Call to prayer in a wheatfield on a windy day: Fayoum, Egypt.
And the fish that was in the river died; and the river stank, and the Egyptians could not drink of the water of the river; and there was blood throughout all the land of Egypt. And Pharaoh hardened his heart at this time also, neither would he let the people go.
February 27, 2011
February 26, 2011
In the Army We Trust
Just returned from Midan Tahrir, where the people's trust in the army remains generally unshaken despite last night's events. Although a couple of the protesters we talked to expressed reservations about the depth of the army's commitment to the revolutionary cause, most were quick to shunt the blame for this most recent altercation elsewhere. One protester told us that the men who cleared the square were State Security officers dressed as soldiers, their faces hidden by masks to conceal their identities, who were sent by the Ministry of the Interior to sow discord between the people and the army. He showed us his heavily bandaged arm, telling us he had suffered broken bones after being flung forcibly from the square; a six-year-old boy, he said, had been trampled to death in the melee. Another eyewitness acknowledged that those responsible had indeed been soldiers, but insisted that they had been acting on orders from the Interior Ministry. Yet another claimed the assailants were common thugs sporting stolen fatigues. "Does this change your opinion of the army?" we asked people again and again. Nearly always, the answer was no.
I'd like to coin a word for "blind love for your army" that would accurately convey what I've seen here.
I'd like to coin a word for "blind love for your army" that would accurately convey what I've seen here.
The Army Chases Protesters from Tahrir
In the first clashes of any significance between the Egyptian military and the protesters since the fall of Mubarak, the army last night used batons and tasers to force a crowd of demonstrators calling for the resignation of the Mubarak-appointed prime minster Ahmed Shafiq from Midan Tahrir shortly after the start of the midnight curfew, according to reports by Al Jazeera, Reuters, and other news agencies. We were in a taxi trying to get home from a bar Downtown and found every street into Tahrir barricaded and a heavy presence of soldiers throughout the surrounding neighborhoods. We were stopped halfway to Garden City at a military checkpoint, where a soldier looked at our IDs and went through my handbag, then let us continue. I guess that's what we get for staying out past curfew.
Then this morning, in an apparent about-face, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a formal apology addressed to the "Youth of the January 25th Revolution" expressing their regrets for what happened last night and reaffirming their commitment to the protesters' cause. The statement, in my rough English translation:
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces assures the Youth of the January 25th Revolution of its wish for the realization of the noble goals of the revolution, and that what happened yesterday during the protests of the Friday of Fulfillment resulted from unintended clashes between the military police and the sons of the revolution, and that it will not and did not issue orders of aggression against the sons of this great people, and that it will take all the precautions in its ability to see to it that this is not repeated in the future.
To pose a question that has been often on people's minds during these past few weeks: what's the military playing at?
Then this morning, in an apparent about-face, the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces issued a formal apology addressed to the "Youth of the January 25th Revolution" expressing their regrets for what happened last night and reaffirming their commitment to the protesters' cause. The statement, in my rough English translation:
The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces assures the Youth of the January 25th Revolution of its wish for the realization of the noble goals of the revolution, and that what happened yesterday during the protests of the Friday of Fulfillment resulted from unintended clashes between the military police and the sons of the revolution, and that it will not and did not issue orders of aggression against the sons of this great people, and that it will take all the precautions in its ability to see to it that this is not repeated in the future.
To pose a question that has been often on people's minds during these past few weeks: what's the military playing at?
February 24, 2011
DAY 6: January 30, 2011
Soft morning light bathed the streets of the city as we made our way through Downtown to meet Chris's translator Seham. At every major intersection, every traffic circle, we came face to face with a tank and its accompanying contingent of soldiers. Many of them, standing half at attention with guns cradled awkwardly, seemed to have no better idea of their purpose there than we did. As we'd been forced to take a more circuitous route than usual to avoid Midan Tahrir, we briefly lost our bearings. I approached a solider who looked younger than I am and politely inquired how to get to Sherif Street, but the fellow, either too shy to talk to a strange girl, or more likely, more foreign to Cairo than we were, mumbled an apology and turned quickly away.
We arrived at Seham's apartment, which had been converted into a makeshift hostel for revolutionary youths resting between stints in Tahrir. No less than four young men were encamped in her tiny living room, watching TV, chewing seeds, and discussing their next plan of action. Seham served us fuul beans and tea on a card table positioned precariously amid the stacks of books crowding every inch of floorspace. Just as we sat down, somebody knocked over the bowl of seeds and they scattered across the carpet, sending her two cats scurrying for cover. As one of the boys started patiently gathering the seeds one by one and returning them to the bowl, a young woman arrived from outside bearing news that the next protest would begin at 2pm that afternoon. The boys mobilized, clearing away the breakfast dishes and making ready to depart.
Chris's editor wanted a story about the informal neighborhood watch groups that had formed to protect their communities from looters since the disappearance of Cairo's police force. Seham led us upstairs to the roof of her building, where perhaps a dozen members of a single extended family lived together in a warren of corrugated iron huts. Several of the men, she said, had been on the street last night fending off would-be thieves, and she was sure they'd be happy to talk to a reporter. Sure enough, within a few minutes we were seated on a carpet-covered bench drinking tea while the men recounted their stories from the previous night. The looters had come on motorcycles, they said, many armed with guns. They'd ransacked a local liquor store and had tried to steal from the shops immediately beside Seham's building, but they had chased them away with clubs and knives. At this point one of the men we were speaking with produced his weapon of choice so we could see it for ourselves: a rusty-looking blade as long as my arm affixed to a wooden handle, a tool that looked like it was intended to cut sugarcane, not for use in hand-to-hand combat. One of the marauders had wielded a bigger knife, he told us, but he had been quicker.
After leaving Seham's, we spent the next few hours at the apartment of one of my classmates whose internet service, which came through a minor provider that had either been overlooked or excluded from the blackout, was miraculously still active. I had just finished answering several days' worth of concerned emails from family and friends back home when the air shook with a sudden explosion of noise from outside, so loud it seemed to set the glasses on the tabletop trembling. I ran to the balcony. Two fighter jets were hurtling through the sky in perfect formation, sketching a long loop around Downtown Cairo. Each time they flew overhead the roar of their engines burst anew like a thunderclap. At every window up and down the street scared faces appeared, looking up and around, trying like I had to identify the source of the noise.
The vegetable souq where we stopped on our way back to Garden City was in chaos. With the planes passing by every two minutes no one could finish a conversation, and with everyone anxious to return home before the start of the curfew in less than half an hour, tempers were quick to flare, and people shoved against each other in their eagerness to hand over their money and depart with their purchases.
Chris's colleague from The National, freshly arrived from Jerusalem via Amman, was waiting for us in Garden City when we got back. A photographer would join them from Abu Dhabi as soon as he could find an airline that would take him to Cairo.
We arrived at Seham's apartment, which had been converted into a makeshift hostel for revolutionary youths resting between stints in Tahrir. No less than four young men were encamped in her tiny living room, watching TV, chewing seeds, and discussing their next plan of action. Seham served us fuul beans and tea on a card table positioned precariously amid the stacks of books crowding every inch of floorspace. Just as we sat down, somebody knocked over the bowl of seeds and they scattered across the carpet, sending her two cats scurrying for cover. As one of the boys started patiently gathering the seeds one by one and returning them to the bowl, a young woman arrived from outside bearing news that the next protest would begin at 2pm that afternoon. The boys mobilized, clearing away the breakfast dishes and making ready to depart.
Chris's editor wanted a story about the informal neighborhood watch groups that had formed to protect their communities from looters since the disappearance of Cairo's police force. Seham led us upstairs to the roof of her building, where perhaps a dozen members of a single extended family lived together in a warren of corrugated iron huts. Several of the men, she said, had been on the street last night fending off would-be thieves, and she was sure they'd be happy to talk to a reporter. Sure enough, within a few minutes we were seated on a carpet-covered bench drinking tea while the men recounted their stories from the previous night. The looters had come on motorcycles, they said, many armed with guns. They'd ransacked a local liquor store and had tried to steal from the shops immediately beside Seham's building, but they had chased them away with clubs and knives. At this point one of the men we were speaking with produced his weapon of choice so we could see it for ourselves: a rusty-looking blade as long as my arm affixed to a wooden handle, a tool that looked like it was intended to cut sugarcane, not for use in hand-to-hand combat. One of the marauders had wielded a bigger knife, he told us, but he had been quicker.
After leaving Seham's, we spent the next few hours at the apartment of one of my classmates whose internet service, which came through a minor provider that had either been overlooked or excluded from the blackout, was miraculously still active. I had just finished answering several days' worth of concerned emails from family and friends back home when the air shook with a sudden explosion of noise from outside, so loud it seemed to set the glasses on the tabletop trembling. I ran to the balcony. Two fighter jets were hurtling through the sky in perfect formation, sketching a long loop around Downtown Cairo. Each time they flew overhead the roar of their engines burst anew like a thunderclap. At every window up and down the street scared faces appeared, looking up and around, trying like I had to identify the source of the noise.
The vegetable souq where we stopped on our way back to Garden City was in chaos. With the planes passing by every two minutes no one could finish a conversation, and with everyone anxious to return home before the start of the curfew in less than half an hour, tempers were quick to flare, and people shoved against each other in their eagerness to hand over their money and depart with their purchases.
Chris's colleague from The National, freshly arrived from Jerusalem via Amman, was waiting for us in Garden City when we got back. A photographer would join them from Abu Dhabi as soon as he could find an airline that would take him to Cairo.
February 21, 2011
Egyptians: Sensibly Violent
I've been wondering how this revolution would have gone down in a society with different attitudes toward violence -- a society more like, for example, the US.
During the past month Egyptians have proved themselves hesitant, by and large, to engage in large-scale violence. Policemen retaliated against the stones thrown at them by protesters with clubs, tear gas, and more stones, but rarely with live bullets. Protesters, likewise, maintained their staunch commitment to peaceful demonstrations, even after pro-government thugs came at them with Molotov cocktails and horses (Yes, horses. And also camels. But only to a limited extent firearms.). Internationally, human rights groups have lauded both sides for their restraint, and indeed, watching the brutal put-downs of pro-democracy movements in Libya and Bahrain over the past few days, one has to agree that the Egyptians negotiated their revolution with astonishingly little bloodshed.
As anyone who has lived here knows, Cairo is refreshingly free of the muggings, robberies, and other acts of random violence that plague so many American cities, especially those acts involving firearms. According to statistics published on GunPolicy.org, a website hosted at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health that promotes a "public health model of firearm injury prevention", there are only 3.5 privately owned guns in Egypt for every 100 civilians, and in an apparent corollary -- although the survey does not address the relationship between gun ownership and murders directly -- the rate of homicides by firearm in Egypt in 2006 (the most recent data provided) was only 0.17 deaths per 100,000 people. In the US, by comparison, private gun ownership by last measurement stood at 88.8 guns per 100 civilians, and during the same year Americans died by gun homicide at a rate of 3.36 people per 100,000 -- a rate almost twenty times higher than Egypt's.
Yet despite their commendable behavior in recent weeks and their statistically low incidence of gun deaths, Egyptians are not non-violent people. Because most of the violence here does not involve weapons and takes place within the private spheres of the family home, the neighborhood, or the classroom -- encompassing fistfights, domestic abuse, corporal punishment, and sexual assault, but rarely outright homicide -- it is little discussed publicly, and almost never witnessed, much less experienced, by foreign observers. But its very secretiveness, far from negating its importance, has allowed it to become arguably more pervasive; unlike gun violence in America, a much-publicized social ill and one that is the object of nationwide preventative campaigns, violence in Egypt is seldom studied or talked about and thus is broadly permitted to continue.
So despite Egypt's lack of the headline-grabbing brand of violence common in the United States, Egyptians are perhaps, if not more violent statistically, more exposed to violence on an everyday level. This, along with ill-enforced safety regulations, low-quality and poorly maintained infrastructure, unreliable emergency response systems, and the generally perilous living conditions of many Egyptians, means that injury and even death are highly visible phenomena throughout Egyptian society. The cripples and amputees on the street are in-your-face reminders of the fragility of the human body, while death, while it certainly doesn't go un-mourned, is viewed as a natural bookend to a life, not a deviation from the proper order of things but wholly part of it.
Americans, if I can generalize, have a less comfortable relationship with these grimmer sides of reality. The thought of our bodies, those exalted temples at whose altars we as a society offer so much in time, effort, and money, being violated by pain or disfigurement is to many of us a terrifying thought. Death is more frightening to us still; this fear drives our obsession with warning labels and traffic laws, informs a folk culture rife with ghost stories on the one hand and tales of magically endowed immortality on the other, and justifies the billions of dollars that the American pharmaceutical and health care industries spend every year in their ongoing struggle to keep us all alive just a little longer.
Americans' attitudes toward violence are, of course, part and parcel with their understanding of injury and death. When violence equals firearms, injuries are severe and death is probable, leading many Americans to fear violence with the same outsize terror they hold for its consequences. Others, in awe of its ability to inflict these worst of all outcomes, fetishize it, claiming its power for themselves imaginatively through video games or practically by keeping guns in their homes. In either case there is an element of mythology involved.
This mythologizing of violence, according to my hypothesis, would inevitably have played a crucial role in the revolution had it been carried out by Americans. Let's picture it this way: those who fear violence would have stayed indoors, prioritizing safety over liberty, while those who fetishize it would have been quick to take to the streets with guns blazing, certain that violence was the only solution; the revolution would have been over before it started, the pro-violence faction going down in a hail of police gunfire while the anti-violence majority watched on TV from the security of their living rooms.
Egyptians, neither afraid of violence nor enamored with it, took neither of these tactics, and thus succeeded where Americans would have failed.
What do you think? If you don't agree, leave me a comment.
During the past month Egyptians have proved themselves hesitant, by and large, to engage in large-scale violence. Policemen retaliated against the stones thrown at them by protesters with clubs, tear gas, and more stones, but rarely with live bullets. Protesters, likewise, maintained their staunch commitment to peaceful demonstrations, even after pro-government thugs came at them with Molotov cocktails and horses (Yes, horses. And also camels. But only to a limited extent firearms.). Internationally, human rights groups have lauded both sides for their restraint, and indeed, watching the brutal put-downs of pro-democracy movements in Libya and Bahrain over the past few days, one has to agree that the Egyptians negotiated their revolution with astonishingly little bloodshed.
As anyone who has lived here knows, Cairo is refreshingly free of the muggings, robberies, and other acts of random violence that plague so many American cities, especially those acts involving firearms. According to statistics published on GunPolicy.org, a website hosted at the University of Sydney's School of Public Health that promotes a "public health model of firearm injury prevention", there are only 3.5 privately owned guns in Egypt for every 100 civilians, and in an apparent corollary -- although the survey does not address the relationship between gun ownership and murders directly -- the rate of homicides by firearm in Egypt in 2006 (the most recent data provided) was only 0.17 deaths per 100,000 people. In the US, by comparison, private gun ownership by last measurement stood at 88.8 guns per 100 civilians, and during the same year Americans died by gun homicide at a rate of 3.36 people per 100,000 -- a rate almost twenty times higher than Egypt's.
Yet despite their commendable behavior in recent weeks and their statistically low incidence of gun deaths, Egyptians are not non-violent people. Because most of the violence here does not involve weapons and takes place within the private spheres of the family home, the neighborhood, or the classroom -- encompassing fistfights, domestic abuse, corporal punishment, and sexual assault, but rarely outright homicide -- it is little discussed publicly, and almost never witnessed, much less experienced, by foreign observers. But its very secretiveness, far from negating its importance, has allowed it to become arguably more pervasive; unlike gun violence in America, a much-publicized social ill and one that is the object of nationwide preventative campaigns, violence in Egypt is seldom studied or talked about and thus is broadly permitted to continue.
So despite Egypt's lack of the headline-grabbing brand of violence common in the United States, Egyptians are perhaps, if not more violent statistically, more exposed to violence on an everyday level. This, along with ill-enforced safety regulations, low-quality and poorly maintained infrastructure, unreliable emergency response systems, and the generally perilous living conditions of many Egyptians, means that injury and even death are highly visible phenomena throughout Egyptian society. The cripples and amputees on the street are in-your-face reminders of the fragility of the human body, while death, while it certainly doesn't go un-mourned, is viewed as a natural bookend to a life, not a deviation from the proper order of things but wholly part of it.
Americans, if I can generalize, have a less comfortable relationship with these grimmer sides of reality. The thought of our bodies, those exalted temples at whose altars we as a society offer so much in time, effort, and money, being violated by pain or disfigurement is to many of us a terrifying thought. Death is more frightening to us still; this fear drives our obsession with warning labels and traffic laws, informs a folk culture rife with ghost stories on the one hand and tales of magically endowed immortality on the other, and justifies the billions of dollars that the American pharmaceutical and health care industries spend every year in their ongoing struggle to keep us all alive just a little longer.
Americans' attitudes toward violence are, of course, part and parcel with their understanding of injury and death. When violence equals firearms, injuries are severe and death is probable, leading many Americans to fear violence with the same outsize terror they hold for its consequences. Others, in awe of its ability to inflict these worst of all outcomes, fetishize it, claiming its power for themselves imaginatively through video games or practically by keeping guns in their homes. In either case there is an element of mythology involved.
This mythologizing of violence, according to my hypothesis, would inevitably have played a crucial role in the revolution had it been carried out by Americans. Let's picture it this way: those who fear violence would have stayed indoors, prioritizing safety over liberty, while those who fetishize it would have been quick to take to the streets with guns blazing, certain that violence was the only solution; the revolution would have been over before it started, the pro-violence faction going down in a hail of police gunfire while the anti-violence majority watched on TV from the security of their living rooms.
Egyptians, neither afraid of violence nor enamored with it, took neither of these tactics, and thus succeeded where Americans would have failed.
What do you think? If you don't agree, leave me a comment.
February 19, 2011
DAY 5: January 29, 2011
A temporary calm, more a sense of exhaustion than of resolution, had descended over the city by morning. Qasr al-Ainy Street looked like it had been hit by a war. Charred skeletons of burned vehicles smoked amid piles of rubble, trash, and broken glass; a gas station halfway to Tahrir had been plundered by protesters, its petrol siphoned out to fuel the fires. The Egyptians seemed as stunned as we were by the transformation that had taken place over night, and like us inspired by a voyeuristic desire to record the wreckage, all of us perhaps seeing ourselves reborn as conflict-zone photographers, documenting disaster for the eyes of those elsewhere.
Tanks squatted at each entrance to Tahrir, many tagged with anti-Mubarak graffiti that echoed the slogans scrawled on every wall and storefront. Down with Mubarak. God is great. Long live the revolution. Soldiers checked our passports, then waved us through.
Inside the square the scene was much the same. The Mugamma, the hulking, labyrinthine edifice at the heart of Egyptian bureaucracy, was untouched, but the manicured lawns around it had been flooded, turning one side of the square into a murky lake whose oil-slick surface bobbed with trash. At the opposite end, flames still licked through the gutted remains of the NDP headquarters, sending a thick plume of smoke overhead that darkened the sky and stung our eyes.
We proceeded cautiously around the central median, taking pictures, trying to understand how we ought to feel about the scene before us. Destruction is sad, even when it's a necessary precursor to the creation of something better.
There was a commotion on the opposite side of the square. We couldn't see what had happened -- had a group of overenthusiastic protesters gotten too close to a tank? -- but suddenly the sky was whistling with bullets. Tear gas exploded right beside us. The crowd panicked, and we were swept in a rush of frantic moving bodies to the edge of the square. We broke free and moved toward a side street at a jog, shielding ourselves first under the awning of the nearby KFC, then beneath the overhangs of a row of papyrus shops and travel agencies. Finally we turned a corner, slowed to a walk, and began the search for an international phone line.
With mobile service and the internet still down, Chris hadn't been in touch with his editors since the previous evening. We tried a string of Downtown hotels, all shabby establishments that cater to backpackers and other less well-heeled travelers with an appetite for their gloomy, faded colonial charm; finally, forty minutes later, we ended up at the Four Seasons, where Chris was able to use the facilities in their business center to contact Abu Dhabi. On our way out, my cell phone rang -- service had been restored, although text messaging would remain unavailable for another week.
We returned to Tahrir, where the mood was as relaxed now as it had been tense two hours earlier, to gather quotes for Chris's latest piece. A group of young girls in headscarves told us they were hopeful that the events of the previous night would show Mubarak how serious Egyptians were about wanting him gone. When I asked them what they thought of the hundreds of soldiers now deployed throughout Downtown Cairo, they expressed absolute confidence that the army would stand by the people no matter what. Personally, the guns, heavily armed tanks, and other signs of military might now visible on every corner made me nervous -- how rapidly could those guns be turned on the people, and with what devastating consequences, was a scenario that would cycle frequently through my imagination in the weeks that followed -- but to the protesters they were a visible pledge of solidarity. One point on which everyone we talked to was adamant, once they learned we were American: this was their revolution, and if America thought her long fingers had any business meddling in it, well, she was very much mistaken.
We returned to the Four Seasons that evening so that Chris could file his story via fax from the business center. At the hotel we ran into two other students from my Arabic program, and while Chris wrote the piece on his laptop, we had drinks at the hotel bar -- $14 cocktails served by black-suited waiters, which we sipped sitting in leather armchairs beside a plate-glass window overlooking the darkening curve of the Nile River. Across the water, an unknown building was smoking. Just below us, knots of people moved along the corniche. Some brandished clubs, and seemed to be headed for another altercation with government forces. Others seemed in a hurry to get home; a lone taxi appeared, and was immediately waylaid by a dozen people clamoring to be let in. In the bar, American jazz played softly, and the waiters pressed us with more complimentary nuts, pretzels, and olives. I overate, as though storing up strength for the days ahead.
 |
| Burned cars on Qasr al-Ainy Street. |
Tanks squatted at each entrance to Tahrir, many tagged with anti-Mubarak graffiti that echoed the slogans scrawled on every wall and storefront. Down with Mubarak. God is great. Long live the revolution. Soldiers checked our passports, then waved us through.
Inside the square the scene was much the same. The Mugamma, the hulking, labyrinthine edifice at the heart of Egyptian bureaucracy, was untouched, but the manicured lawns around it had been flooded, turning one side of the square into a murky lake whose oil-slick surface bobbed with trash. At the opposite end, flames still licked through the gutted remains of the NDP headquarters, sending a thick plume of smoke overhead that darkened the sky and stung our eyes.
 |
| Midan Tahrir: A tank inscribed with anti-Mubarak graffiti; the NDP headquarters smolders in the background. |
We proceeded cautiously around the central median, taking pictures, trying to understand how we ought to feel about the scene before us. Destruction is sad, even when it's a necessary precursor to the creation of something better.
There was a commotion on the opposite side of the square. We couldn't see what had happened -- had a group of overenthusiastic protesters gotten too close to a tank? -- but suddenly the sky was whistling with bullets. Tear gas exploded right beside us. The crowd panicked, and we were swept in a rush of frantic moving bodies to the edge of the square. We broke free and moved toward a side street at a jog, shielding ourselves first under the awning of the nearby KFC, then beneath the overhangs of a row of papyrus shops and travel agencies. Finally we turned a corner, slowed to a walk, and began the search for an international phone line.
With mobile service and the internet still down, Chris hadn't been in touch with his editors since the previous evening. We tried a string of Downtown hotels, all shabby establishments that cater to backpackers and other less well-heeled travelers with an appetite for their gloomy, faded colonial charm; finally, forty minutes later, we ended up at the Four Seasons, where Chris was able to use the facilities in their business center to contact Abu Dhabi. On our way out, my cell phone rang -- service had been restored, although text messaging would remain unavailable for another week.
We returned to Tahrir, where the mood was as relaxed now as it had been tense two hours earlier, to gather quotes for Chris's latest piece. A group of young girls in headscarves told us they were hopeful that the events of the previous night would show Mubarak how serious Egyptians were about wanting him gone. When I asked them what they thought of the hundreds of soldiers now deployed throughout Downtown Cairo, they expressed absolute confidence that the army would stand by the people no matter what. Personally, the guns, heavily armed tanks, and other signs of military might now visible on every corner made me nervous -- how rapidly could those guns be turned on the people, and with what devastating consequences, was a scenario that would cycle frequently through my imagination in the weeks that followed -- but to the protesters they were a visible pledge of solidarity. One point on which everyone we talked to was adamant, once they learned we were American: this was their revolution, and if America thought her long fingers had any business meddling in it, well, she was very much mistaken.
We returned to the Four Seasons that evening so that Chris could file his story via fax from the business center. At the hotel we ran into two other students from my Arabic program, and while Chris wrote the piece on his laptop, we had drinks at the hotel bar -- $14 cocktails served by black-suited waiters, which we sipped sitting in leather armchairs beside a plate-glass window overlooking the darkening curve of the Nile River. Across the water, an unknown building was smoking. Just below us, knots of people moved along the corniche. Some brandished clubs, and seemed to be headed for another altercation with government forces. Others seemed in a hurry to get home; a lone taxi appeared, and was immediately waylaid by a dozen people clamoring to be let in. In the bar, American jazz played softly, and the waiters pressed us with more complimentary nuts, pretzels, and olives. I overate, as though storing up strength for the days ahead.
February 18, 2011
So we don't forget too soon...
...what the power of the people looks like. Especially as the news these days fills with accounts of protesters in other parts of the Middle East being beaten, silenced, disappearing, let's not forget that here, in Egypt, they succeeded. Living proof that such a thing as overthrowing a government really is possible.
Cairo, Feb. 11, 2011
February 17, 2011
Optimism in Cairo
I just got off the phone with an Egyptian friend who told me in no uncertain terms that the revolution will "work", and that Egypt is heading, unequivocally, all sails to the wind, in the right direction. He bases this assessment on what he's heard from his acquaintances among the youth leaders of the so-called January 25 Movement, a group of whom have been meeting with the military government over the last few days and attempting to hash out a way forward for the country that will allow the army to remain as a guarantor of stability during the interim period until the elections later this year but will ensure a peaceful transition of power at that time, and will encourage active civilian participation in the nation's political arena in the meanwhile. My friend himself had spent the day working to promote political awareness among the population of his working-class neighborhood of Shobra, though whether that meant handing out leaflets on the street or going door-to-door with a sign-up sheet I didn't glean.
For us foreigners as well he promised "safety" in the new Egypt -- which is welcome to hear, of course, although I can't say I felt especially endangered in the old one (except as a woman in danger of facing harassment every time she stepped outside...though not to the extent of what happened to poor Lara Logan, not at all; more on that in another post).
Still, optimism is always comforting.
For us foreigners as well he promised "safety" in the new Egypt -- which is welcome to hear, of course, although I can't say I felt especially endangered in the old one (except as a woman in danger of facing harassment every time she stepped outside...though not to the extent of what happened to poor Lara Logan, not at all; more on that in another post).
Still, optimism is always comforting.
February 16, 2011
DAY 4: January 28, 2011
January 28, 2011: a Day of Rage for Egyptians everywhere.
Chris left at 11am to position himself at a critical mosque in Mohandiseen before the start of midday prayers. Shortly after he had gone, the cell phone network went dead across the country. I tried to turn on the TV to see what was happening but couldn't figure out how to work the satellite box. I paced anxiously, unsure what to do, checking my laptop every five minutes to see if by some miracle internet access had been restored. Finally I decided that I would walk over to our former apartment up the street to see if the girl who was living there now had a functional TV.
Within five minutes of being outside, my nose and eyes were streaming; even down here, twenty minutes by foot from Midan Tahrir, the air was acrid with tear gas. I made it to the apartment, where Sarah had the TV tuned to Al Jazeera International, the Qatari-based network's English-language news channel, which was offering live coverage of the events unfolding in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez. In Cairo, they reported, tens of thousands of protesters were clashing with riot police throughout the city's main squares and on its numerous Nile bridges. Similar battles were taking place in Alexandria and Suez, with unconfirmed reports that the police there, unable to repel the protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets alone, had begun pushing them back with live fire.
As we huddled under blankets with our eyes glued to the screen, the tinned noise of gunshots and shouts from the TV set started to take on a new dimension of depth. We muted the sound and realized the commotion we were hearing was real now, as though it came from just outside the building. We ran to the dining room window, which offered a view of a narrow slice of Qasr al-Ainy Street a block over, and saw a crowd of people running away from Midan Tahrir pursued by clouds of tear gas. A moment later the smell hit us, seeping through the cracks in the window frame and making us cough.
We covered our mouths with wet cloths and went to the other side of the house, which overlooked a four-way intersection where our street fed into Qasr al-Ainy, and saw more protesters running, and close on their heels a dozen black-clad riot police. Some of the protesters split off and disappeared down the narrow side alleys, but a small group stood their ground and, urging each other on with shouts of "Come on!" and "We won't go back!", began lobbing debris at the policemen: stones, fragments of brick, broken glass bottles -- whatever they could lay their hands on. They were all young, teenagers and kids in their twenties, all with kerchiefs knotted at their throats and many stripped down to undershirts, though the day was quite cool. Some had the carefully styled facial hair and toned physique of AUC students, the sort of guys I was used to seeing lounging on the steps of campus with aviator shades and a pack of Marlboros. Others seemed to belong to the same class of underemployed middle-class Cairene youth who make a habit of loitering against storefronts harassing passing women, scrawny things in tight Eurotrash jeans and misspelled knock-off designer tees.
The police retreated at first, then retaliated by firing tear gas canisters directly at the protesters. The street erupted in white smoke. When it cleared we saw that they had seized one of the protesters by the arms and feet and were dragging him into the intersection, where they threw him on the ground and began beating him with clubs. Eventually they pulled him out of sight around the corner and his shouts faded.
There was a sense of unbelievability to it all. Not to what was happening, but that we should be the ones witnessing it. It was like being transported into a film or a news broadcast -- the images were familiar, but to share the stage with them was strange, unaccustomed, frightening.
Throughout the afternoon the two sides vied back and forth. We'd look outside and see only protesters, and then, half an hour later, there would be only policemen apparent. Shortly before dusk the tide seemed to turn in the protesters' favor. Al Jazeera announced that across the city the police were withdrawing. We watched on TV as mobs set abandoned police vehicles on fire and toppled them off bridges and torched the headquarters of President Mubarak's National Democratic Party just north of Midan Tahrir.
The announcer on Al Jazeera seemed as stunned by what he was seeing as we were, saying over and over that in all the time he'd spent in Egypt he'd never have predicted this could happen. As flames engulfed the massive concrete building, attention turned to the adjacent Egyptian Museum, home to King Tut's mummy and hundreds of other priceless treasures of Egyptian antiquity, with commentators predicting that it would catch alight as well if the blaze weren't checked soon. We could smell the smoke from the window and see great black plumes of it billowing across the night sky. Initial counts of those injured in the capital that day were already topping 800.
Throngs of people moved up and down Qasr al-Ainy, first toward Tahrir, then away from it, some brandishing torches. We couldn't tell what was going on or whether or not there were still police in the area. The stench of things burning had replaced the odor of tear gas in the air. The TV said that the military was moving in to occupy key parts of the city, and sure enough as we watched a line of tanks rumbled up Qasr al-Ainy. The shouts from outside changed, harmonized into a single refrain: "The people and the army! There is unity!"
I took advantage of the distraction to slip back home to my own apartment. I hadn't heard from Chris in nearly twelve hours. I got our television working at last, made a pot of rice, and watched the news until, just before midnight, he came back. He had spent most of the afternoon and evening in the safety of the Marriott Hotel across the river, but with no phone service and no internet he'd had no way of telling me he was ok.
Chris left at 11am to position himself at a critical mosque in Mohandiseen before the start of midday prayers. Shortly after he had gone, the cell phone network went dead across the country. I tried to turn on the TV to see what was happening but couldn't figure out how to work the satellite box. I paced anxiously, unsure what to do, checking my laptop every five minutes to see if by some miracle internet access had been restored. Finally I decided that I would walk over to our former apartment up the street to see if the girl who was living there now had a functional TV.
Within five minutes of being outside, my nose and eyes were streaming; even down here, twenty minutes by foot from Midan Tahrir, the air was acrid with tear gas. I made it to the apartment, where Sarah had the TV tuned to Al Jazeera International, the Qatari-based network's English-language news channel, which was offering live coverage of the events unfolding in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez. In Cairo, they reported, tens of thousands of protesters were clashing with riot police throughout the city's main squares and on its numerous Nile bridges. Similar battles were taking place in Alexandria and Suez, with unconfirmed reports that the police there, unable to repel the protesters with tear gas and rubber bullets alone, had begun pushing them back with live fire.
As we huddled under blankets with our eyes glued to the screen, the tinned noise of gunshots and shouts from the TV set started to take on a new dimension of depth. We muted the sound and realized the commotion we were hearing was real now, as though it came from just outside the building. We ran to the dining room window, which offered a view of a narrow slice of Qasr al-Ainy Street a block over, and saw a crowd of people running away from Midan Tahrir pursued by clouds of tear gas. A moment later the smell hit us, seeping through the cracks in the window frame and making us cough.
 |
| Protesters and police clash in Cairo on Jan. 28, 2011 (Reuters). |
We covered our mouths with wet cloths and went to the other side of the house, which overlooked a four-way intersection where our street fed into Qasr al-Ainy, and saw more protesters running, and close on their heels a dozen black-clad riot police. Some of the protesters split off and disappeared down the narrow side alleys, but a small group stood their ground and, urging each other on with shouts of "Come on!" and "We won't go back!", began lobbing debris at the policemen: stones, fragments of brick, broken glass bottles -- whatever they could lay their hands on. They were all young, teenagers and kids in their twenties, all with kerchiefs knotted at their throats and many stripped down to undershirts, though the day was quite cool. Some had the carefully styled facial hair and toned physique of AUC students, the sort of guys I was used to seeing lounging on the steps of campus with aviator shades and a pack of Marlboros. Others seemed to belong to the same class of underemployed middle-class Cairene youth who make a habit of loitering against storefronts harassing passing women, scrawny things in tight Eurotrash jeans and misspelled knock-off designer tees.
The police retreated at first, then retaliated by firing tear gas canisters directly at the protesters. The street erupted in white smoke. When it cleared we saw that they had seized one of the protesters by the arms and feet and were dragging him into the intersection, where they threw him on the ground and began beating him with clubs. Eventually they pulled him out of sight around the corner and his shouts faded.
There was a sense of unbelievability to it all. Not to what was happening, but that we should be the ones witnessing it. It was like being transported into a film or a news broadcast -- the images were familiar, but to share the stage with them was strange, unaccustomed, frightening.
Throughout the afternoon the two sides vied back and forth. We'd look outside and see only protesters, and then, half an hour later, there would be only policemen apparent. Shortly before dusk the tide seemed to turn in the protesters' favor. Al Jazeera announced that across the city the police were withdrawing. We watched on TV as mobs set abandoned police vehicles on fire and toppled them off bridges and torched the headquarters of President Mubarak's National Democratic Party just north of Midan Tahrir.
 |
| Protesters watching the NDP headquarters burn (AFP). |
The announcer on Al Jazeera seemed as stunned by what he was seeing as we were, saying over and over that in all the time he'd spent in Egypt he'd never have predicted this could happen. As flames engulfed the massive concrete building, attention turned to the adjacent Egyptian Museum, home to King Tut's mummy and hundreds of other priceless treasures of Egyptian antiquity, with commentators predicting that it would catch alight as well if the blaze weren't checked soon. We could smell the smoke from the window and see great black plumes of it billowing across the night sky. Initial counts of those injured in the capital that day were already topping 800.
Throngs of people moved up and down Qasr al-Ainy, first toward Tahrir, then away from it, some brandishing torches. We couldn't tell what was going on or whether or not there were still police in the area. The stench of things burning had replaced the odor of tear gas in the air. The TV said that the military was moving in to occupy key parts of the city, and sure enough as we watched a line of tanks rumbled up Qasr al-Ainy. The shouts from outside changed, harmonized into a single refrain: "The people and the army! There is unity!"
I took advantage of the distraction to slip back home to my own apartment. I hadn't heard from Chris in nearly twelve hours. I got our television working at last, made a pot of rice, and watched the news until, just before midnight, he came back. He had spent most of the afternoon and evening in the safety of the Marriott Hotel across the river, but with no phone service and no internet he'd had no way of telling me he was ok.
February 15, 2011
Return to Downtown
I took my first walk today through Downtown since the revolution ended. Apart from a vocal knot of men gathered on one side street near the Interior Ministry -- who based on their appearance and location I assume were policemen demonstrating for higher wages, an unexpected splinter protest group that has appeared in the wake of Mubarak's departure -- things seemed more or less normal. The trash that had accumulated during the occupation of Tahrir had been cleared away and traffic was flowing as usual around the square, and most businesses that had not been damaged too badly during the unrest were open again (among the worst-hit establishments I saw were those in the immediate vicinity of the AUC campus, including McDonald's, Pizza Hut, Costa Coffee, and Radio Shack, all of which looked as though they had been completely gutted by looters and might not reopen for months).
On a main street leading into Tahrir, teams of young Egyptians were sprucing up the iconic checkerboard curbs of Cairo's Downtown with fresh coats of paint, while soldiers reclined against tanks, chatting with passersby and drinking tea.
 |
| The Costa Coffee on Mohamed Mahmoud Street, across from AUC's main gate. |
On a main street leading into Tahrir, teams of young Egyptians were sprucing up the iconic checkerboard curbs of Cairo's Downtown with fresh coats of paint, while soldiers reclined against tanks, chatting with passersby and drinking tea.
February 14, 2011
Today's News: Regimes Poised to Go Down like Dominoes?
A quick sampling of lead paragraphs from the top stories in the online edition of The New York Times right now:
Iran - Hundreds of black-clad riot police officers, some in bullet-proof vests, deployed in key locations in central Tehran on Monday to thwart an opposition march in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt -- an event Iranian leaders cheered as the popular overthrow of an Arab strongman.
Yemen - More than a hundred pro-government demonstrators clashed with hundreds of student protesters on Monday at a sit-in at Sana University that called for an end to the authoritarian rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Bahrain - Skirmishes broke out early Monday between heavily armed police and scattered groups of young people in villages outside of the capital, as this strategically important nation in the Persian Gulf braced to see if the wave of unrest which has toppled two presidents would reach its sun-scorched shores.
Palestine - The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, dissolved his cabinet on Monday and was immediately re-appointed by the president to form a new one. The move was the latest of a series of political steps taken by the authority after the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
So ok, I still don't believe that invading Iraq was right, but it looks like the peoples of the Middle East really do want democracy. Now of course there's a monumental difference between winning it for yourself and having it handed to you -- no, imposed on you -- by a foreign army. As a protester in Tahrir told me early on in the pro-democracy movement here, "This is our struggle, and we don't want any interference, not from the Arabs and not from the West." But maybe it's time to give up once and for all the repeated assertion by American liberals that the Muslim world has its preferred systems of governance and we have ours, and far be it for us to judge which is better, and concede that the conservatives might have been onto something when they insisted that democracy is the only right way to run a country.
Iran - Hundreds of black-clad riot police officers, some in bullet-proof vests, deployed in key locations in central Tehran on Monday to thwart an opposition march in solidarity with the uprising in Egypt -- an event Iranian leaders cheered as the popular overthrow of an Arab strongman.
Yemen - More than a hundred pro-government demonstrators clashed with hundreds of student protesters on Monday at a sit-in at Sana University that called for an end to the authoritarian rule of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.
Bahrain - Skirmishes broke out early Monday between heavily armed police and scattered groups of young people in villages outside of the capital, as this strategically important nation in the Persian Gulf braced to see if the wave of unrest which has toppled two presidents would reach its sun-scorched shores.
Palestine - The prime minister of the Palestinian Authority, Salam Fayyad, dissolved his cabinet on Monday and was immediately re-appointed by the president to form a new one. The move was the latest of a series of political steps taken by the authority after the popular uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt.
So ok, I still don't believe that invading Iraq was right, but it looks like the peoples of the Middle East really do want democracy. Now of course there's a monumental difference between winning it for yourself and having it handed to you -- no, imposed on you -- by a foreign army. As a protester in Tahrir told me early on in the pro-democracy movement here, "This is our struggle, and we don't want any interference, not from the Arabs and not from the West." But maybe it's time to give up once and for all the repeated assertion by American liberals that the Muslim world has its preferred systems of governance and we have ours, and far be it for us to judge which is better, and concede that the conservatives might have been onto something when they insisted that democracy is the only right way to run a country.
DAY 3: January 27, 2011
Word began circulating that the organizers were planning something big for tomorrow, the first Friday since the movement started. Friday, of course, is the Muslim sabbath, and as well as being a day potent with religious significance it's also the first day of the weekend here, meaning many more people would be free to attend the protests.
Opposition elements usually at odds with each other publicly declared their eagerness to put aside differences and stand united against Mubarak's regime. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency turned would-be political bandleader, returned to Egypt from Vienna, telling reporters that the time had come "to see a new regime and to see a new Egypt through peaceful transition.'' The Muslim Brotherhood, which until now had been reticent about voicing support for the protests -- allegedly out of concern that its involvement would brand the movement another "Islamic revolution" in the eyes of the world -- pledged to cooperate with ElBaradei and other secular opposition figures, and for the first time called on its members to take to the streets.
Facebook and Twitter were blocked on Egyptian internet during most of the day; blogs and listservs sympathetic to the protesters responded by posting links to proxy sites that could be used to get around the ban, and the planning continued unabated.
A PDF began making the rounds by email outlining the routes the protesters would take the following day to reach key targets around Cairo: the central TV broadcasting building Downtown, the Presidential Palace, several police stations. The document also included a list of equipment to bring -- a scarf to protect the mouth and eyes, a first aid kit, a light snack and drinking water, vinegar and Coca Cola (both believed to mitigate the effects of tear gas; the Tunisians had popularized the latter during their own revolution and, rather ironically for such an iconic American product, it had become a potent symbol of resistance), aerosol paint to spray on the visors of policemen -- as well as tactical plans for responding to various types of attacks.
Just after midnight, an hour after we went to bed, the government ordered all of Egypt's major internet providers to discontinue service, effectively shutting down online traffic throughout the country in one of the largest blackouts in the history of the World Wide Web.
Opposition elements usually at odds with each other publicly declared their eagerness to put aside differences and stand united against Mubarak's regime. Mohamed ElBaradei, the Nobel Peace Prize laureate and former director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency turned would-be political bandleader, returned to Egypt from Vienna, telling reporters that the time had come "to see a new regime and to see a new Egypt through peaceful transition.'' The Muslim Brotherhood, which until now had been reticent about voicing support for the protests -- allegedly out of concern that its involvement would brand the movement another "Islamic revolution" in the eyes of the world -- pledged to cooperate with ElBaradei and other secular opposition figures, and for the first time called on its members to take to the streets.
Facebook and Twitter were blocked on Egyptian internet during most of the day; blogs and listservs sympathetic to the protesters responded by posting links to proxy sites that could be used to get around the ban, and the planning continued unabated.
 |
| "Essential Clothing and Equipment" |
 |
| A map illustrating access routes to the Presidential Palace. |
Just after midnight, an hour after we went to bed, the government ordered all of Egypt's major internet providers to discontinue service, effectively shutting down online traffic throughout the country in one of the largest blackouts in the history of the World Wide Web.
February 13, 2011
DAY 2: January 26, 2011
I spent most of today cleaning our new apartment, which we'd moved into the previous night well past midnight once Chris had finally finalized his story with his editors in Abu Dhabi.
In the evening I met Chris across the Nile at the apartment of a former National colleague, now a writer for The Wall Street Journal; in these paradigm-changing early days of the protests, when Cairo's foreign journalists were still scrambling to contextualize the startlingly violent clashes of Days 1 and 2 within their old understanding of the city, there was a sense of certainty in numbers, of the unbelievable made more believable when witnessed by two sets of eyes. Chris had stayed indoors making phone calls to experts and opposition leaders, while his friend had tracked the protesters through the northern Downtown neighborhood of Bulaq, dodging tear gas canisters and trying to figure out what story to tell the rest of the world.
A real sense of danger hadn't yet set in. The journalists of Cairo are a motley bunch, a serious cadre of professional reporters -- along with the Journal, The New York Times, AP, Bloomberg, and a host of major European media outlets all have full-time correspondents here -- rubbing shoulders with an ever-changing mixture of freelancers, bloggers, and activists. Until three weeks ago they were better known for producing sentimental features about poor falafel vendors and throwing good parties than for the hard-hitting news coverage of their comrades in Beirut, Baghdad, or Khartoum. These events would change what it means to be a journalist here; it's too soon now to say if that change is a permanent one or if, like the potato seller who has already returned to hawking his merchandise on our street each morning or the store-owners near Midan Tahrir who aren't letting broken windows and graffitied walls stop them from reopening for business, they will soon resume their previous habits. Will life return to normal here? Does normal still mean the same thing it used to?
We went out for Indian food that night with a friend of mine who works for the American Embassy. The Embassy wasn't on high alert, he told us, they were simply monitoring the situation closely, and like everyone else, waiting to see what would happen. Over curry and beer from our third-story vantage point overlooking the glittering billboards and frenetic traffic of Cairo's Mohandiseen neighborhood, we speculated about what new developments the coming days might bring. Like me, he assumed the unrest would die down quickly.
On the way home to Garden City I asked our taxi driver what he thought of the protests. He was nervous, driving too fast, didn't want to talk about it.
In the evening I met Chris across the Nile at the apartment of a former National colleague, now a writer for The Wall Street Journal; in these paradigm-changing early days of the protests, when Cairo's foreign journalists were still scrambling to contextualize the startlingly violent clashes of Days 1 and 2 within their old understanding of the city, there was a sense of certainty in numbers, of the unbelievable made more believable when witnessed by two sets of eyes. Chris had stayed indoors making phone calls to experts and opposition leaders, while his friend had tracked the protesters through the northern Downtown neighborhood of Bulaq, dodging tear gas canisters and trying to figure out what story to tell the rest of the world.
A real sense of danger hadn't yet set in. The journalists of Cairo are a motley bunch, a serious cadre of professional reporters -- along with the Journal, The New York Times, AP, Bloomberg, and a host of major European media outlets all have full-time correspondents here -- rubbing shoulders with an ever-changing mixture of freelancers, bloggers, and activists. Until three weeks ago they were better known for producing sentimental features about poor falafel vendors and throwing good parties than for the hard-hitting news coverage of their comrades in Beirut, Baghdad, or Khartoum. These events would change what it means to be a journalist here; it's too soon now to say if that change is a permanent one or if, like the potato seller who has already returned to hawking his merchandise on our street each morning or the store-owners near Midan Tahrir who aren't letting broken windows and graffitied walls stop them from reopening for business, they will soon resume their previous habits. Will life return to normal here? Does normal still mean the same thing it used to?
We went out for Indian food that night with a friend of mine who works for the American Embassy. The Embassy wasn't on high alert, he told us, they were simply monitoring the situation closely, and like everyone else, waiting to see what would happen. Over curry and beer from our third-story vantage point overlooking the glittering billboards and frenetic traffic of Cairo's Mohandiseen neighborhood, we speculated about what new developments the coming days might bring. Like me, he assumed the unrest would die down quickly.
On the way home to Garden City I asked our taxi driver what he thought of the protests. He was nervous, driving too fast, didn't want to talk about it.
February 12, 2011
The Morning After
I walked down to our local grocery store this morning to buy -- prosaically, for my first trip outdoors on the first day of the New Egypt -- toilet cleaner for our maid. Maybe it was just my own positive frame of mind, but everyone I saw seemed gloriously happy. In the store, the clerk brought me a basket as I was pulling sponges and disinfectant from the shelf and declared that if I needed any help he was ready to assist me. Our maid told me she believes that this is the beginning of a better era for Egypt, when people like her who hold academic degrees but are forced by poor economic circumstances to work menial jobs will finally have a chance to realize their dreams of self-determination.
The traffic on Qasr al-Ainy Street, the main avenue linking our neighborhood Garden City with Midan Tahrir, was flowing normally (and in the legally designated direction) for the first time in two weeks, guided along by two soldiers in neon vests waving batons. Perhaps this wasn't the heroic role these two fellows might have envisaged for themselves last night, but with the police force still largely absent from the city, someone has to keep the cars moving.
The traffic on Qasr al-Ainy Street, the main avenue linking our neighborhood Garden City with Midan Tahrir, was flowing normally (and in the legally designated direction) for the first time in two weeks, guided along by two soldiers in neon vests waving batons. Perhaps this wasn't the heroic role these two fellows might have envisaged for themselves last night, but with the police force still largely absent from the city, someone has to keep the cars moving.
DAY 1: January 25, 2011
We were startled awake at noon by Chris's cell phone ringing. It was his editor calling from Abu Dhabi. What's going on in Cairo? We hear there are protests, big ones. Get out there!
We had arrived just hours before on a late-night plane from Rome, where we'd spent four days inhabiting a world circumscribed by the cobblestone alleys and candlelit enotecas of Trastevere -- a neighborhood we'd chosen as our base precisely because it was an escape from reality, across the river from the main tourist sites of the city and nearly inaccessible by public transport. Egypt is a place insistent on rubbing your face in reality under the best of circumstances; Rome -- European, well-heeled, morally permissive, its summertime exuberance muted by January rain -- was our chance to fortify our defenses before returning.
And now here we were, reality knocking down the door before we'd even gotten a full night's sleep. Chris left immediately to find out what was happening. I stayed home and caught up on a week's worth of emails, mostly unaware of the events unfolding in the streets outside. It was Police Day, a national holiday commemorating the date in 1952 when fifty Egyptian police officers defied British orders to relinquish control of a police station in the Egyptian canal city of Ismailiyya, and it had been chosen by the fledgling pro-democracy movement as the occasion for their first round of protests.
While still in the US, I had read the accounts of Egyptians lighting themselves on fire in imitation of the Tunisian vegetable-seller who torched himself on December 17 in a public statement against government injustices, and I knew that the Egyptian population had seen in the departure of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali less than a month later a ray of hope for their own country. But I was no newcomer to political unrest in Egypt -- I was here in May 2006 when Egyptian judges took to the streets to protest the fraudulent presidential elections the preceding fall, and on April 6, 2008, when thousands of workers in the northern industrial town of Mahalla al-Kobra demonstrated for higher wages -- and I assumed that this latest round of civil disobedience would be no different. Brief, sparsely attended, ultimately ineffectual.
I made plans with a friend to go to the Cairo International Book Fair that weekend. I never once turned on the TV or checked local news websites. It was only that evening when Chris finally returned, having spent the day covering a multi-pronged march that ended in a violent confrontation with police in Midan Tahrir, that I began to realize that something new was going on.
Concerned friends outside the country began messaging me as soon as the international media broke the story:
We had arrived just hours before on a late-night plane from Rome, where we'd spent four days inhabiting a world circumscribed by the cobblestone alleys and candlelit enotecas of Trastevere -- a neighborhood we'd chosen as our base precisely because it was an escape from reality, across the river from the main tourist sites of the city and nearly inaccessible by public transport. Egypt is a place insistent on rubbing your face in reality under the best of circumstances; Rome -- European, well-heeled, morally permissive, its summertime exuberance muted by January rain -- was our chance to fortify our defenses before returning.
And now here we were, reality knocking down the door before we'd even gotten a full night's sleep. Chris left immediately to find out what was happening. I stayed home and caught up on a week's worth of emails, mostly unaware of the events unfolding in the streets outside. It was Police Day, a national holiday commemorating the date in 1952 when fifty Egyptian police officers defied British orders to relinquish control of a police station in the Egyptian canal city of Ismailiyya, and it had been chosen by the fledgling pro-democracy movement as the occasion for their first round of protests.
While still in the US, I had read the accounts of Egyptians lighting themselves on fire in imitation of the Tunisian vegetable-seller who torched himself on December 17 in a public statement against government injustices, and I knew that the Egyptian population had seen in the departure of Tunisian President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali less than a month later a ray of hope for their own country. But I was no newcomer to political unrest in Egypt -- I was here in May 2006 when Egyptian judges took to the streets to protest the fraudulent presidential elections the preceding fall, and on April 6, 2008, when thousands of workers in the northern industrial town of Mahalla al-Kobra demonstrated for higher wages -- and I assumed that this latest round of civil disobedience would be no different. Brief, sparsely attended, ultimately ineffectual.
I made plans with a friend to go to the Cairo International Book Fair that weekend. I never once turned on the TV or checked local news websites. It was only that evening when Chris finally returned, having spent the day covering a multi-pronged march that ended in a violent confrontation with police in Midan Tahrir, that I began to realize that something new was going on.
Concerned friends outside the country began messaging me as soon as the international media broke the story:
Trying to follow the news, looks like people really have turned out for the protests?
yeah, chris was there all day
he got tear gassed but he's ok
yeah, chris was there all day
he got tear gassed but he's ok
Oh jeez!
that sounds scary
that sounds scary
yeah
he said people were really getting hurt
incl the police
lots of blood
he said people were really getting hurt
incl the police
lots of blood
And with another friend:
wow - tunisia part deux huh? Are you guys ok over there?
thankfully so far yes
wow - so it's as serious as I'm reading then
i guess so
we'll see what happens tomorrow
people seem to think that this might be the BIG thing that finally topples the govt
but i don't know, i've heard that before
we'll see what happens tomorrow
people seem to think that this might be the BIG thing that finally topples the govt
but i don't know, i've heard that before
I read something with a woman saying "I hope someday when our children are studying they will learn about the revolution of January 25"
i suppose it's exciting in a way -- this govt is long overdue to leave power
i just hope we stay safe
i just hope we stay safe
The revolution was beginning.
Words from the American President
President Obama's speech was televised live on state TV here late last night.
Good afternoon, everybody. There are very few moments
in our lives where we have the privilege to witness history taking
place. This is one of those moments. This is one of those times. The
people of Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard, and Egypt
will never be the same.
By stepping down, President Mubarak responded to the Egyptian people’s
hunger for change. But this is not the end of Egypt’s transition. It’s
a beginning. I’m sure there will be difficult days ahead, and many
questions remain unanswered. But I am confident that the people of
Egypt can find the answers, and do so peacefully, constructively, and
in the spirit of unity that has defined these last few weeks. For
Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less than genuine democracy
will carry the day.
The military has served patriotically and responsibly as a caretaker
to the state, and will now have to ensure a transition that is
credible in the eyes of the Egyptian people. That means protecting the
rights of Egypt’s citizens, lifting the emergency law, revising the
constitution and other laws to make this change irreversible, and
laying out a clear path to elections that are fair and free. Above
all, this transition must bring all of Egypt’s voices to the table.
For the spirit of peaceful protest and perseverance that the Egyptian
people have shown can serve as a powerful wind at the back of this
change.
The United States will continue to be a friend and partner to Egypt.
We stand ready to provide whatever assistance is necessary — and asked
for — to pursue a credible transition to a democracy. I’m also
confident that the same ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit that the
young people of Egypt have shown in recent days can be harnessed to
create new opportunity — jobs and businesses that allow the
extraordinary potential of this generation to take flight. And I know
that a democratic Egypt can advance its role of responsible leadership
not only in the region but around the world.
Egypt has played a pivotal role in human history for over 6,000 years.
But over the last few weeks, the wheel of history turned at a blinding
pace as the Egyptian people demanded their universal rights.
We saw mothers and fathers carrying their children on their shoulders
to show them what true freedom might look like.
We saw a young Egyptian say, “For the first time in my life, I really
count. My voice is heard. Even though I’m only one person, this is the
way real democracy works.”
We saw protesters chant “Selmiyya, selmiyya” — “We are peaceful” —
again and again.
We saw a military that would not fire bullets at the people they were
sworn to protect.
And we saw doctors and nurses rushing into the streets to care for
those who were wounded, volunteers checking protesters to ensure that
they were unarmed.
We saw people of faith praying together and chanting – “Muslims,
Christians, We are one.” And though we know that the strains between
faiths still divide too many in this world and no single event will
close that chasm immediately, these scenes remind us that we need not
be defined by our differences. We can be defined by the common
humanity that we share.
And above all, we saw a new generation emerge — a generation that uses
their own creativity and talent and technology to call for a
government that represented their hopes and not their fears; a
government that is responsive to their boundless aspirations. One
Egyptian put it simply: Most people have discovered in the last few
days…that they are worth something, and this cannot be taken away from
them anymore, ever.
This is the power of human dignity, and it can never be denied.
Egyptians have inspired us, and they’ve done so by putting the lie to
the idea that justice is best gained through violence. For in Egypt,
it was the moral force of nonviolence — not terrorism, not mindless
killing — but nonviolence, moral force that bent the arc of history
toward justice once more.
And while the sights and sounds that we heard were entirely Egyptian,
we can’t help but hear the echoes of history — echoes from Germans
tearing down a wall, Indonesian students taking to the streets, Gandhi
leading his people down the path of justice.
As Martin Luther King said in celebrating the birth of a new nation in
Ghana while trying to perfect his own, “There is something in the soul
that cries out for freedom.” Those were the cries that came from
Tahrir Square, and the entire world has taken note.
Today belongs to the people of Egypt, and the American people are
moved by these scenes in Cairo and across Egypt because of who we are
as a people and the kind of world that we want our children to grow up
in.
The word Tahrir means liberation. It is a word that speaks to that
something in our souls that cries out for freedom. And forevermore it
will remind us of the Egyptian people — of what they did, of the
things that they stood for, and how they changed their country, and in
doing so changed the world.
February 11, 2011
Ding Dong the Witch Is Dead!
We just returned from Midan Tahrir, where it all began and where four hours ago thousands watched onscreen as the Egyptian president resigned in absentia.
My fellow citizens, in the difficult circumstances our country is experiencing, President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak has decided to give up the office of the president of the republic and instructed the supreme council of the armed forces to manage the affairs of the country. May God guide our steps.
Perhaps one of the shortest resignation speeches in history, delivered by a vice president whose tenure lasted a mere thirteen days. The streets were, naturally, flooded with people -- men, women, kids -- all waving Egyptian flags, shouting, cheering, and honking their horns. We saw young men belly-dancing on the beds of pickup trucks, grateful protesters prostrated in prayer, and little children escaping from their mothers' grasps to run circles from the sheer excitement of the moment. In Tahrir itself, tarpaulin tents that as recently as this afternoon served as makeshift homes for the hundreds of Egyptians who were determined to occupy the square until Mubarak left were hosting impromptu parties, while outside people sang, banged drums, shot off fireworks, and chanted "Allahu akbar" (which contrary to popular belief in the West is NOT said only by suicide bombers about to detonate themselves, but is simply an expression of faith and gratitude).
Everywhere we went, smiling soldiers -- Egypt's new heroes -- were posing for photos with the adoring public. You have to wonder what it feels like right now to be a low-ranking solider who's just had a stressful two weeks camped out in a tank in downtown Cairo, under orders not to let the protests get out of hand...but also forbidden from using force against the people...and now finds himself not only a hero but the inheritor of an entire country.
Egypt's challenges are multifarious and complex. The country's resources are already stretched too thin for its population of 80 million (a number that could double by 2050, according to some estimates). Too many Egyptians have grown lazy on a cocktail of short working hours and government handouts; too many have been quick to blame their ills on a corrupt regime and villainous bureaucrats but slow to initiate reforms themselves where they could. If the people here believe that the military can solve all their problems for them, not only are they once again passing the buck to another strongman institution but they're deluding themselves. An Egyptian professor of mine once explained the Egyptian attitude toward governance by saying, and I paraphrase, "In America everyone wants to be president. In Egypt, most people have no desire to be president -- what they hope for is an enlightened leader who will make the right decisions on their behalf."
Do the Egyptians see in the military one more version of this wise Leviathan? Or is this the start of a new attitude toward leadership, a bid for true democracy?
My fellow citizens, in the difficult circumstances our country is experiencing, President Muhammad Hosni Mubarak has decided to give up the office of the president of the republic and instructed the supreme council of the armed forces to manage the affairs of the country. May God guide our steps.
Perhaps one of the shortest resignation speeches in history, delivered by a vice president whose tenure lasted a mere thirteen days. The streets were, naturally, flooded with people -- men, women, kids -- all waving Egyptian flags, shouting, cheering, and honking their horns. We saw young men belly-dancing on the beds of pickup trucks, grateful protesters prostrated in prayer, and little children escaping from their mothers' grasps to run circles from the sheer excitement of the moment. In Tahrir itself, tarpaulin tents that as recently as this afternoon served as makeshift homes for the hundreds of Egyptians who were determined to occupy the square until Mubarak left were hosting impromptu parties, while outside people sang, banged drums, shot off fireworks, and chanted "Allahu akbar" (which contrary to popular belief in the West is NOT said only by suicide bombers about to detonate themselves, but is simply an expression of faith and gratitude).
 |
| People celebrating atop a burned police vehicle in Midan Tahrir. |
Everywhere we went, smiling soldiers -- Egypt's new heroes -- were posing for photos with the adoring public. You have to wonder what it feels like right now to be a low-ranking solider who's just had a stressful two weeks camped out in a tank in downtown Cairo, under orders not to let the protests get out of hand...but also forbidden from using force against the people...and now finds himself not only a hero but the inheritor of an entire country.
Egypt's challenges are multifarious and complex. The country's resources are already stretched too thin for its population of 80 million (a number that could double by 2050, according to some estimates). Too many Egyptians have grown lazy on a cocktail of short working hours and government handouts; too many have been quick to blame their ills on a corrupt regime and villainous bureaucrats but slow to initiate reforms themselves where they could. If the people here believe that the military can solve all their problems for them, not only are they once again passing the buck to another strongman institution but they're deluding themselves. An Egyptian professor of mine once explained the Egyptian attitude toward governance by saying, and I paraphrase, "In America everyone wants to be president. In Egypt, most people have no desire to be president -- what they hope for is an enlightened leader who will make the right decisions on their behalf."
Do the Egyptians see in the military one more version of this wise Leviathan? Or is this the start of a new attitude toward leadership, a bid for true democracy?
How It Ends (for now, at least)
At just after 6pm local time here, VP Omar Suleiman appeared on state TV and, in the briefest of speeches, announced the resignation of President Hosni Mubarak. Months shy of the thirty-year anniversary of his ascension to power following the assassination of President Sadat, he's been ousted after two-and-a-half weeks of largely peaceful demonstrations that began in Cairo and Alexandria and soon spread to nearly every major Egyptian city, drawing people to the streets in numbers not only unprecedented in the Arab world but nearly unseen in the history of modern civil disobedience.
Al Jazeera International has an Egyptian girl on the line who between sobs is declaring that she never thought she'd live to see this day. I think that pretty well sums up what we're all feeling right now. Outside our apartment, cars are honking and faint sounds of celebratory explosions echo across from Midan Tahrir. Ya Masr!! Go Egypt!!!
This is a triumphal testament to the power of a people to determine its own destiny, a victory for democracy and free speech and liberty in the purest and oldest of senses.
Yes, I have reservations about the idea of a military junta ruling the country until the proposed September elections, but I won't go into those now. Let's leave this night for hope, optimism, and a great big congratulations to the people of Egypt.
Al Jazeera International has an Egyptian girl on the line who between sobs is declaring that she never thought she'd live to see this day. I think that pretty well sums up what we're all feeling right now. Outside our apartment, cars are honking and faint sounds of celebratory explosions echo across from Midan Tahrir. Ya Masr!! Go Egypt!!!
This is a triumphal testament to the power of a people to determine its own destiny, a victory for democracy and free speech and liberty in the purest and oldest of senses.
Yes, I have reservations about the idea of a military junta ruling the country until the proposed September elections, but I won't go into those now. Let's leave this night for hope, optimism, and a great big congratulations to the people of Egypt.
Why a Blog?
I've thought often during these past few weeks that I ought to be writing this all down, creating a record for posterity of what I've witnessed, or at least, less ambitiously, jotting down reflections, feelings, opinions. Journaling. Keeping a diary. I don't care to prove my own presence as a spectator of history; what commendation is there, what bravery, in watching another people's revolution? What matters to me is that I don't forget, and to this end I started saving emails, committing a few thoughts here and there to the semi-permanence of my computer hard drive.
But then I thought -- why not blog instead? Why not write not only so that I don't lose what I've seen, but so that others who have not had my front-row seat on these events can see them too?
I ask you, any of you reading this blog from outside of Egypt, to be patient with the imprecision of my recollections. I will try as much as I can to reconstruct the past eighteen days faithfully, but I am not a journalist (I'll leave that species of reporting to others).
So here we go....
But then I thought -- why not blog instead? Why not write not only so that I don't lose what I've seen, but so that others who have not had my front-row seat on these events can see them too?
I ask you, any of you reading this blog from outside of Egypt, to be patient with the imprecision of my recollections. I will try as much as I can to reconstruct the past eighteen days faithfully, but I am not a journalist (I'll leave that species of reporting to others).
So here we go....
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