Revolt! Jan 28 - Feb 1

January 28, 2011

1:45am
OMG the Internet is down!!! I’m sure they’ve done it to protect “national security” or some such but what the regime has actually done is severely limited my ability to stream and download this week’s new TV shows tomorrow. I feel affronted somehow, because I am not even protesting. I am willing to sacrifice supporting my Egyptian friends and sit on my butt protecting my work visa and all I ask in return is this week’s episode of The Mentalist. Is that too much?! And 30 Rock. It is just a half-hour show! Really, Mubarak, really?

Phones are supposed to go down too, which will leave me disconnected from everyone marching into battle after noon prayers tomorrow. As an apartment on the other side of the bridge from the chaos, I wanted to offer support from behind the lines tomorrow by keeping track of everyone’s last known location, health, etc. in case anyone gets injured or arrested. However, without phone, Internet, or BBM (BBM, Mubarak, really?!), The Mentalist and I can’t keep track of Black Swan’s reviews, much less the situation in Downtown Cairo.

No gunfire tonight. It is tense and quiet. The calm before the storm. Tomorrow will be huge. And unless I find a local news station on my Emirati satellite carrier (which will no doubt be all in Arabic), I will miss out on everything…including The Mentalist.

10:15am
Just got back in from my morning walk with the dog. The protests are planned for after the noon prayers so I thought I’d better get some last minute shopping done, get at least one walk in for Whiskey today, and withdraw some cash before the craziness starts.

Friday mornings aren’t usually very busy in Egypt, as families spend time together at home before noon prayers and many businesses don’t usually open until around 2pm anyway so it was difficult to tell if things are quieter than usual this morning. There certainly wasn’t much traffic but taxis were out and working and I wasn’t the only one running some last minute errands. However, most of the people out and about this morning were men and could be classified into four categories: men serving tea, men drinking tea, men observing others drink tea (police), and men secretly observing others drink tea (secret police – who, in their grandma sweaters and waist-length khaki jackets are not really that secret).

My phone providers for my personal cell and my work cell went down sometime last night or this morning because when I woke up at 9, I had no signal. The government is no longer just blocking certain websites or certain services (i.e. texting and BBM), but rather it has terminated all communications networks in an effort to discourage and disrupt the protests. However, late yesterday afternoon and through the evening, an email made its way through the online community announcing the planned gathering times and places in preparation for the expected communications shutdowns. Similar shutdowns had occurred in Iran after their elections, and recently in Tunisia, so the organizers of the demonstrations wanted to get the word out early. It was possibly in an attempt to halt the spread of this email that the web block went into effect last night. My guess is it was too late and everyone either knows where to go or knows someone who knows.

The biggest danger of the phones being down is that friends who meet at the protests won’t be able to find each other once there (how did we ever meet one another in large public spaces before the advent of cell phones?!) and friends who get separated won’t be able to find one another. More annoying for me is that I won’t be able to keep track of my friends’ locations on a map as I’d planned to do as my meager contribution to their efforts.

I bought a bunch of long-lasting root veggies like carrots and potatoes and some yogurt, eggs, and canned food in case it isn’t safe to leave my apartment for a few days. I had already stocked up on water and toilet paper. I am going to bake some banana bread just to have on hand in case any of my friends find their way to Zamalek, which is going to be one of the only protest-free neighborhoods today. I asked a Communist protester yesterday what I could expect in Z-town today and he answered, “empty streets.” The emptier the better, I’d say.


12:27pm
Prayers are going on now. On Friday there is the call to prayer, then the equivalent of a sermon, both of which are piped through loudspeakers. Each mosque must be within hearing distance of those around it so that there is no one the call to prayer does not reach. There is a mosque on the street that runs alongside the building next to mine, a stone’s throw from my balcony so it is actually quite loud. Thankfully, in October they replaced the guy who used to do the call to prayer with someone significantly more skilled and the whole experience is much less grating than it used to be.

I cannot understand the sermon. I wonder if the imams are supportive of the protests or supportive of the government and I wonder if they have the courage to discuss the issue, even to encourage peace or condemn violence in vague terms, knowing their congregations have no doubt been infiltrated by police today.

BBC and Al Jazeera English have correspondents on the ground in Cairo and Suez but coverage has been spotty – only like a minute or two every hour spent on this story. I can’t fault them really, because so far nothing is happening but I hope they go to that story more and the “Nelson Mandela isn’t that sick” story less as the day goes on and the action picks up. Without Internet access, I’m reliant on the international news providers to tell me what specifically is going on but I think I will be able to guess at the level of violence as I expect the shooting to start again soon across the river.

I think I can tell the difference in sound between rubber bullets and live ammunition by now, just in the way the sound carries. The sound of live ammo, which so far I have only heard at night, has a sound like a whip cracking against the sky itself. I heard it last night but there is no way to tell if the shots were aimed at protesters, in the air as warning shots, or shot by protesters themselves into the air or off their balconies at home in excitement. I did a load of laundry this morning and I am worried that when I hang it out of my balcony to dry it will smell like gunpowder by the end of the day. I swear I never had such concerns in Oregon!

1:55pm
Al Jazeera is showing footage of the 6th of October Bridge at the point it crosses the Nile. It is a major thoroughfare connecting the young, middle class neighborhood of Mohandiseen, on the far side of Zamalek to the upper middle class and majority Coptic neighborhood of Heliopolis about 40 minutes away on the other side of the city. There are quite a lot of people running back and forth like they may being fired upon but it isn’t clear what is happening.

Mohammed El Baradei has been arrested, which Al Jazeera is calling a brash move by the government but in my opinion it is pretty smart. There will be a bit of an international backlash for this move but nowhere near what would have happened had El Baradei been injured or killed participating in the protests. People would have gone bonkers.

Seven people have died across Egypt since the protests began on Tuesday.

3:00pm
I am extremely grateful for Al Jazeera’s consistent coverage of Egypt throughout the afternoon. BBC and CNN have focused more on Mandela’s release from the hospital, much to my disappointment.

Al Jazeera has been playing a limited cycle of footage over and over but the video they do have makes it clear that although the protests have started in different areas of the city they are moving into Tahrir Square. The security services were supposed to have blocked off Tahrir but they’ve either given way or been overwhelmed by the crowd.

I could hear a group of what sounded like maybe 20 people on one of the main thoroughfares in Zamalek near my apartment. I couldn’t understand what they were chanting and I have no idea why they’re here when the center of the action is so far away. I couldn’t see them from my balcony but I am charging my camera just in case they come by the section of the street I can see.

The religious component of the protests is interesting. Although the footage of Tuesday and Wednesday’s protest showed people shouting “Get out Mubarak” and “Down with the regime,” today’s footage has included a lot more “Allahu Akbar.” I don’t know if this is because the Muslim Brotherhood wasn’t involved in the first couple days of protest but they’ve finally climbed on board today or if there actually is something fundamentally different about today’s crowd.

Some Egyptian Christians have told Al Jazeera that when the Muslims must stop protesting for the afternoon prayer (which is going on as type this), they will protect their fellow protesters regardless of religion. Apparently this protection is necessary because as Noor Ayman Noor is explaining on TV now, his father, Ayman Noor, one of the most prominent opposition leaders, was struck in the head with a rock after he stopped protesting to pray. He was taken to intensive care at a Cairo hospital. I am looking at live footage of the protesters who have stopped on the 6th of October Bridge to pray. That group at least appears to be left alone. Some of the wide angle shots of the Nile in the background, a cloud of black smoke on the bridge mid-frame and more than twenty rows of protestors lined shoulder to shoulder and head to toe in prayer are pretty breathtaking.

Two women are reported killed in the violence.

Honestly, CNN is in its fourth hour of reporting on Nelson Mandela’s health. Bearing in mind that he has been released from the hospital and said to be recovering, I’m not sure what there is left to report on. I’m wondering if CNN just doesn’t have enough people on the ground in Cairo to cover the story.

5:55
At 5:28, Al Jazeera announced that the government was demanding a 6:00pm curfew. I took the dog out for one last walk in Zamalek. The streets were quiet but my doorman and one of the garage attendants from the building next door saw me with Whiskey and said that there had been shooting in Zamalek and that it wasn’t safe for me to walk around. My neighbor, who I have seen around, had also left at the same time to walk his dog and offered to walk with me and Whiskey long enough for both dogs to work out some of their adrenaline.

There was no traffic but sundown prayers finished at the same time we got to the main street and people were walking back from the mosque and leaving work to get back home before curfew. These were not protestors and I saw no police (except a few guys in sweaters and jackets who may have been secret police or may have just been cold). My neighbor, who I have only met a couple times, when he realized I’m by myself tonight, told me where his apartment was and said that if I need anything, he and his wife would help me however they could. What a nice guy. He even volunteered the help of his neighbors (Labrador owners, so obviously good people) if he and his wife weren’t home for some reason.

I got back home just as Egyptian armed forces trucks drove up 6th of October Bridge into Al Jazeera’s camera view near the Ramsis Hilton. Mubarak plans to address the country soon and in the meantime has ordered the Army onto the streets to help the police enforce the curfew. The people have been chanting “Where is the Army? Come and save us!” because in Tunisia the Army protected the protestors from the police. People are standing in the street to cheer and raise their hands in victory cheers at each Army truck that passes.

The curfew, I can tell you now, at 6:03, seems to be failing. I see police personnel carriers on fire and protestors almost dumped one into the Nile. There are still tens of thousands of people in Downtown, maybe hundreds of thousands across the country, and in Suez at least, the mob has totally dominated the police force.

The situation doesn’t look good for Cairo’s police right now. I see only protestors on the bridge. And tires and piles of trash on fire. And now an explosion in the cab of the truck they were trying to dump in the river and people cheering as it burns.

6:21pm
The National Democratic Party headquarters is on fire.
6:37pm
Police are firing live ammunition into the crowds Downtown.

7:19pm
I am underwhelmed by Hillary Clinton’s speech. I am glad the US has now apparently paused to consider Egyptian’s personal and political rights, as opposed to just valuing stability in the region. But I would have appreciated stronger language. Hopefully that’s going on behind closed doors. I am happy she gave a shout out to the communications blackout. Reconnect me to the world!

7:31pm
AP is reporting that protestors are storming the foreign ministry building and possibly also the television and radio building. I am concerned about so many fires starting downtown, since the buildings are old and very close together and Cairo’s fire department is non-existent. The Egyptian Museum is right in the area that’s on fire.

The fire and violence downtown and the breakdown in policing has me concerned about the eventual security of my island neighborhood. Whereas everyone Downtown is ignoring the curfew, no one in my neighborhood is. The streets are pitch dark and dead quiet except for the tear gas cannon fire and gunshots from across the bridge. Nonetheless, I can’t help but think what will happen in my largely upper-class, partly expat neighborhood if the police force completely breaks down. There are a lot of nice shops and expensive homes and I don’t want anyone to confuse my building with something worth looting.

I have prepared a “Go-Bag” ala Jason Bourne for Whiskey and me in case we have to make our way about ten minutes down the street to my friend’s hotel, which will have more security than my apartment, as well as a couple cars. I’m not sure how I’ll get Whiskey into the hotel but questions like that are why I withdrew a bunch of cash yesterday.

Want to know what goes into a go-bag? Passport, money (dollars and Egyptian pounds), phones (even though they’re not currently working), chargers, adapters, camera, video camera, 2 hard drives, laptop and charger, jewelry (in case I run out of money and still need to bribe people), change of clothes, running shoes (for running), Laughing Cow cheese that does not require refrigeration, a peppered salami (thanks, Millie!), canned beef that can double as dog food, jar of peanut butter that can double as dog or human food, six granola bars, three packets of instant oatmeal, travel-sized toiletries (it’s a girly go-bag), a small hammer (because you never know when you might need one).

7:48pm
An Egyptian-American photographer is reporting that Sangria, a bar directly across the river from my friend’s hotel apartment is on fire as well. That must be a spectacular view from my friend’s balcony but I can’t help but wonder why anybody would bother with lighting up a bar, which has zero political meaning and was undoubtedly totally empty at the time. Random.

8:23pm
The wind has changed and we can smell the gunpowder and the smoke from the fires. The smell is making Whiskey nervous. I don’t like the sounds. The shooting and explosions are closer. I can hear airplanes or maybe helicopters over the river that sound sometimes like they wander overhead. I can hear sirens but I don’t know if it is police, ambulance or fire trucks.

8:31pm
A very big, loud helicopter just flew directly overhead.

8:36pm
They are flying very low, buzzing my neighborhood, possibly as a way of turning around in their circuit over Downtown but maybe there are protesters in Zamalek now. From Al Jazeera’s view of 6th of October Bridge, there doesn’t seem to be that many people there anymore, meaning they’ve either all moved to the center of Downtown, in Tahrir Square, or they’ve moved in the other direction, toward me. There is still no noise or people outside though, so I think things may be winding down or moving away.

8:44pm
BBC confirms Military helicopters have been deployed over Cairo.

9:13pm
The Cairo Tower is a tall, narrow, cylindrical building with shops and restaurants and a viewpoint of all of Cairo at the top. I am sure it is closed tonight but the tiny lights that light up and turn off to make little patterns around the sides of the building are on. The light show includes ghostly ankhs, the ancient Egyptian symbol of eternal life, sliding around the building from top to bottom. The BBC is doing a very serious interview with a very serious Egyptian journalist on the roof of a building on the Downtown side and the tower is in the background. I keep getting distracted by the swirling ankhs. What idiot thought it would be a good idea to turn on the cheesy lightshow tonight of all nights?

9:30pm
I just heard an explosion simultaneously from my apartment and on Al Jazeera and Dan Nolan happened to be reporting from Cairo at the exact moment specifically describing the different gunfire sounds he was hearing. He said they thought those big explosions are just sound grenades meant to stun and disperse protesters. I hope he’s right!

9:56pm
CNN is reporting that protesters themselves are forming a human chain around the Egyptian Museum to prevent any possible looting.

10:14pm
Robert Gibbs has absolutely no ability to inspire confidence. He has clearly written out his lines ahead of time and yet doesn’t even deliver his pat answers with reassurance and resolve. Although props for again to the US for requesting that Egypt turn the Internet back on.

10:46pm
I just went out and stood on my balcony for a few minutes. The one that faces one of the bigger streets in Zamalek. I wanted to sort of assess the status of the protests’ effects on my area as a way of figuring out if it is an okay time to go to bed and what I can expect tomorrow morning. The man who runs the newsstand across the street is not there, but neither is the cop stationed next to the newsstand. Which sucks for the Algerian Embassy he is supposed to be protecting.

I saw a man limping home by the light of one of the few street lamps but maybe he wasn’t a protester. Maybe he was just a guy with a limp. Hard to tell in Egypt.

The smell has changed from the sort of sulfur smell of gunpowder to the smell of burning trash (I assume burning buildings smell much the same) but it isn’t overpowering and I can’t smell it indoors like I could for awhile. The sound grenades (or shooting, or explosions) have just started up again after having faded for awhile but they sound much farther away than they did about an hour ago.

The fruit stand on the side street I can see from my balcony was receiving a truckload of bananas. A small boy was perched on top of a BIG pile of banana branches on the back of a truck, handing them down to men below. I wonder if that happens every night.

It is a breezy night, which is unfortunate for a few reasons. First and foremost, the tree next to my building will scrape its branches loud and creepily across the outside of my bedroom wall all night and I am already on edge enough. Secondly, it will keep blowing the smoke around to neighborhoods that otherwise aren’t involved in the protests so there’s no way to avoid or get away from it. Okay when it is trash smoke but if it becomes teargas again that could be a problem. Finally, a windy night is bad for buildings on fire in a city full of priceless antiquities without a fire department.

11:03pm
Ben Wedemen of CNN says that the police have fallen back entirely and the Presidential Guard has taken up positions outside the foreign ministry, the Egyptian Museum, and the State TV building. He says there are no protests going on because there’s nothing to protest against since the police have left the streets (so who is shooting?). Al Jazeera is reporting that several top Egyptian businessmen and other influential figures have boarded a private jet and left the country.

11:16pm
Two fire trucks have arrived at the NDP headquarters to try to put out the fire. After the fire has completely gutted the building. Good luck with that.

11:19pm
Bed time!

January 29, 2011

2:18am
Whiskey woke me up in a terror and I thought for sure something crazy was going on. Apparently just after I went to bed, Mubarak addressed the country, ordered his ministers to resign, and agreed to name a new government. However, he claimed to be “on the side of the poor” and refused to step down. He noted that without the reforms of the last few years, these protests would not have been possible. This was not what got Whiskey’s attention, however. He agrees with me that there might be mice in my walls (in addition to the creepy tree scraping mentioned before) and wanted me to join him in barking at them. I was just feeling guilty about the noise when my neighbors upstairs decided to move their furniture by dragging it screechily across the floor (not the first time they’ve thoughts 2am would be a good time for this). And remember their floor is my ceiling.

The shooting has not let up significantly since I went to bed and I can smell the gunfire from my balcony again.

CNN for the first time has referenced the fact that the Muslim Brotherhood is being held out by the regime as a “scarecrow.” That is, “if you allow a free and fair election we’ll wind up with an Islamist government in Egypt.” This is the first time I’ve heard CNN comment on the fact that that is a fear tactic without much truth to it, noting that the Muslim Brotherhood didn’t even get involved in this uprising until the second and third days of protests.

I also missed Obama’s speech (seriously, when’s a girl supposed to sleep around here?! I was away for like 3 hours). I hope someone replays it later in the day.

Protestors have re-filled the streets after the speech. There was just a low rumble that could have been an explosion or a burst of automatic machine gun fire.

Incredibly, BBC is replaying the press conference announcing Nelson Mandela is being released from the hospital. Do they realize he isn’t president of South Africa anymore? Can’t we discuss Nelson Mandela no longer having a respiratory infection tomorrow?

Al Jazeera is interviewing Egyptians in New Jersey who wish they could be here for this historic moment. Ahh, irony.

2:55am
Back to bed.

10:18am
My friend Amani just came over. I was really, really asleep when she came but I was so happy to see her. She’d been on the outside edge of the protests and got a little bit of tear gas but was otherwise fine. She watched a local mall across the river burn and get looted from her balcony on the 22nd floor of a Zamalek hotel.

4:08pm
Amani told me the streets were safe so I took Whiskey for a quick walk. I thought I should check in on a British coworker of mine who also lives in my neighborhood and has only been here since October so I stopped in at her apartment and found that not only had Amani had the same idea, but another coworker of ours who lives in Zamalek was also there.

Cell phones were up working again (I credit American pressure with this achievement so THANKS HILLARY) so I called my mom on Amani’s cell. It was the middle of the night in Oregon so my mom was relieved to hear from me but semi-conscious so we agreed to talk again later.

My friends and I decided to meet for coffee a half hour later so I ran home and got a quick shower and then met them at Amani’s hotel for lunch and coffee.

Around 1:30, the TV stations were reporting that there were more people on the streets at that time today than at the same time yesterday. This makes me think tonight will be bigger and more violent than last night.

When I got the word around 2:30 that the government had moved curfew up to 4pm from 6pm, I hurried home to walk the dog one more time. I also did a little more last minute grocery shopping when I saw that people were cleaning out the stores. I bought a kilo of potatoes, a kilo of bananas, some rice, flour (to make banana bread), garlic, and two whole chickens (I froze one). I had already bought all my canned food, bottled water, toilet paper, etc. in the last couple days so I am quite well-stocked for one apartment and a dog.

I talked to my friend Millie and asked her to reassure our friends that I am fine and explain that my neighborhood is outside of the combat zone.

On my way home from after the dog’s afternoon walk, the wife of the man who helped me walk the dog at curfew time yesterday called out to me from her balcony next to my apartment building and reminded me to call on them if I need anything. What sweet people. I will have to bring them a banana bread when the chaos dies down.

I spent the last few minutes before curfew calling around to my friends to get everyone’s landline numbers in case cell service goes down again. I called my mom again, and my grandma, to reassure everyone that I am still fine. I think it is likely a hysterical overreaction but I pulled a heavy piece of furniture across my door. It is so unlikely looters would ever come here, much less think my apartment is worth their time, but my friend lives in a compound far outside the city and said her neighborhood has some looting so I figured better safe than sorry.

CNN is reporting that Ahmed Ezz has resigned. He is a steel magnate who has had a stranglehold on a lot of the business sector for years, thanks to lucrative government contracts paid for in kickbacks. He is possibly disliked by the people on the streets as much or more than the President.

I am going to finally take a shower and then make some banana bread (enough to freeze), stew (enough to freeze), and a chicken (if I can figure out how long to cook it, I can’t believe the Internet still isn’t back up!). I feel like I should be taking some sort of action to prepare (for what, I don’t know) and cooking is kind of the only thing I can do from within my apartment. I’ll make things I can freeze anyway so nothing will go to waste if I wind up not needing to hunker down in my apartment for days.

6:28pm
Mubarak has appointed his intelligence chief as Vice President (which Egypt has not had since Mubarak took power nearly thirty years ago) and the former Aviation Minister (what’s that?) as Prime Minister. I am not at all hopeful that this will satisfy the protesters and, in fact, it doesn’t seem to have impacted them at all. However, it may inadvertently prevent a power vacuum if Mubarak does eventually step down, as there will already be someone in place with the Constitutional authority to govern. Eventually the people will demand someone fairly elected with no association with Mubarak but in the interim, having a VP could be a good thing for restoring some stability or at least staving off total chaos.

I am going to wash the dog.

The military helicopters are back.

7:44pm
There are rumors that looters and state-sponsored gangs of thugs are looting and vandalizing upscale neighborhoods. One of our secretaries who called to confirm we don’t have work tomorrow also confirmed that in her neighborhood, Heliopolis, which is an upper middle class mostly Christian neighborhood near the airport, this was the case. Another expat neighborhood, Maadi’s Road 9 has a lot of coffee shops and restaurants and supposedly the residents grabbed sticks and kitchen knives and formed gangs of their own and ran down to protect their property and businesses. Al Jazeera reported that these neighborhood watch style vigilantes were forming gangs throughout Cairo to protect their homes.

I went out to my balcony and although the street was quiet, a group of six or seven teenagers holding sticks and planks of wood walked past. They looked like middle class boys and so I think they must be the sons of shop owners and doormen who live in the area. Doormen are quite poor but they live in small apartments near the entryways of the buildings they protect so they have a personal interest in patrolling. We have a big metal gate in my apartment that is rarely closed but I imagine it is bolted today.

The military is supposedly sending reinforcements to the suburbs but I have not seen any troops or vehicles yet. I haven’t heard any traffic besides the helicopters in a long time.

Charlie Sheen checked into rehab again. Thanks CNN ticker!

9:12pm
I roasted my first chicken, thanks to all I learned watching Karen in my years in Madison. I used a garlic sauce my friend accidentally left here to make the spice rub, though, so it wasn’t a purely Wisconsin (or Ohio) recipe.

The streets of Zamalek are still relatively quiet but the quiet is broken every now and again by the scraping of a metal barricade (stolen from police by the residents and set up to block the street), the banging of metal, occasionally shouts (far off, thus far) and sometimes shots I can hear from far away. It is definitely not as quiet as yesterday. Yesterday all the people, the energy, the anger was focused on Tahrir and Downtown. Now that people have the idea of looting and vandalizing, the anger is spreading out from Downtown. Some of these guys work for the government. They are plainclothes police or otherwise state-hired thugs.

I want to hear the US government condemn the absence of police. The total withdrawal of police, rather than a piecemeal falling back from protest areas to residential areas in need of protection, indicates that the government has given an order to disperse the police. This is spiteful and immoral. It is a move that whines, “you don’t like the police? Fine, we’ll take them away.” The US needs to demand Mubarak return the police to the streets in a policing capacity, to protect the people and their property from looters. And privately, the US needs to demand he withdraw the looters on his payroll.

11:03pm
Just talked to Mom again. Having the phones back up is really a blessing but I have to conserve my minutes in case I can’t buy more tomorrow. If any of my friends in Zamalek learn of looting or any other danger, though, we can contact one another on our land lines. For now the odd sounds of the neighborhood watch groups getting settled and getting their adrenaline under control have faded and it is extremely quiet outside. There is little to no shooting or tear gas firing sounds coming from Downtown and it does seem that with the military in place the protests are finally relatively peaceful in the Central Cairo area. The number of people in Tahrir is down to a few thousand, which is much earlier than things wrapped up yesterday.

I just saw an interesting piece on Al Jazeera about the young people protecting their neighborhood in Nasser City, another upper middle class suburb about forty minutes out of the city center. The camera watches them make a few traffic stops on the side street that leads into their neighborhood (the army is checking the main thoroughfares but not the side streets). They surround a car they don’t recognize and wave weapons until it stops. Then they check the driver’s bita’a (national ID) and ask his business. Then they discuss it amongst themselves and determine whether or not to let the car pass, at which point it peacefully goes on its way. They are not acting like mobs, but rather as street police.

Almost all eyewitness reports in the media so far claim that the gangs of looters and vandals are police officers in civilian clothes.

12:35am
The news has been reporting the same stories for the last two hours. All is quiet on the Zamalek front. Time to read a bit and head to bed.

January 30, 2011

11:24am
I heard a couple shots last night around 3:45am that sounded like they might have come from 26th of July street, a few blocks away. The street was charred on the block closer to me than 26th of July when I took Whiskey for a walk this morning but my friend Joanne lives on that street and she didn’t call worried last night so I assume it must have been something innocuous like some burning trash or maybe firecrackers.

It is quiet on the streets, partly because today is a work day (though I finally got my snow day), but also because the guys who are usually hurrying around running errands in the morning are exhausted from patrolling the neighborhood all night. But people are still out washing cars, buying groceries and, in my case, going out for coffee.

The military is out but not really “in force.” I saw a group of about four guys protecting a government-owned grocery store, another three in front of a government building on 26th of July street and three more directing traffic at what isn’t even the biggest intersection (the police who normally direct traffic are still gone and the culture of obeying stop lights is unheard of here).

4:47pm
They are buzzing Cairo with military fighter jets to intimidate the crowds and enforce the curfew. Really they’re just scaring the crap out of the law abiding citizens (and law abiding dogs) who are already inside).

The helicopters are back as well. It’s smart, though. It creates the impression of a military presence without actually a lot of troops on the ground.

The Muslim Brotherhood backed Mohammed El Baradei to negotiate a transition with the government. This is a big deal because it shows a level of cooperation and trust within the opposition and a willingness to band together in a practical way to push things forward.

The former interior minister has been arrested by the Army.

Hillary said today that the US supports an orderly transition of power. This is the closest thing we’ve heard so far that could even be interpreted as support for the revolution. I wish they’d come down a little stronger on the Internet blackout issue and on the government encouraging violence and looting issue.

The American Embassy called my friend and told her the US was providing planes tomorrow morning to evacuate citizens. They haven’t called me or two other American friends and their phones have been unsurprisingly busy all day so I don’t know the details. I‘m not sure if a flight out would be free or if I’d have to buy a ticket. Frankly, I don’t really want to leave yet. I trust my neighborhood to protect me and I trust Egyptians to keep their anger focused on the President until he leaves. If El Baradei or even the new VP steps in at that point and returns the police to the streets and orders the gangs to stand down and requests aid to restock the grocery stores and TURNS ON THE INTERNET, we have a real shot at quick stability. I hope this happens soon because there are reports of food and fuel shortages.

Tonight is the second night of vigilante protection against government sponsored gangs of looters and vandals.

7:20pm

At the same time the American Embassy is recommending evacuation, all European embassies are recommending against it. Thanks guys.

8:35pm
Carmen, my friend Dena’s roommate, who has only been in Egypt for less than three weeks, would have been home by herself tonight since Dena is at her grandpa’s in Heliopolis and their other roommate is staying overnight at the Dutch Institute. Their part of the neighborhood saw a little more action than mine last night so she asked to stay with me tonight. We had some spaghetti and vodka lemonade and watched the news for a few hours but I think we’re both about done for the day. I got a bit of a sore throat earlier and I think it is turning into a cold so I am going to read a bit, then go to bed early.

January 31, 2011

8:16pm
Long, busy day. I got up to walk the dog at ten and picked up a bunch of groceries. I am definitely sick so I hit the pharmacy too and stocked up.

Amani and I were going to meet for coffee but none of the coffee shops were open so we walked around and did my grocery shopping together. I stocked up on some more water and refilled a bunch of old water bottles with tap water in case they turn the tap water off, as was rumored today.

Amani had the idea to go to a public park that overlooks Qasr el Nil Bridge, which connects Zamalek to Tahrir Square and is one of the main arteries for the protesters. Today wasn’t even supposed to be a big protest day. The organizers asked for a general strike today and told everyone go home and rest in anticipation of tomorrow’s “Million Man March” from Tahrir to the presidential palace in Heliopolis. (in response to this news, I had two thoughts: first, isn’t the president in Sharm El Sheikh?! Second: that is a loooooong way to march!) Despite today being kind of a down day, our visit to the park was exciting because there were actually a huge number of people marching and chanting on their way to Tahrir. They are apparently planning to spend the whole night. The military is building blockades to prevent people from entering the square so when the protesters heard this they decided to go the night before, before the blockades could be completed, and just stay until tomorrow. Like American Idol tryouts.

The police are back on the street tonight, though not in their usual numbers. I can see a cop at his post out my balcony. I’m not sure if I feel safer having him there or not. I heard a siren (haven’t heard that in a while!) and shots but otherwise Zamalek has been quiet since curfew today at 3pm.

I got to talk to Millie and Jill tonight. I was going kind of stir crazy so it was really nice to talk to people who have something else to do in their lives besides grocery shop and think about Egyptian politics. I am going to go even crazier tomorrow as they’ve moved the curfew up again. We are all supposed to be indoors for the night by 1pm tomorrow. I already have a dog walking date lined up with my neighbor to break curfew. The little critters just can’t stay cooped up for so long. They’re not the only ones.

I just watched an emotional interview on Al Jazeera with Salma El Tarzi, an activist in Tahrir right now. The picture she painted of the protest was inspiring. When asked how people were getting the food, water, and supplies they needed to sustain the protest while the banks were closed. She said “The people who have money are buying food for the people who don’t have, I’ve never been more full in my life because someone is always here offering a bottle of water, a biscuit or a sandwich.” She said that she’d never seen Egyptians so civilized to one another and that perhaps it is because they never felt the country belonged to them but now that they feel they’ve taken it back they feel a responsibility to behave. She said they are setting examples for one another, “You stop to pick up a piece of trash and then you look around and everyone is picking up the trash.” This echoes what Amani said of Tahrir yesterday, which is that everyone is picking up their own garbage and that the square, which is usually quite dirty even when the state is functioning normally, is “spotless.” Wouldn’t it be amazing if Egypt transformed itself into a nation where all its citizens feed one another and no one litters?!

I have heard the phones will be shut off again soon so I am going to try to call home one more time. Then, to bed!

February 1, 2011

3:17pm
Curfew was at 1pm today though enough people thought it was at 3:00 that it essentially was. I walked the dog a couple times and got more banana bread making materials. I went for coffee with my nice neighbors and they offered to cut me in on their backup plan, “like an adopted daughter.” They have a place in a compound out by Hurghada on the Red Sea where they and some friends who also have pets they don’t want to leave alone in Egypt are planning to head if they feel like it is no longer safe in Cairo. They have their three Jeeps gassed up and loaded with water and extra fuel and I am welcome to come. Sounds like a nice vacation, actually. I hope they invite me sometime when the world isn’t in utter chaos.

I haven’t heard the helicopters much today, which makes me think the military really is standing by their word to leave the protesters alone. I am going to tentatively walk the dog toward the bridges today on my side of the Nile in a few hours to see if I can see or hear anything interesting. My guess is the police or the army or the neighborhood guys will stop me before I get there and tell me to go home but it is worth a shot.

3:52pm
Al Jazeera is estimating 2 million people are demonstrating in and around Tahrir Square. That is one-tenth of Cairo’s population.

According to my friend Dena, state TV has been playing patriotic songs and showed a half-hour tour of King Farouk’s palace. They’re showing food deliveries, people at work and peaceful shots of the Nile. Basically they’re putting the camera on every location possible except Tahrir to “prove” to Egyptians that life is going on as normal.

7:30pm
I walked down the Corniche, the wide boulevard along the Nile, on the Zamalek side, with my neighbor, Don, and his dog, Chippy. People were ebbing across the bridges in both directions and the group surrounding the Interior Ministry started singing the national anthem just as we were passing parallel to it on the other side of the Nile.
We could wander around the streets as we pleased since there is basically no traffic. It was great to be able to walk in the middle of roads we usually can’t even spring across.

The two of us with our dogs must have looked pretty innocuous because even though we were breaking curfew by several hours no one stopped us until we were coming back into Zamalek, when a young boy with a kuffeya around his neck carrying a broom handle came over and politely asked us what street we lived on, I guess as a quiz to see if we really lived in Zamalek. We both live on a very obscure street so he knew we really were locals.

We met an Egyptian girl on her way back home to Zamalek after spending six hours standing and chanting in the square. She seemed exhausted but elated and very positive about how kind everyone was to each other in the protests and hopeful about the future. She is a single mom.

I made another loaf of banana bread and brewed a pot of tea for my neighborhood watch. My bawab (doorman) asked for cigarettes to go with it since that is the first thing to have sold out and not be replenished in Zamalek but of course I couldn’t help him out.

CNN just showed a poster someone is holding in Tahrir saying “Yes We Can TOO”. Awesome.

9:11pm
The hilarious activist Salma Tarzi just explained to CNN that Mubarak’s proposal that neither he nor Gamal will run in the next election is not enough and that until he steps down the protesters will stay in Tahrir. She said they’ve set up a soccer tournament that will run for three days as they assume they will be there at least three days and they’ve invited the military to participate in the tournament “and they quite liked the idea.”

If Mubarak really does say that he and Gamal won’t run in the next election it will be a big concession but I doubt it will be enough. It is too late. Those people aren’t going home.

Al Jazeera is reporting that “there is no clear sign of one individual who the protesters would recognize and name as their chosen leader.” They’re acting like this is a defect of some kind. I think this demonstrates a fundamental misunderstanding of what these people are out there for. Their whole point is that they are multidimensional, from all religions and walks of life and they want a government that represents them, in that they want a complex, multiparty system, rather than a fake representative system where the NDP holds 97% of the seats in parliament, yet represents none of the people. Al Jazeera said the people are clear about who they want out but not clear about who they want in…because they don’t want a new president, they want new presidential ELECTIONS. They want to be courted by candidates for once. They want to be allowed to vote without intimidation and they want their vote to count. To me those demands are much more complex and touching on a human level than a demand for a particular person would be.

11:10pm
Mubarak just announced on state TV that he will not run for a second term. He said the protests were started “by honest youths and men” but had been “manipulated by political forces”. He emphasized the thieves and arsonists who had taken advantage of the lack of security and called on the police force to restore security while respecting rights and dignity (he used the word dignity about a million times in the speech). He called on parliament to amend the articles of the Constitution to limit the term(s) of the president and he said he would happily pass the banner over to the next president at the end of this term. He said he will “die on the soil of Egypt.” That doesn’t bode well.

The crowd in Tahrir is chanting “Leave! Leave!” and “Not Enough! Not Enough,” and “By Friday afternoon we will be at the Presidential Palace!”

It seems as if you stomp on your people for nearly 30 years they will have the tenacity to stomp on you for quite a long time in return.