25/03 Hosni Mubarak’s Shadow Still Falls on Much of Egypt

March 25, 2011

Andrea Bruce for The New York Times
Former President Hosni Mubarak's likeness has been damaged on a Cairo monument. Mr. Mubarak's image and name, until recently seen everywhere in Egypt, are now under attack.

By NEIL MacFARQUHAR

CAIRO — Amid the myriad public interest lawsuits filed against the deposed government of Hosni Mubarak, the volume of which is beginning to rival the flow of the Nile, the attorney Samir Sabry contributed a novel ripple.

Mr. Sabry, known mainly as the slick lawyer for star belly dancers and infamous tycoons, is suing to force the government to erase the Mubarak name from every public institution across the land of Egypt.

“Egyptians have adopted this habit for centuries — since the time of the pharaohs, when the image of pharaoh was everywhere,” said Mr. Sabry, doing a little walk-like-an-Egyptian maneuver with his hands and head. “Corrupt people should not be honored. I do not want to delete 30 years of Egyptian history, but I want to remove that name.”

The name and face have been scraped away piecemeal since Mr. Mubarak was overthrown Feb. 11 after three decades as president. Mr. Sabry’s lawsuit, filed in Cairo Expediency Court on March 1, seeks a court order to mandate “deMubarakization” in one fell swoop.

The idea draws widespread, but not universal, approval. A brief legal hearing on the issue on Thursday ignited a heated skirmish outside the downtown Cairo courthouse between those seeking to preserve the Mubarak name and those wanting it expunged.

Given that the once universal billboards bearing Mr. Mubarak’s portrait have largely come down, the sudden profusion of his picture held aloft by more than 100 supporters seemed alien.

“The people want the president to be honored!” they yelled, a variation on a popular chant that started in Tunisia and spread around the region, about the people wanting the government to fall.

“The people want the president put on trial!” yelled back an impromptu counterdemonstration that the police kept across the street.

The Mubarak supporters also chanted that they were not being paid to stand there, which only served to strengthen suspicions that they were, as did the uniformity of their statements. Each spouted the same sentence practically verbatim about how the Tahrir demonstrators were only a fraction of Egypt’s 85 million or so people.

Some Egyptians decry the attention focused on the issue, calling it superficial given the far more serious problems the country faces, ranging from the direction of the revolution to the brewing economic crisis. Sherif Hafez, a political science professor, for example, argued that removing the name was considerably less important than the more profound task of changing the mentality that allowed one man to dominate the country for nearly 30 years.

Cataloging every public use of the Mubarak name would require an effort not unlike constructing the Pyramids. It was plastered across schools, libraries, hospitals, clinics, bridges, roads, squares, airports, stadiums, ministry buildings, industrial complexes, dormitories, scouting centers and various national prizes. You name it.

The Ministry of Education reported that 549 schools had been named after either the president, his wife, Suzanne, or their son Gamal. The president was the namesake for 388 schools, compared to 314 for the three previous presidents combined.

Some children seeking an excuse to avoid school have hit on a corker — refusing to attend classes in any building bearing the Mubarak name, said one lawyer joining the lawsuit this week, arguing that speed was of the essence.

Naturally, all sorts of government branches and individuals have taken matters into their own hands. Newspapers report countless changes. The governor of Assiut ordered the name of “The Suzanne Mubarak School for Girls” changed to “The January 25th School for Girls.” The president of Zagazig University in the Nile delta ordered the name of the Mubarak University City dormitory complex changed to Tahrir Square. In the port of Damietta, workers protested until the Mubarak Petrochemical Complex was rebranded the Free Industrial Zone.

Gigi Ibrahim was about to inaugurate a free speech program at the American University in Cairo when the name etched in gold across a heavy beige marble plaque hanging outside the hall stopped her in her tracks: H. E. Suzanne Mubarak Conference Hall.

So Ms. Ibrahim, 24, having cut her teeth as a political activist at Tahrir Square, immediately applied the lessons learned about direct action, found a screwdriver and took it down with a friend’s help. “When we saw it we thought, ‘Well this just needs to come down,’ ” she said, although officially the name holds.

The profusion of Mubarak rooms, photographs and statuary in the National Assembly rivaled that of Julius Caesar in imperial Rome. In fact one marble bust that media reports said cost around $30,000 gives the former president a passing resemblance to the Roman emperor. (One paper referred to it as “sanam,” the Arabic name for false idols worshiped in pre-Islamic days.) They have all been carted off, with the Mubarak room in the currently defunct Assembly chambers renamed Nile Hall.

Nile is one of the popular neutral alternatives to the Mubarak surname. The Culture Ministry, for example, announced that the Mubarak Prize for Social Science, Arts and Literature would become the Nile Prize.

The Martyrs of Jan. 25, or simply Jan. 25, the date of the start of the revolution, is perhaps the most common alternative to Mubarak. The names of the hundreds killed in the protests are also a popular choice.

Subway riders opposed to the Mubarak name have scratched it off on many of the signs inside the cars, and play a cat-and-mouse game with the workers at the Mubarak Station beneath Ramses Square, Cairo’s main railroad terminal. Every time they plaster an alternative name — Jan. 25 Martyrs — across the Mubarak signs, subway cleaners remove it.

They are hardly the only government workers who still revere the former president.

When Mohamed al-Sayed, a labor leader at an aluminum factory, was hauled in by military interrogators about organizing strikes at the plant, he was surprised to find Mr. Mubarak’s framed portrait still hanging on the wall. (An addendum to the lawsuit over the name would require all pictures to come down, too.)

One army officer told Mr. Sayed that Mr. Mubarak remained the supreme commander of the armed forces. (Although the president handed over the running of the country to a military council, the lack of any known letter of resignation means he might technically remain the head of state.)

“I refused to answer questions until the picture came down,” Mr. Sayed recounted, at which point the officers laughed at him and said he would have to wait until there was another president.

Those who support making Egypt Mubarak-free wonder how far they can take the effort. Mohamed Safi, a radio disc jockey, said he was considering initiating a campaign to stop using the standard Egyptian holiday greeting from “Id Mubarak” or “Blessed Feast” to the equally serviceable “Id Said” or “Happy Feast.”

But behind the scrubbing of the name, he said, lay a serious warning for future leaders: “It sends the message that you are not immortal, that unless you do something really good for the people, we are not going to slap your name up everywhere.”

Amr Emam contributed reporting.