The Egyptian writer Alaa al-Aswani has a penchant for time travel.
In "Beit Jacobian" he returned to an old colonial building in the 1990s and to the class gaps from which the Arab Spring was created.
In "The Car Club", which came out after the overthrow of Mubarak, he jumped into the twilight of the ruling triangle of the monarchy, the British mandate and the Al-Wafed party of the 1940s.
In the novel "Republic as if", which was recently translated into Hebrew, the writer returned to the great hope of the overthrow of Mubarak at the beginning of the previous decade, a protest in which he himself took an active part.
Behind the mask of the past, Al-Aswani enjoys the illusion of immunity from the government.
It is difficult to say this about other democracy seekers in the country, who do not enjoy the iron aura of international prestige.
Arab reports recently announced that dozens of citizens who planned to hold a demonstration on November 11 were arrested by the authorities.
It is doubtful whether their fate will become an embarrassment that will cloud Cairo's relations with the West.
Similar to his previous books, the intimate relationships between the characters are al-Aswani's great metaphor for the power struggles in the land of the Nile.
In "Beit Jacobian", the rich journalist who pretends to be the "Sugar Daddy" of a poor guard, taught how Arab socialism castrates precisely the disadvantaged in society.
The subsidies for bread and basic products have burdened the state budget for years, but also block personal development through the growth of small and independent businesses.
Alaa al-Aswani.
illusion of immunity,
In "The Car Club", the romance between the young and muscular Mahmoud Hamam and Rosa, an English woman in her 60s, reveals a touch of the interdependence between Egypt and the West.
One, despite its young population, is ready to sell its rights to the highest bidder.
The second - old and free, but needs resources and working hands to oil the wheels of the economy.
Dependence that was fertile ground for a dictatorship that came to power under the auspices of the struggle against colonialism.
Hope and despair
If in his previous books Al-Aswani dug into the roots of the revolution, in his new book he tries to understand what went wrong.
In the two main relationships in "Republic as if" lies an explanation of hope and despair.
Ashraf the Coptic's relationship with the Muslim maid grows into a love story against all odds.
She becomes a partner for whom he is ready to confront his wife, a metaphor for the change that is taking place in Egypt after all: the power relations are still unequal, but like the maid - the citizen abandoned his traditional clothes, and managed to climb another step up the pyramid.
On the other hand, there is the romance between the promising teacher Asmaa and the factory worker.
The relationship builds through the exchange of emails, as befits the digital generation, but also during the demonstrations in Tahrir Square.
On top of their story, Al-Aswani comes out against those who abandoned the protest.
To his credit, he pours empathy into the choices of the heroes who are trampled to the ground, leaving room for the embers of resistance - until the next explosion in Cairo.
Faith as a business
But perhaps the most interesting explanation for the failure of the protest is the symbiotic relationship between political Islam in Egypt and the military establishment.
While the army tries to justify its existence as the last barrier to the Muslim Brotherhood movement, the author describes a "give and take" relationship between the hawks.
The character of General Alwani, thirsty for religious legitimacy, paints the army and the Muslim Brotherhood as two sides of the same torture stake: the political oppression and the social oppression that crush the little citizen.
These and those cynically exploit faith, as a business for anything.
Equally fascinating is the beautiful media woman Noorhan.
Through it, a sharp indictment is leveled against the treacherous nature of the media, and the illusion sold to the leaders of the revolution in Egypt, as if social networks could become a doomsday weapon.
Nourahan becomes a television presenter and senior manager, the one who criticizes the leaders of the revolution every evening and paints them as "traitors and collaborators with Israel".
At the same time, she marries and divorces alternately, supposedly to maintain her modesty.
The cover of the book "Republic as if".,
But Al-Aswani removes the veils of impurity from her, revealing what she really is: a frightened animal in a war of survival.
Her fragility is evident to the reader when a younger presenter arrives at the channel, and tries to meet her new husband (the owners of the network).
Her short dress rings the alarm bells of Nourahan, who realizes that at any moment she might be replaced by a younger woman - just like the television, sweating from exertion in front of the networks.
It seems that the unbearable ease with which the media incites these citizens against others, is Al-Aswani's main answer to the failures of the Arab Spring, which in the last year lost the achievements it recorded in Tunisia and Sudan.
But the dismal state of the media in Egypt is also what leads the writer to channel his criticism into fictional characters, an escape into Egypt's past and a mesmerizing romance.
When there is no democracy and no watchdog - literature remains.
Alaa al-Aswani / republic as if; Western: Broria Horvitz, Kinneret Zamora Dvir Publishing House, 416 pages
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