Jan28 Part III

Large plumes of tear gas billowed in the distance as I walked toward the square in front of the gates to the opera. Exactly one year earlier I had passed through those gates wearing a suit and tie, thrilled to watch the Cairo symphony perform. This day I wore cargo pants and a green military jacket, believing for the first time in five years that Egyptians were taking their destiny into their own hands.

As I looked around nothing made sense. Riot police had blocked the Qasr El Neel Bridge, or the Palace of the Nile Bridge, with a line between the iconic statues of lions atop the pillars of bridge’s entrance. On one side of the square protestors were pleading with police officers to stop what was going on. The officers ignored them and spoke on their walkie-talkies. At one point a young man pulled away another man screaming at an officer because he knew such efforts were futile.

The crowd was swelling in the square. I looked up to the base of the statue of Ibrahim Pasha, one of Egypt’s great military leaders of the 19^th century. My friend, the Paris Match correspondent Alfred de Montesquiou, was taking notes on the scene. We talked about the enormous restraint Egyptians were showing, that if this day had occurred in other countries, the crowds would have acted with mob-mentality violence. He said he was amazed that after a fight broke out between a single police officer and a group of protesters, the group had carried the injured officer over to his fellow policeman for medical care.

We jumped down off the base of the camera when we saw several men rushing through the crowd carrying a body toward an ambulance. When we reached the ambulance a man was inside yelling. Many people gathered at its door and the as the driver was trying to reverse the vehicle. When it left, a man was standing with his white shirt steeped in blood. He began crying. Someone he knew, a woman, had died. Men embraced him in consolation.

Another group carried a man into the back of car and drove off. A tall, muscular young man in a white tank-top had a long slice down his arm. A medical practitioner examined his arm and told him he would be ok, and then attended to a man on the ground. A few men shouted to make room. When the space opened up I went in front of his feet to film what was happening. He rolled over on his side. His shirt was above his waist and I saw several round holes of blood on his back. He had been shot with a shotgun from behind–shot while running away.

The bridge had opened up, so I moved onto it. When I got about three-quarters of the way across it, men started Asr prayers around 3pm. The bridge went almost completely quiet. When they finished, they stood up and started moving. The police immediately fired tear gas into the crowd. Everyone headed back. In the scariest moment of the day we were pushing forward with our heads down. I was afraid if I fell, I would be trampled.

I got off the bridge and saw someone who had been hit with too much teargas. It was Simon Hanna, a producer for Reuters. I told him not to rub his eyes because it would make it worse. He had witnessed the previous days protests and the effects of the tear gas were making him lethargic. I looked across the street and saw another journalist, Ashraf Khalil. I called out his name and met him. We hugged, and as usual he had a big smile on his face. He told me his wife was freaking out that he was there, but that he needed to report. Ashraf is tough journalist who covered the Iraq War. He was not about to miss this. We spoke briefly; he had to keep moving. I then ran into Alfred, who wanted to head back to his hotel to file a story. The battery of his camera had died and he lost the photographer. He wanted to continue reporting, but he decided the story was too important to hold. I walked back to Midan Doqqi and we parted ways.

There I found the most incredible sights. A group of people sat in a circle on the street while singing national anthems and a Shiekh Imam (a revolutionary singer of the previous generation) song together. The square was packed. In its middle people were standing in rows as if they stood on risers in a choir, and they too were singing, and chanting "Aeesh, horreya, karama insaanaya," or "Bread (life), freedom, human dignity." I walked over to a wall on top of the bridge above the street that runs perpendicular to Tahrir Street. A man below me was making the peace sign with his fingers. Beyond him, and beyond my eyesight, thousands of people were walking toward us. As they passed to my left people on the sidewalk clapped and cheered them. I found Simon and stuck a microphone in his face and asked him if the protesters could make a run at Tahrir Square. “There’s a seemingly endless stream of protestors,” he said as he pointed in the distance. “There are tens of thousands, up to a hundred thousand–if not more–continuing to march up Kobri Qasr El Nil toward Midan Tahrir where they were stopped before, but with these numbers, I think there will be no stopping them at the moment.” I asked if he was calling it a revolution. He answered, “I think there’s no stopping it now. If not today, if not tomorrow, it’s this week. His days are numbered. Previously they were calling this to be Mubarak’s last day.”

“There’s no end in sight for these people. And they’re gonna get what they want. They have to; it’s too much now. It’s gone too far.”

As he said this, the crowd was chanting, “The people want the downfall of the system.”