Writer Joins Growing Ranks of Egypt's Accused
The New York Time, August 4, 2000
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Ali Salem recently wrote the script for an unfinished 10-minute public
service announcement that encourages his fellow Egyptians to shed their
cynicism and vote in elections. The state now says that makes him a
criminal. Mr. Salem, a big, rumpled, chain-smoking, 64-year-old satirist
who has 25 plays and 15 books to his name, was charged July 22 with
threatening national security and harming the national interest. After
handing over his identity card and being released, he still could not
believe it. "It's the first time I've ever heard my name used in
this way," Mr. Salem said, sipping strong coffee in the hotel cafe
where he holds court with his artist and actor friends each day.
"Not the Egyptian Ali Salem, not the playwright Ali Salem, not the
columnist Ali Salem. But the accused Ali Salem."
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The screenplay that Mr. Salem wrote for the film focuses on an Egyptian
couple who reflect on how they can best assure themselves a bright
future. In one scene, a group of men are sitting around a coffee shop in
Cairo complaining. One says there is no good health care. Another says
the education system is bad. Another grouses that there is no national
dream. The couple ends up scolding them. "You can become a
partner in the future by participating in elections," they
say. Mr. Salem said he tried in vain to explain to the prosecutors
that the coffee shop complaints were a dramatic device to set up the
theme of the film, which was meant to show that Egyptians should vote
rather than just gripe to assure themselves a good future. But the
government interrogators, he said, just kept asking him why he
wrote all those bad things about Egypt. "To explain a joke is a
miserable job," Mr. Salem lamented, adding that it reminded him of
another joke from the 1960's, when President Gamal Abdel Nasser was in
power and suppressed political debate. In the joke, a man is
arrested by the police for carrying a bag of blank papers. When he asks
the police why, they reply, "Do you think we should wait until you
write something bad on them?"
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