That was in May 2003 when I received a letter from the office of the President of the Republic asking me to come to a building next to the Federal Palace in Heliopolis (Heliopolis), similar to an official summons.
I was anxious and nervous at first from the summons, and hesitated to go.
I was working as a junior researcher at the technical office of the former Minister of Foreign Trade, Youssef Boutros Ghali, and I thought for a while that the summons belonged to my work in the ministry or something like that.
While I was sitting I noticed 4 other young men close to me in age, and they seemed to have a bird on their heads;
Anxiety and tension increased from this summon, making us feel as if we were preparing for an adventure with untold consequences.
I had also embarked on research cooperation with the "International Politics" magazine, in which I published a study on the effects of the American invasion of Iraq, which took place approximately two months before that date;
I said that the summon may be for the purpose of discussing what was mentioned in the study, especially since it had met with the approval of many researchers and writers at that time.
All the possibilities and reasons crept into my mind of the President of the Republic's office called me, including my work at Cairo University, which lasted 4 years between 1996-2000, or because of my travel to Saudi Arabia to work as a journalist for Al-Watan newspaper, which was then under establishment, in August of In 2000, and my return after 3 weeks after my resignation, I submitted an objection to the way the newspaper's editor-in-chief treated me.
In any case, I arrived at the destination on time.
It was a building closer to a military facility (I later learned that it was one of the palaces used by the late President Gamal Abdel Nasser), and everyone moves in it with calculation and caution, and passers-by do not talk to each other.
After they searched me strictly at the entrance gate, and confirmed my identity through a member of the Military Police who was standing at the outside door of the place, one of the soldiers took me to an interior building that appears to have been built from the outside as the smell of new paint smells in the place, and the glass panels are reflected Bright external sunlight.
I arrived at a guest hall inside the building where my companions asked me to wait.
While I was sitting I noticed 4 other young men close to me in age, and they seemed to have a bird on their heads;
Anxiety and tension increased from this summon, making us feel as if we were preparing for an adventure with untold consequences.
After a period of silence, I chose to open my speech with them, only to discover within minutes that they had reached the same letter of summons that did.
Among these young men were two who worked as teaching assistants in the libraries department of two Egyptian universities, and two others were colleagues working in the research field, and also graduates of my college and university (Faculty of Economics and Political Science, Cairo University).
Minutes later, someone escorted us to the office of a retired army general who had left the service and joined the research field, especially military and security research.
His Excellency Major General welcomed us, and we were anxious and anxious until he said that we had been called to work on a "large national research project", and that we were chosen from a large group of young researchers, after making the necessary security and intelligence investigations about us, in order to accomplish This is a great national mission.
And he said it proudly in the manner of actor Youssef Shaaban (Major General Mohsen Mumtaz) with actor Mahmoud Abdel Aziz in the famous series "Raafat Al Hajjan", and we were only missing to hear the soundtrack of the series in the background.
Then he went into details, saying, “You will document the contemporary history of Egypt since the revolution (coup) of 1952 until now” (that was in 2003), and “this great national project will begin with the history of the period of President Mubarak’s rule since he was Vice President Sadat. In the mid seventies. "
At a time when colleagues were enthusiastic about the project and considered it a professional, and perhaps political, shift by virtue of the fact that the work belongs to the Office of the Presidency of the Republic, I was concerned about the project as a whole, and I felt that there is something behind it that goes beyond what the Major General said about the "great national research project."
My suspicion did not last long. When we met with the Major General the second time, he went into the details of the "project," saying, "We want you to document President Mubarak's foreign trips by going back to the official newspaper clippings (Al-Ahram, Al-Akhbar and Al-Gomhoria) that are archived and archived on thousands of slides of microfilm."
At the time, my suspicions were true that the "great patriotic project" was nothing but a "funkoush", in the manner of Adel Imam in the movie "Al Fankoush", and it had nothing to do with patriotism from near or far.
Whereas colleagues were ecstatic in the prestige and social status that their work in the office of the President of the Republic could bestow upon them, despite the fact that the Major General had affirmed - in his first meeting with him - that the issue should remain secret and that no one should know the nature of the "great national project" that will be We are working on it, but I have decided not to participate in this Venecian farce.
Therefore, in the second meeting to take over the work, which was this time in the Abdeen Palace, with another retired army brigade, and while the rest of my colleagues were busy signing work papers, I asked to speak with the Major General alone, and I told him, "Excuse the Major General, but I will not sign These papers, and I will not receive the work. "
The man was surprised by what I said, and he asked, astonished and condemned, “Why?”. After gathering all I could from strength and composure, I said, “Frankly, I did not learn all these years to prepare in the end an archive of Hosni Mubarak!”
My words fell to the Major General as if they were a "cold shower" on a winter night, and he only responded with one word, "with your comfort!"
I left Abdeen Palace with my feet racing against the wind, as if I was running from a large prison towards the Gate of Freedom, and that was the first and last time that I entered Abdeen Palace, and the conversation has the rest.