Reporting from Cairo — Men arrive at an Islamic party's headquarters on a hot Cairo night. They hug, laugh and whisper around trays of pistachio sweets. A door closes and the haggling over Egypt's future begins. But the young revolutionary is missing. Thirty minutes tick by; the amiable mood is cracking.
No rest for an Egypt revolutionary
Ahmed Maher, leader of the April 6 Youth Movement, is one of the country's most savvy activists. But he senses the young are losing the revolution they heralded.
Egyptian activist Ahmed Maher hands out juice boxes to demonstrators in… (Holly Pickett, For The Times )
Ahmed Maher hurries in, dabbing his forehead with a tissue. He sits across from Saied Abdul Azim, a cleric in an embroidered skullcap, who with a phone call can summon tens of thousands of Koran-wielding followers into the street. The old man begins: "Liberals see freedom as giving rights to homosexuals or for anybody to do and wear what they want, even if it's against Islam. We've come out to tell them we will fight this."
Maher twitches as if a fly has landed on him. He takes a breath and looks at Azim.
"If we liberals managed to find something in common with nationalists, communists and other sects, then surely we can find common ground with Islamists," he says. Maher listens for another hour to a Coptic Christian leader, a newspaper publisher, a representative of a onetime terrorist organization involved in a president's assassination and an envoy from the new Civilization Party, a name that evokes the splendor of Egypt's ancient past but seems a mirage in the precarious present.
Maher slips out at 1:21 a.m. and orders a coffee in an open-air cafe down the street. The 30-year-old rebel jots notes and appointments in a little black book: Watch the generals. Unify the opposition. Connect with the poor.
The leader of the April 6 Youth Movement, Maher is one of the nation's most strategically savvy activists. But he senses the young are losing the revolution they heralded. Islamists are pressing for power. Remnants of the old guard are running for office, bankrolled by the same tycoons who made their fortunes under toppled President Hosni Mubarak. The commanders of the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces are maneuvering behind closed doors and updating their own Facebook page — an irony Maher can only describe as irritating.
Maher believes April 6 must protect the country from religious extremists; the army, which days ago expanded martial law; and other forces more skilled at intrigue than politically inexperienced cyber-dissidents. He envisions Egypt as a representative democracy to inspire an Arab world that until just 10 months ago seemed doomed to despotic rule. Every day is a kaleidoscope of competing tactics. Maher plots protests, taps out demands to the military-controlled interim government, meets with foreign diplomats and contemplates how to write a constitution.
His cellphone flashes like a strobe light, alerting him to labor strikes in the provinces and stones hurled at police in the capital. The generals have accused April 6 of "igniting strife" between the army and the people. The group has responded by suing the military council for libel.
"What I wish for is a country with a strong constitution that guarantees social equality and personal freedom," says Maher, a civil engineer with bristles of gray in his close-cropped hair. "But the question is, what's doable now? The next three or four years will bring a lot of fighting. Parliamentary elections. Presidential elections. Will the military turn over power? The country needs someone to guard the revolution. April 6 is the watchdog."
Maher finishes his coffee and vanishes. He often appears and then, suddenly, is gone, roaming the city as if on reconnaissance. His 3-year-old daughter knows her father through glimpses of him creaking through the door late at night and out again just after dawn. He seems solitary, adrift, even when he's surrounded by people.
One night Maher is talking electoral reform, the next sleeping in his car, texting tactics on the eve of a demonstration. Unlike many Egyptian rebels, Maher prefers the trenches to the limelight. No detail is too small. At a recent demonstration against the military, he instructed young men not on the merits of civil disobedience, but on how to tie and hang a canopy of sewn-together sheets to shade protesters in the summer heat.
There is not one enemy anymore, but many in different guises and trappings. The "pure black-and-white struggle" against Mubarak, he says in a puff of smoke from one of his meticulously rolled cigarettes, has turned more unnerving and surreal: "I met with the minister of interior the other day. He kissed me on both cheeks and invited me into his office. He would have thrown me in jail a few months ago."
The call to prayer pierces the breeze off the Nile. Tanks sit beyond the ring road and boys hawk Egyptian flags on street corners. Maher melts into a new night to keep the revolution alive.
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