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Summary
Summary
The revolutions that swept the Middle East in 2011 surprised and captivated the world. Brutal regimes that had been in power for decades were overturned by an irrepressible mass of freedom seekers. Now, one of the figures who emerged during the Egyptian uprising tells the riveting inside story of what happened and shares the keys to unleashing the power of crowds.
Wael Ghonim was a little-known, thirty-year-old Google executive in the summer of 2010 when he anonymously launched a Facebook page to protest the death of one Egyptian man at the hands of security forces. The page's following expanded quickly and moved from online protests to a nonconfrontational movement.
The youth of Egypt made history: they used social media to schedule a revolution. The call went out to more than a million Egyptians online, and on January 25, 2011, Cairo's Tahrir Square resounded with calls for change. Yet just as the revolution began in earnest, Ghonim was captured and held for twelve days of brutal interrogation. After he was released, he gave a tearful speech on national television, and the protests grew more intense. Four days later, the president of Egypt was gone.
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The lessons Ghonim draws will inspire each of us. He saw the road to Tahrir Square built not by any one person, but by the people. In Revolution 2.0, we can all be heroes.
Author Notes
Wael Ghonim was born in Cairo and grew up in Egypt and Saudi Arabia, earning a degree from Cairo University in 2004 and an MBA from the American University in Cairo in 2007. He joined Google in 2008, rising to become Head of Marketing for Google Middle East and North Africa. He is currently a non-resident senior fellow at Harvard's Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Ghonim's name made headlines in early 2011 when, during the Egyptian revolution, the 30-year-old Google executive was abducted by Egypt's State Security and detained for eleven days. Ghonim's role in the revolution began well before that. Ghonim narrates his own story in this clear, matter-of-fact book, beginning with his days as an idealistic young man most comfortable online. Even after he marries, finishes graduate school, and is hired by Google, Ghonim retains a youthful romantic passion for social change; he explains that after seeing the movie V for Vendetta, he had "fallen in love with the idea of the mysterious warrior fighting against evil." This is exactly the role Ghonim takes when he begins agitating for change in Egypt-anonymously, but online. The engagement of the online community gives him confidence (the Facebook page he creates in honor of a young Egyptian killed by the police quickly gains 300,000 users), and recognizing "the possible connection between the virtual world and physical reality," Ghonim begins organizing protests. The movement soon takes on a life of its own. Then, in the midst of Egypt's youth uprising, Ghonim is arrested and held in secrecy. This is a bold, moving story of the interconnectedness of the modern world, and the hope, courage, and fearlessness it takes to start a revolution. (Jan.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
Ghonim launched an anonymous Facebook page in 2010 to protest the death of a man detained by Egyptian security forces. Ghonim's followers moved from online to street protests and soon joined the massive revolution against the government. He was arrested in 2011 and held and tortured for 12 days before being released and resuming protests that led to the overthrow of President Hosni Mubarak. Ghonim chronicles his journey from Google executive to online revolutionary and the role of the Internet in fomenting and supporting the protests behind the Arab Spring. In high school, he'd stumbled onto the appeal of the Internet and developed a social-network website. He later moved to the U.S. to study computer engineering and was there until the 9/11 attacks made it a difficult place to be a Muslim. Returning to Egypt with his American wife, Ghonim eventually went to work for Google. Ghonim, who has developed a nonprofit organization to support education and technology in Egypt, brings his broad international perspective and knowledge of technology to this fascinating look at the new face of revolution.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
IN the embryonic, ever evolving era of social media - when milestones come by the day, if not by the second - June 8, 2010, has secured a rightful place in history. That was the day Wael Ghonim, a 29-year-old Google marketing executive, was browsing Facebook in his home in Dubai and found a startling image: a photograph of a bloodied and disfigured face, its jaw broken, a young life taken away. That life, he soon learned, had belonged to Khaled Mohamed Said, a 28-year-old from Alexandria who had been beaten to death by the Egyptian police. At once angered and animated, the Egyptian-born Ghonim went online and created a Facebook page. "Today they killed Khaled," he wrote. "If I don't act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me." It took a few moments for Ghonim to settle on a name for the page, one that would fit the character of an increasingly personalized and politically galvanizing Internet. He finally decided on "Kullena Khaled Said" - "We Are All Khaled Said." "Khaled Said was a young man just like me, and what happened to him could have happened to me," Ghonim writes in "Revolution 2.0," his fast-paced and engrossing new memoir of political awakening. "All young Egyptians had long been oppressed, enjoying no rights in our own homeland." Ghonim's memoir is a welcome and cleareyed addition to a growing list of volumes that have aimed (but often failed) to meaningfully analyze social media's impact. It's a book about social media for people who don't think they care about social media. It will also serve as a touchstone for future testimonials about a strengthening borderless digital movement that is set to continually disrupt powerful institutions, be they corporate enterprises or political regimes. An accidental activist, Ghonim tapped into a shared frustration that became immediately evident online. Two minutes after he started his Facebook page, 300 people had joined it. Three months later, that number had grown to more than 250,000. What bubbled up online inevitably spilled onto the streets, starting with a series of "Silent Stands" that culminated in a massive and historic rally at Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo. "We Are All Khaled Said" helped ignite an uprising that led to the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak and the dissolution of the ruling National Democratic Party. In turn, Ghonim - who was arrested during the height of the protests - reluctantly became one of the leading voices of the Arab Spring. Ghonim's writing voice is spare and measured, and marked by the same earnest humility he has displayed in media appearances. During the interview he gave on Egyptian television after his release from detention, when he broke down crying as a photo montage of young Egyptians killed in the protests played across the screen, he was quick to point out that "the real heroes" of the revolution were those who had been martyred. He resists being labeled an icon. He insists he represents just one story and says his online activism should be seen only in the context of "hundreds of other pages, Facebook accounts and Twitter profiles" dedicated to covering and organizing the Arab Spring. And he's right. But his individual story resonates on two levels: it epitomizes the coming-of-age of a young Middle Eastern generation that has grown up in the digital era, as well as the transformation of an apolitical man from comfortable executive to prominent activist. The Middle East is home to roughly 100 million people ages 15 to 29. Many are educated but unemployed. Though only a fraction of Egyptians have Internet access, Ghonim writes, the number of Web users in the country increased to 13.6 million in 2008 from 1.5 million in 2004. Through blogs, Twitter and Facebook, the Web has become a haven for a young, educated class yearning to express its worries and anxieties. Technology, of course, is not a panacea. Facebook does not a revolution make. In Egypt's case, it was simply a place for venting the outrage resulting from years of repression, economic instability and individual frustration. Ghonim writes that in 2011, out of Egypt's more than 80 million people, some 48 million were poor and 2.5 million lived in extreme poverty. "More than three million young Egyptians are unemployed," he says. A father of two, Ghonim comes from a relatively prosperous family. Though he places himself in "a small, privileged slice" of Egypt's population, he once shared his countrymen's indifference to politics. "Most of us shied away," he writes, "believing that we could not do anything to change the status quo." Connecting online with other young, educated Egyptians changed his mind. The Internet, Ghonim says, was "instrumental in shaping my experiences as well as my character." Like many who grew up with instant messaging, online video games and the here-comes-everybody ethos of sites like Wikipedia, he refers to himself as a "real-life introvert yet an Internet extrovert.11 He met his wife, Ilka, an American Muslim, online. Ghonim drew on his considerable skill and knowledge as an online marketer while running the "We Are All Khaled Said" Facebook page. Early on, he decided that creating the page, as opposed to a Facebook group, would be a better way to spread information. More important, he knew that maintaining an informal, authentic tone was crucial to amassing allies. People had to see themselves in the page. "Using the pronoun I was critical to establishing the fact that the page was not managed by an organization, political party or movement of any kind," he writes. "On the contrary, the writer was an ordinary Egyptian devastated by the brutality inflicted on Khaled Said and motivated to seek justice." He polled the page's users and sought ideas from others, like how best to publicize a rally - through printed fliers and mass text messaging, it turned out. ("Reaching working-class Egyptians was not going to happen through the Internet and Facebook," he notes.) He tried to be as inclusive as possible, as when he changed the name of the page's biggest scheduled rally from "Celebrating Egyptian Police Day - January 25" to "January 25: Revolution Against Torture, Poverty, Corruption and Unemployment." "We needed to have everyone join forces: workers, human rights activists, government employees and others who had grown tired of the regime's policies," he writes. "If the invitation to take to the streets had been based solely on human rights, then only a certain segment of Egyptian society would have participated." As the youth-led Tunisian upheaval further inspired young activists in Egypt, Ghonim was arrested by the secret police. For nearly two weeks, he was held blindfolded and handcuffed, deprived of sleep and subjected to repeated interrogations, as his friends, family and colleagues at Google tried to discover his whereabouts. That he was released as quickly as he was demonstrated the power of Revolution 2.0. A year after Mubarak's ouster, it remains to be seen exactly how and when - or whether - Egypt will transition to a better democracy. What Ghonim's book makes clear, however, is that revolution begins with the self: with what one is willing to stand for online and offline, and what one citizen is willing to risk in the service of his country. 'Today they killed Khaled,' Ghonim wrote on Facebook. 'If I don't act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me.' Jose Antonio Vargas has written for The Washington Post, The Huffington Post and The New Yorker. He is the founder of Define American, a multimedia campaign for immigration reform.
Kirkus Review
Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Ghonim was Google's Mideast marketing director when he became active in Facebook campaigns protesting Egypt's repressive government. This is the memoir of an educated, tech-savvy Egyptian who found himself in the middle of the Arab Spring-and in a Cairo jail for 12 days during the height of the protests. A personal view of the social, political, and economic realities leading to the events in Tahrir Square in January 2011. (c) Copyright 2012. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Prologue The world around me was reduced to pitch black. I could sense the deliberate use of side streets by the driver as the car traveled through Cairo at midnight. We twisted and turned many times, a technique my captors often used to disorient their victims. On my right and left were two guards from State Security. They kept a tight grip on my handcuffed arms. I remained completely silent so as not to provoke them. They had forced my shirt up to cover my head so I could not see, and my belt was tied firmly over the shirt, around my head. One of them had pushed my head down to hide me from passing pedestrians. Everything I had been carrying had been confiscated. Those brief moments before the car reached its destination were all too familiar. I had published the accounts of many captives of State Security. Now it was my turn. I wondered what could happen to me next, but I knew the answer: anything. "Get out, you son of a b--------," said a loud and angry voice when we arrived. I was being pushed out of the car. My reception inside the building was harsh and mocking. I was slapped, kicked, and cursed, all accompanied by derisive laughter. It seemed as if these men enjoyed their work, or at least they did it purposefully. The laughter was part of their strategy to instill fear prior to interrogating newcomers. The most difficult thing about the slaps and kicks was their element of surprise. I had no means of anticipating any strike because I was blindfolded. When would I be hit next? From which side, on which part of me? I had no clue. I wondered what they knew. What had I done that had given me away? Kick. Curse. My fear grew. I knew that this was what they wanted -- to break me down before the interrogation. I decided to hasten things along by pretending to tremble. Yet real fear was starting to take over. In the midst of the beating I prayed to God that he would somehow inspire my friend Najeeb, in Dubai, to change the password to the Facebook page's e-mail account. I prayed for Najeeb to do it before the interrogation got serious. They must not know what I had done. I wanted to see my children again. 1 A Regime of Fear My 2011 arrest was not the first time I had encountered Egyptian State Security. One winter afternoon in 2007, I received a call from a man who presented himself as Captain Raafat al-Gohary, from the bureau in Giza, Egypt's third largest city, which is part of greater Cairo. Needless to say, Rafaat al-Gohary was not his real name. State Security officers feared the potential wrath of citizens they interrogated and tortured, so they used pseudonyms. I greeted him calmly, attempting to hide the anxiety caused by the surprise. He said I needed to meet him for an important matter and I was to head to State Security in Dokki, a neighborhood in Giza, at eleven o'clock that night. My anxiety increased. I asked what was the matter. His response: "There's nothing to worry about. We'll just have a chat over coffee, that's all." This failed to comfort me. I asked if we could reschedule, saying that I was busy with work. He refused. I wanted to play for time to try to figure out why I was being summoned, but he insisted we meet at eleven. What is the worst that can happen? I wondered. My days of activism were long over. I had never before been summoned. Immediately after hanging up, I contacted a close friend, and we agreed that I was to call him right after the meeting ended. If he never got the call, he was to find out exactly what had happened to me, since in the past, people in a situation like mine had suddenly disappeared for days or even months after their "visit." I decided not to tell my wife or my family anything, as I didn't want them to panic. I arrived at the main gate at 11 P.M. sharp. The neighborhood was quite familiar to me; my high school was literally right around the corner. At reception, after confirming that I was to meet Captain Rafaat al-Gohary, I was told to sit down and wait. Around me were at least six others. Although I didn't speak to them, it was clear that we all shared one emotion: apprehension. Egyptian State Security reached deep into society, involving itself in every detail of life. It thrived on the emergency law, enacted in 1958 but not enforced until after the Six-Day War in 1967, and still in effect in mid-2011. That law gives executive authorities the right to arrest, interrogate, and imprison any Egyptian for up to six months without a warrant or any legal grounds or even the right to an attorney. It also empowers the authorities to ban all types of protests as well as gatherings of any group of people without a security clearance. The dossiers of State Security were objects of fear and ridicule. Any activist of any sort, or even anyone with considerable financial or intellectual influence, had an exhaustive dossier in his or her name at State Security, containing every detail the authorities had collected that could possibly be useful in blackmailing him or her into obedience when needed. Privacy was almost meaningless to this quintessentially Machiavellian organization. Thus, phone tapping, for instance, was a very common practice of State Security officers. Word spread that tapes documenting the infidelities of famous businessmen and public figures were stored in a room at headquarters. Ironically, officers used to advise each other not to spy on their own wives' phones, to avoid family conflicts. Not only did the state monitor and terrorize political opposition groups and religious activists, but its oppressive reach extended to anyone engaged in public service, including charities whose field operations were limited to empowering the poor and unfortunate. With over 40 percent of Egyptians living below the poverty line, the authorities were consistently trying to curb anyone who might mobilize the masses for a future political cause. State Security approval was obviously a prerequisite for any senior appointment in the government. Even university teaching assistants, who are supposedly selected from among the top students of the year's graduating class, could not be hired by the university without a security clearance proving that they were innocent of any dissident activism, political or religious. The Egyptian regime lived in fear of opposition. It sought to project a façade of democracy, giving the impression that Egypt was advancing toward political rights and civil liberties while it vanquished any dissidents who threatened to mobilize enough support to force real change. The Ministry of Interior was one key force of coercion. Another was the state media: terrestrial and satellite television as well as newspapers and magazines, the most famous of which were Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar, and Al-Gomhouriya. The regime sought to plant fear in the hearts of Egyptians from an early age. Fear was embodied in local proverbs, such as "Walk quietly by the wall (where you cannot be noticed)," "Mind your own business and focus on your livelihood," and "Whosoever is afraid stays unharmed." The regime's uncompromising control also covered workers' unions and the nation's legislative bodies. This all amounted to what I came to call "weapons of mass oppression." No matter how far down we spiraled, no matter how much corruption spread, only a few people dared to swim against the current. Those who did ended up in a prison cell after an unfriendly encounter with State Security, or were subjected to character assassination in the media, or were targeted on fraudulent charges or long-ignored violations. "Hello, Wael. Why are you giving us a hard time? Why the troublemaking?" This, together with a faint smile, was how Captain Raafat greeted me. His air-conditioned office contained three other investigators. The room was modestly decorated with a number of books, many of which were very obviously about religion. State Security wanted everyone to believe that it had nothing against faith. I looked at him and smiled as I responded calmly, "I don't make trouble at all. It is you guys who give me trouble, and I have no idea why. I'm glad you called me in, so I can figure out what the problem is. Every time I travel back to Egypt my name appears on the arrivals watch list and the airport officers transfer my passport to State Security, who pulls me aside for an inspection, including a full search of my bags." This problem dated back to December 2001, when I returned from the United States, three months after 9/11. As I was collecting my luggage, I heard my name over the loudspeakers. I was urgently asked to return to passport control. There was also someone calling my name in person, so I showed myself to him. He took my passport and asked me to wait in front of a lounge by State Security's airport office. After a very nerve-racking forty minutes, a detective emerged with my passport and asked me to bring my luggage in for inspection. That day I thanked God that everything turned out well. It appeared to be nothing more than a typical post-9/11 glitch. Yet every time I entered Egypt between that day and the time the revolution began, I was pulled aside. Until this day, I had never found out the reason for that. Captain Raafat was deliberately friendly, as if we really were just having a chat. However, he was armed with pen and paper, and he carefully documented the conversation. He took time to finish recording my responses before he resumed his questions. Almost everyone from the upper or middle class who was called in for interrogation by State Security was met with this same friendly, off-the-record manner. (Poorer people were treated far more harshly.) It was transparently illegitimate. The captain asked for my personal information: name, age, address, marital status. I answered all his questions. He asked about my wife's full name. "Oh, she is not Egyptian. Where is she from?" "America," I responded. He wrote her full name in Arabic as I pronounced it again and asked me to verify the spelling. "So you married an American for the citizenship, right?" He was surprised to discover that despite my marriage in 2001, I had never applied for a green card or U.S. citizenship. "I'm a proud Egyptian and I find no reason why I should apply for any other citizenship," I explained. Very cynically, he replied, "And what is it exactly that you like about Egypt?" "I'm never able to verbally express my reasons for loving Egypt, yet love for it runs in my blood," I replied honestly. "Even my wife asks why I love my country despite all its shortcomings. I always answer that I don't know why. You know, Captain, when I lived in Saudi Arabia, during the first thirteen years of my life, I literally used to count the days left, on a paper on my desk, before I could return home to Egypt to spend the annual vacation. And when only a few days remained, I was too excited to fall asleep at night." I returned his cynical smile and joked, "I love it here because life lacks routine. You wake up in the morning and have no idea what the day will be like. One morning you could receive a phone call like the one I received today, asking you to report to State Security." He smiled while saying, "You are certainly a troublemaker." I saw a copy of the Holy Qur'an lying on the captain's desk. I assumed it was there to assure anyone who sat opposite him that the captain regularly read scripture and had nothing against faith. The ruling regime was extremely apprehensive about organized religious forces in Egypt, particularly ones that concerned themselves with public affairs. Their fears were intensified when thousands of Egyptians traveled to Afghanistan to fight the Soviet invaders. Many of those fighters, or self-proclaimed mujahideen, returned with ideologies that rejected the Arab regimes, denouncing them as heretical and treacherous tools of the West. The new ideology, and the new militants, posed a threat to the Egyptian authorities. Although the emergency law had been suspended by President Anwar al-Sadat in 1980, it was reinstated eighteen months later, following Sadat's 1981 assassination at the hands of radical Islamists. Sadat's assassins were apparently motivated by his crackdown on more than 1,500 political and religious activists, and also by the fact that he signed a peace treaty with Israel and emphasized it with a visit to Tel Aviv. The influence of religious groups in Egypt increased as time went on, and their variety expanded. These groups were never homogeneous, nor did they all necessarily share the same philosophies or even objectives. They did share one thing, however: enmity toward the regime. In turn, Hosni Mubarak's government feared them. Mubarak knew these groups could influence the Egyptian masses more than anyone else, since Egyptians tend to be religious by nature; in a Gallup poll conducted in June 2011, 96 percent of the one thousand Egyptian respondents agreed that religion played "an important role in their daily life." Ordinary Egyptians take religious figures as role models, symbols of nobility and sincerity, values which were thoroughly lacking in many of the the public representatives of the regime. Most of the time when the regime attacked a religious group, that group's popularity received a boost. The fact that economic conditions were stagnant or declining only magnified the effect. State Security kept an eye on all religious speakers and scholars and even on university students who frequented mosques, not just those who were active in Islamic movements. They were careful to summon such people to their offices to ask them about their activities and even to intervene and attempt to redirect them. Occasionally, hundreds would be arrested and thrown into jail for years without explicit accusations. Behind bars, they were brutally treated and humiliated. Once released, they either became fanatics, motivated by their bad experience, or attempted to reintegrate into society and forget the past. This, I realized, was the real reason for my interrogation. State Security wanted to know if I had any links to religious or political activism, especially now that I regularly traveled abroad and, as a result, was becoming more exposed to real democracy. It was time to create a dossier in my name that contained the details of my life for future reference. The story of my faith dates back to high school days. I did not pray regularly before then, although I adhered to the general ethics of religion, thanks to my parents' encouragement and because I grew up in Saudi Arabia. That country is conservative by nature, especially in Abha, a small southern city where society and culture are assumed to be less advanced than in urban centers. One of my closest cousins, Dalia, died in a car accident in 1997 at the age of twenty-five. Her death had an impact on me, and I was moved to explore my faith, as I didn't want to die unprepared. I listened to sermons, attended religious lessons, and read books. I felt that life was a brief test that ended at death. I started praying five times a day, on time, and often at the mosque. At the university, I mixed with people from many religious groups and ideologies, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and I joined many of their activities at the school. But I always made my own sense out of things. A famous sheikh whom I met with several times once said to me, "Your problem, Wael, is that you only follow your own logic and you don't want to have a role model to follow." It was hard for me to accept conventional wisdom. It was my nature to discuss any matter thoroughly before I could accept a conclusion with both heart and mind. This attitude in an eighteen-year-old is not always endearing. It was not just my age, however. Thanks to frequent exposure to global media and modern communication tools, many young Egyptians were slowly becoming empowered to make their own educated choices. Excerpted from Revolution 2.0: The Power of the People Is Greater Than the People in Power - A Memoir by Wael Ghonim All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Prologue | p. xi |
| 1 A Regime of Fear | p. 1 |
| 2 Searching for a Savior | p. 28 |
| 3 "Kullena Khaled Said" | p. 58 |
| 4 Online and on the Streets | p. 82 |
| 5 A Preannounced Revolution | p. 122 |
| 6 January 25, 2011 | p. 116l |
| 7 My Name is 41 | p. l88 |
| 8 The Dungeon | p. 218 |
| 9 A Pharaoh Falls | p. 249 |
| Epilogue | p. 292 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 295 |
| Index | p. 297 |
