The bewildered coup-maker seeking consolation at Rabaa al-Adawiya

Tahrir, which had become the symbol of the Arab Spring and, after it, of civil opposition movements all over the world, was officially stolen by the 30 June junta, and has now been turned into the symbol of coup-makers, schemers, axe-men and the status quo.

The Belaam tradition, able to distort God's verses and produce different messages, truly had no difficulty in distorting Tahrir and placing it on the side of the exact opposite struggle. By contrast, for those who truly feel freedom in all its subtleties and dimensions, the name and place of the square matter not at all.

Today, all the squares in Egypt other than Tahrir are overflowing with people shouting their clearest, purest messages of being "against the coup and for democracy." Never before has it been understood in such "clear" terms how important it is for the message to be given "in the clearest and purest way."

In the days approaching 30 June, I remember my conversations with those, among them Arab Spring revolutionaries, who said they would join the demonstrations in Tahrir to warn Morsi. When I said that, as far as I could see, this would not end well and that the course of events was heading toward a counter-revolution in which all the gains of the revolution would be taken back by the old regime, they tried to explain to me that this worry of mine was quite misplaced because the Tahrir action was being held as a warning to pull Morsi onto the democratic line.

Moreover, they said that their most important slogan was "neither Morsi nor a coup," and I explained that this very slogan should be warning enough about the course of events. For in an environment where military tutelage is a de facto situation, we are experienced enough to understand "only a coup" from slogans such as "neither Sharia nor a coup" or even "neither communism nor a coup."

I am trying to watch what kind of feeling the hundreds of thousands of people who filled Tahrir in Egypt, among them genuine opponents of the coup, are in these days. Some have already left the Tahrir coalition and joined Rabia al-Adawiya Square, but in endless remorse and bewilderment. Every evening, group after group of people confess this remorse from the platform of Rabia al-Adawiya Square and announce their joining the "anti-coup front."

If not the leadership stratum of the April 6 or Kefaya movements, then their youth, the Salafis of the Nour Party, some Copts, Generation Y youth and so on... All of them have now, through a very quick and bitter experience, lived the fact that saying "neither Morsi nor a coup" was not protective enough against a coup. They are trying to understand how, in such a short time, the image of Morsi as a "dictator" and "incompetent in government" was created, and how they themselves were convinced of it.

How could Morsi, in less than a year, establish an effective government with the institutions and men of the old regime entirely? Moreover, with those institutions resisting him completely, and their men continuing to scheme in every way to undermine him. The incidents that led to his being called a dictator must have been based on the noise made by one or two men he tried to replace and one or two institutions he tried to touch in order to fix them. The gasoline problem, which appeared suddenly and wore people out in daily life, was solved on the very night of the coup and the people were fed their fill of gasoline. Because it was the coup-makers themselves who had caused the gasoline problem, and today it is on everyone's lips that they created problems of this kind just to justify the coup. That is why a significant part of the people have realized what kind of game they were caught in. But it is too late.

While Morsi, whose repressions they complained of, had not arrested a single journalist in the span of a year, the coup-makers shut down 7 opposition TV channels from the very first day and arrested hundreds of people. While Morsi signed a single temporary decree increasing his powers until the constitution was voted on, the coup-makers abolished the entire constitution and began to issue whatever decrees they pleased every day. It appears from the roadmap that the constitution will be written before the parliamentary elections (and whether those will even take place, or when, is now entirely unknown). So who will write the constitution, and by what authority? The advisory committee for the constitution will, as of now, consist of persons appointed by the coup-makers and not authorized by the people.

Of course, in the meantime, the gains of 25 January, which had almost become a consensus among the people, were completely taken back. The people were told openly, "enough of this dream of revolution." All the institutions and even the men of the Mubarak regime were reinstated in their posts one by one; the old order was restored, strengthened.

What giving credence to the slogan "neither Morsi nor a coup" has brought Egypt to is nothing other than an immoral coup that made fools of those who naively believed in it.

Those who joined the 30 June movement, however, had been asked beforehand, and their answers had been received in person. When we said "this road ends in a coup," those pure, innocent Egyptian youths got sincerely angry, because they had no intention of a coup.

Well, we also know you will not carry out the coup. In any case, you will not be the ones to carry out the coup; those who will exploit your sincerity will carry out the coup, we were saying.

Well, what happened now?

Dear Mustafa Akyol, those youths too thought in just the same way that they were acting of their own will. Morsi was a dictator, and he only had to be warned in order to continue the revolution and develop democracy.

Of course they did not want a coup, but now they are at Rabia al-Adawiya. They are looking for consolation.

As for ours, they have not even understood what kind of thing the coup is that they unintentionally tried to bring about. If they understood, where would they look for consolation?