"Tell Mubarak we don�t need his damn Internet"

Byy John Ballard

Via a Blake Hounshell tweet, an exciting interview at Brian Whitaker's blog. This is a guest post by Parvez Shama, an Indian writer and film maker, with someone on the scene in Cairo with whom he has been communicating previously using screen name only.

The interview opens with his friend Omar tossing aside the pseudonym Yousry.

�Please use my real name Omar from now on�we have nothing left to hide anymore�

That is how the man I was calling Yousry started his remarkable interview ith me a few hours ago. At a point in our conversation he also said � Please tell Mubarak we do not need his damn internet for the peoples revolution.�

Yousry is Omar. A dear friend. An extremely articulate Egyptian and in my haze filled 140 character days, a steady voice of reason and immense perspective. Every conversation I have had with him expresses the nuance, the complexity and the immensity of the day�s events like no news broadcast can. At 30 he is as old as the Mubarak regime. He is married. His wife will join him tomorrow for what should really be called the Million man and woman march. He was born in Cairo and studied in the US briefly before moving back and working for an oil company. He comes from a rich family as does his wife.

It's the middle of the night for me and I need sleep more than blogging, so this will be quick. Go read the rest of this remarkable exchange.

Me:   Have you been watching Al Jazeera?

O:   Are you kidding me? I can either be there or stay at home and watch the damn TV and try and get on the fucking internet which is not working and try and do these damn tweets you keep on telling me about�I mean yes, some people watch it when they go home at night and today the word on the street was that the Egyptian media finally caught up with the international media�people were saying that for the first time now they are starting to report�they are showing that there are people, looting, violence�Even State TV�Nile TV is reporting�and you know we also have this state public radio channel�its at 88.7 fm and even they are being more balanced than before, people were saying�. You know till yesterday the assholes were showing streets of Cairo are calm

Me:   Today I did have an Al-Jazeera free day�I did not watch the live stream at all�but on twitter I did see their updates�while I was constantly calling�

O:   I have no time to watch�you know this new VP of ours, Soliman now with Mubarak wants to show see they are all in Tahrir, penned it�see how good we are that we are allowing people to voice their grievances�maybe for any other revolution we could have stayed downtown�maybe it will be one day ok and safe to protest in Tahrir which now the whole world knows what it is�but for now we have to go to him to make sure that he goes�.

Me:   It will be so hard to be at Heliopolis and it is not really walking distance if you know what I mean�

O:   (Laughs) Well our weapon is not Jazira or Facebook or all that�our main weapon is the change we want, our focus, our peacefulness and the shoes on our feet man�the shoes still on our feet�so much talk in Tahrir today also about this new scam thing of new cabinet�you know Mohamed Rashid was asked to be Minister of Industry�he declined�this is important in the past you know he had supported Mubarak�but please Parvez get this out�its really important�for 30 years of this dictatorship many Egyptians, good men and women joined the Mubarak government not because they hated the people but because they felt that it was best to change the system from inside, from working within the government and Egyptians realize this�Egypt also was never a Ba�athist kind of cult regime like Syria or Iraq�so different�