Revolution 2.0. Wael Ghonim

my small study in Dubai, unable to control the tears flowing from my eyes. My wife came in to see what was wrong. When I showed her Khaled Said’s picture, she was taken aback and asked me to stop looking at it. She left the room, and I continued to cry over the state of our nation and the widespread tyranny. For me, Khaled Said’s image offered a terrible symbol of Egypt’s condition.

      I could not stand by passively in the face of such grave injustice. I decided to employ all my skills and experience to demand justice for Khaled Said and to help expose his story to vigorous public debate. It was time to lay bare the corrupt practices of the Ministry of Interior, our repressive regime’s evil right hand.

      The logical first idea was to publish news of Khaled Said’s murder on Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei’s Facebook page, whose members exceeded 150,000 at that time, but I reasoned that doing so would exploit an event of national concern for political gain. I discovered that a page had been launched under the title “My Name Is Khaled Mohamed Said.” I browsed among the posts on that page. It was evident that the contributors were political activists. Their discourse was confrontational, beginning with the page’s headline: “Khaled’s murder will not go unpunished, you dogs of the regime.” From experience I knew that such language would not help in making the cause a mainstream one.

      I decided to create another page and to use all my marketing experience in spreading it. Out of the many options I considered for the page’s name, “Kullena Khaled Said” — “We Are All Khaled Said” — was the best. It expressed my feelings perfectly. Khaled Said was a young man just like me, and what happened to him could have happened to me. All young Egyptians had long been oppressed, enjoying no rights in our own homeland. The page name was short and catchy, and it expressed the compassion that people immediately felt when they saw Khaled Said’s picture. I deliberately concealed my identity, and took on the role of anonymous administrator for the page.

      The first thing I posted on the page was direct and blunt. It voiced the outrage and sadness that I felt.

      Today they killed Khaled. If I don’t act for his sake, tomorrow they will kill me.

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      In two minutes’ time three hundred members had joined the page:

      People, we became 300 in two minutes. We want to be 100,000. We must unite against our oppressor

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      I wrote the first article on the page: “You People Deprived of Humanity, We Will Extract Justice for Khaled Said.” It was an emotional, spontaneous piece of writing. I vowed that I would not personally abandon the fight for Khaled until his attackers were punished. The response was instant, and within a single hour the number of members climbed to three thousand.

      Egyptians, my justice is in your hands.

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      I spoke on the page in the first person, posing as Khaled Said. What drove me, more than anything else, was the thought that I could speak for him, and if even a single victim of the regime could have the chance to defend himself, it would be a turning point. Speaking as Khaled gave me a liberty that I did not have on ElBaradei’s quasi-official page. It also had greater impact on the page’s members. It was as though Khaled Said was speaking from his grave.

      Even though I was proficient at classical Arabic (al-fusHa) from my school years in Saudi Arabia, I chose to write my posts on “Kullena Khaled Said” in the colloquial Egyptian dialect that is closer to the hearts of young Egyptians. For the generation born in the eighties and nineties, classical Arabic is a language read in the newspapers or heard during news reports on television and comes across as quite formal. By using colloquial Egyptian, I aimed to overcome any barriers between supporters of the cause and myself. I also deliberately avoided expressions that were not commonly used by the average Egyptian or that were regularly used by activists, like nizaam, the Arabic word for “regime.” I was keen to convey to page members the sense that I was one of them, that I was not different in any way. Using the pronoun I was critical to establishing the fact that the page was not managed by an organization, political party, or movement of any kind. On the contrary, the writer was an ordinary Egyptian devastated by the brutality inflicted on Khaled Said and motivated to seek justice. This informality contributed to the page’s popularity and people’s acceptance of its posts.

      The number of responses, and the incredible speed with which they came, indicated that administering “Kullena Khaled Said” was going to take a lot more time and effort than administering the ElBaradei page. I definitely needed help, and my experience thus far with AbdelRahman Mansour made him the perfect choice. I added him as the page’s second admin. During the first few weeks AbdelRahman was quite busy with school and other commitments, but he tried his best to help whenever needed.

      I closely monitored news on the case and found the prosecutor’s report that acquitted the police force. I wrote:

      The prosecution issued a preliminary report that the cause of death was drug overdose. Not only have you murdered me, but you also want to stain my reputation? God will reveal the truth and repay your lack of conscience.

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      Mostafa al-Nagar, ElBaradei’s campaign manager at the time, had written a moving article on his personal page entitled “We Are the Murderers of Khaled Said” after he visited Alexandria to verify the story. I published the article on my page without mentioning the writer’s name. I did not want people to make the link between al-Nagar and the page and eventually identify the anonymous administrator.

      As the page’s membership base grew, so did my personal commitment. I felt the stirrings of a rare opportunity to make a difference and to combat oppression and torture. I was angry, and I was not the only one. On its first day, 36,000 people joined the page. Some of them wanted to learn more details about the case, some sought to offer sympathy and support, and others joined out of curiosity because they had received an invitation from a Facebook friend. Images of Khaled before and after the assault spread like wildfire. Similar crimes had taken place in the past, all too frequently, yet their stories had not spread too widely. It was the visual documentation of Khaled’s terrible death, along with the fact that he was from the middle class, that catalyzed this huge reaction. The image was impossible to forget, and thanks to social media, it was proliferating like crazy.

      By the end of the first day there were more than 1,800 comments on the page. Some people wondered why another page had been launched when the first one, “My Name Is Khaled Mohamed Said,” had already reached 70,000 members. “Why not unite our efforts?” they asked. I considered joining forces and closing the page I had created. Yet the aggressive tone adopted by the first page continued to worry me.

      I advertised “My Name Is Khaled Mohamed Said” on “Kullena Khaled Said” and declared that we all worked for a common cause. I urged people to link to the page and requested that we all coordinate our efforts. To my delight, the admins of the other page reciprocated. It was becoming obvious that this cause could unite a lot of people.

      Several prominent opposition politicians publicly condemned Khaled Said’s brutal killing. Also, a public funeral for Khaled had been announced for Friday, June 11. I publicized the funeral on the page and asked that as many people as possible attend. I also posted an edited video of various acts of torture by members of the police force, in the hope that Egyptians would