Egypt rewrites its recent bleak history in Ramadan TV series

Throughout the Muslim month of Ramadan, during which soap operas have their great moment of the year, a series has attracted special attention - and an equal dose of controversy - in Egypt.

The country's president himself, Abdelfatá al Sisi, praised him in his final stretch, and Cairo's iconic Tahrir Square was briefly closed to take a team photo, an honor reserved only for great state occasions.

The series, called

The Election

, represents an unprecedented exercise in the historical review of the fight against terrorism in the country between 2013, coinciding with the Al Sisi coup, and 2020, faithful to the narrative of the regime. The description of the producer, linked to the country's secret services, leaves no room for doubt: "based on real events," the soap opera "reveals the true heroism of the security forces to protect our country from terrorism."

"Our sources for the accuracy [of the series] come from the Ministry of the Interior and the other sources that we have obtained from different trusted entities in Egypt," said Hossam Saleh, the head of operations of the Egyptian Media Group, the conglomerate that owns the producer.

"For the information about the characters, in most cases we met their friends, people and families, and the details come from them," adds Saleh, who points out that the series has taken a year of work and has reached millions of people.

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That the series was one of the main bets of the year is clear from the quality of its production, which contrasts with a Manichean story and narrative, simple and chewed for the general public. The security forces are always ready to sacrifice, they exhibit a heroic attitude, they are intuitive, intelligent, meticulous, they are cold-blooded, and they exude courage and a certain bravado to complete the prototype of masculinity. In front of them are people driven by their personal interest, cowards, liars, manipulators, drug addicts and brainwashed. The main target is the members of the Islamist movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, who appear demonized and as the origin of any extremist group.

The most problematic episode of the production is the one that recounts the massacre of supporters of the deposed President Mohamed Morsi in August 2013, while they were camped out in Cairo's Raba Square. In the series, it is the Muslim Brotherhood who prepare for combat and who open fire on the security forces, who want the eviction to be peaceful and only shoot those who are armed. The Brotherhood, on which the responsibility for everything that happened is weighed, exaggerates the death toll and manipulates videos to hide their weapons, which appear continuously in the series - especially with real images - despite the fact that they actually came to find only a few.

The show's version contrasts with the much sour reconstruction of events by multiple Egyptian and international human rights groups, which documented the deaths of between 800 and 1,000 protesters. Human Rights Watch, for example, considered that the eviction could constitute crimes against humanity because of its widespread and systematic nature and because it probably responded to a previous plan. It has never been investigated.

Other bloody episodes in recent Egyptian history that are chronicled in the series include the assassination of former prosecutor Hisham Barakat in 2015, attacks on Christian targets such as the Church of St. Peter and Paul in Cairo in 2016, the deadliest attack in the recent history of the country in the Al Rawda Mosque of the Sinai in 2017, or assaults on military checkpoints. In no case are distinctions drawn between the episodes, their perpetrators or the targets. All are attributed to the same and unique phenomenon.

A particularly prominent element of the series is the figure of the martyrs of the security forces, who lay down their lives for the homeland, and even their own martyrdom as their destiny. The names and images of dead policemen are remembered at the end of many chapters. Likewise, a special emphasis is placed on disputing religious space from the Muslim Brotherhood through subtle resources, such as agents who pray or read the Qur'an while heading for an operation, and more directly, when officials discuss religious ideas with the alleged terrorists, always with more knowledge of the facts. The production also deals with showing interrogations that take place thanks to the skill of the agents and in which torture is not used, despite the evidence to the contrary.

Finally, the soap opera is in charge of sending a clear message to the audience: despite the achievements, the fight against terrorism - and it goes without saying that, with it, also the extraordinary measures that accompany it - will not stop. Since the attacks against Egypt do not stop or are expected to, in the words of one of the protagonists, "as the country progresses."