Original subtitles

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♪

♪

(television chatter)

I never thought I would find myself filming a story

about the police in my country.

Or that I would get this close to one of them.

(gun cocking)

♪

♪

If the idea of a police force is to protect its citizens,

then something has gone badly wrong in my country.

Years of police brutality made Egyptians fear the state

and taught me to avoid the police at all cost.

I was born the year President Mubarak came into office.

By the time I turned 30,

living in his repressive police state

was all I had ever known.

This strange relationship to authority

played a part in my family upbringing, too.

♪

My father was a criminal investigator.

But he was secretive about his work.

After he died, I learned that his job

was to investigate state corruption,

but I never understood why he kept it hidden from me.

That burning question haunted me for a long time

and left me wanting to uncover this world.

Growing up in a repressive police state

left me and many other Egyptians angry.

♪

(boots marching)

♪

Our anger finally erupted

and spilled into the streets in 2011.

Ironically, it was on National Police Day.

♪

(shouting)

♪

(sirens blaring)

(whistle blowing)

(cannons firing)

During a battle with police near my house,

I saw a protestor crying.

I wasn''t sure if it was from the tear gas

or because of his emotions.

I was shocked to discover

that he was a plainclothes policeman

but fighting on our side.

When he saw my camera,

he told me if the revolution ever failed,

I must never show his face.

(shouting)

As night fell, protestors gained more ground,

forcing the police to retreat to whatever hiding places

they could find.

(banging)

Angry mobs set fire to police stations,

and many policemen shed their uniforms along the way.

What started as a protest against police repression

grew into demonstrations by millions of Egyptians

against the president''s regime

until something incredible happened.

When the police lost power,

President Mubarak lost his shield.

Watching this national father figure fall

was like a toppling of a pharaoh.

For the first time in years, I was hopeful.

Despite the chaos,

maybe my country now would change for the better.

♪

Everything I knew about the deep state was coming undone.

♪

Until the revolution, filming in a police station

was unthinkable.

But now, everything seemed possible.

♪

Walking through a burned-out police station,

I felt like I was in a surreal dream.

These were sights my father could never have imagined.

To me, the plainclothes police had been responsible

for so much of the brutality and corruption we had experienced.

In search of answers, I headed into the street

to track more of them down.

This policeman told me that he too had suffered

from police injustice.

But he disappeared.

Maybe he got scared that he said too much.

A few weeks later, I heard about a demonstration

of low-ranking policemen in front of police headquarters.

These were the very men I was looking for.

They were protesting against their $50 a month salary.

Many were also angry for having been unjustly fired

or court-martialed.

It seemed that no Egyptian was immune to injustice.

At this demonstration, I met a plainclothes cop

called Abu Habiba.

He seemed suspicious of my motives,

so I put away my camera and we just talked.

He told me he had left the police a few years ago

but was called back when the uprising began.

Hinting that he supported the revolution,

I got intrigued.

But it took six months before he was willing to open up,

by which time ex-President Mubarak was on trial.

The most powerful man in Egypt reduced to a prisoner

and accused of ordering the death of his own people.

What''s your statement?

I deny all these charges and accusations categorically.

Most Egyptians watched Mubarak''s trial with gratification.

For Abu Habiba,

it meant that he now felt free to talk.

Abu Habiba invited me to his hometown.

To get there, I joined him

in one of his long train rides home.

I was the only civilian in this special carriage

reserved for the police.

I wondered how my father would have reacted

to my growing involvement with the police.

Would he have been angry or proud?

♪

♪

(speaking foreign language)

Watching Abu Habiba with his children,

I almost forgot the kind of policeman he might be.

♪

Before the revolution,

such words could have got us both arrested,

or even worse.

And the risks were ever present for both of us.

On my way back home, I kept imagining the terrible places

where such interrogations took place and wondered

if he had just been a witness or if he had taken part as well.

♪

And why was he confiding in me?

Was he looking to redeem himself?

Or was he trying to exonerate himself from any involvement?

I couldn''t be sure of his motives.

Abu Habiba told me that left the police several years ago

for moral reasons.

♪

I wanted to believe him.

(motorcycle purring)

♪

If the revolution could inspire a man like him

to go back to the force knowing how bad the system could be,

then there must be hope for both of us.

♪

Abu Habiba wanted the revolution to succeed,

but he also wanted to remain a cop.

Was it possible to have it both ways?

♪

His words reminded me of that secret world

my father belonged to.

A world that I had often dreamt of uncovering.

If he were still alive, my father would surely have wanted

Abu Habiba put in jail.

But things weren''t so black and white for me.

He seemed to have a heavy conscience,

so I decided not to judge him.

♪

♪

In the following months, there were revenge attacks

on the police.

Because of this, they avoided interacting with civilians.

For the first time, they were truly afraid.

I wanted to meet Abu Habiba''s police unit.

To fit in better with them,

I cut my hair short and grew a moustache.

To my surprise, I didn''t find his unit patrolling the streets.

Instead, they were guarding public buildings

on night shifts.

(train rattling)

Even in plain clothes,

people recognized Abu Habiba was a cop.

And although he was defending the revolution,

they were quick to disrespect him.

(knuckles cracking)

(rooster crowing)

(phone ringing)

(yelling in foreign language)

I wondered what his daughter understood

about her father''s world.

As a child, I had always been shielded from that world.

I almost felt envious of how close she was with her dad.

Abu Habiba''s unit was still on the night shift.

Not much had changed for them, it seemed.

(laughing)

Although the security forces were told to stay away,

Abu Habiba went to Tahrir Square anyway.

I guess he was checking on the progress of the revolution,

to see if there was a place for him in the new Egypt.

For years, the Muslim Brotherhood had been

the main opposition to both Mubarak and the police.

It was well known that they had been brutalized

at the hands of the state in the past.

Now, they were everywhere.

♪

Abu Habiba appeared more and more disillusioned.

He looked out of place.

I shared his sentiments.

The face of the revolution was changing before our eyes

into something unexpected.

(train rumbling)

♪

♪

Over the next few months,

the political situation continued to evolve,

and the Muslim Brotherhood got stronger and stronger.

I wondered how these men would rule the country

if given the chance.

♪

♪

(fire crackling)

(embers hiss)

(dog barking)

(horns honking)

It soon became clear that the main candidates for the election

would come either from the Muslim Brotherhood

or from the military side,

represented by Mubarak''s former prime minister.

This was our first fully democratic election

and our only choice was between these two extremes.

I voted for neither.

(train rattling)

I was surprised he considered supporting Morsi for president,

especially since the police and the Brotherhood

had been at odds for years.

But he seemed ready to back whoever he thought might win,

even if that meant forcing himself to do it.

♪

♪

When the Muslim Brotherhood won, I cried.

They were a religious party holding dogmatic beliefs

that I had nothing in common with.

Is this what so many had fought and died for?

♪

Did people really believe an Islamist group was the answer?

Liberals like me lost out.

The Brotherhood had hijacked the revolution

but behaved as if they represented it.

♪

(train rumbling)

♪

Abu Habiba and I shared the belief

that the Brotherhood was just in it for themselves.

Neither of us were optimistic.

♪

(wood splintering)

(fire crackling)

(sports chatter on TV)

His last words lingered in my thoughts.

Four more years.

♪

Abu Habiba''s hopes for change seemed to be vanishing.

(dogs barking)

(whistle blowing)

(cannon fire)

Within a year, the Muslim Brotherhood had not only failed,

but had become the new oppressor.

♪

A breakdown of law and order soon followed,

and people went back out into the streets to protest.

♪

(clapping and yelling)

Egyptians were giving up their hard won freedom

for a return to an old-style regime.

It seemed that the nation needed a new father figure.

(helicopter blades whirring)

♪

The police returned in full force

and everyone cheered them on.

The same police they had chased from the streets

three years ago.

♪

Had people forgotten how they had suffered

at the hands of the police in the past?

♪

I could always tell when something was weighing heavily

on my father''s conscience.

Watching this scene, I wondered what side he would have chosen.

♪

Abu Habiba was still with the police,

but I sense that the window that had opened between us

was about to slam shut.

♪

I ask him to meet in Cairo one last time.

♪

(wind ruffling leaves)

♪

When we first met,

he told me that he had left the police for moral reasons.

Now I understood what he meant,

that he had quit his job because he had been mistreated

by a superior officer.

♪

Abu Habiba contradicted himself

as if he were erasing the words he said three years ago.

♪

But like other Egyptians,

he ultimately embraced military rule

as a way to feel secure and to survive.

♪

The system that he was now standing for

hadn''t just crushed the people,

it has crushed him as well.

For a while, we were allies.

Now he may no longer be an ally,

but neither is he my enemy.

Not anymore.

Maybe you have to lose a part of yourself

and give up some of your beliefs

in order to exist in such a country.

♪

My father was a principled man.

But his fight against corruption

was a battle that couldn''t be won by one man alone.

♪

That constant struggle eventually took a toll

on his health and he died young because of it.

♪

After all these years,

I understand why he kept his way of life secret from me.

Because throughout, I had to keep my journey with Abu Habiba

secret from my family, too.

♪

♪

Nothing has turned out as I expected

and this is not the ending I had hoped for.

♪

But If I could have, I would have written

a different narrative for my country.

♪

♪