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.
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| 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.
For me, January 28 was the day I couldn’t get warm.
ReplyDeleteBrian, Chris’s dad, awakened me with a phone call asking if I’d seen the news. The regime was cracking down, people were being beaten, Internet and cell phone service had been shut off, journalists were being targeted. Chris had called from the Marriott Hotel, across the Nile from downtown Cairo, where he and other reporters had gathered to file stories over the land lines. He was safe, but he had no way to reach Anna, assumed to be back in their apartment. The roads were blocked, and he’d likely have to spend the night there. If I somehow managed to connect with Anna, I should let her know. Brian also gave me the phone number for the Marriott, but he soon called back to say that the number was wrong. In fact, the number was correct, or in any case was the only number listed for the Marriott, but calls weren’t getting through. I went immediately to my computer, where I also had an email Brian had forwarded from The National, Chris’s newspaper, confirming that Chris was safe. I turned up the heat and dressed warmly, but I was shivering.
I emailed Anna with the news I had, assuming that the Internet would be restored soon. I also loaded credit onto my Skype account and gave Anna’s phone a try. Surely a country could not cut itself off like this for long. How could people function? Business would come to a standstill. What if someone needed to reach a doctor? I also thought about the danger of rumors, misinformation, the fear that arises from not knowing what is happening. And I thought about all the things that I didn’t know.
To begin, I had no idea where Anna and Chris lived. They’d been in the process of moving into a new apartment when the protests started, but I didn’t have the address of their old apartment either, since I’d had no occasion to use the mail system. I also had no land-line number to contact, or any contact information at all other than cell phone numbers and email addresses that were now useless. My thought now was to figure out what I did know, in case I needed to reach someone in Cairo. Thanks to the forwarded email, I now had a contact at The National. I recalled that Anna had a friend at the American Embassy, whom I had met several years ago in Egypt. I found his full name and email address on a list of people Anna was informing about her upcoming wedding. I also made note of a couple other friends on the list who were also in Cairo or had connections there, figuring that if I had enough contacts, I could find someone who could provide help if I needed it. To these, I added land lines at the American University in Cairo, where the Center for Arabic Study Abroad is located, and also the phone number for the University of Texas, which administers the program.
Now I turned my attention to the news, flipping from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal. I turned to The National to look for stories by Chris, my assurance that things must be okay for him and Anna. I added CNN and Al Jazeera to my Favorites. The news was awful, but I looked for signs. The military at least had not begun shooting. I put a wool sweater over my fleece vest, but I was still cold.
Work was a distraction, and I was glad to immerse myself in it throughout the day and into the evening, always keeping a news feed open, and periodically checking to see if communications were back up in Egypt. Around 12:30 a.m. I tried Anna’s phone again, and this time I got through. The Internet was still off, and would be for many days, but cell phones were functioning again. Chris had found a taxi driver willing to drive him back to the apartment. And Anna and Chris were safe. I emailed Chris’s parents and others who had been concerned. I left my computer on with Skype connected and the sound turned up high, in case Anna might need to reach me. Then I piled on the blankets and went to bed.