from the many different experiences of the revolution, Shabayek’s team is preparing a different set of monologues for each future performance. They have already pulled off a successful second showing on June 16 and are expected to put on another show in July. “We want to develop the play more, so it’s not the same performance over and over again,” says Shabayek. “and we’re going to add more stories as we are still receiving them until today.”