Dr. Ayman Nour

Just before midnight, the phone rang at my home on the coast of Alexandria.

The call was exceptional by all measures: the caller, the timing, the content, the purpose.

It was a contradictory mix of conditions, restrictions and temptations. There was no third option; either accept and yield or reject and leave!

He did not wait for me to answer nor did he give me any choice in terms of my date of departure, destination or date of return. My seat was booked on the first flight taking me anywhere so I can breathe freely in order to decide and choose whether to be or not to be.

Being a man with a “record” of clashing with authoritarianism, I could recognize the difficult situation and the impossibility of adapting to a situation where there was none but his voice, no whisper but his, no existence but for those who subscribe to his power and submit to his will, and those who applaud his genius and heroism.

I had no crime to run from, or a purpose or destination to run to. My only crime, all I ever wanted to do, was to have my say about what was happening in my country. I did not run from detention; I had been arrested five times in my life and never did it silence me. Nor did I run from a punishment because I never committed a crime other than loving my home country and dreaming of its betterment.

Lebanon hosted me for two years and Turkey for six other years. In total, I have spent eight years and eighty days in exile. Egypt has never eclipsed from my thought one second. Everyday I dream of reciting Quran at my mother’s grave in my beloved Alexandria and crying at my father’s grave in the beautiful city of Mansoura. I dream of walking down the streets and alleys of my area, Bab El Shaaria, and visiting Ballanah, Nubia villages, the valiant Port Said, the resilient El Mahalla, and the steadfast Suez. Everyday I dream of every inch of Egypt’s land where I stumbled and purged myself with its soil.

Our beloved Egypt is greater and more lasting than those who ruled or are ruling her. When the sun sets, only fools believe that darkness and injustice will persist and that night will be eternal.

How can those who see the rising sun turn their backs and pray to the gods of darkness?!

How can people believe they are fighting darkness by blowing off the flame instead of opening the doors and windows?!

I refuse to see more prisons and detention centers built instead of freedom beacons. For freedom is the only stepping stone towards the future in a world that offers no room except for free peoples. Freedom is the only path to life and the end of all dictatorships is one and the same but we refuse to learn from other experiences and insist on being the experience studied by others.

There is no need to wait to see the dictatorship experience nor learn the outcomes of the bloodbath and the gallows. This path can only lead to defeat, poverty, misdirection and peril of peoples and nations.

We did not leave our homecountry in pursuit of power or profit nor to take sides. Rather, we left in defense of our homeland so we become, from abroad, the voice of those whose voices have been silenced by the ruthlessness of the republic of fear.

It has been 3000 days. I cannot claim that the principles we believe in and the legitimate rights we aspire for have prevailed, but we have not lost the battle either. We have won some rounds and lost others; we have won one castle of freedom to lose another to tyranny and its allies

It’s the right of every exiled Egyptian to yearn for the moment they return home without fear or injustice. I refuse to lash those who have been exhausted by the past years, but I also refuse the logic which claims that adding a colorful façade to a crumbling building is enough to mend the cracks and rifts. Partial freedom is but tyranny. A homeland can be either free or in shakles, either on the right path or abyss.

We do not reject societal dialogue. We are firm believers in dialogue, but we refuse a dialogue falling on deaf ears and using a swing-door approach to keep going in circles

Former Candidate in the Presidential Elections

Head of the Egyptian National Alliance