The January 25 Revolution remains an inspiration to many Egyptian writers and creators from different angles (European News Agency)

Since the end of its first wave with the abandonment of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power, the revolution of January 25, 2011 has not ceased to inspire writers with diverse writings that extend from history, political analysis, constitutional and legal debates, providing in-kind testimonies and a portion of autobiographies or others, to creating stories. Short stories, poems, novels and plays.

The novel, as an art that crosses the genres of writing, can include a lot about the revolution, moving away from its official path, and it is able, through artistic tricks, including symbolism, metaphor, description, dialogue, and imagination, to slowly narrate this great event, and reveal hidden aspects of it, which many did not pay attention to in the past. The context of attraction, competition, and bitter political conflict that erupted after that, burying many facts in the midst of conflicting interests, and the widespread lies that accompanied disavowal of its faltering, fighting for its benefits, and escaping from bearing the bad consequences of it.

Anger and departure

The latest literary work that took the revolution as its subject is the novel by writer Muhammad Salamawi, “Oedipus in the Plane,” recently published by “Dar Al-Karma” in Cairo, in one hundred and twenty-five medium-sized pages.

The novel takes some of its importance from its author’s contact with political circles before and after the revolution, and his being one of those who preached it in his novel “Butterfly Wings,” which was published in 2010.

In "Wings of the Butterfly," Salmawi expected the outbreak of a massive protest, with young people representing the main social bloc, and calling for modern technologies, which were granted by the communications revolution after the spread of the Internet in our society, especially social networking sites.

This novel depicted a path of civil disobedience, with people leaving their homes in anger, the streets flooding, and then gathering in Tahrir Square, demanding the fall of the regime, and their success in forcing those in power to leave, which was actually achieved.

As for “Oedipus in the Airplane,” it took, through a circular structure, a knowledgeable narrator, and a historical literary parable, from Mubarak’s last day in power as its subject, and it did not present this in a direct form, as do historical narratives or crude realism, but rather it borrowed the famous story about King Oedipus, Which was mentioned by one of the most important ancient Greek playwrights, Sophocles, and then re-presented by Tawfiq al-Hakim in his play “Oedipus the King.”

If Al-Hakim was preoccupied, from the legacy of Sophocles, with the idea of ​​misery that follows the discovery and exposure of the truth, then Salmawi, in his novel, was concerned with exposing the lies and deceptive myths accompanying the existence of the political authority against which the revolution broke out, to make King Oedipus the fictional equivalent of President Mubarak, and she becomes “Thebes” in the text. The ancient equivalent of “Egypt” and “Sparta,” that purely military emirate, was equivalent to “Israel,” while the character “Dieter” was the equivalent of the Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army at the outbreak of the revolution, and “Creon” was his Minister of Defense, to whom power came after Mubarak's departure, and Tobias, the president of the Senate in Thebes, remains the president of the Egyptian People's Assembly, while the "plague" seemed like an epidemic that spread in Thebes, equivalent to the spread of corruption and the harmful effects of tyranny throughout the country.

The general's dilemma

Salmawi wanted to give us an understanding of the truth of what happened on the last day of a president who ruled for thirty years, and his desire to inherit his son’s inheritance became widespread among the people, so that we realize, in the end, that what happened on that memorable day, which was February 11, 2011, was a coup against Mubarak. And the revolution together.

Salmawi hid his conclusion among scrolls borrowed and restored from the Greek play behind the revolutionary scene, which was present timidly in the background of the narrative, or tucked in several shells, some of which were as old as Sophocles’ play, and some of which were new, represented in intermittent scenes of the revolutionary act, which became an important aspect of it. Now it is in the rule of "general knowledge", or the popular stories circulated by those who participated in the revolution and created its grand narrative.

The path to this understanding, or this truth that is hidden behind many allegations and propaganda, seems clear from the first lines of the novel, which came in a chapter titled “The General’s Dilemma,” where it begins by depicting “Oedipus” sitting in his seat on a plane that landed at the prison airport, refusing to get off. In order to be placed in his prison cell, in fulfillment of the prophecy of the god “Zeus,” who spoke in front of everyone, accusing Oedipus of spreading the epidemic in the kingdom of “Thebes.”

We infer the personality of “Dieter” from a question addressed to him by “Oedipus”: “Didn’t I promote you a few months ago?” This is what happened with Lieutenant General Sami Anan, Chief of Staff of the Egyptian Army at the time of the revolution. Then we infer the personality of Mubarak from what Oedipus said about himself: "I refused to leave Thebes and flee abroad. This is my country in which I was born, and I devoted myself to its service... I rejected the invitations to host that came to me from the kings and rulers of the world."

Then the writer goes into detail in revealing this character when she says: “Have you forgotten the victory in the war against Sparta? I brought you victory after years of humiliation. It was my fatal blow that achieved victory for our forces.” This is in reference to the airstrike in the October War. The first was 1973, when Mubarak was the commander of the air force, and he linked the legitimacy of his rule to it, to the point that those around him reduced the army to the air force, and made his strike the key to victory, or indeed to all victory.

Exposing the lies

The writer does not leave this exaggeration, or this exaggeration, regarding Mubarak’s role as it is, but rather exposes the lies carried by the propaganda that accompanied it on the lips of media professionals and politicians loyal to the president over the course of three decades, just as the lie of Oedipus was exposed when people believed that he was a commanding hero who fought the monster for his life. The door of Thebes and killed him and he entered the city victorious to sit on the throne of the kingdom. Then they discovered that the dead man was his father, “Laius,” who had gotten rid of him as an infant many years before, and had thrown him to a shepherd in the mountains after the gods had told him that his son would kill him, and that the woman whom Oedipus had married was Queen Jocasta is none other than his mother.

Thus heroism is removed from Oedipus, and his legitimacy is destroyed by the discovery of his hateful secret, and the blind imagination of the masses is wounded, which mythologizes the leaders, and they continue this and embrace it, and deny what is against it, just as Oedipus’ wife and two daughters denied the truth that he himself revealed, considering it excessive delirium. The tragedy that befell him resulted in his sentence being overturned and his sentence being threatened with imprisonment.

The novel also reveals the truth about those who sought to remove the king, who was isolated from his people, in a simulation of receiving the ancient in the heart of the contemporary, when Oedipus says about them to his wife: “Do you think that these fools have the solution? I know them well. They are only concerned with one thing. Which is how to Maintaining their positions. In this they are geniuses, but in anything less than that they do not understand anything.”

She replied: “They must realize that if conditions continue to deteriorate in this way, they will not maintain the positions they are keen on.”

Oedipus says: “They do not understand anything and there is no benefit to be expected from them.”

She replied without hesitation: “It may be, but you have no one to discuss state matters with except them.”

Oedipus reveals them further when he says to them in defiance: “I have been sitting on the throne for a long time and listening to your nonsense. You have antagonized the people against me with your failed policies, and you have incited the anger of the masses with your scandalous thefts, and now you want to blame me?”

As for the President of the Senate, his situation is revealed by the narrator when he describes him as “a cunning fox who does not reveal what he is hiding.”

Revealing conversations

This simulation takes us to an area that may reveal an aspect of what happened in our time, which Oedipus tells us when he says in response to “Tobias” after telling him that the rule after him will fall to “Creon”: “So you have arranged everything. Have you not realized that the masses detest you all?” .. “Tobias” replies: “Do not forget, Oedipus, that the council that today demands that you abdicate the throne is the one that seated you on it.”

Here Oedipus asks: “What does this mean? Is it a threat to depose me?”

Tobias replies: “It is a reminder of history.”

This is a revealing dialogue, the voice of which is not hidden in a bygone history. Rather, some people heard it in our time, inside closed rooms, and then it moved in a whisper outside them, reaching circles that were close to the institutions of power, and the circles expanded, to the point that today this conflict is no longer hidden from many. The silence that accompanied the transfer of power led the huge masses to think that this was the moment when the success of the revolution was announced.

In his confrontation with Creon, Oedipus says to him in response to his accusation of causing the kingdom’s suffering, and his demand that he carry out the gods’ order to abdicate power: “It is a conspiracy to seize power. The matter has now become clear as the sun. You have been coveting the throne for a long time. They have always warned me about you.” "But I didn't care about that. The conspiracy has now been exposed. You want to usurp the throne."

While in other places he describes those who ousted him as “traitors,” and describes the revolution as a “despicable conspiracy.”

While it is a “revolution that was conspired against,” as I always say, Salmawi agrees with me when he talks about his novel, or as he is known, about his bias towards the revolutionaries and his sympathy for them, while the text of his novel looked at the revolution as an extended act that fades and flourishes, fades and floats, and it must not Believing in its end unless the goals it aspires to are achieved, and if many obstacles are thrown in its way from the forces opposing it.

In the novel, he plays the role of the herald of the revolution, Tiresias, the blind old man, who more than once entered into revealing conversations with Oedipus after he brought him to him bound with iron chains. He walks through the streets of Thebes shouting: “O kings of tyranny, power is fleeting, and kingship does not last.” O dwellers of palaces, do not be seized by the arrogance of power, for the punishment of the gods is inevitably coming.”

As for the youth of the revolution, they are represented by the boy “Petro” and the girl “Hypatia.” They take to the street to incite the masses to anger. The young man is arrested and the girl waits for him and continues what he started, like a professional photographer who captures with his camera the scenes of the revolution in its full force.

These two characters embody a lot about the role of youth in what happened, but in the text they seem more aware than many of the youth who revolted in reality, and perhaps the writer wanted to use them as a mask to convey to us his awareness of the meaning of the revolution that was not completed.

Little harvest

When the people rejoice in forcing Oedipus to leave, and the girl rejoices in completing the film that was filmed about the revolution, he says: “The joy of the people in the streets when Oedipus descends from the throne gave me the ending that I was looking for to complete the film. But the revolution will not be complete unless the new state that we dream of is established.” “A modern democratic state that does not depend on superstitious myths, nor is it based on the fatalism of the desires of the gods.”

But the novel, which was characterized by a smooth style, also alludes to the reasons for the faltering of the revolution when it ends, while Oedipus has not lost his strength, which symbolizes here that the regime on which the revolution was based retains many of the playing cards, as the guard who accompanies him on the plane “gives him a military salute.” When this guard asks permission to help him get down, he rebukes him, makes him tremble, takes refuge in silence, and then runs away from him.

As for the harvest of the revolution, it seems a little small compared to the winged dreams that flew by masses who flooded the streets, including those who had disputed politics, such as the owner of the studio, “Leon,” and compared to the effort made by all of these people in order to change the situation for the better, as success was only that. He is an isolated individual, achieved by some, and represented in the novel by the success of the boy and girl in snatching a prize from the Amsterdam Documentary Film Festival, and then the love that arose between them during the days of anger was crowned with marriage.

The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of Al Jazeera.