Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 3: The Future Soldier

A is 24, with rosy skin and auburn hair, an almost Scottish colouring inherited from a Circassian Turkish ancestor. He graduated recently and is travelling around Egypt before he begins his compulsory military service.

“I don’t want to do it,” A says. We’re sitting in the sun outside a chicken restaurant in a small town near the base of Mount Sinai, passing dates around the table. “At the moment, the army is not the army. It’s more like a gang. I have to do either three years in the police, or one year in the army, and at this time I don’t want to do either of them.”

“Do you get a choice?” I ask. Military service is compulsory for every man in Egypt (unlike in neighbouring Israel, where women have to serve too, but the ultra-religious of both sexes are excused). A’s has been deferred because he was at university.

“They choose whether I do police or army. But at least because I studied engineering, I get to be an engineer. It’s better than what I could be doing. I stay focused on this as the bright spot for me.”

“So, you won’t be doing this?” I mime an internal inspection, the “virginity tests” that male Egyptian soldiers conducted on female protestors during the second wave of protests in Cairo’s Tahrir Square until the army bowed to internal and external pressure.

A makes a face. “Were you on Tahrir Square?” I ask.

“Not the first time,” he says. “My brother and sister were in Cairo. I was out at my parents’ house in an oasis.”

There were two main waves of protests in Tahrir Square (and elsewhere in Egypt). The first was against Mubarak, to depose the dictator. The second was against the army’s assumption of control and for free elections, and the army — which A, of course, may soon be joining — acted brutally to repress these.

“For two months, during the Revolution, everything stopped in Egypt,” A says. “The universities closed. Schools closed. And, because they opened the prisons, there were thieves everywhere, all over the place. So we were at my parents’ house. We stayed awake all night to guard the house, then slept all day. Things were… backwards.”

I nod. “So you went to Cairo for the second wave? The protests against the army and for elections?”

“Correct,” he says. “The second time, I went.”

“You’ve got a presidential election coming up,” I say. “Do you think you will get a free president?”

“We never feel there are free elections in Egypt,” A says. “I hope it’s OK. But I think one of the Muslim Brotherhood will take it — Abouel Fotouh, that’s his name. It’s all been decided. They are a very arranged organisation.”

“Are you religious?” I ask. A looks at me. “Do you pray?” I clarify.

A’s pretty French girlfriend is sat beside him. “In the past, I prayed five times a day,” he says (five is the required daily observance for any practising Muslim). “Now, not so much. I pray if I feel a need…”

“You go to mosque if there is a family occasion…” I suggest.

He nods. “But you might have the occasional beer?” I guess.

He grins, sheepish, slightly guilty, looking all of a sudden very young, far too young to be a soldier. “Maybe one or two.”

“Do you believe in Allah?” I ask.

A looks at me with raised eyebrows, as if this is a stupid question, which, given I am accusing him of apostasy, it probably is. “Of course,” he says.

“Do you think you will stay in Egypt, after the army?” I ask.

“I will go where the jobs are,” he says. “Because of my specialism… We don’t make machinery here in Egypt, really. We don’t have factories. I can work maintaining things on the oil fields, American machines. But I don’t know. I will need to see if there are jobs.”

A has three days left before he finds out what he will do for the next year, or three years, of his life. When we leave him and his girlfriend at their hotel, it is almost midnight. Two more days to go…

More in this series:
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 1: The Coder
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 2: The Bedouin Girl
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 4: The Guide
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 5: The Businessman
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 6: The Taxi Driver
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 7: The Working Mother