Ayman Nour pardoned; will contest 2012 presidential race

Egypt’s military ruler has officially pardoned a prominent liberal politician, paving the way for him to contest upcoming presidential elections. The move negates a 2006 forgery conviction that would otherwise prevent Ayman Nour from his second presidential bid.

"The decision restores rights to where they belong and this is one of the results of the revolution," Nour told Reuters.

In 2005, Nour placed second in Egypt’s first multi-candidate presidential election, receiving around 10 percent of the votes. Many saw Nour’s subsequent imprisonment as punishment for daring to challenge then-president Hosni Mubarak.

"The military council issued a presidential decree giving Ayman Nour the right to elect and nominate himself (in presidential elections), practice all his political rights and drop all penalties against him," Nour posted on his Twitter account on Wednesday.

The announcement of Nour’s pardon came just 10 days before the application period for presidential nominations will close.

Nour, 48, began speaking out against Mubarak’s regime two decades ago. He has already announced his intention to contest the upcoming presidential race.

Elections are expected May 23-24, 2012.

Nour can confirm his nomination in one of three ways: with 30,000 recommendations from citizens in at least 15 different governorates, with recommendations from at least 30 members of parliament, or by registering as the candidate of a recognized political party by April 8.

Nour’s new party, al-Ghad al-Thawra, won two seats in recent parliamentary elections as part of an alliance with the Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Freedom and Justice Party.

Last year the Cairo Court of Cassation rejected Nour’s appeal to reconsider the 2006 forgery conviction that sent him to prison for five years. In 2005, Nour was accused of forging roughly 1,000 of the signatures submitted to form al-Ghad Party in 2004. Nour has consistently maintained his innocence and insisted the charges and conviction were politically motivated.

Under the Egyptian penal code, a person convicted of forgery, considered a crime of dishonor, is forbidden from participating in political life for five years from the end of his sentence. Thus, without the pardon Nour would be forbidden from running for public office or chairing a syndicate or political party until 2016, five years after his original sentence should have ended.

When Nour’s request for an appeal was denied, his supporters and other members of the political community called on the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SCAF) to pardon Nour.

“It is illogical that Ayman Nour is prevented from practicing his [election] nomination right while remnants of the former regime can,” fellow presidential contender and al-Karama Party head Hamdeen Sabbahi said at the time, calling on SCAF to pardon Nour.

Some have already come out in support of Nour after this most recent development, but others worry that his candidacy could further splinter what is likely to be a divided liberal vote.

Weekend recipe: Spaghetti with zucchini in red sauce

Since I have more time on my hands than I've had in a while (I'm taking a break from daily news to teach high school English) and people seem to enjoy my cooking, I think I'll start a weekly series of recipes and general tips for cooking (and eating) healthy here in Cairo. If you try one of my recipes, send me a picture and let me know how it goes!

Unless it's a special occasion, I generally cook with whatever happens to be in the kitchen, and consequently most of my recipes are made up on the spot and can handle a significant amount of modification. Most of my dishes are very Italian-inspired, as I learned much of my cooking during the four years I spent in Rome.

I also like to listen to good music while I'm cooking, so you'll find a playlist suggestion with each recipe :)

Enjoy!

Spaghetti with zucchini in red sauce

Approx. time: 50min (20min prep, 30min cook)
Makes two servings

Suggested playlist: Oldies! Go for Tom Jones or The Beach Boys

Ingredients:
- Olive oil (approx. 2-3 tablespoons)
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2-3 cloves garlic, minced
- 2 small zucchini, split lengthwise and sliced
- 3 medium tomatoes, diced
- Dash salt
- 1 tablespoon tomato paste (optional)
- Dash vodka or red wine (optional)
- Freshly grated parmesan cheese (optional)

The keys to great pasta are simplicity and timing. This dish is simple and delicious, highlighting the flavors of the zucchini and tomato. True Italian dishes aim to highlight one or two flavors rather than throwing every posible spice into the dish (i.e. "Italian seasoning").

First, get your ingredients ready. Heat some of the olive oil in a pan over medium-low heat (for this type of sauce, I prefer to use a shallow pan rather than a sauce pan). Add onion and garlic and sauté 2-3 minutes, or until soft. Add zucchini and sauté another 2-3 minutes, then add tomatoes. At this point you can add a dash of vodka or red wine to the pan if you like (while the majority of the alcohol will cook off, some of it remains, so if you don't drink alcohol for religious reasons you probably want to leave this out; the sauce will still be great without it!).

Add just a dash of salt. You may be tempted to add more, but trust me on this one: first, most of us eat too much salt as it is. Second, once your taste buds get used to not being overwhelmed with salt, your food tastes SO much better.

Turn the heat to low and let the sauce simmer for 10 minutes or so, stirring occasionally to make sure nothing sticks to the pan.

While your sauce is simmering, put a pot of water on to boil for the pasta, adding a dash of salt to the water. If you're REALLY good, you can even use this time to clean up your prep dishes!

If you want a lighter sauce, you can end the recipe here. Tonight, however, I was in the mood for something a bit heavier, so I added about a tablespoon of tomato paste (I try to use kinds without added salt when possible) and another dash of olive oil and let my sauce continue to simmer.

Once the water boils, add your pasta. I used about 1/3 of a 500g box of spaghetti, which makes about two regular servings. Be careful not to overcook the pasta. I'll say it again: DO NOT overcook the pasta. Good pasta should not be a sloppy, soggy mass that sticks together or falls to pieces. Good pasta should be cooked al dente, an Italian phrase that literally means 'to the teeth.' (If you like your pasta soggy that's your choice, but try it my way once!)

By the time your pasta is ready, your sauce should be ready as well.

Add a bit of freshly grated parmesan on top (if you have it), and enjoy! :)



Notes: The onion can be a bit overpowering in this dish, especially as Egyptian onions seem to be particularly strong. I made a very similar sauce last night but omitted the onion and added another clove of garlic and a dash of cooking cream instead.

Finding cross-cultural reality in a sweet pea

When I was young, my grandfather kept a large garden at the end of our yard. He grew many things, but my favorite was the sweet peas. They ripened in early spring, usually just before Easter, around the same time daffodils were sprouting bright and yellow among the spring greenery.

By the time I was eight or so I learned how to tell when the pods were just ripe. I wandered through the long, carefully-tended rows picking perfect specimens as the soft dirt, heavy with Virginia red clay, stained my bare feet a deep, earthy red-brown.

Dewy spring grass would wipe away the worst of the dirt as I headed back to the house, leaving a trail of pea-pods in my wake. Growing up, there was hardly anything better about spring than those juicy, crisp, fresh sweet peas straight out of my grandfather’s garden.

It’s been years since I was home in the spring to raid pea-pods from those carefully tended rows. I’ve lived many places during those years and I’ve spent the past two in Cairo, a sweltering city of cars, pollution, and some 20 million people.

Living in a different culture, sometimes the simplest things remind you of ‘home,’ alternately highlighting the similarities or the differences between ‘here’ and ‘there.’ I seldom find similarities between Cairo and small-town southern America, although they’re there: a genuine and humble hospitality, for one, and tea with mint, for another.

Yet this morning I sat in village an hour from Cairo with a pile of fresh sweet pea pods heaped on the table in front of me, popping the peas from their pods in preparation for tonight’s dinner. Each time one of those succulent fresh peas found its way into my mouth instead of the bowl in front of me, I was reminded of that old memory.

Sometimes those quiet, mundane tasks remind you that, wherever you are, there are intrinsic similarities among humans. Sure, this morning I was sitting in a rural Egyptian village with palm trees and fields of chamomile out the window, neither of which I ever saw growing up in Virginia, and the majority of the peas ended up in a bowl rather than in my mouth, but even so the similarities seemed more stark than the differences.

I once spent a week living with a family in a tiny community in Brazil’s southern Amazon basin. It was starkly different from anything I had grown up with: they had no running water, most of the family slept in hammocks, they washed clothes in a spring, and there were mango trees everywhere.

But even there I found familiarity: an elderly man in a t-shirt and baseball cap bouncing his grandson on his knee, everyone gathered around a (generator-powered) TV to watch a soccer match, each child expected to help with chores and the youngest crying when her mother left the house without her.

As scholars debate theories of globalization, giant multi-national corporations search for cheaper labor and politicians’ rhetoric expounds the virtue of “us” versus “them,” sometimes all we need is to take a step back.

Consider, for example, the simple joy of one fresh pea: surreptitiously pilfered from the pot before it is cooked, it is just as sweet in rural Egypt as in small-town America.

In Egypt, conspiracy theories sometimes have merit

Armed bank robbery. Scores killed in a football brawl. American tourists kidnapped.

One year after the uprising that sparked national pride and hope in Egyptians, the wave of unprecedented incidents – as well as renewed clashes between demonstrators and police in downtown Cairo – has many asking: What is happening, and why?

Many believe the incidents of the past few days are anything but coincidence, and with reason. Just days before masked gunmen robbed the HSBC bank in New Cairo, an upscale Cairo suburb, Egypt’s de-facto ruler cancelled the country’s three-decade-old Emergency Law.

Put into effect in the wake of late President Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981, the series of laws prohibit more than five persons from gathering in one place without prior permission and allow search and seizure without a warrant, among other things.

The first armed bank robbery in modern Egyptian history occurring just after the cancellation of the law seems unlikely to be pure coincidence.

And despite an age-old rivalry between Cairo football team al-Ahly and Port Said team al-Masry, Egyptians refuse to accept that mere team rivalry is to blame for the 73 deaths after Wednesday night’s match in Port Said.

Many have questioned the inaction of the country’s hated Central Security Forces, who stood by and watched the violence instead of intervening to stop it. One match-goer said he and others were not searched by security upon entering the stadium, perhaps explaining how some al-Masry fans were able to enter the match with knives.

The real question is whether recent events are an honest representation of Egypt without the Emergency Law or whether someone – the ‘who’ is as always unclear – is orchestrating events.

One theory is that the government or the ruling military council – in power since former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down in February 2011 – is stirring up trouble as an excuse to reinstate the Emergency Law. Removing the law was one of demonstrators’ primary demands during the 2011 uprising, and remained a source of contention as the military continually delayed its repeal.

Others blame the ubiquitous “foreign hand.” One theory reported on state television today was that the ongoing clashes in downtown Cairo are a US-German plot in retaliation for the Egyptian government’s raid on a series of foreign NGOs earlier this year.

Both suggestions may sound like conspiracy theories, but in Egypt conspiracy theories are selcdom as impossible as they seem.

In one example, documents “liberated” by Egyptians citizens during the so-called Amn Dawla Leaks last spring revealed former Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was involved in the New Year’s Eve bombing outside an Alexandrian church that shocked the country.

The government had tried to pin the incident on an al-Qaeda faction based in the Gaza Strip.

Today images of clashes between demonstrators and police glare once more from television screens. The upraised arms of demonstrators and the unfaltering wave of an Egyptian flag can be seen through a foggy haze of tear gas. Both sides throw stones, and the wail of an ambulance occasionally cuts through the dull roar of the clashes and the television presenter’s voice.

The images are painfully and eerily reminiscent of earlier clashes: the battle of Mohamed Mahmoud in November 2011, the June 28 clashes, and, perhaps most poignantly, the infamous Battle of the Camels.

On February 2, 2011 Egyptians watched and lived in horror as men on horses and camels and wielding clubs and machetes attacked what for nearly five days had been a peaceful demonstration in Tahrir Square. Yesterday, exactly one year later, the current clashes began, sparked by the deaths of more than 70 people at a football match.

Public opinion is sharply divided.

“This had to happen,” said one young Egyptian, watching the images today on the television in a small town an hour outside Cairo. “The revolution has to continue.”

Others fear the economic impact of continued clashes.

Egypt's Day of Rage as I saw it - Video

Video compilation of clips from Friday, January 28, 2011 in Cairo's Abdel Moneim Reyad Square, just steps from the now-iconic Tahrir Square.

#Jan25 - One year later

One year ago today, I stepped out of a taxi in Mohandiseen and stared in disbelief: hundreds of demonstrators were gathered across the street. In that instant, I knew the January 25 demonstration would be different. I knew it wasn't the usual - demonstrators outnumbered by police in some out of the way location. I knew something had started.

Today is the one-year anniversary of that first demonstration that set the pace for Egypt's 18-day uprising, which topped 30-year ruler Hosni Mubarak from power and, more importantly, renewed Egyptians' pride in their country and hope for a better future.

Today, Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square was packed hours before marches were set to converge on the square.

Men, women and children thronged around various stages set up in the square. They chanted for the freedom of Egypt and the fall of the military council, which has administered Egypt since Mubarak resigned on February 11, 2011. Vendors carried food, drinks, sweets, and memorabilia of all kinds.

By 10am, it was clear that January 25, 2012 was to be a giant celebration for Egyptians.

Foreigners who have made Cairo their home also gathered in the square. One British woman had brought her two young daughters. Their small faces painted with Egyptian flags, the girls stared around them wide-eyed as Egyptians asked their mother to take pictures with her children.

The younger one refused, instead opting to take pictures herself.

Video: Egyptians take to the streets on Jan25

A brief look at January 25 through videos I captured, starting from Gameat al-Dowal Street in Mohandiseen into Tahrir Square.

Jan 17, 2011 - Whispers of a demonstration

One year ago today, 49-year-old restaurateur Abdou Abdel Moneim Gaafa set himself ablaze outside the Egyptian parliament. A stark reminder of the young vegetable seller whose self-immolation weeks earlier catalyzed an uprising in Tunisia, the question inevitably arose: will this be Egypt’s Mohamed Bouazizi?

Egypt remained silent.

“Some… predict Tunisia is but the first of the tyrannical [Arab] regimes to fall,” I wrote at BikyaMasr.com on January 17, 2011. “Others see little chance that Egyptians, typically apathetic when it comes to politics, will be stirred to action.”

There was talk. Analysis. Articles in newspapers – but no revolution. No uprising. Not even one single demonstration.

The next day I wrote, “Egyptians are still too afraid of their government and its security forces… to go to the streets in the numbers that a revolution requires.”

After a year of watching Egyptians’ apparent inability to act, I was already somewhat jaded. I suggested that Gaafa’s act would join Khaled Said on a long list of painful sores for the Egyptian people, but would not be enough to stir action.

Three nights earlier Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had fled Tunisia. I was at an Open Mic in Cairo when the news broke. The crowd buzzed. In between performances there were whispers of, “Did you hear??” and “Is it true?!”

Some couldn’t peel their eyes from Twitter applications or frantically searched for news updates on their mobile phones. Others – including myself – relied on text message updates from friends following the news at home.

Young people in my circle of friends were frustrated, but many more remained apathetic even as they praised Tunisians’ courage.

“No one will move,” wrote one young Egyptian woman on Facebook. “We are not Tunis.”

It seemed she was right. Egyptians were angry – at their government, at their police, at growing inequality, at their own inaction – but it seemed they were not yet angry enough.

I remember so well the frustration, the yearning in the voices of my friends as they talked about Tunisia and how they wished Egypt would be next. Even the boldest and most optimistic hardly dared to dream that Egypt would rise up - but they did dream. They dreamt and they talked and they planned, and there were whispers of a demonstration on January 25.

And then, just one week later, Egypt rose in all her glory and fury.

New series: Looking back at Egypt's revolution

One year ago today I wrote one of my favorite blog posts – Spiced tea, social norms, and me. One year ago today, no one was talking about politics. I, the young foreign journalist, was the one explaining to my Egyptian friends the requirements to run for president and what, exactly, the Emergency Law said.

One year ago, it would have been unthinkable to sit in a trendy Cairo café and find BBC Arabic on the television.

It’s amazing how much can change in a year.

Outwardly, it’s easy to overlook the changes. In many ways, things seem to be as they always were. The traffic is as bad as ever, young people still have to go to school and take exams, there’s still sexual harassment on the streets. The blog post I wrote last year about social norms I could write again today.

Yet many things have changed. There are Egyptian flags everywhere, every Egyptian knew when parliamentary elections were happening, and the cover of state-run Al-Ahram newspaper doesn’t boast a picture of three-decade ruler Hosni Mubarak on the front page every morning.

A year ago, the only people talking about a ‘revolution’ were those watching Tunisia and the handful of Egyptians who, some for months and others for decades, had been trying to bring political and social change to Egypt.

Among them were the April 6 Youth Movement, the Kefaya Movement, Sheyfenkom, and We Are All Khaled Said. There were individuals, as well – popular public figure Gameela Ismail, journalist Hossam al-Hamalawy, and young activists such as Asmaa Mahfouz, Israa Abdelfattah, and Ahmed Maher.

Now there are a thousand more names: Wael Ghonim, Ramy Essam, Alaa Abdel Fattah (a long-time activist, but only recently well-known), Amr Hamzawy.

On January 25, 2011 I stood in Tahrir Square with Hamalawy. He told me he always knew there would be a revolution.

Over the next few weeks, I intend to post a series looking back on the revolution, its aftermath, and its future. Whether you're looking for more insight into the events surrounding the revolution, a different perspective, or just want to revisit those earth-shaking 18 days, I will show you Egypt's revolution through my eyes.

I will share with you how I crossed paths with names both big and small – Ayman Nour, Mohamed el-Baradei, and many others. Look forward to text, pictures, video, and sound bites of Egypt's January 25 Revolution.

Hello, words. I've missed you.

Words. Subtly shaping scenes or brazenly baring broken lives; coldly cutting to the core or whimsically weaving wishes. Beauty; ugliness; pain; love; forgiveness; entrapment. Art. The beauty of words lies in their truth; or perhaps it is their beauty that reveals their truth. And in that truth, the purity and simplicity of naked words - yet neither of those is truth; so, then, perhaps words also are lies.

Words manipulate, they trick. Words make the sinister seem scrupulous; the magnificent, mundane.

To craft words is to know words; to wield words wildly or willfully. A bit of both brings clarity - though sometimes opacity - with a dash of style, a pinch of wit and just a bit of poetry. Inspiration isn't charity.

Stripped of ornamentation, words are just as powerful. Tell a story with adjectives not adverbs. Describe the city by what you see - sidewalks cluttered with construction and pedestrians; white-and-black cabs and rusty motorbikes vie for space in crowded streets; a sandy haze settled low on a horizon of dusty rooftops - and others will see it, too.

Yet words are a capricious craft: the wrong word will rend and raze and render meaningless what was painstakingly built, purposefully created. The wrong word sits heavily, awkwardly, marring hate as fully as joy; loathing diluted to dislike, euphoria whittled away to simple synonyms of happiness and contentment.

Words are used and abused; cultivated and created. Words are a necessity; words are a luxury. They gather together and tear apart and stand between. Written or scribbled or intricately painted; crooned, whispered, shouted, spoken, sung. Intransigent. Maleable. Uncompromising. Submissive.

Hello, words. I've missed you.