Egypt: The Drive for RevolutionComes from 'American Grandparents,' Too

After immigrating to the U.S. in the 1950s, these grandparents are fighting “Islamist fascism” from a distance. “This is a unique opportunity for our grandchildren.”

Nelly Fahim is 87, and Mona Hassan-Williams is past 76, but the energy that unites them has little to envy of the protesters’ in Cairo and Alexandria. The difference, however, is that they are based in San Francisco and have created rather original “action groups.” They include Egyptians who immigrated to the U.S. in the ’50s and ’60s and still have many grandchildren in their motherland. They share the desire to push their grandchildren to protest against President Mohammed Morsi with the same determination that was shown against Hosni Mubarak. They use landlines, cell phones, and sometimes emails to deliver messages, from living rooms on the Pacific to streets on the Mediterranean.

“I am telling all my young descendants in Egypt that the revolution started against Mubarak needs to continue against Morsi,” explains Nelly Fahim who is convinced that “for my three grandchildren, this is a unique opportunity to create a better society.” Mona Hassan, married Williams, justifies this commitment “with the need to prevent Islamist fascism from settling in, in Egypt, or allowing Mubarak’s methods to make a comeback, flogging people.” Then, with a bit of disdain, she adds:

“It is enough listening to Morsi to understand that he is not a president: He has a laughable Arabic accent; Nasser’s even fascinated opponents.”

In the Egyptian-born “grandparents club,” created in San Francisco within one of the best integrated Arab-American communities, there are 70-year-old and 80-year-old men and women with American grandchildren who decided to go back to Egypt to take part in the revolution. A specific petition is circulating to support their choice to join the anti-Morsi protests; we are talking about third-generation, Arab-American citizens. The grandparents fled the dictatorship led by the charismatic Nasser, and the parents grew up during the ’70s, almost never returning to Egypt. Yet today the grandchildren make the opposite choice, driven as well by the new technologies that allow them to “know everything about what is happening in our neck of the woods,” as Fahim puts it. For Morsi, who lived in California in the ’70s with his young wife Naglaa Ali Mahmoud, the mobilization of the immigrants with gray hair sounds the alarm on the determination of Arab-Americans, who still feel connected to Egypt.

“The time to back our children hitting the square is now,” assured the two Californian grandmothers in unison, “because since Mubarak was overthrown, the opposition has never been this united.”