A long view of a mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in Downtown Cairo finished in November 2013
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to mark the two-year anniversary of violent clashes there that broke out between demonstrators protesting military rule and the police, in which around 50 were killed and more than 3,000 injured. The artwork comes one year after artist Ammar Abo Bakr had painted another mural on the street and after the November 14 lifting of the three-month nighttime curfew, enacted in August when the pro-Morsi sit-ins were violently dispersed. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Workers build a government-commissioned monument erected by state-owned Al-Abd Construction in the
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middle of Tahrir Square. In televised condolences on November 17 ahead of the monument’s inauguration, Interior Ministry spokesperson Hani Abdel Latif said the memorial was constructed to honor “the martyrs of the revolution whose pure blood was shed to water the tree of national struggle.” For young protesters who say the security state continues to act with impunity and is responsible for the deaths and injuries of thousands since the January 25 uprising, condolences from the military government were macabre. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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The graffiti on the military monument calls for the downfall of those who are against the revolution—the
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military government, Muslim Brotherhood, and Fulul (remnants of the Mubarak regime)—and insults deputy premier and defense minister General Abdel Fattah El-Sisi. The monument has since been rebuilt, and police direct traffic around the circle. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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In the hours between November 18 and 19, young people destroy a government-erected monument in
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the middle of Tahrir Square with the names of the country’s president, prime minister, and deputy prime minister. The monument’s completion coincided with the second anniversary of violent clashes in Mohamed Mahmoud Street that broke out on November 19, 2011between police and demonstrators protesting military rule. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Ammar Abo Bakr and his fellow artist-activists painted over an earlier artwork from November 2012 of four
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youths killed by security services: Khaled Said, Essam Atta, Atef El Gohary, and Shenouda Nousshi. Abo Bakr calls the Mohamed Mahmoud murals “the tomb of the square,” honoring those killed since the January 25 uprising by asking “where their killers are.” Photo by Angela Boskovitch
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Artists work on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, connecting Tahrir Square with the Interior Ministry, on the wall
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encircling the American University in Cairo’s Downtown Campus in the early morning hours of November 19. Of the team working with him, artist Ammar Abo Bakr says, “We are the voice in the street when they need everyone silent.” Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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The mural’s creation generates a festive atmosphere on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, a space young
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people have come to claim as their own. This year around 1,000 demonstrators gathered in the street to mark the second anniversary of violent clashes there on November 19, 2011. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Artist Salma Samy works on a pink camouflage pattern for the Mohamed Mahmoud mural, a comment on the
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overly affectionate relationship that has developed between the military government, general public and the media. The only female artist in the group, Samy says she longed to be part of a team working in the street and that, “It felt like the spirit of January 25.” Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Artist Ammar Abo Bakr works on the mural’s text. The words in red recall how impaling devices, which were
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used to subjugate indigenous peoples by their oppressors, were greased before punishment was meted out to potential revolutionaries—in 1800, the French impaled the man who desired to end the French occupation of Egypt by assassinating the commander of their forces. “We’re having a conversation with a brutal police force, so the words should match the tone of what’s happening in the street,” says Abo Bakr. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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The team finishes the first layer of their mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street early in the morning of
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November 19. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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A festive atmosphere in the morning hours of November 19, as the team finishes their first layer of a mural on
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Mohamed Mahmoud Street. Young people brought flowers to mark the entry of the street, which has come to represent the struggles of the ongoing revolution for youth who say they’re still fighting for their rights, dignity, and freedom. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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The team gathers their materials at the wall on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. The artists pooled their
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funds to buy materials costing less than 1,000 Egyptian Pounds (around 145 USD); the government memorial in Tahrir Square was erected for an undisclosed sum. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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The team of artists, activist graffiti artists, and others pose for a photo in the early morning hours of November
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19, 2013 after they finish the first layer of a new mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street in downtown Cairo. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Although the mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street provides a festival space young people have come to claim
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as their own, soldiers, military tanks, police, and barbed wire surround the street, which connects Tahrir Square to the Interior Ministry. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Although the mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street provides a festival space young people have come to claim
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as their own, soldiers, military tanks, police, and barbed wire surround the street, which connects Tahrir Square to the Interior Ministry. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Police stand at the entry of Mohamed Mahmoud Street at its entry to Tahrir Square looking at the first layer
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of a recently completed mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street that comments on the military government. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Young soldiers stand in front of tanks at the top of Mohamed Mahmoud Street near its entry with Tahrir
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Square in front of the first layer of a recently completed mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street that comments on the military government. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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A soldier stands atop a military tank stationed on Mohamed Mahmoud Street near its entry with Tahrir
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Square in front of the first layer of a recently completed mural that comments on the military government. Enacted when pro-Morsi sit-ins were violently dispersed, a three-month curfew was lifted on November 14; it had kept people behind closed doors at night. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Artist Ammar Abo Bakr at work on the second layer of a new mural on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. The
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portrait is of 11-year-old Said Khaled, killed in the November 2011 Mohamed Mahmoud clashes. Khaled’s older brother was killed in the so-called Camel Battle–when camel-mounted assailants attacked anti-Mubarak protesters on February 2, 2011. Of the portrait, Abo Bakr says, “These people are so young and just killed in the street like this. They were there fighting for their rights and a better life.” Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Artist Ammar Abo Bakr works on the text for his portrait of 11-year-old Said Khaled, killed in the November
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2011 Mohamed Mahmoud clashes between demonstrators protesting military rule and the police. Khaled’s blue-and-white, angel-winged portrait replaces portraits of other more well known figures killed over the past three years at the hands of the security services, whose stenciled portraits around Egypt’s cities have become almost cult-like. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Children pose in front of the portrait of 11-year-old Said Khaled, killed in the November 2011 Mohamed
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Mahmoud clashes between demonstrators protesting military rule and the police. The image is part of a new mural on the street, whose layers have chronicled events in Egypt since the January 25 uprising. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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The emotionally evocative portrait of 11-year-old Said Khaled, part of a new mural on Mohamed Mahmoud
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Street leading to Tahrir Square, recalls that many young Egyptians have paid the ultimate price for a revolution they say is still ongoing to restore their basic rights, end mismanagement and corruption in the country, and rein in the security services who act with impunity. Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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An emotionally evocative portrait of 11-year-old Said Khaled is part of a new mural on Mohamed Mahmoud
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Street encircling the American University in Cairo’s Downtown Campus. Of the artwork, 22-year-old Wassim Khaled says, “For me, this wall and Mohamed Mahmoud represent freedom, and the Egypt I loved and will love. I feel the soul of January 25 is still with us and will evolve.” Photo by Abdelrhman Zin Eldin
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Young Egyptians, who say they’re still fighting for the unmet demands of the January 25 uprising, held demonstrations in November for the first time since mass protests resulted in the military takeover of power this past July. Muralists and activist graffiti artists contribute their own media to these voices. During this November’s demonstrations, they painted over massive murals on Cairo’s Mohamed Mahmoud Street, marking the second anniversary of violent clashes that occurred there in November 2011 in a space youth have come to claim as their own.
“Most people my age didn’t have any feeling for their country before the January 25 Revolution,” said twenty-two-year-old Wassim Khaled, who took part in the January 25 and Mohamed Mahmoud protests. “My education, everything that I have, my family did for me. The government didn’t provide anything for us young people.” The revolution’s aims of ending the mismanagement and corruption within the security state have been hard to achieve, however. According to Transparency International’s 2013 Corruption Perceptions Index, Egypt ranks 114 out of 177 countries. Laws forbid disclosure of military activities, even those in the commercial sector, and the military has de facto immunity from prosecution. The new constitution up for a referendum January 14-15 ensures the military budget remains without civilian oversight. And in a country that witnessed mass uprisings that toppled two governments in less than three years, a new protest law severely restricts public gatherings. Three of the country’s most well-known activists associated with the April 6 Youth Movement have now been prosecuted and handed down three-year jail terms for not abiding by this new law.
In an alternate interpretation of events, however, the military government built a memorial they said was intended to honor “the martyrs of the two revolutions” of January 25 and June 30. The hastily erected, yellow-brick monument in the middle of a Tahrir Square traffic circle was finished in just two days. Less than twelve hours after its inauguration by the prime minister and the governor of Cairo on November 18, youths destroyed it brick by brick. It has since been rebuilt with new landscaping, and police direct traffic around the circle. Artist Ammar Abo Bakr, who’s worked on earlier murals portraying the revolution’s fallen on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, explained, “The military government made a kind of fake memorial to those they killed, and they build the institutions that kill us, so we need to answer that.” His team’s new 150-meter (492-foot) work on the wall, which encircles the American University in Cairo’s (AUC) Downtown campus, critiques the relationship between the media, the general public, and those in power.
Youth say their furor over the state’s monument is really about the impunity with which Egypt’s security state operates, especially the police, and for the continued crackdown on demonstrators and activists since the January 25 uprising. “When I saw the government monument, I was so upset; the names of the people killed aren’t even written on it,” said Wassim. “I want justice for all those young people who were killed—fair trials and fair verdicts, not monuments.”
This past November, around 1,000 demonstrators gathered in the street to mark the second anniversary of the November 19, 2011 clashes between the police and demonstrators protesting military rule, which left 50 killed and 3,000 injured. Demonstrators hung a banner at the corner with Tahrir Square that read: “No Entry for Fulul (remnants of the Mubarak regime), the Muslim Brotherhood, or the military.” As demonstrators chanted into the morning hours of November 19, a team of around fifteen worked on the new mural. A camouflage pattern was painted in pink and red—“the colors of love!” Abo Bakr explained. He continued, “There’s a kind of love fest with this new military government, and Sisi’s picture is on cookies in the bakery and even on lingerie.” The brightly colored wall starkly contrasts with the old AUC building above it with its shattered windows, and can be seen from the government memorial.
Three years since the January 25 uprising, Mohamed Mahmoud’s wall holds history within its layers. “Some people were upset because we painted over the portraits of the martyrs,” Abo Bakr said. (The pink camouflage covered one of Abo Bakr’s earlier artworks from 2012, a gruesome portrait series of four young men as they looked upon their deaths at the hands of the security services.) “But this wall needs to reflect events and should change. We don’t paint the martyr to immortalize him, but to ask where his killers are,” he said. “In this street we’re indicting the killers of all these young people, not just the iconic faces you see everywhere, but the anonymous ones too.” Salma Samy, the only female artist in the group, agreed, “I didn’t want to paint in Mohamed Mahmoud to celebrate the dead, but because I felt like we could do something for the living.”
Wassim said it was difficult for him to watch the portrait of his friend Atef El-Gohary painted over to make way for the new mural. El-Gohary died from a gunshot wound to the face in protests against the Defense Ministry in Cairo’s Abbasiyya neighborhood on May 4, 2012, “At first I was so upset when I saw Ammar cleaning the wall,” he said. “But Atef was always helping people and if he had been here, he would have told us not to care about his portrait, but about the revolution, so I accepted this too.”
The mural’s emotional portrait is of someone mostly unknown to activists, based on a photo of 11-year-old Said Khaled in Tahrir Square. Said’s brother was killed in the so-called Camel Battle—when camel-mounted assailants attacked anti-Mubarak protesters on February 2, 2011. Wanting to follow in his brother’s footsteps, Said attended all the major demonstrations—until he too was killed in the Mohamed Mahmoud clashes of November 2011. “These people are so young and just killed in the street like this,” said Abo Bakr. “They were there fighting for their rights and a better life.”
In addition to their role as critical media, Mohamed Mahmoud’s murals also serve as a gathering space. It’s rare for women to work in the street, and painting this mural was something existential for Samy, a thirty-year-old graduate of fine arts who also works as a costume designer. The corner of Mohamed Mahmoud and Tahrir Square had become notorious for sexual assaults. “As a woman, I had a problem with this street and even know someone who was assaulted,” she said. “But I can’t just stay home hiding. When we were working, it felt like the spirit of January 25 and I wasn’t afraid.” In addition, the camouflage patterns were painted with roller brushes, making it easy for anyone to join in and help, turning the space into a kind of open-air atelier. “I really liked that we worked as a group,” said Samy.
As Egypt approaches the three-year anniversary of the June 25 Revolution, Abo Bakr and his fellow artist-activists say the country’s ups and downs are an expected part of the struggle. “These three months of curfew [between August and November] gave people time to think, but the revolution is not a memory, and this dialogue on the wall is a part of that.” The murals have come to represent the revolution for so many young people: “When the wall’s cleaned it’s like a fresh canvas,” Wassim says. “For me, this wall and Mohamed Mahmoud represent freedom, and the Egypt I loved and will love. I feel the soul of January 25 is still with us and will evolve.”
Angela Boskovitch is a Cairo-based writer, researcher, and cultural producer.
