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.
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