The aged judge lifted his sagging face and stared out through the camera at the millions of viewers. A faint tremor moved his lips—And the winner of the 2014 presidential elections is…—then he glanced down at his page for an instant and everyone held their breath, but just then the electricity cut out countrywide

The aged judge lifted his sagging face and stared out through the camera at the millions of viewers. A faint tremor moved his lips—And the winner of the 2014 presidential elections is…—then he glanced down at his page for an instant and everyone held their breath, but just then the electricity cut out countrywide

The latest flat-screen televisions went dark without warning, older sets gave off a sudden glow then faded. The very oldest, far out in the countryside, in the forgotten depths of the slums, displayed a thin line of light across the centre of the screens bisected by a wavering circle like a flared match, then, like their modern brethren, they too died out.

This climactic cut, or rather this climax to the electrical blackouts of recent months, extended the length and breadth of the land, not a street or alley or village neglected, not a device or desk or streetlamp let alone—though the people, wherever they might be, didn’t know this. Everyone assumed it must be their street’s turn and the calls soon started to see what was going on. But all the numbers were out of service, because the signal boosting towers were down, the mobile networks were off, the WiFi in offices and restaurants and malls had cut out with the electricity supply, browser pages were frozen on computer screens, mobile phone displays showed no reception and USB Internet plug-ins were just scrap plastic hanging off the side of laptops. The land-lines’ copper wiring still worked, but no one answering their home phone could see a thing: they lifted the ancient, dusty receivers and answered in the negative, staring at the darkened screens.

The electricity had also cut out in the hall where the results were being announced. The locked room went dark and the vast official microphone, the only one the government had permitted on the platform, went quiet. In the sudden gloom those present could just make out the judge’s lips moving, shaping a name whose sound never reached them, and because both candidates names were dominated by “y” sounds, everyone interpreted this utterance as they saw fit. Seconds later, thanks to a generator, light and sound were restored and the judge re-read the result for broadcast, but the result could not leave the room: television signals and phone calls evaporated into a void without broadcast towers and networks, and those signals that the satellites picked up could not be beamed back down into a country whose screens had all gone dark and where repeated blackouts ensured that the majority of electricity generators were out of fuel. Excited, eager, the attendees swarmed out of the results hall, only to encounter first the darkened streets, then the pedestrians’ utter ignorance of the judge’s pronouncement.

The darkness lasted four days. People spent the nights around fires and street corners, swapping accounts of the election’s outcome, accounts that varied according to the disputants’ region or city of origin, their political affiliations and their age and aspirations. Some pulled out old radio sets and began gnawing at the crystals to get them working, hoping to pick up a foreign broadcast. In defiance of management, hospital workers diverted electricity from their almost exhausted generators to run television sets, but with the channels’ transmitters down, all they got was interference. They found old aerials, but the lack of electricity extended even to Maspero’s vast hulk on the Corniche and almost all the local stations’ signals had fizzled into nothing. A few bright sparks stopped by the newspapers’ headquarters to get the news direct. They stood with journalists alongside the vast and silent printers and spools of unmarked paper, and though they got the right information, it somehow got muddled up in the distance between the newspaper building and their various homes and neighbourhoods.

 At 7 pm on the fourth day the electricity returned and all the screens in every home in the land suddenly came on to reveal… one of the presidential candidates smilingly receiving a guest from some Asian state and at the bottom of the screen the words, The president welcomes… Silence reigned for a brief moment, then everyone looked down to follow the tickertape, hoping to see the result. Compressed phrases followed one after the other: weather… sport… politics… The president welcomes… bids farewell… announces… and naturally, nothing about the result: that was four days ago.

 By great good fortune (and most exceptionally), that very night the television aired an old report covering the president’s victory—the total number of valid and spoiled ballots cast and the percentage taken by each candidate—and yet despite this official announcement, the report seemed more like a lie than anything. People couldn’t forget that they hadn’t seen it live, the moment the result was declared, and despite the loser’s acceptance of the result and the fact that the Internet was back up and the world’s recognition of the result confirmed, millions of voters on both sides could not shake the feeling that they were victims of a deception.