Revolt! Feb. 11 Alf Mabrouk Ya Masr!

By now you all know Mubarak stepped down and passed power to the military, rather than to his newly appointed VP and/or the shady Parliament. The people of Egypt welcome this transition to military rule and really do trust completely that the military will oversee a swift transition to credible democracy. Only in Egypt would "martial law" be an improvement to civil liberties and human freedom.

Okay, not only in Egypt...Yemen, are you listening?!?!

After yesterday's disappointing speech (one of the worst ever in history by my bet) in which the President refused to step down and made no further concessions, I'd gone to my friend's to practice some good old fashioned depressed escapism and watch Twilight. Forewarned by her dad that "the office of the presidency" was going to make a speech, we reluctantly left Edward and Bella (it was the first Twilight so not much Jacob, unfortunately) to tune into Al Arabia, an independent Egyptian news channel (i.e. not State TV). We were on alert that something was up because they were advising of an announcement from the Presidency, not the President.

VP Suleiman succinctly delivered the immortal words:
"Hosni Mubarak has waived the office of presidency and asked the army to run the affairs of the country."

Everyone freaked the f*&% out. Dancing, clapping, shouting, waving flags (where'd those come from?!). The streets exploded (really, actual gunfire, they were even shooting emergency flares, like the ones that come in liferafts, into the air) and cars began the traditional Egyptian celebratory honking in the pattern of beeep beeep beepbeepbeep, beeep beeep beepbeepbeep usually reserved for weddings and soccer victories.

I ran home and grabbed my camera and video camera (so yes, I will be spending all day tomorrow trying to remember how to upload video) and met up with Amani and Karim and their parents and headed across 6th of October Bridge to the Corniche, then past the Ministry of the Interior (where snipers had cut down protesters only two weeks ago) and the State Television building, past the back of the Egyptian museum and into Tahrir Square.

A note (Attention President Obama!) on the pronunciation of Tahrir, which by now everyone knows means liberation. The h is not silent. It is the sound you make when you blow on your hands to warm them up. So the Tah is not like how we'd say good by if we were being snooty (ta-tah!), it is similar but followed by a quick exhalation of breath: Tahh! Then role those r's when you say the rir part of Tahrir.

The five of us had to hold hands in a train when we got to the square and many other families and groups of friends were doing the same. Chants would break out, many of which were variations on the chants that have become familiar in the past weeks. Instead of "leave, leave," it became "he left, he left" and "He must leave, we will not leave," became "He left, we will not leave." There was another that sounded really snappy in Arabic but is a little more cumbersome in English. Amani translated it as "we have extracted him," which makes Mubarak sound like a leech, and BBC used the word "dislodged," which makes him sound like a barnacle. Both fairly appropriate metaphors. "The people, the army, one hand" popped up whenever we got near one of the tanks and groups of soldiers around the outside of the square (the soldiers were posing for photos with the protesters and letting them dance on top of the tanks with their flags) and of course "Allahu Akbar," God is great, is perfect for any occasion. My favorite (because it is also the name of a dive bar Downtown), shouted mostly by secular looking student-aged women was the simple "houreyya," or "freedom!"

Flags were literally everywhere but my favorite was worn by a boy of perhaps two on his mother's shoulders (sitting on her hijaab). Although in his sitting position, he was about two feet tall, the flag was easily four or five feet long and tied around his neck like a cape and trailing all the way down his mother's back to the backs of her knees. He looked like the world's tiniest Superman.

We passed three sets of human chains, two made circles within the crowd that protected men on their knees praying (one even used a flag as a prayer rug!), and one, which included civilians and military men, encircled the Egyptian museum, protecting it from further looting and vandalism. You often see grown men hold hands in Egypt, but rarely does it look noble, and even fierce, as it did tonight, when dozens, maybe hundreds, linked hands to protect the vulnerable men in prayer and the vulnerable relics of Egypt's history in the museum.

We made a half-circuit around the square and then tried to squeeze out by Hardee's. This proved to be a bottleneck point and as the crowd squeezed together, the kind of sexual harassment that, according to reports by my friends who have been protesting every day, has been completely absent from the protests so far, reared its ugly head. It is a weird kind of groping, similar to a snake flicking its tongue. A finger will dart into the wasteband of your jeans, touch the skin on your hip or back right where your shirt usually covers but sometimes rides up, then dart away. Or a more daring finger or two will slip into your armpit from behind, barely graze the side of your boob and then disappear. But because there were several snakes in the crowd, it is like when a little kid is trying to get your attention by poke poke poke poking. If I weren't in Egypt and didn't know what it was, I'm not sure I would even know it was sexual in nature and might just think it was accidental; a result of the crush of the crowd.

When we finally popped into a side street and found each other near Pizza Hut, we had to traipse through a few more side streets to get to Qasr el Aini street, the long, wide boulevard that connects our office to Tahrir. These smaller side streets answered my long-pondered question of where all those protesters have been going to the bathroom. My sneakers are sitting on my balcony waiting a good soaking in bleach tomorrow.


We passed by Parliament (where people were writing "this is where Parliament USED to be!" in chalk on a big sign on the front gates while laughing soldiers looked on, and by several other ministry buildings. The sidewalks out front were covered in tents (Coleman is getting some great advertising exposure they're probably not even aware of) and blankets with plastic (like the kind you use to cover your lasagna when you put it in the fridge) stretched over the trees and bushes to protect the blankets from the rain.



I got through my only checkpoint when a boy barely high school aged with flag as a bandana checked my passport (which he could not read, since it was in English) and serious young woman in a purple hijab and studious glasses searched my purse and I was waved through. The men got frisked but not the women. These were volunteers, not military or police, checking to make sure weapons didn't get into populated areas. After we were confirmed weaponless, we were allowed onto Qasr el Aini street and made our way back to our office for some coffee, tea, the leftover pasta I'd forgotten to take home yesterday, a much-needed bathroom break, and President Obama's speech.

It was a beautiful speech. The kind we haven't heard him give since the Primaries. He sounded like how a leader is supposed to sound. For me it was a relief, since I have been waiting for weeks for him to give that speech. I suspect it may have been a relief for him too, since although the US has had to hedge its bets publically, I like to think that somewhere, while Gibbs was giving his ambiguous press conferences, Obama was pacing the Oval Office, chomping at the bit to praise what has happened here. My favorite line was the "For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, that bent the arc of history to moral justice once more." It was everything I remembered Obama used to be, that I don't think we've seen from him in a long time and it was everything the people of Egypt (and we people IN Egypt) have been waiting for him to say.

I think it will go a long way toward repairing any damage done by not weighing in on the right side earlier. Insha'allah. For another, smarter person's analysis, see Nick Kristof's review of the speech: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/obama-leaves-wishy-washy-behind/

Our bodies warmed by tea and our hearts warmed by the speech, we returned to the streets fortified (and empty-bladdered!) and headed for home. We were barely back on the corniche outside Garden City, the neighborhood that houses our office, as well as the British and American embassies, when we ran into friends of ours, one of whom was a lawyer in our office up until December. Of all the millions of people out on the streets and we found each other! We exchanged quick hugs and kisses and congratulations and, as one of them is of Iranian descent, we noted that this is the 32nd anniversary to the day of Iran's 1979 Revolution (the bad one) and exchanged hopes that Egypt's revolution would lead us in a different direction (forward).

We crossed Qasr el Nil bridge, one of my favorite places in Cairo and the best part of my commute to and from work each day. It connects Tahrir Square to the Cairo Opera House and is framed on each end by a pair of regal looking lion statues that seem to stand at attention, protecting the bridge. Men and boys had climbed to the heads of the lions, at least forty feet in the air and were waving flags while families, some with teeny babies, posed near the claws of the lions for what are sure to be awesome Christmas (Ramadan?) cards.



After ambling the length of Zamalek, we ended the evening at the Marriott, in their garden restaurant, surely the only restaurant still open three hours after curfew (I assume because the outer wall of the Marriott property extends all the way around the grounds it keeps out the rifraff, like the police, who would otherwise close the restaurant at curfew time. We ate a late dinner (though Egyptians are usually just getting dressed to go out at 11pm on a Friday night) and toasted the future and pondered whether our firm could get the job of tracing and freezing Mubarak's assets around the world.

Never having attended New Year's Eve in Times Square, this was the biggest party I have ever seen, and no one deserves it more as the people who are partying now have suffered for decades (ahem...Yemen...still paying attention?). The youth are intent on starting the future, as in tomorrow, on the right foot and Facebook and Twitter are abuzz (Google search Tahrir clean and click on the Realtime button on the left margin) with the news that there will be a giant community cleanup of Tahrir starting bright and early at 10am. I doubt many will go home in the intervening hours but those that do are encouraged to bring gloves and garbage bags. The dresscode, according to the Facebook event (https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=151128844945432) is jeans and a shirt, "any color from the Egyptian flag."

I am proud and humbled to know these people and honored to have shared even a small part of this experience with them. Alf mabrouk ya Masr, a thousand congratulations to Egypt on the success of tonight, the past eighteen days, and the future.

Revolt! Feb. 9

Yesterday practically half the lawyers in our office went to Tahrir. It had been peaceful all day and by afternoon it was clear they’d already set a record for the greatest number of protesters so far. Again, I didn’t go, but on the way home, I got to experience some of the protest as my car had to weave around the swarms of people on their way to Tahrir. They were literally every type of Egyptian I have ever seen. Women in full hijab and niqab, little babies in fleece coats with hoods pulled up over their noses in preparation for sunset, fashionable girls in skinny jeans, young guys hauling blankets ready to stay the night, old men who looked like they’d come straight from the mosque, guys in workshirts carrying their sons on their shoulders. Everyone had flags or were wearing the Egyptian colors in headbands and armbands.

Zamalek is basically a parking lot for the protesters. Cars are double parked all along the broad avenue along the Nile called the Corniche to the point that there are even uniformed parking attendants who wave people into the tightest imaginable spots. One way streets have become two way streets (which freaked me out when we first turned onto a formerly one way highway in the morning and had to dodge oncoming traffic!) but Egyptian drivers just go with the flow and make it work.

My friend showed me pictures from the protests yesterday of how, after rumors that the army was planning to move their tanks further into the square to restrict the open space protesters could use, protesters set up their blankets around the tanks and would sleep at night in front of the wheels and actually lay with their heads in the cogs of the wheel mechanism so the tanks cannot be moved.

There were so many people yesterday that the protest spread to the Ministry of the Interior (where thankfully there are no longer snipers!) and the State Television building and throughout many of the streets downtown. Today protesters have surrounded government buildings, including the Parliament building with Parliament still inside (they were in session to discuss what to do about the protesters when the protesters boxed them in and told them what they could do with themselves!).

As yesterday was a record number of protesters, obviously many people came who had not been to the protests before. When interviewed, they said that they were not deterred by VP Omar Suleiman’s morning speech that the President had decreed a roadmap to constitutional reform and many cited the speech of activist and Google exec Wael Ghonim moments after his release following 12 days of police detention as the reason they joined the movement. His speech, which was less than two minutes long, was given off the cuff when asked how it felt to be out so soon after his release that he was literally still being embraced by friends and family. It was so emotional and so moving that a coworker had to excuse himself immediately after watching it on my friend’s iPhone so he wouldn’t cry in front of us. It has been disseminated through blogs and tweets and is now on everyone’s Facebook page. Here is the interview, with an English translation at the bottom. Try to read along at the pace he speaks to get the full effect (to assist in this effort, listen for the words “masryeen” – Egyptians, “camera” and “insha’allah” –God willing to pace yourself).

http://ircpresident.blogspot.com/2011/02/wael-ghonim-is-free-and-his-first-words.html

You can follow him on Twitter to hear the new voice of the youth movement.

Another recent speech which had exactly the opposite effect on the Egyptian people was that of Tamer Hosny, a pop superstar popular with teen and preteen girls, who made possibly the dumbest PR move EVER this morning. Last week he made a really dumb speech about “how can you be upset if Mubarak overlooks you, you are eighty million and even a father of three or four kids mixes up his kids’ names sometimes.” Then this morning he went to the square to tell the protesters to go home had to flee when people booed and essentially chased him out.

Also, this morning the new VP basically stated that a coup followed by a military dictatorship would be the only way to resolve the situation if the protests continue. He called the protests a “grave threat to society,” and basically said he would use the army to grab power and impose martial law to stop them if necessary. And this is the guy the US seems to be backing?

Suleiman reminds me of the skinny, gaunt, hollow-eyed caretaker guy who is always behind the Scooby Doo haunting who “would have gotten away with it if it weren’t for you meddling kids!” Check out this quite awesome independent Egyptian paper for more fantastically creepy quotes:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/egyptian-vp-holds-firm-says-only-alternative-dialogue-coup

The workers from two petroleum companies and one of the Suez Canal companies have declared a strike to demand higher pay and better working conditions. So far it is not interrupting Canal operation.

My friends’ mom just told me two people got married in Tahrir a few days ago. I looked it up and it is true!
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/07/tahrir-square-wedding_n_819603.html
What a beautiful idea.

Revolt! Feb. 6

It is raining again today. And Egyptians were standing in line (IN LINE!) at the banks this morning waiting for them to open for the first time in about ten days. The small trash cans attached to the street lights are being used and the street lights are on. Basically Cairo is becoming Oregon!

Well, not quite...

A really scary article came out in Al Masry Al Youm, an independent paper today giving more details about the arrests of foreigners, which have been grinding through the rumor mill for days:

http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/news/foreign-residents-become-tense-amid-rising-xenophobia-egypt

Another guy posted on the expat list serve I am on that the secret police are sweeping apartment buildings in Downtown looking for foreigners.

My office has informed everyone that working hours will be 9-3 but so far is not providing any support for those of us foreigners who are still around (there are two of us who have stayed) to safely get to and from the neighborhood where we work, which is surrounded by roadblocks as it is a ten minute walk from Tahrir Square. This is extremely frustrating to me because although I am doing my best not to be hysterical, I do still want to be cautious, and the advice I’ve received is don’t be anywhere near Tahrir in the afternoon or evening, don’t take taxis because drivers are turning foreigners into police, and ride with Egyptians whenever possible.

Unfortunately, this makes me dependent on my friends for rides and as only one of my friends lives in my neighborhood, if she is not going back right when work gets over at three (and she rarely does), then I am in a situation where I must either take a taxi, stay where I’m not supposed to be into the afternoon or evening, or work from home instead of going into the office. I have chosen the latter for tomorrow. All my work is on the computer anyway and I have remote access so I have absolutely no problem with spending more time with my puppy in my PJs if there isn’t any secure way to get to and from the office.

The fires of xenophobia stoked again and again by State TV are manifesting in completely irrational and self-defeating ways. For one thing, the government is simultaneously blaming the Muslim Brotherhood (Egyptians) as well as foreign agents (of Israel and “the West”) for the protests and their impact on Egypt’s economy and security. We can’t all be involved because since when do the West, Israel, and the Muslim Brotherhood work together? In addition, encouraging ordinary citizens to fear and intimidate foreigners only works against the economy by continuing the billions in tourism losses Egypt has already suffered since the revolution began. By pressing the people to harass foreigners, Mubarak is undercutting the fabric (not to mention the funding) of Egyptian society, which, like much of the Middle East, is centered largely on hospitality; the welcoming and protecting of guests.

For those of us who have been in Egypt long enough to make friends and build lives, we feel a twinge of betrayal. Although our particular friends are sympathetic and loyal, we can no longer trust “the Egyptian people” as an abstract, and this trust that strangers will not only not do us harm, but will welcome and help us, is foundational to our ability to live and work in Cairo despite its various smaller dangers (traffic, pollution, untrained medical staff, signs all in Arabic, etc.).

I feel like because there are only two foreigners in the firm now who are not at least dual Egyptian citizens, the office is preoccupied with other things, like finding new work arising from the revolution, getting things back online and checking systems after the internet blackout, securing the office and the building from intruders since so many new people are in the immediate area now, etc. I can’t say I should rank at the top of anyone’s list of things to worry about in a time like this but at the same time, although I am ready and willing, I simply cannot go to work tomorrow because I have no safe way to get home. This is frustrating because I want to be a good employee and set a good example by being at the office but I feel extremely selfish informing human resources that their revolution is inconveniencing me.

I am loving the early work hours and the later curfew, which between the two give me four hours to run errands, walk the dog, and possibly find beer (that will have to wait for tomorrow, since I missed the time window for delivery tonight). On one hand, I am relieved that many things returned to normal today. Offices and restaurants reopened, delivery started up again (a lot of my friends got calls from the restaurants they normally order from notifying them that delivery was once again available…one friend got calls from FIVE places…guess she doesn’t cook much!), and the banks opened, albeit withdrawals from the ATMs are limited to 500LE (about $80). On the other hand, I am concerned that this government push for a “return to normalcy,” and the emotional response (relief, gratitude) from ordinary people like me will take some of the steam out of the revolution and reduce the population of the protesters. If this fizzles out and Mubarak weathers the storm, a lot of good people could be in great danger. So says the great Robert Fisk (http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/fisk/robert-fisk-the-wrong-mubarak-quits-soon-the-right-one-will-go-2205852.html) and although I am all for security and stability, the potential for many knocks at many doors is too high a price to pay for Normal.

On a lighter note, the pic of Whiskey on this post is not relevant to anything, he is just adorable.

Revolt! Feb. 5

A rainy day in Cairo! Almost as miraculous as Egyptians standing in line! All bets are off, it seems, though somehow I don’t think this is what Hillary meant by a “perfect storm.”

Besides my dog walks, I stayed indoors all day, out of the mud and rain, but tomorrow I get/have to go to work. We have limited hours, just 9-3 so we can get home before any craziness and still have some time to run errands but I also have Arabic class before work so I have to get out early early in the morning.

The protesters are trying to keep the momentum maintainable by having the hardcore people hold the square most days and calling for big representation from the general population certain days: Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays. So tomorrow might be a big rally but it shouldn’t get started in earnest until after I’m headed back from work. I hope.

Curfew has been pushed back to 7, which is still not enough time for me to go to the movies or go out to dinner and the beer place still is not open so everyone’s stock is getting low but I miss socializing so I hope my friends and I are able to meet up this week. The talk on the list serve for expats is getting increasingly hysterical. There were a lot of reports of foreigners getting detained for questioning in different neighborhoods and people were even talking about how to flavor contaminated water and home remedies for diarrhea from drinking contaminated water if the entire infrastructure collapses. Considering the banks are supposed to open tomorrow and a lot of restaurants were open this evening, it seems some of my fellow westerners who have stayed behind are going off the deep end. I could definitely use some social time with friends and booze to decompress.

Apparently the people in Tahrir have felt the same need to vent some pent up anxiety. According to my friend who has been there the last few days, the atmosphere is still friendly and festive. Women are not being harassed by fellow protesters, despite sleeping overnight in the streets with strange men. They are being protected, fed, allowed to use the bathrooms in homes around the square, and generally supported and cared for by their fellow protesters and neighbors. My friend said they brought in speakers last night and a few people managed to smuggle in guitars and they had an impromptu concert in the square. With the army maintaining security and protecting the protesters from would-be attackers, I hope the protests stay peaceful. Military leaders visited the square today and the protesters clasped hands in a human chain to protect the path they walked through the crowds from any potential troublemakers.

There have been some interesting reports by legal analysts and constitutional scholars that say that Mubarak cannot just step down. If he goes on medical leave or something temporary, then the VP takes over but has limited powers, which do not include the power to reconstitute the parliament or call for new elections, or change any of the extremely oppressive election laws Mubarak himself put in place in 2007 which basically make it impossible to vote in a new government. If he steps down entirely, basically the same power vacuum exists, with worse people in charge than the VP. So if the protesters’ demands are met word for word, whoever takes charge of the transitional government will not actually have the constitutional authority to amend the constitution, hold new free and fair elections, or change the voting laws. I think these particulars are what is holding up the process and navigating these challenges may be what people are referring to when they say (as the New York Times did today) that Egyptian political leaders are looking for ways to nudge Mubarak out.

In the meantime, another positive step came today when the top leadership of the NDP resigned, including Gamal Mubarak. On the down side, recent reports indicate that as many as 300 people have died since the protests began.

I don't know how I am going to be able to do anything but read the news at work tomorrow!

Revolt! Feb. 4

Today was thankfully uneventful but it was like one of those westerns or thrillers where the good guys are like “it seems quiet…maybe a little too quiet” and then something blows up or the bad guys come out shooting. So my day was like that, except for the exciting part. Fridays are usually completely dead in the mornings. Most businesses don’t open until after prayers around 1 and people usually stay in with their families until then so it wasn’t unusual when I went for my morning walk with Whiskey that hardly anyone was around. It was a little weirder when I went to get lunch at a local bagel shop owned by an American and his Polish wife and didn’t see anyone on the way there. The shop was open as usual and I had an awesome grilled chicken sandwich for lunch with my friend Dena and her British roommate, Carmen. They were planning to head to Morocco for two weeks to escape the tension of feeling trapped in their apartment with nothing but State TV (they haven’t been in town long enough to get a satellite dish) so we had a nice lunch and quick chat and they headed off to get their tickets out of town.

I heard some rumors about foreigners getting beaten up or detained by police or, scarier, abducted by ordinary Egyptians on suspicion of being foreign spies and then turned into the police for questioning but the rumors were in other neighborhoods and I didn’t feel threatened as I went about my errands today.

I went to visit Amani and Karim and their family down the road from me. They have the most amazing chocolate biscuits they serve with tea or coffee so even on a Friday, which is supposed to be a family day, I can’t resist bothering them. With so many people evacuating, they are some of my few friends left in the neighborhood. I saw about four people on the fifteen minute walk back from their house and three were police officers guarding one of the embassies.

Another friend had called me while I was still at their place to discuss the targeting of foreigners so I was really freaked out right before I took Whiskey for his second walk around four but besides the streets still feeling like a ghost town, everything was fine. We got to walk in the middle of the road for most of the time because there was no one else around. It was the quietest I have ever seen any part of Cairo.

Despite the total absence of people, there was also a refreshing absence of trash since residents and shop owners have been sweeping the streets and bagging garbage themselves (people are actually putting trash cans in front of their stores and passersby are actually USING THEM!) and the garbage trucks finally made it into the neighborhood a few days ago to pick up the bags of trash. Now there is just one mystery bag that smells like about 8 pounds of poop sitting in a squashy lump on one corner that Whiskey and I carefully avoid.

My mom said Fareed Zakaria said on CNN today that whereas we are used to seeing protests lead by the likes of Ghandi and Martin Luther King Jr., these protests have no leader. I have heard similar complaints on CNN International and BBC and find it a bit silly. This precise complaint proves that the protesters truly want what they are demanding: free and fair elections. They want a government that represents them, in all their chaos and diversity. They don’t want to switch one man out for another, they don’t, as a group, have a particular president in mind to lead them. That’s the POINT. They want the right to vote in an election where their votes are counted, not altered or cast aside, and they are not hunted down and beaten up for them afterwards.

The party of the guy they want out has a strangle hold on 97% of the parliament, yet one tenth of the population of Cairo has joined the protests. Do the math. The party in power doesn’t represent them. The parliament doesn’t represent them. They don’t all WANT to vote for the same guy. That’s the point.

Heard some disturbing stories about food, blankets and medical supplies sent by average Cairenes to support the protesters in Tahrir being confiscated by police and Mubarak supporters. Medical supplies tossed in the Nile and those carrying them detained and interrogated, sometimes for hours. One woman bringing extra blankets to the friends’ house she was planning to stay out AWAY from the city center was detained and questioned for four hours and her blankets were taken away even after they determined she was not headed to Tahrir. She was finally released, shaken.

The Egyptian police have arrested the Al Jazeera bureau chief and a Cairo journalist. Al Ahram, a state run newspaper reported the first death of a journalist in yesterday’s fighting. Al Jazeera’s offices were ransacked and burned by unknown thugs. Despicable.
The government reports that 5000 were injured in the violence of yesterday and the day before. Today’s protests were peaceful, with the help of the army which stepped up again to secure Tahrir against government thugs. The line to get frisked to get into the square stretched all the way over the Qasr el Nil bridge to Zamalek and what Amani and I noticed most prominently in the news coverage is that the video actually showed Egyptians waiting in line one behind the other. It’s a miracle! Egyptians have learned to stand in line! All it took was eleven days of revolution.

The helicopters kept up their nonsense all day but seem to have finally given it a rest in the last hour or so. No shooting tonight (I think they’ve run out of teargas – which, if you hadn’t heard, was manufactured in the US and was expired) and the atmosphere on the streets of Zamalek is fairly relaxed. I took a dog walk with my neighbor around 9:30 and we had to dodge around two soccer games among our protectors. A single truck of police are stationed in the middle of the island that can zoom off and report to trouble spots if necessary but so far all is quiet.

The Central Bank said something today about wanting to try to resume business on Sunday, but demonstrators are calling for big rallies on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday so I doubt I’ll be going back to work any time soon. I am one of very few foreigners I know who are still in Zamalek, and the only foreigner from my office still here. I am going to work my email contacts to try to make some new friends tomorrow and reconnect with some old ones!

Revolt! Feb. 3

February 3, 2011

9:53pm

Today has been a difficult day. The jubilance and celebratory atmosphere of the peaceful protests is marred now by the bloody street war yesterday. The good guys are a little on the defensive and thankfully the international media has picked up the truth of the story that many of the so-called “pro-Mubarak supporters” that attacked protesters yesterday were plainclothes police and/or paid to cause violence. Fortunately, the bad guys are on the defensive too, and I say fortunately because although the news is not good for me, with the new VP giving a long interview on State TV blaming foreigners for everything, the continued backpedaling and mixed messages from the administration (while the VP was blaming foreigners, the new Prime Minister said he would start an investigation into whether security forces were involved in the violence) is strengthening the stance of foreign governments against Mubarak.

There are some scary rumors of foreigners being targeted by government funded gangs (I heard a foreigner was beaten to death in Tahrir yesterday) and the media reports it is basically open season on journalists. The US Embassy has provided its last evacuation flight out of Egypt and those of us that wish to leave after this will have to make our own arrangements. Honestly, most foreigners were making commercial reservations anyway, as they are significantly cheaper than the evac flights provided by the State Department. Interestingly, I learned that most countries fly their citizens out of emergency situations for free. The US is fairly unique in requiring reimbursement. Even Mexico was evacuating its citizens from Egypt free of charge.

Mexico. Take a minute and think about that. What responsibilities does a government have to protect its citizens who choose to live on foreign soil? Do those responsibilities change depending on whether or not those citizens engage in peaceful protest against a foreign government? If there is no actual legal obligation for a government to protect its citizens abroad, does it have some moral obligation? Whether it is a moral or legal obligation, is it right that such protection comes with a price tag?

Many Americans have been disappointed by the lack of guidance and assistance offered by the Embassy here. No one from the Embassy ever called me, despite the fact that I am registered with them. Not knowing I was receiving Cairo Warden emails from the Embassy (proving I was registered), due to the Internet blackout, I had my mom re-register me. To complete my re-registration, the State Department sent me an EMAIL with a link I had to click and enter a code (HELLO – NO INTERNET). After 48 hours of me not entering the code I didn’t know about, they canceled the re-registration request (which turned out not to matter because I was already registered, they just weren’t calling me because they’re lame). No safe transportation was provided to the airport and I’ve heard reports of roadblocks on the way where foreigners trying to leave are first robbed. Even if you can get an evac flight, you are sent to the “safehaven” (and the safety of these places is debatable at best) cities of Nicosia, Istanbul, or Athens (no choice where you’re sent) and must provide your own accommodation or transportation from there, at your own cost, in addition to reimbursing the State Department for your evacuation at two to three times the commercial rate. No pets allowed, even as carry-on luggage.

The president apparently admitted to ABC today that he is fed up with being president and would like to step down but fears that if he does, Egypt will descend into chaos. I didn’t see the interview but if that is accurate, it is a surprisingly frank admission from what I have believed this whole time is basically a stubborn octogenarian blinded by his pride and his advisors (who supposedly keep a lot from him) to the reality unfolding in his country.

Officially, the two sides have come to a stalemate, as the VP declared the government will not negotiate as long as the protests continue and the protesters will not leave until Mubarak steps down. If Mubarak is making admissions in the foreign media about wanting to leave office, perhaps he is trying to soften his landing a bit but the crackdown by government forces yesterday, the continued non-intervention of the military or police to protect peaceful citizens, the stoppage of supplies into Tahrir by government lackeys and the sanctioned hunting of journalists and demonizing of foreigners weighs against the likelihood that he is preparing for a graceful exit. If he is, judging from the continued rage and frustration of the Egyptians I’ve heard from, he really shouldn’t take his time. If tomorrow’s protests are as big as Tuesday’s, or even as big as last Friday’s, he could be chased out before he has time to leave on his own.

If he’s not planning to leave on his own, his terror tactics are weighing against him in the court of international opinion.

10:46pm

Hillary is slamming the attacks on the peaceful protesters, foreigners, and journalists now and she totally called out the army for sitting on its ass while people were attacked around them. She fell back on the “immediately begin negotiations for a peaceful and orderly transition.” It isn’t enough to demand that negotiations begin immediately. The transition needs to begin immediately or those people on Tahrir are not going home. Sigh. That was disappointing.

The Health Minister says that 13 people were killed in yesterday’s fighting and some 1200 were injured.

Middle class Iraqis who had taken refuge in Egypt during the war are fleeing Cairo and returning to Iraq in search of security and stability. Yikes.

So it was a big day in the news but one of the most boring days so far in Zamalek. In the wise words of my friend Dalia, “this is what unemployment felt like.” Only with the caveat that unemployment comes with a little tingle of guilt like it is somehow your fault. This at least doesn’t feel like that. But there is a sense I should be doing more with my days, which is difficult when the day officially ends at five. I am going to make a better effort to exercise each day, in addition to my two half-hour dog walks and finish some projects I promised I’d do for my mom but haven’t been able to work on without Internet. Of course with the restoration of Internet, I’ve caught up on my TV shows, but it is time I buckled down and did some work too. Now that I am used to watching TV for 12-14 hours a day it will be hard to work anything else into my schedule but after 10 days, maybe some variation in my routine will be good for me.

The helicopters have been circling non-stop today but otherwise the streets are quiet. I can smell burning trash from the campfires warming the neighborhood watch groups (who I neglected to make banana bread tonight – hopefully tonight will be uneventful!) but I associate that smell with the burn barrel of one of my babysitters when I was little and would strike out on my own into the woods during the day to explore. It is the smell of adventure!

Thanks to those of you who continue to write and call. It is nice to hear from home and reeaaally nice to break up the monotony. Good luck with this year's snowpocalypse!

Revolt! February 2, 2011

February 2, 2011

1:16pm

I told my friend Dena last night that the surefire way to undermine the protests now would be to restore Internet service and let the protesters eat each other alive in the blogs and chat rooms, bickering about whether this latest concession goes far enough. Sure enough, we have Internet back today and there is a lot more debate in the streets about whether the protests should continue. Many people who aren’t participating and therefore aren’t getting a daily dose of patriotism and camaraderie at the rallies are getting tired of the curfew, tense from being cooped up and the pressure of having to provide for their families with limited cash supplies and no work. There will start to be more infighting soon between the opposition factions and it will be up to the organizers to hold it all together. I hope they do, otherwise we’ll have to go through this all again in September when Mubarak decides to run for reelection.

I heard this morning that around 300 have been killed across Egypt so far

4:54
Well, it has been a sad and exciting afternoon. A few hours ago, a horde of camel and horseback riding thugs rode through the military roadblock and began attacking the protesters in Tahrir Square. The two sides began throwing rocks at one another. Many people fled and many others were carried away with wounds from rocks. The army is trying to provide a cordon between the protesters and the attackers with tanks but is not able or willing to actively restore calm. The noise is incredible and clearly audible from my balcony.

The international news media keeps referring to them as “pro-Mubarak supporters,” which does not seem to be accurate. Possibly some of them are politically motivated, but the protesters are pulling the IDs off of the ones who started the attack and showing the cameras that these are security forces in plainclothes. The TV stations know this and reported this but instead of calling these guys “security forces,” or “hired thugs,” or “government forces,” etc., they keep calling them “Mubarak supporters.” I think that gives a really skewed view of what is happening. This is not a popular counter-protest movement, this is an attack by the government on the peaceful protesters and should be reported as such. This is very disappointing.

It appears from CNN’s coverage that Anderson Cooper has arrived in Cairo. This is the closest I have ever been to Anderson Cooper. Curfew just started so I suppose it is a bad time to go looking for him…maybe tomorrow…

I wonder if both sides will stop to pray at the evening call to prayer.

Life in Zamalek continues to be uneventful. I made a different kind of chicken soup today. I walked the dog twice again. Internet is back, at least temporarily, so most people I know have stayed home answering concerned emails of friends and family. I am immensely appreciative to be back in contact with the rest of the world but I am really disappointed that the police and the military are doing nothing to bring peace back to the protests in Tahrir and concerned about what will happen after dark. I am feeling cabin fever more than ever and my cold has moved into my chest so I will probably go to bed early. However, I am afraid that once darkness falls and the cameras don’t have so great a view, the government forces will start using live fire. Even if it is jus tear gas and rubber bullets again, I imagine the gunfire will make sleep difficult.

My neighbors have invited me over for dinner in a few hours. I hope they have wine. It has been a stressful afternoon.

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.