CAIRO: Like many Egyptians, the closest I had ever got to the country’s fallen president was when I waited in frustration in gridlocked traffic as his motorcade raced through the streets of Cairo.
On Wednesday, I got a bit closer to the only Egyptian president I have ever known. Hosni Mubarak lay on a hospital bed just meters away, behind bars and in the dock for conspiring to kill protesters during the uprising which ended his 30 years of power in February.
Oddly, this real-life drama opened on a series of television screens propped on the courtroom walls.
Before Mubarak and his sons arrived for their trial, people crammed into the courtroom at a Cairo police academy chatted excitedly, some pointing to television cameras broadcasting the session.
"Did the camera catch me? I think that was me on TV. I want history to show I was here," one policeman told a colleague after spotting himself on the TV screens. "I never thought I would live to see a day like this. No other day can top this."
Then a helicopter appeared on the screens, flying into the barracks compound as it brought Mubarak on the last stage of his journey from a hospital bed to the courtroom cage.
At last our attention turned from the screens to the cage, where defendants in Egyptian criminal trials usually stand. Inside, a metal door opened to let the defendants in.
Mubarak’s son Gamal, who many thought was being groomed for top office, looked into the courtroom, glancing at his watch, arms folded and waiting for a request to step inside.
Far from being bowed, Gamal looked more like he was on the way to another meeting of his father’s now disbanded political party. "That’s Gamal! He is still acting like he is going into a National Democratic Party conference," an onlooker said. Gamal’s brother Alaa followed, avoiding eye contact with the crowd.
But the shock of seeing Mubarak’s two sons in the dock lasted only the few moments until their father entered on the hospital trolley. The courtroom gasped. "That’s the president! There he is!" someone said.
Mubarak, who dyed his hair as he aged in office, still had jet black hair but seemed frailer than in his last appearance before he left Cairo and the presidency behind for the resort of Sharm El-Sheikh.
Stealing Glances
Even the policemen, who were supposed to be watching people in the courtroom, stole glances at Mubarak.
"I’m dizzy. I can’t believe my eyes," said Khaled, an electrician overseeing the court’s sound system.
Mubarak was separated from the crowd not just by the cage bars. His sons, who appeared holding the Quran, seemed to be trying to hide their father from the cameras. Dozens of policemen also blocked the view.
The first day of Mubarak’s trial may have opened a new chapter in Egypt’s transition from decades of dictatorship. Yet, it was a trial that kept much of the "old Egypt" intact.
Although the head of the old Egypt was on trial, overwhelming security inside and outside the courtroom showed that the methods of the police state that kept Mubarak in power for three decades are little changed.
Some lawyers representing victims of the uprising that toppled Mubarak and relatives were denied entry due to a lack of space. Yet I watched hundreds of plain-clothes police fill much of the courthouse.
Only four family members of the victims or 414 plaintiffs involved in the case made it into the courtroom.
With more than 100 lawyers in the room — representing Mubarak, his two sons, the former interior minister and six senior former officers, as well as the plaintiffs — the patience of the judge seemed to run thin.
"What else do you want? Are those your demands? Quickly please," judge Ahmed Refaat said as lawyer after lawyer took to the stand to make requests during the four-hour session.
Finally Refaat set the date for the next session, ended the hearing and Mubarak was wheeled out.
But I was left wondering how long this complex trial would last, just as before I would wonder how long I had to wait for the presidential motorcade to pass.
