Egyptian opposition activists had agreed via the Internet and cell phones to go to Tahrir Square in the heart of the capital at noon on whatever day the offensive started in order to demonstrate against the war.

The U.S. and British embassies are located not far from Tahrir Square, as is the American University.

At the American University, on the morning of Thursday, 20 March, a small number of students were trying to come up with a way to let the others know that the shelling of Baghdad had in fact begun during the early hours of the morning, so as to get them out to demonstrate without waiting for the agreed-upon time.

They decided to set off the fire alarm.

Students and teachers rushed out of their classrooms to see what was going on. News of the war spread. They set off spontaneously for Tahrir Square and occupied it before the government could put its fortifications in place. A little later, the Cairo University students and waves of local citizens poured in. The government had lost control of the situation.

The Egyptian government spends millions of pounds to protect this particular square and only very rarely in recent history have the students of Cairo University been able to get to it, because the security forces close the university’s gates on demonstrators and imprison them inside the campus, making it impossible for them to get out.

The government found that the square had fallen early, and to a threat from an unexpected direction. The students of the American University are mostly children of the ruling class or of the social elite that has the means to pay its fees, and in the estimation of the security apparatus nothing is to be feared from such people. The state went crazy.

Tamim returned from the demonstrations at night and said he expected to be arrested. He spent the night at another house and nothing untoward happened.

He returned the following day.

We became less cautious and he slept at home.

At dawn, five Egyptian security officials forced their way into our house.

Through the partly opened door, the figure of a man in civilian clothes could be seen.

“We want Tamim al-Barghouti and we want to search the house.”

“Who are you?”

“State Security.”

“Where’s your permit?”

“Open the door immediately.”

“I want to see the written permit. This is kidnapping.”

When the first man heard us insist on seeing the permit, he took a step to the right, bringing into our field of vision the man standing directly behind him — a soldier wearing gleaming black body armor that gave him the appearance of a two-meter-tall metal bar and who looked as though he were about to set off for the battle front. His index finger was on the trigger of his weapon. He said nothing. He jerked his body one step to the left and another of his colleagues appeared behind him — a huge leaden twin, who didn’t speak either and whose hand, like his companion’s, was ready for anything.

“There’s no reason to be alarmed. Just a couple of questions. We’ll bring him back to you in an hour or so.”

They’re inviting him for ‘a cup of coffee,’ I told myself.

No matter the differences in terms and methods from one Arab country to another, such people are always gracious when inviting their prey to be their guests and they will always be bringing them back in an hour or so at the most. Men and women have spent decades in the cells of the Arab regimes without ever finishing that damned cup of coffee.

We got the message.

The message of fear or, rather, of intimidation.

In dictatorships, local industry’s finest product — the best made, best packaged, hardest wearing, and most quickly delivered to the home — is fear.

Helpless, Radwa and I would watch them as they took Tamim down the building staircase, their guns pointed at his back.

Thuggish authority is the same, whether Arab or Israeli. Cruelty is cruelty and abuse abuse, whoever the perpetrator.

What hurts most is the lack of a clear legal mechanism for what follows the arrest.

They don’t tell you where they’ve taken him. His place of detention remains unknown to you — such places are many and they are scattered throughout Cairo. All you can do is look through your telephone list for the name of someone influential who may be able to direct you.

As to what happens to him there, it’s no different from what any foreign occupation would do to a citizen who had the miserable luck to fall into the hands of its security forces. Humiliation, slapping, torture with hot and cold water, being hung from the ceiling with your arms behind your head, electric shocks, and sleep deprivation. None of those things may actually be done to him, but fear that they will is used deliberately to bring about the desired effect.

The night before his arrest, we were with Edward Said and his wife Mariam at the house of our friend Huda Guindi in Zamalek. Edward was talking to Tamim about his dissertation, asking him about his professors at Boston University, and telling him what he knew about them.

The following morning, Edward and Mariam were on their way to a resort on the Red Sea coast for a holiday when Edward found out via a phone call from a friend what had happened. He phoned me in the utmost fury.

“What can I do? Tell me how I can help.”

“No one can do anything, Edward. Things will take their course.”

Tamim, who had been given his rights in Palestine, a country he didn’t know, would lose them in Egypt, the only country he knew.

He was born in Cairo to an Egyptian mother and educated at Egyptian schools, from the Happy Home kindergarten to al-Hurriya School, to Cairo University, to the American University in Cairo, where he obtained his master’s degree. On arresting him, along with hundreds of other students, the Egyptian security authorities would treat him as a foreigner and ‘advise’ him to leave the country, unlike the Egyptian students, who typically would spend a few weeks or months in the detention centers, after which they would be released. If a male Egyptian marries a woman from the furthest reaches of Eskimo Land, Egyptian law automatically grants her and her children Egyptian nationality. At the time, this same right was not granted to a female Egyptian who married a non-Egyptian.

Tamim was forced to leave Egypt.

What has stayed with me from this incident was my inability to protect my son.

In Marrakech, Morocco, I was to see with my own eyes the most painful example of a father who couldn’t protect his son. When I was invited to read poetry in a number of Moroccan cities, I was accompanied by Jamal al-Durra, father of the martyred boy Muhammad al-Durra. I arrived at my hotel in Marrakech on time but Jamal al-Durra didn’t come. He didn’t come for two days after that. The Egyptian authorities had prevented his brother, who was coming by land from Gaza to accompany him, from entering Egypt to catch the Moroccan plane, which left from Cairo. Jamal cannot move on his own because his right side is packed full of bullets, some of which surgeons managed to remove and some of which remain in place. After repeated telephone calls, the Egyptian authorities allowed him to travel alone and transported his brother from the border post in the Gaza Strip directly to Cairo Airport, to make sure he didn’t spend a single hour on Egyptian territory. To the Arab regimes, the Palestinian is simply a security file. He is dealt with by the interior ministries, not the foreign ministries, as though to give meaning to the secret motto embraced by the Arab States from the Atlantic to the Gulf: “We love Palestine and hate the Palestinians.” That said, the Rafah crossing point on the Gaza-Egypt border is the ugliest embodiment of the ruthlessness of Egyptian official policy and the cruelty with which the regime treats the ordinary Palestinian citizen.