Living in Exile; The Life of an Egyptian Activist in America
27 July 2017 — Berkeley, California
Sitting in his San Francisco studio apartment; 7,451 miles from family and friends, Ahmed Salah knows that if he returns to Egypt, at best, he’ll be thrown in jail, and at worst, he’ll be murdered.
Salah was Egyptian leader of the pro-democracy movement that helped spur President Mubarak’s Feb. 11 resignation. Co-founder of the April 6 Youth Movement, started in Egypt in 2008 to support workers who were going on strike, Salah has much history in political activism. Since 2012, he’s lived in exile in America.
Upon arrival to the United States, Salah lived in Washington, DC but found himself attracted to to the Bay Area’s liberal activism, so he moved to San Francisco. He thought he’d return home to Egypt when “things died down,” but they never did. He left a fiance, friends, and family behind.
In 2009 Salah came to America to talk to diplomats on Capitol Hill about the need to replace the current Egyptian regime with a parliamentary democracy, then testified at a Congressional hearing. He met with Hillary Clinton after her visit to Cairo in 2011. These meetings were revealed in a 2011 Wikileaks report from the US Embassy in Cairo. The Egyptian government and media considered him a traitor, which led to an assassination attempt in Tahrir.
“My escape in 2012 to America was nothing more than a miracle,” Salah, sporting a grey suit, speaking fluent English, told a crowd of about 150 people last week at the Berkeley Universal Unitarian Fellowship.
Arriving with 25 minutes to spare before his plane took off from Cairo Airport in 2012, he took his chances in getting caught at passport control. He was on a travel ban list with a court order for his arrest. Thanks to a distracted control officer, a civil servant escort rushed him to the plane and he escaped.
Salah comes from a family of politicians. His father campaigned for the Egyptian Socialist Labor Party and lost three times. His great-uncle served as Egypt’s defense minister and his grandfather was a member of parliament.
“I have always been a pacifist. At 21, conscripted into the Egyptian Armed Forces, I went on a 45 day hunger strike as a form of protest. I was pronounced dead and they had to resuscitate me,” he said.
Salah was arrested the morning after the 2011 January 25 uprising, beaten and detained for three days. Later, he was shot in the head with a rubber bullet in Cairo’s Tahrir square.
With the volunteer efforts of a local therapist, Salah goes to somatic experiencing sessions, which focuses on the physiological responses that occur when he relives the traumatic events of his imprisonment and beatings. He’s diagnosed with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and the sessions help relieve symptoms. “I’ve got a lot of demons to deal with — thinking of comrades killed and those suffering in prisons with no clean air or food,” Salah said.
These days the phone rings less, and it’s hard for Ahmed because he wants to dispel myths the global media has perpetuated; including references to the Egyptian uprising as, “The Facebook Revolution” or “The Twitter Uprising.”
“The false narrative was based on a faulty model. So much misinformation. Most Egyptians didn’t have access to internet at the time leading up to the protests,” said Salah.
“People were too scared to use the internet for fear of government reprisals.” Instead, activists walked up and down the streets calling for people to come out of their homes and march.
When Salah first moved to America, universities invited him to speak, he traveled the country to share life as an activist, and provided suggestions for movements here, including the The Occupy Movement.
“People have lost interest — they’re on to the next thing. I am offering ideas on how to enhance activists’ efforts. Salah doesn’t want the mistakes of the Egyptian uprising to be repeated. He wants to share what went wrong, what worked, and to build on that.
Long gone are the days of meeting with diplomats, including meetings with officials at the State Department, Hillary Clinton, the Pentagon, and Congress.
You Are Under Arrest for Master Minding the Egyptian Revolution, published in 2016, is Salah’s memoir. Copies sold out at the Unitarian Fellowship presentation; reliance on public transportation makes it difficult to carry a big load to his speaking engagements.
“I bought a car only to have it stolen. Twice. The second time it was recovered by police near Lake Merritt, and I didn’t have the money to fix it. All of my luggage was inside. It was a disaster.”
When asked how his experience could help social justice movements in America, Salah had a lot to say. “Never give up, have faith, focus in the now but keep the end goals in mind.”
Sources:
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-14075493
http://hoodline.com/2016/04/meet-ahmed-salah-an-egyptian-revolutionary-in-exile-in-sf
http://www.sfchronicle.com/news/article/Egyptian-activist-in-exile-struggles-in-San-7304697.php
https://www.amazon.com/Under-Arrest-Masterminding-Egyptian-Revolution/dp/0692630767
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/egypt-5-years-on-was-it-ever-a-social-media-revolution
https://priceonomics.com/how-i-went-from-leading-the-egyptian-revolution-to/