Protests against Hosni Mubarak fracture friendships in Egypt

Their friendship is falling apart amid a nation’s revolt.

Tarek Bahaa and Islam Badawi have known each other for years. They attended university together, shared the aspirations and burdens of those born into a country that snips dreams quickly. Both became engineers. They lingered through late nights in cafes, talking about imagined wives and soccer.

Nothing has strained their relationship more than the daily protests against President Hosni Mubarak. Born into the president’s repressive 30-year-rule, Bahaa and Badawi had imagined no other leader beyond Mubarak’s emblazoned, looming image. But now each is forced to march for change or linger passively at the edges.

“I was called a coward by many of my close friends,” said Bahaa, 27, who has refused to join demonstrations. “They said I’m irresponsible and don’t have the guts to join those protesting in Tahrir Square. They blame me for not playing my part in Egypt’s history.”

Badawi, 26, a big man with short-cropped curly hair, wants Mubarak and his ruling party tycoons swept aside immediately. He can’t tolerate anyone who believes otherwise.

“I’ve reached a point where I don’t even want to speak to at least two of my best friends,” said Badawi, referring to Bahaa and another man. “We’ve never had a bust-up like this before. This is big. What they think of the current events — the twists and naivety of their logic — is just too much to take. We’ve known each other for a long time but this is revealing things about their characters I never suspected.”

There is shrinking ground on which to stand. Every day is greeted by waving flags and songs of revolution that swell above Tahrir Square. Secret police yank protesters into holding cells; state television promises order and the temptation of normalcy. The battle over the future is loud and fractious, but the most stinging debates unwind in intimate conversations among friends.

They are tiny dramas that mirror and affect the larger struggle between the supporters of a besieged president and those who want to bring him down. The balance, at times, shifts hourly with the pro-Mubarak camp gaining political ground only to be rattled by a surge of protesters challenging tanks and razor wire.

There is yet no winner.

It’s as if a nation and its people, stifled by three decades of one-party dominance, are asking: Who are we?

The answers draw recrimination and surprise, especially among the educated middle class that for years preferred aloofness and suspicion when it came to politics. Young professionals such as Bahaa and Badawi concentrated on jobs, bank accounts and wedding dowries. But it was their generation — one that shifted from dreams of escape to anger — that spurred the unrest now engulfing Egyptians of all ages and classes.

The cost has been high. Human Rights Watch reports that at least 300 people have died since the unrest broke out Jan. 25.

Many Egyptians say the protests have achieved their goals of forcing the government to agree to constitutional reform and Mubarak to promise his exit from power by autumn. They want the demonstrators to reel in their banners, break camp and return home. Others argue that the government is playing a game of deception in hope that the uprising will fade from the world’s consciousness.

Acrimony and insults have seeped across cyberspace in screeds and political manifestos. Friends have “un-friended” friends on Facebook. Internet social networks steam with missives, both petty and passionate, that are adding restiveness to Cairo’s chaotic nature. Even Vice President Omar Suleiman has warned of the “dark bats of the night” emerging to terrorize people.

“I am missing normal life,” said Sameh Swedan, a dentist from a well-to-do family and a friend of Bahaa and Badawi. “What I hate is that the pro-Mubarak supporters only speak to each other and anti-Mubarak people do the same. I don’t want to lose a close friend because of this. I’ve decided to avoid everyone for now so no one will blame me in the future for preferring one side to the other.”

The normal life that Swedan longs for— sitting in a cafe with a water pipe and silver trays of sugared teas — has been eclipsed. He and others are unsure of how to blend the personal and the political into an identity that moves beyond Mubarak’s grip or justifies the status quo for the sake of stability.

“I sympathize with protesters but I don’t want to take any part of their demonstrations,” said Bahaa. “But today it’s like my friends and I haven’t known each other for years. It’s as if we’re all being reborn and judged only according to the sides we take in this crisis.”

Among demonstrators, Badawi finds the ideals and camaraderie he no longer finds in Bahaa. He refers to Bahaa and other friends as “some guys,” as though they were if strangers or irritating acquaintances.

“They used to complain on a daily basis of how corrupt this regime is, but now they’re calling for so-called stability and want Mubarak to stay on,” said Badawi. “It’s like they’re pleased to hear the man is fooling them. They’ve started criticizing everyone taking part in the revolution. The way some of my best friends were mocking and sarcastically laughing off efforts of those in Tahrir was really provoking.”

Conspiracy theories spun by state propaganda efforts have deepened fault lines between friends. Protesters have been dubbed stooges of foreign hands out to spoil the country. State television had been mocked by many of Badawi’s friends for years as a corny, parallel universe to the real-life failings of the state. But now, with so much uncertain, they have turned to it for sustenance.

“It was horrible the way they started to believe all sorts of lies that were spread about protesters on Egyptian TV,” said Mustafa Shahin, a demonstrator and friend of Badawi. “If state TV wants to create fantasy to serve its president, our close friends should know better. They should believe me rather than those TV channels, which lost credibility decades ago.”

When he gets home from his office, Swedan yearns for a night at his usual cafe, to hear the banter of his friends amid the clatter of cups, to stay out well past midnight. But curfews and revolution have intruded, and these days it’s often better to be alone.

“Everyone wants me to take a side,” he said. “I really hate it.”

jeffrey.fleishman@latimes.com