Telling the Stories of Martyrs: The Cases of the Egyptian and Lithuanian Revolutions

Heroic acts, sacrifices and martyrdom are a few symbols of nationalistic movements and sources of the collective identity in recent history. The heroic acts of martyrs are recounted and recited repeatedly within communities, and their representations become a strong element in nationalistic narratives. The martyrs of the January Events in 1991 in Lithuania became crucial symbols in the official revolutionary narrative after the reestablishment of the state. Their role of “national hero” was established through honours given to them after their deaths, multiple memorials, and naming streets after them. Similarly, the role of shahid [martyr] is prominent in the narratives of the 25th of January revolution in Egypt. These deaths and their commemoration became both a cause generating societal outrage towards the regime and an inspirational example of revolutionary acts. Tributes to the martyrs are still being paid in a variety of revolutionary mediums, from poetry to graffiti.This article explores how stories of martyrs in both revolutions were constructed to gain the greatest appeal, what forms they took, and how they were propagated through various means of communication. Analysing examples from each revolution, it examines the stories of a few martyrs that had to challenge arguments contradicting them, and how eventually, they were absorbed into dominating revolutionary meta-narratives.A few months after the Egyptian Revolution, in February 2011 (https://tahrirmonologues.wordpress.com/), a popular storytelling theatre project Tahrir Monologues was performed. It aimed to preserve the memory of the revolution, as it was kept in numerous urban stories retold in Cairo coffee shops, accurately crafted to spin the revolutionary remembrance, which was already starting to fade. One particular story was told by the Egyptian activist Sally Zohny. She was sharing a story about dozens of condolences she and her family had received after she was mistaken for Sally Zahran, the famous Egyptian martyr. She finished her performative fragment with touching phrases referring to the fragility of life and the higher cause of revolution and concluded with the already renowned phrase “I could have been Sally Zahran”. In the following days, a YouTube video of the performance reached high popularity on the internet, when it was widely shared among the Egyptian and foreign activists on social media. Its key phrase “I could have been Sally Zahran” and its slight variation “I wish I could have been Sally Zahran” accompanied the video as a Facebook or Twitter post (see the full video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKbzQTQtZww). Both the performance and its popularity in social media demonstrate what a central role martyrs’ stories played during the revolution, and how they became the “faces” of the revolution, objects of empathy and sources of collective identity. Moreover, it shows a significant shift in traditional martyrs’ mythologies: from state or elite constructed national heroes to rather mundane figures, created by popular narratives, who have sacrificed their life for a greater good. The “new martyrs” are every-day people; the “unwilling victims” randomly struck by “the cruel fist of the regime”. During the revolutionary and post-revolutionary period many people via different media, from Facebook to theatre, expressed their solidarity by empathizing and identifying themselves with the martyrs, demonstrating that they were ready actually or symbolically to take their place. Many “wanted to be Sally Zahran”.