Last days in Cairo

There's something about experiencing unrest and what may indeed become a revolution that brings me back to this blog. Since evacuating from Egypt a little over a week ago, I have been living in a cloud, in a state of limbo, in a blur of everything that has happened and is happening. A few days ago I forced myself to sit down and write the story of my last days in Cairo, which were the first days of the protests, in an effort to process everything that has been going on around me and create some order in the chaos of my memory. And so the story begins...

I knew that protests were planned for Tuesday, a mid-week holiday in honor of Police Day, but at this point I can’t even remember how I had heard about the scheduled demonstrations. Perhaps I saw an email was sent around the office by the U.S. Embassy suggesting that Americans avoid the crowds in Tahrir Square or perhaps I saw mention in the news or perhaps I saw a post from someone on Facebook. All I remember was a feeling of curiosity and calm with a slight sense that this might grow into something bigger. And so, as work drew to a close on Monday, I asked my boyfriend if he would stop to pick up some extra groceries after work. Just in case something came of this.

The demonstrations on Tuesday were significant and larger than many had expected. But now even their memory has faded into the haze that has taken over much of my memory of that week. On Wednesday we returned to work, joking in carpool that we hoped to encounter a group of protesters on the way to work so we could turn around and return home. The work day proceeded much as usual, though I did find myself checking Facebook and Twitter much more often than usual to try to get the latest scoop as what started as a single day of demonstrations continued onward. (Note that access to Twitter had been turned off on Tuesday by the government in an attempt to prevent protesters from organizing, but I still had access on my work computer.) I believe it was Wednesday afternoon that one of my colleagues received a phone call from her husband warning us that a group of protesters were gathering near his office and would be marching downtown – a route that would most certainly lead them right past our office. Although this news brought a sense of uneasiness, no one with whom we discussed the possibility seemed overly concerned. So we finished out the work day and returned home. The protesters continued their stand in Tahrir Square on Wednesday evening, but by Thursday morning their forces were dwindling.

Sometime on Thursday we learned that protesters were planning to re-establish themselves with a large demonstration after Friday prayers. Crowds would gather after mid-day prayers throughout the city to demonstrate against President Mubarak in what was being called a “Day of Rage”. An email was sent around the office advising that Americans stay away from mosques and from any places where people gather after prayers. Another email was then sent with an updated list of phone numbers and plans for notifying all office personnel in case of an emergency. And then, just before I left the office for the day, an email with a list of “what to pack in case of an evacuation”. At the time, I thought the office was being overly cautious and was just using the current events as an opportunity to update emergency and contingency plans. At that point in time, the thought of an evacuation seemed utterly ridiculous

At some point on Thursday, as I continued to follow Twitter and Facebook, I realized that posts about the current events in Egypt on Facebook had gone strangely quiet. It wasn’t long before I learned that Facebook had joined Twitter and other social media websites in being added to the list of websites that had been blocked by the Egyptian government. That mattered very little, though, when around 5:30 p.m., general internet access in Egypt was completely blocked by the government.

Yet life was still continuing rather normally. My boyfriend had colleagues from London in town and we had plans to take them out to dinner downtown. With the disappearance of the internet, I wondered if the situation might be growing more serious and if we ought to stay in our neighborhood, Maadi, for the night, but the rest of the group seemed unconcerned. And so our group of six met up at a friend’s place, loaded two cars and began the journey to Zamalek, an island in Nile in downtown Cairo. As we left Maadi and headed up the Corniche, toward Tahrir Square, I knew something was wrong. The roads into the city were empty. It was only 15 or 20 minutes before we were approaching Tahrir Square, which was probably less than half the time it would take to make that drive on a usual Thursday night. Just about a block before the square, we turned onto a side street so that we could then take the Kasr el Nil bridge to Zamalek. I strained my neck to look towards Tahrir Square, but could see no signs of the protests. All was quiet. And so we dined on the Blue Nile, a boat docked on Zamalek overlooking downtown Cairo, and all remained quiet. We then returned to Maadi, again with eerily little traffic for a Thursday in Cairo.

On Friday morning, the air was noticeably more tense. I woke up early and went to church, where the congregation was smaller than usual. As our pastor reached the point in the service designated for announcements, he told how upon arriving at the church earlier that morning, he saw one of the plain-clothes security guards who is normally posted to the church and who greeted him excitedly. “This is Mubarak’s last day,” he said. It was a shocking statement in many ways – that someone would have the courage to say it, that someone who is part of the government’s cadre of secret police would say it and that someone would have the confidence to think it might actually happen. The grave effect of those words left an eerie silence in the church.

After the conclusion of the service, we realized that mobile phone service had now been blocked by the government. No phones and no internet. The feeling of isolation began to appear. As we mingled with friends from church before going our separate ways, we realized we might have another issue at hand. Friday night was meant to be poker night for the guys and girls’ night for the ladies of our group. Although 14 of the ladies had r.s.v.p.’ed for girls’ night, without internet access to check the directions that had been sent out, few would know how get to the flat where we were meeting. And without mobile phones in service, the guys would be unable to place their pizza order for dinner. But there wasn’t much we could do, so we all decided to continue as planned. As the hostess for girls’ night, I needed to pick up some recipes from my house and then do some shopping. It was a strange feeling to leave the church on my own with no way to check in on anyone else, not being able to make a call or send a text message or have any communication to follow up on plans for the afternoon.

I wanted to hurry and finish my errands before mid-day prayers finished, but as I walked to my house, I heard the call to prayer ring out from the loudspeakers of the neighborhood mosques. I began to wonder what would happen an hour later when prayers drew to a close. I decided to pick up more than just a couple recipe books from my house – I packed a bag with a few clothes and some valuables. But I still had the feeling that I was being overly cautious and was trying to be prepared just in case of an emergency. As the mid-day prayers drew to a close, I managed to catch a taxi over to my boyfriend’s house where I was to host girls’ night. This was no small feat as the roads were almost empty. From there, I headed out shopping and found myself being overly cautious again as I decided to stock up on some food items. Again, just in case. I went to Metro market and bought extras of all the staples – eggs, juice, butter, flour, sugar, cereal – as well as ingredients for my dinner. I then stopped by my favorite fruit and vegetable stand for my usual produce – carrots, onions, melon, zucchini, tomato, lemon, lime, bananas. As I waited for my groceries to be packed, I looked toward the street to flag down a taxi. This street, which is normally bustling with Egyptians and with foreigners, was literally empty. What was most relevant to my particular situation, though, was that there wasn’t a single taxi to be found. I was thankful that the guys from my fruit and vegetable stand have been wonderful to me over the years that I’ve spent in Cairo and offered me a ride in their delivery car.

I arrived at my boyfriend’s place, unloaded the groceries, and noticed him sitting in the small park across the street talking with two neighbors whom we know from church. I walked out and chatted with them for a few minutes, during which they mentioned that their landline was still working and would make international calls. I decided to call my family in the States to let them know that I was safe despite the break in communication, and then I began preparing dinner for girls’ night.

At some point in this afternoon, we heard that a curfew had been put in place in an effort to clear the protesters from Tahrir Square. The curfew would be in effect from 7:00 p.m. until 8:00 a.m., throwing another kink in our plans for the evening. I continued cooking anyway, unsure of who might venture out despite the curfew, but probably also clinging to some sense of normalcy as the television continued to broadcast the scenes from downtown Cairo and across Egypt.

It wasn’t long before a few friends began to arrive. One couple arrived and had just come from downtown, on a side street by Tahrir Square, where they had been providing first aid treatment to the protesters who had been attacked by teargas and rubber bullets. They were supposed to have been working inside an acquaintance’s apartment, but instead had been refused entrance to the apartment and had worked in the lobby and stairwell of the apartment building, narrowly escaping confrontation with police who marched by in the street. Another couple, who live across the street, stopped by to see what we were planning for the evening. We made a decision that we would all eat and spend the evening together, despite curfew and despite our other plans. We all lived close to one another and could always stay in one apartment if curfew were being enforced. A fourth couple joined us and we settled in for a “revolution party” that consisted of “revolution imported wine”, “revolution homemade soup”, “revolution pastries”, “revolution Cuban cigars”, etc. At this point, early in the night, the mood was light. Yet as we ate dinner, we remained glued to the televised news reports from Al Jazeera and discussed what implications the day’s events might have for Egypt. As night fell, demonstrations were taking place across the country, and in places such as Suez, things were turning violent, but in our little enclave in Maadi, we were still enjoying the company of good friends.

Then everything changed. One of the neighbors who had been in the park earlier in the afternoon ran over and told us that a mob of protesters were headed to Maadi and the police had been given authority to use live ammunition on those who defied curfew. The apartment where we had gathered, with its huge front windows, large veranda and less-than-sturdy wooden fence, was a great place to live, but it was defenseless against a mob. Within seconds, the ovens had been turned off, valuable items had been gathered, lights had been turned on to give the appearance of someone being home, and we had run across the street to one of the couples’ third-floor apartment, which we felt would provide additional security.

There we continued to watch the news reports on Al Jazeera. We took turns on the landline calling employers, family and friends to check in and get updated information. We were nervous, but I doubt we yet felt the true intensity of what was happening in the country. We continued to drink “revolution beers” and smoke “revolution Cuban cigars”.

As we watched the news, the police had disappeared from the streets and the army had rolled in. They had been hailed by the protestors but had not obviously chosen whether they would continue to support the regime or turn and support the protesters. And that’s where the story of the “Day of Rage” ended. The army had arrived, but there was no conclusion. It felt unfinished. It was really just a pause, a hiatus, a moment of waiting to see what would happen next. Finally we prepared for some rest, spreading out on beds and couches and cushions throughout the apartment. As we tried to sleep, there was a bit of gunfire in the night, but it felt distant.

When I awoke the next morning, Maadi was quiet. I had slept longer than most of the group and learned that the boys had been up early to drive around Maadi with the pastor from our church. They reported that there were indeed tanks in the streets and a few burned-up vehicles in a traffic circle on the opposite side of the neighborhood. Everyone scattered to check on their own apartments and a couple of us set out to find one of our colleagues who had not yet checked in with the office. As we walked through the neighborhood, we could hardly notice that it was anything other than a regular Saturday. We walked over to my house, where I packed a few more clothes, hid a few valuables and filled up a bag with food from my kitchen. We then returned to my boyfriend’s apartment, where I showered and packed an emergency “go” bag.

One of the other couples then joined us and we set about packing food items, water bottles and extra blankets so that we would all be able to stay in the apartment across the street for a few days if needed. We then learned that one of the other couples who had been with us had moved out to a hotel near the airport and were waiting to be evacuated by their company. Those of us who remained rushed over to the designated apartment where we would all stay and settled in for the evening, continuing to watch the news and enjoying a large spaghetti dinner. A single friend who lives downtown soon joined us after having had a stressful day taking photographs in Tahrir Square. We made sure everyone was prepared with a “go” bag and settled in for the night.

Unfortunately this night was to prove much more harrowing than the previous one. It wasn’t long after dark that the gunfire began. The neighbors I mentioned previously joined us with their two sons and we were a packed apartment. We kept the lights and the noise low to avoid attracting attention, but the night was filled with gunfire throughout the neighborhood. We invited two single women who lived on the same floor of the apartment building to join us for safety in numbers, but they refused. We then barricaded ourselves in the apartment. The guys moved the refrigerator in front of the door, then wedged it in place with a mattress and two dining room chairs. We discussed contingency plans – what to do if someone came to the door, what to do if the building caught on fire (from a Molotov cocktail), what to do if the gunfire came right up to us. We spent much of the next several hours huddled in the hallway of the apartment, which was the only area away from windows and exterior walls.

At some point in the night mobile phone reception returned and a lot of phone calls were made – to family and friends overseas, to evacuation insurance companies, to employers, to friends and colleagues elsewhere in the city. It was a hectic night.

Eventually, we headed to bed, but it was to be a night of little sleep. I spent most of the night listening to the gunfire outside, planning what to pack if I were to have to evacuate, planning what to move from my place to someone else’s place if I were to have to evacuate, thinking up more contingency plans, praying for peace and safety, and wondering what the future would hold.

The next morning was a difficult one. As curfew ended, I ran across the street to my boyfriend’s apartment to take a shower and make a decision as to whether I would evacuate. His company had booked us both flights that were scheduled to leave that day at 1:40 p.m. I had no idea what to do. One couple was evacuating; two couples were not; a single friend was evacuating; my boyfriend was not. I was on the fence. It was just like every moment throughout this ordeal has been – unclear about the future with the feeling that things could either return to normal or turn disastrous in only a moment’s time. I returned to the apartment across the street, where our pastor and his wife had joined our group for a discussion about possible evacuations. The U.S. Embassy had not yet ordered an evacuation, but many companies were starting to send their expatriate staff away. By the end of the discussion, I decided I would go and, as I said the words out loud, I immediately burst into tears out of the emotion of it all. I then had only a few minutes to run back over to my boyfriend’s apartment where I had left the items I had already collected from my house. I packed a small bag with a couple shirts, two pairs of jeans, my cowboy boots, a small bag of toiletries, electronics and a few work-related documents, then grabbed my purse and stuffed several coats into the bungee cord on my duffle bag. In what felt like a matter of minutes, we were off to the airport.

As we drove out of Maadi, I started to question my decision to leave. Everything seemed normal. There was no apparent looting that had occurred on the streets we passed. However, as we approached the main highway out of the neighborhood, I saw the tanks, and the soldiers, and the looters who had been arrested and now stood with their heads hanging down and their hands tied. The scene made my stomach turn. We continued toward the airport onto the Ring Road, where the scene was much the same.

At the airport, I made it through the first level of security without much trouble. In the check-in area, the lines were enormous and there were people waiting everywhere. I went to check in for my flight and inquired about the line for business class passengers. I was only somewhat surprised when I received a response – “Today it is survival of the fittest”. It was a fair enough answer under the circumstances. I waited in line to check-in, thankful that there were airline attendants stationed at the front of the line, since many counters were unstaffed. However, when I finally made it to the front, I was told that my flight was not yet checking in. Although it was almost noon, the airlines were still trying to check in passengers from the first flights of the day.

I waited a bit and then remembered a separate business class check-in area at the opposite end of the room. I tried checking in at this line but was told the same thing. And so the pattern began – wait a half hour, try to check in, be told the flight isn’t yet being checked in. Finally, an hour after my flight was meant to have taken off, four hours after I had arrived at the airport, I was able to check in. I rushed through passport control and into the business lounge, where I met some friends who had been waiting for a flight that had already been delayed over six hours. They had been at the airport for eight or nine hours in total. We waited a couple more hours, becoming more and more convinced that our flights would be cancelled and we would have to stay overnight in the airport, which actually wasn’t a terrible option since the airport felt much more secure than our neighborhoods. Finally, an announcement came that my flight was boarding. I rushed to the gate and made it onto the plane just as they were closing. I breathed a sigh of relief as a settled into my seat, only to be told that it would be another thirty minutes before we could take off as there was no one at the airport to load the luggage onto the plane. The airlines were even shorter on personnel since the extended curfew prevented other persons from coming to/from work. Eventually we were able to take off.

I arrived in Milan long after my connection had been scheduled to depart, stayed the night in a hotel, and the next morning continued on my way to London. By Monday afternoon I was in a farmhouse in the English countryside.

"Garbage Dreams"

Last night, I attended a screening of a film called "Garbage Dreams", which follows the lives of three teenage boys living in an area of Cairo called Moqattam. Because it is home to over 60,000 Zaballeen (trash collectors) who earn their living by recycling up to 80% of the garbage collected throughout Cairo, Moqattam is also known as "Garbage City". (See this post for photos from my first trip to the neighborhood.)

The film was incredibly interesting, examining the challenges the Zaballeen face as their trade is affected by globalization, particularly by Cairo's move to privatize trash collection through a $50 million contract with three foreign companies. It was both heart-breaking and thought-provoking.

The film was shown at a great venue called Darb 1718, a contemporary art and culture center in an area of town near Coptic Cairo. According to its website, Darb 1718 focuses on “(1) exhibiting the works of largely unseen local artists alongside those of established regional and international artists who have rarely or never exhibited in Egypt, (2) providing local artists with opportunities for international exposure and cross-cultural exchanges, and (3) implementing developmental programs that include workshops, debates, films and other educational initiatives.”

The film was shown outside, projected against the side of a neighboring buildling. The crowd that had gathered to watch it sat in orange beanbag chairs on the small grass lawn and on the roof of the building. It was certainly not a typical Egyptian evening, except, perhaps, for the oppressive heat and crowded Metro trains!

Break from blogging

When I was back in the States in May, several people made comments about how much they enjoy keeping up with what I’m doing through this blog. Their comments reminded me that I should get back into the habit of writing and posting interesting stories, and I began to wonder what had led me to stop in the first place.

I noticed almost immediately that my blog posts trailed off right around the one-year anniversary of my time in Egypt. In that year, everything was so foreign and interesting – Islamic holidays, strange fruits and vegetables, trucks piled high with fifteen feet of God-knows-what wobbling down the highway, cases of H5N1 influenza, peaceful felucca rides on the Nile, even travels to nearby countries like Israel and Djibouti. Then everything was new. And strange. And fascinating. It was truly, as Paul Coelho writes, “an act of rebirth” in which “you confront completely new situations, the day passes more slowly, and...you don’t even understand the language the people speak.”

However, over the course of the first nine months of my second year in Egypt, situations are no longer “completely new”. Many things that were once strange and unusual have become routine pieces of daily life. Sights that I would have once photographed immediately and situations about which I would have loved to write and analyze are hardly notable. Thus blogging has become less of a priority.

While part of me feels like this familiarity could mean that it’s time to move on to a new country, another part of me recognizes that there is still much to learn and experience here, and perhaps I just need to pay a bit more attention to the environment around me.

As much as I would like to promise that I’ll revert to my former habit of regular blogging, I don’t think I can make that promise, but I do recognize that many of these things that have become routine for me may still be interesting to some of you, so I will try to continue sharing the more interesting aspects of this southern girl’s life in the Middle East.

Guestroom improvements

In case anyone’s actually been following my home renovation projects, I thought I’d post a few pictures of my newly painted guest room. (Maybe this will encourage a few more people to visit?)

"The wedding will start at 8:30"

“The wedding will start at 8:30,” she said. “Please be there on time.” She emphasized the latter phrase at least three more times before I hung up the phone.

On the surface, the request was simple enough. After all, I come from a region of the world where wedding guests are expected to arrive approximately thirty minutes before the event is scheduled to begin. There have been times when I’ve been scolded for not arriving a full hour before the scheduled time. So one would think that arriving at an Egyptian wedding “on time” would be no problem.

But this ignores the fact that this request went against everything I’d been told about Egyptian weddings. Although weddings are typically scheduled to begin at 8:00 or 9:00 at night, I’d been told that they never start on time and I ought not arrive any less than an hour or two AFTER the scheduled time! So it would seem that I should wait until 9:30 or 10:30 to arrive at the wedding, but the fact that she had placed such an emphasis on the time confused me.

I asked a couple fellow expats at work what I should do and they were as confused by the emphasis on timeliness as I was. Thankfully one of our senior scientists is an Egyptian woman who seems to always have the answers to these questions. Our conversation went something like this:

Me: If a wedding starts at 8:30, what time should I arrive?
Her: Between 9:30 at 10:00.
Me: What if the bride specifically asked me to be on time?
Her: (pause to think) Who’s wedding is it?
Me: The bride is a friend of mine, the daughter of my landlady.
Her: So do you know many people who will be at the wedding?
Me: Not really, just the bride and her immediate family.
Her: If it was a wedding where you knew a lot of people and wanted to spend time socializing, you should go at 9:30 or 10:00. If you aren’t going to know many people, wait until 10:30.

As my colleague seems to always be right in these situations, I took her advice and planned to arrive at the wedding at 10:30. However, while sitting in traffic en route to the venue, I started to worry – What if I was too early? Would I be sitting in a corner alone as the only non-Arabic speaker in the room? What if I was too late? Would I be an embarrassment to my friend? Would she be offended? Would I have to make up for my tardiness by staying until the very end of the event and not return home before 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning (on a Tuesday night when I would have to work at 7:30 the next morning!)?

I arrived at the hotel and entered the ballroom, and one of the first people I saw was the father of the bride (the husband of my landlady). He was thrilled to see me, stopped in his tracks, led me to a table at the very front of the room and sat me at a table with the bride’s grandmother and great aunts. As I sat down, I was relieved to see that neither the bride nor her new husband was seated on the stage at the front of the room. I was still early. So I sat and carried on a limited conversation with the older women, smiling and attempting to bridge the gap between our languages.

Within ten minutes, the lights dimmed, the music came on, and the bride and groom made their grand entrance. My timing really could not have been more perfect. The events of the night began and continued through the night. After the typical events of a wedding reception (signing the contract, exchanging rings, the first dance, cutting the cake, etc.) and lots and lots of dancing, everyone sat down to dinner, and I decided it was time to make my escape. It wasn't easy to sneak out - I had to say goodbye to about half of the wedding guests and make numerous excuses as to why I didn't need to eat a full meal of lamb, turkey, beef and fish - but I made it home and glanced at my watch as I walked in the front door. It was 2:30 in the morning - just three and a half hours before I would get up for work.