Mukhabarat in the Square
The secret police in Egypt usually aren’t very secret. They wear a certain recognizable cut of shabby pants, button-up shirts meant to hang untucked over the belt, and depending on rank a wide-weave sweater or shiny leather jacket.
In Tahrir Square, they parade with the crowds, ostentatiously filming everyone with their cell phones. Some activists who have been arrested and released since January 25 told me their interrogators reference films of them from Tahrir.
No one in the square seems to pay them any mind.
I found this indifference mystifying. Why weren’t the people in Tahrir trying to purge the place of infiltrators, as they had in early days? One organizer explained that there were simply too many, and that it only mattered if they tried to provoke fights. Otherwise, they caused no harm.
Helmy Hassan, a carpenter with no living family members to care for, offered a more compelling explanation. He spends his nights guarding a spur street leading to the square. “The revolution needs people like me,” he said. “That’s why we’re strong. Someone who needs to support his family can be bribed with money.”
Helmy said the scores of people circulating the square, filming with cell phone cameras, couldn’t intimidate demonstrators. “The video is a double-edged sword,” he said. “In the best case, they show the films to their friends and they see what we’re doing. In the worst case, they give the films to state security, and they see that I am defending my country. Let them. It is an honor.”
