Revolution is my Name: An Egyptian Woman's Diary from 18 days in Tahrir (Essay Sample)

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Revolution is my name: An Egyptian woman's diary from 18days in Tahrir.
Prince, the author is an associate professor at Suez Canal University. She is an established writer, and this book is a first-hand experience detailing the fall of dictator Mohamed Morsi though democratically elected. The army in Egypt is in charge of his ousting taking the nation back to dictatorship though the generals claim that they are reconciling the country. Mona Prince has many titles depending on who you talk to; she is a writer, activist and academic and former presidential candidate. She is a fiction writer and translator and has written several books some of them are Suitcases for departure, the last prince of Clay among others. The book was released in 2011 by the American University in Cairo. Prince writing career began in the 90s after graduating from Aims Shams University where she studied English literature. Her writing career was influenced by many people among them her lecturer, RadwaAshour, who was a leftist. Prince was doing short stories about Egypt in 2011 before Mubarak falls, but she says the 18days before Mubarak's fall were transformational. These eighteen days changed Prince from an academic to a political activist and this is evidenced in this book Revolution is my name which is ismiThwwra in Arabic.
This book offers a clear understanding to the eighteen days before the fall of Mubarak, she considers newspaper compilations, poetry, and dialogue and interviewing of protagonists, police, and other protestors. Prince felt this a moment in history that she needed to put it in writing lest people forget these revolutionary happenings. Prince also felt a compelled urge to tell her experiences during this period thus the book Revolution is my name. Prince in this revolution is my name book does not seek to predict the future or place certain contexts as they should be she tells the day to day life experiences of the protest. From her narration of these day to day experiences we can understand various struggles that protesters had to go through be sleeping at the Merit publishing house as well as family square. Prince through her vivid narration of these escapades she describes the divide in Cairene society but in a very humorous manner. The protests started off with a lot of hope and optimism from the people but slipped slowly into a military dictatorship engineered by General Abdul Fattah. This violence repression experienced within this period was fatal as it led to deaths to the protesters engaging the police. From a neutral view, these killings were one too many and made it resulted in many people questioning the big picture of the revolution. The military mistreated the civilians and the optimism that they had when they started the protests was quickly forgotten.
Prince gives a personal and first-hand account of the revolution providing a much-needed texture as opposed to many other scholarly works done regarding this revolution. Many have considered these other accounts of the revolution as dry and lacking in the narration mostly due to lack of the first-hand information. The title is itself deliberate to connect the personal and political accounts, Prince describes the political situation from bottom to the top. She gives a vivid account of this political revolution from an academic view as well as political view as an activist and the challenges the protesters face in such unfriendly environment. The memoir is a deep insight into the happenings during the eighteen days of the change; Prince carries on a theme of the role of social media during revolutions. The writer is considering two sides of the divide in Egypt that is the military and the protesters. The protests started out as an email circulation to the people on the eve of the uprising. Prince cites this message delivery channel as very powerful and efficient in the present world. The email had clear and precise instructions to the people those that were to be out on the streets and the ones that were to stay behind and watch from the comfort of their homes. The privileged people were asked to stay away from the protests explaining that in cases of protests the privileged class usually rebels. Prince is fascinated by this particular revolution as it’s different from all the other that has ever happened in the world. The strength of social media clearly is a spellbound to any observer; there has not been a high usage of social media platform as evidenced in this case of Egypt. As a matter of fact, online meetings to plan for the protests were held on Facebook and twitter handles. Prince notes that she has not heard or seen a revolution that operates a Twitter handle or a Facebook page, this in itself was legendary and revolutionary. There is a close comparison to the Iranian revolution of 1979 where the uprising was started off by cassette tape. The social media was not only crucial to this Egyptian revolution but the whole Arab Spring uprising. Analysts have on several occasions concluded that indeed social media enhanced the quiet revolution of castigates the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg as an outside force behind this transformation, they claim the uprising had an outside hand away from the Arab world. They firmly believed that the West was the single prime mover of these happenings, and they had a hidden agenda of asserting their power once more in the Arab world by triggering peace and installing their favored leaders. This school of thought further compare Mark Zuckerberg to modern day Lawrence of Arabia by drawing comparisons on each other’s roles in revolutions. The book revolution is my name emphasizes the crucial role of social media in revolutions and more often quotes Facebook usage during this revolution. The use of social media and especially Facebook played a very critical role to the fall of Mubarak, the leader who had been viewed as indispensable in the eyes of many Egyptians. Social media was another option for finding information which was very efficient and timely. It was free of government interference and manipulation thus serving the masses very efficiently. The government at first also underplayed the power of social media and at first did tiny to contain it wrong usage to spread messages of anti-government.
Prince is highly critical of the mainstream media terming them as corrupt and ignorant and fail to understand how they owned all the television channels in Egypt. She views these owners as illiterate and unprofessional and not fit to own the television channels. Prince is often quoting social media as a very sharp tool and an alternative to the mainstream media. She says that in average revolutions the organizers spread flyers at night but in this particular one things were quite different as meetings were held on BBM. The protests had Facebook pages such as we are all Khaled said, and these simple but powerful messages brought down Hosni Mubarak, a dictator that was too powerful to be fallen by social media, so they thought. Prince further explains this powerful tool in Facebook via jokes when she narrates of a joke that Mubarak would be ridiculed by both Nasser and Sadat when he reaches heaven. They would be concerned how he joined them, whether he was poisoned like Abdel Nasser or was it by assassination like Sadat but he would answer none of those, but his reply would be "Facebook ”Abdel Nasser would both burst in laughter wondering how Facebook could kill someone and indeed not just someone but a great president of Egypt. Mubarak would be at pains explaining to these two how he fell to social media in the name of Facebook.
The book revolution is my name gives an authoritative account of the military in Egypt and how the people held it in very high regard since 1973 after winning against Israel. Prince elaborates this relationship between the army and the people apparently and the respect they have earned to the people. Prince also has deep respect for the military and those in particular soldiers who lost their lives during the war against Israel noting that every time she drives past their graves she salutes these martyrs. However she is not sure whether all this respect will be reciprocated at Tahir square when protesters meet to oust Mubarak or they will turn against them and support the government. Prince is also one of the protesters and she too feels that enough is enough and that its time Mubarak quits leadership. The protesters are in agreement with the police and are on the same side; they take selfies con top of the army tankers. Prince enjoys these episodes by her narration by telling how they flirted with one officer to the point of embarrassing him, but they didn’t realize he was an officer at first. Both the army and the protesters were very cautious of the relationship they had no side wanted to hurt the other.
The Army wanted to develop a political institution while the protesters wanted to make friends with the military, they knew too well that enmity with the army would spell doom to their revolution plan. The command relationship seems to remain as it were before the protests despite various laxatives. During the protests, the military did not intervene when Mubarak goons invaded Tahir during protests and beat up some of the people protesting. The army reputation remains unaltered after the whole debacle, and the respect they had earned since the war with Israel is left intact according to Prince. In celebration, Prince writes that she stood between two soldiers on a tanker and took pictures she explains that she felt joy for Mubarak’s fall. Prince being an activist herself does not hide the...