From Dictatorship Syndrome to False Truths: The Political Evolution of Alaa al-Aswany

Abstract

The majority of Egyptians are happy to be oppressed . . . They hated the revolution from the beginning because it embarrassed them in front of themselves . . . The Egyptians live in the Republic of False Truths . . . Everything in Egypt is a lie, except for the revolution. Only the revolution is true, which is why they hate it, because it shows up their corruption and their hypocrisy. (Republic, 386)Asmaa had hoped against hope, that the uprising would uplift the Egyptian people from their shackles. But as she bore the brunt of the counterrevolution's crackdown, enduring sexually humiliating virginity tests by the Egyptian state's “Apparatus”, she eventually decided that Egypt was beyond saving. By the end of Alaa al-Aswany's latest novel, The Republic of False Truths, his revolutionary heroine has decided to leave Egypt and seek exile in the UK. In her final letter to her comrade and putative love interest Mazen, she begs her confidante to follow suit, and leave Egypt as soon as he has been released from state custody. Yet even as the uprising failed to supplant dictatorship, it remains sacred in the hearts of its supporters. This is evidenced by Madany, father of the fallen revolutionary leader Khaled, who exacts his own justice by arranging a hit on the police officer who murdered his son. The revolution lives on, but only when the revolutionaries take justice into their own hands.