Wael Ghonim is talkative and confident, just like many in the new generation of Arabs who are out to change their world — and prosper in it — by way of technology. He once pointed out that Norway, so much smaller than the Middle East in population, had more indigenous language content on the Web. There was so much room to grow. “We live in a digital age, and it is important that the Arab world takes advantage of this new medium,” Ghonim told an Abu Dhabi paper.
I met him briefly on a couple of occasions in Dubai, where the expatriate Egyptian lived and worked as Google’s head of marketing for the Middle East and North Africa. Slim and standing a little more than average height, Ghonim, 30, is typical of the new guard: he speaks English with an American accent but is audibly Arab when he pronounces Arabic words. He is at ease in both worlds.
Ghonim’s friends and family shared their concern over Twitter and other social media to get his name out into cyberspace. And when Ghonim was released, he increased his media profile by giving an emotional interview on Dream TV, one of Egypt’s satellite stations, breaking down in tears during a montage of images of young men killed in the protests. He said, “I want to say to every mother and every father that lost his child, I am sorry, but this is not our fault. I swear to God, this is not our fault. It is the fault of everyone who was holding on to power greedily and would not let it go.” Then, clearly overcome with emotion, he said, “I want to leave,” and walked off the set.
The next day, many people in Tahrir Square said they had been motivated by the footage to show up to the protest. The epicenter of the uprising had suffered a slackening of dissent, as the focus of the political events shifted to meetings behind closed doors. Ghonim appeared in Tahrir that day as well, and was met with a thunderous greeting. Among the thousands of people who had never been to a protest before was Fatma Gaber, 16, who had finally persuaded her parents to let her go. “When I saw Wael Ghonim [on television],” she says, “I really got affected by his words and understood that a lot of people suffered in this revolution. I really wanted to be part of it and support it. I wanted to join for Egypt, because I didn’t want the people who had died, and the ones who had protested every day, to pay the price alone for what all Egyptians would benefit from.”
But even as he grows increasingly popular and mediagenic, Ghonim has pleaded that he should not be portrayed as the hero of the movement. “I ask you, really, please don’t turn me into a hero,” he said during his TV interview. “I am not a hero, O.K.? I am not a hero. I am a very ordinary person. The heroes are the ones in the street.”
He took time to tweet thanks to “@Google for all the efforts you did in ‘searching’ for me. Today ‘I’m feeling lucky’ that I work for this company.” Through the technology he so fervently embraces, Ghonim has become for many the archetype of the future of leadership in the Arab world: educated, savvy and entrepreneurial. Says Tuqan back in Dubai: “He really does represent what’s best in all of us.”
— With reporting by Rami Aysha / Beirut and Yasmine El Rashidi / Cairo
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