Jan28 Part IV

We decided to head toward Tahrir Square again to see if the crowd could break through to it. It looked like the police were again holding ground at Qasr El Nil bridge. We were tired and getting hungry. I suggested we look for a restaurant, buy as many sandwiches as we could afford to hand out to protesters, and call it a day. Then we ran into a friend, Bakry. He asked if we had seen his girlfriend and a group of friends. He looked worn out. Tear gas had earlier rendered him unconscious. Some people took him in, and nursed him back to health with some sandwiches and tea. I asked him to tell me what happened on camera. He said he didn’t want to do anything for the media at the moment. Tired and dejected, he sat on the middle of the road. A stranger asked if he was ok. He was angry and fed up with his country. I asked him if in his dream he ever imagined it would be like this. He said, no he didn’t.

We told him our plan about the sandwiches and he asked if we were hungry. We said yes, we were. He pulled out cheese sandwiches from his pocket. I devoured one. He seemed to have energy all of a sudden, as if helping someone else gave him strength. We walked to the bridge. It was open and now covered with water from cannons of the riot police trucks. We walked to the end and the police pushed us back again with tear gas. Bakry was keen not to lose us. He grabbed my hand and Simon’s hand and we went back toward the police again. This went on several times, until we came very close to Tahrir Square. I sat down on the ground. I pointed the camera at my watch to note the time. A tear gas canister landed a few feet next to me without me even realizing it. I jumped up and ran back. People around me were coughing. I couldn’t see.

We stood on the bridge, feet wet from stepping in puddles. Simon and I were ready to give up. Bakry insisted we move on and try one last time. It was dark. We walked into Tahrir Square, Liberation Square, to the sound of rhythmic banging on the metal poles holding up the handrails of the sidewalk. The police had been pushed to the other side. It looked like a war zone. A large fire burned and I saw the most amount of smoke of the whole day. People were walking into it.

I climbed up on a stone block with a metal grate above the underground metro line. I turned to a guy beside me, and told him that they had taken Tahrir Square. It was over. He said it wasn’t over, many other cities had to follow. But what they would do next, he said, he didn’t know.

It was over for me. I had reached Tahrir, or liberation, so to speak.

I walked back toward the car after about six hours in the protests, wondering if my friend Nermine was waiting. I managed to find a taxi by the grace of God. I landed back where I started, in front of Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque. I walked toward the street where Nermine’s car was. A friend of a friend stopped me to chat. I asked him how he felt. He was happy and amazed. Originally he didn’t want to join the “Facebook revolution,” but changed his mind after seeing a video on Youtube of an Egyptian who stood in front of a riot police truck that was firing from its water cannon.

I arrived at Nermine’s car just as she left. She had found a ride with a friend after waiting for an hour for me. It was dark and the streets were becoming unsafe without any police. I ran after the car, shouting her name, but it was too late. She left the key to her car with a boweb, or doorman, named Awwad and instructed him to give me my bag. I sat on the stoop next to them. I had nowhere to sleep. The only friend I knew with a place was on the other side of the city. After seeing the chaos in Tahrir Square, I knew I couldn’t make it to his apartment safely, even if I could walk for at least an hour to get there. I somehow had the feeling earlier that Nermine wouldn’t be there, and that I would end up where the bowebs were sleeping. Indeed, with typical Egyptian hospitality, they offered me a place to stay.

We descended into the garage and they made me a cup of tea. Within five minutes they called me their brother. We talked about what was happening. They insisted the protest was largely economic. They were tired of no work, lousy pay and a bunch of corrupt politicians and businessmen who robbed the country. Awwad told me of a friend who studied formal Arabic and could only find a job as a boweb. We chatted for some time, but they understood I was tired, so they set me up in a small room off to the side. I was prepared to sleep in the beds where we were drinking tea, but they insisted I sleep in the room because it was protected from the draft coming in from the garage entrance. The room was only a bed with metal walls around it–no floor. It smelled of insecticide, which was unpleasant, but relieving because I wouldn’t have to deal with cockroaches. They put my bag with me to protect from thieves. I was exhausted, but the day’s events swirled in my head. I slept on and off, at points hearing banging sounds from the street from what could have been gunshots. I wasn’t sure. I learned then that liberation does not come in a day.

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.”

Jan28

I can't believe it was two months ago that I was in the airport in Cairo on my way back to Beirut. I wrote about my experience upon my return. Here's what happened:

Friday mornings in Cairo–before salaat el gomaa, or Friday prayers–have the few hours of relative quiet in a city of at least 20 million people. On Friday, January 28 the quiet of the streets felt like the calm before a storm.

A former colleague, Nermine, picked me up at the airport and brought me to her home before we left for the protests. Her brothers met us in the street. They wore scarves to protect themselves from tear gas. I also brought towels after reading online about techniques to stay safe in a protest.

Nermine served me sandwiches. I wasn’t hungry, but it is considered rude in Egypt for a guest to turn away food. I also had a long day ahead and could use the extra strength. Al Jazeera was on the tv. The host was taking phone calls from Egyptians who complained of poor wages and corruption and said it was time–after 30 years–for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Suddenly the video cut. The Egyptian government had blocked the channel. We switched to Al Jazeera Mobasher, which was broadcasting instructions on how to change the satellite coordinates to watch the channel.

Nermine’s mother was nervous. Her hand formed a tight fist and even her toes curled up onto her sandals. Yet somehow she still had a kind look on her face when she looked my way.

We drove to Mohandesin, on the Giza side of the Nile River in Greater Cairo. When we got out I told Nermine that if anything happened we should meet back at her car. The government cut off mobile phones service, so we had no way to get in touch if we separated.

We walked to Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque, one of the most crowded mosques for Friday prayers. Before we reached the square in front of it, I asked Nermine to stop. I told her we were about to face something big and we should say a few prayers before going ahead.

I had spent the previous four evenings deep in prayer and meditation before going to bed in Beirut. Tears ran down my face much of the time. The tonglen meditation practice I conducted involves taking upon the suffering of others and sending them love. I felt overwhelmed, literally believing I was receiving the suffering of Egyptians. I can recall only a handful of times in my life when I have begged God for help with all my heart. These nights were the first time that those pleas were for someone else.

The scene was calm in front of Mustafa Mahmoud, although people shuffled about with a certain amount of nervous energy as lines of riot police surrounded the area at a distance. The regular crowd of the faithful filled the mosque and prayed in several rows into the street. Behind them in the garden, many people sat and watched, a few prayed. In between, some journalists were taking pictures and conducting interviews. I ran into a few colleagues: Alfred de Montesquiou, the correspondent for Paris Match magazine, and Simon Hanna, a producer for Reuters who had the day off.

At the end of prayers, they turned their heads to the right and to the left to wish peace to their brothers. After a pause of only a few moments they stood up and started chanting, “Eshaab, ureed, isqot in-nizam,” or “The people want the downfall of the system.” Spoken in formal fosha Arabic, the Egyptians had clearly taken the slogan from Tunisians, who used the same words to as they toppled their regime.

The crowd swelled as they reached the main thoroughfare, Gamaet id-dowal el Arabia Street, or the League of Arab Nations Street. I ran into a friend, Nagwa, who works as a fixer for journalists. We hugged and she flashed a big smile as she said, “We’re really doing it!” I told her I would see her on the side of victory.

The police barricaded the street to divert us onto Batal Ahmed Aziz Street. When the crowd had all moved onto the street, the policed formed a line and marched behind us. Nermine went back to talk to one of the officers, but he said he wouldn’t speak with anyone. We ran ahead to join the crowd. I was eager not to stay in the back of the protest. I read the fringes of a protest are dangerous places where police may attack. It didn’t matter, though, because more and more people joined the march from side streets. Standing from a high vantage point, the stream of heads went as far as my eye could see in both directions. As we passed buildings people waved from their balconies, mostly older couples, women and children. One of the chants from the protest included “Enzel! Enzel!” or “Come down! Come down!” In other words, join the march.

I gave Nermine the microphone of my video camera. I was filming everything. She gave a passionate speech about changing the government and respecting the basic rights of people. She began joining in the chants for the first time. She asked me why I wasn’t chanting. Part of me felt a journalistic duty not to join in the slogans, although I knew whose side I was on. Another part of me felt that I had no right to chant. It’s not my revolution. Although I have taken Egypt is an adopted homeland–former colleagues even gave me a plate that says Ibn el-Neel, or Son of the Nile–I’m not Egyptian. I wanted to feel that I was a witness, so that I could never take credit for what happened. The real credit belongs to the Egyptians themselves. I was inspired by their courage, peacefulness and unity. I was particularly impressed with women, who began new chants when the peoples’ voice lowered, and urged them forward when they became sluggish.

As we walked along Nermine spoke with one of the riot police, asking him why he didn’t put down his arms and join us. A higher-ranking man told her to stop talking to them. The protesters were chanting to them, asking why they were on the sidelines when they receive such meager salaries. When we reached the end of Batal Ahmed Aziz Street, we turned left onto Tahrir, or Liberation, Street. The very end of this street is Midan Tahrir, or Liberation Square, the main site of protests in Cairo during the previous days. Well before that point the police had set a barricade at Midan El-Doqqi, at the bridge next to the base of the Sheraton Hotel.

People started shouting “Gas!” to indicate tear gas was in the air. We could see plumes of it in the distance, but it has a tendency to disburse, so you might feel the effects of it without seeing the smoke around you. People lifted surgical masks and towels to their faces. A strange buzzing/humming sound was ringing in the air. I never figured out where it came from, but I will never forget that eerie tone.

A police truck in the square was on fire. I heard that it started driving over people until they disabled and burned it. More people were moving from the front lines coughing and squeezing their eyelids tightly. We neared the front of the crowd, about a hundred meters in front of the police barricade, when the tear gas started burning my eyes and nose. Every time the gas overwhelmed people, a crowd came to their rescue by splashing cola and water in their faces, sticking onions up to their noses and spraying vinegar on their scarves.

The police were continuously firing canisters of gas in the air. I warned Nermine that the best way to deal with tear gas is to run away. She asked me why and I told it’s simply too powerful. She was incredibly brave, eventually naïvely so. As people turned back from the gas, she shouted –as many others did throughout the day–words like “Off!” “Ma-ergash!” and “Yalla!” or “Stop!” “Don’t go back!” and “Let’s go!”

It was clear to eventually reach Tahrir Square the demonstrators would have to break through the police line at the bridge. The scene there was chaotic and we were close to the front. Nermine grabbed me and told me to come forward with her. We only moved a few feet at the base of the Sheraton before the gas overwhelmed us. I saw Nermine ahead of me, but I couldn’t continue. I turned back and went around the corner where a few dozen people were coughing and gathering at an ambulance. I got near the ambulance when someone asked me if I could breathe and needed the oxygen mask. I said I was ok and went back looking for Nermine. I couldn’t find her. Eventually I believed she had moved ahead because by this time crowds were starting to rush across the bridge. I would not find her for the rest of her day, but her bravery and words rang in the back of my head at times when I needed to press forward.

More to come...

Social Media's Influence on Revolution

Social Media's Influence on Revolution

Alexandria, Egypt--Social media's influence on revolution is a hot issue in the press and also among young people.

When Egypt's interim Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq recently stepped down from his post, the announcement came out not on television or in a press conference, but on Facebook.

The Supreme Council of the Armed Forces -- now ruling Egypt -- made the announcement on its official Facebook page, which has more than 700,000 followers.

At the recent Arab Youth Conference at the Library of Alexandria, technology's role in Egypt's revolution certainly was not lost on the crowd....

Arab Youth Flex Freedom Muscles at Egyptian Gathering

Here's a blog post I wrote for NatGeo News Watch about the post-revolution Arab Youth Summit at the Library of Alexandria.

"Library of Alexandria Hosts Youth Summit for Post-Revolution Discussion"

Here's an interview I did with Ismail Serageldin, director of the Library of Alexandria, during an Arab Youth conference at the Library in the wake of the Egyptian revolution.

Blocking the net in Egypt

The Egyptian government shut down the Internet, mobile communications and satellite television, but it didn't stop the revolution. By that point, on January 28, the revolution had gained too much momentum. Mass protests for the 28th had already been announced to start after صلاة الجمعة. On that day, thousands immediately took to the streets following noon prayers, gathering more and more protestors until their numbers reached scores, if not hundreds, of thousands in Cairo.

Too Late?
But what if the government had shut down communications earlier? Would it have prevented the revolution from reaching critical mass? Would Egyptians have figured out a way around it?
If the Egyptian government had cut off communications earlier, on the first day of major protests– January 25– for example, maybe it could have delayed the revolution, but it would not have stopped it. Seeing the thousands of protesters on the streets was enough to garner more supporters. One must not forget that Egypt witnessed some 3,000 labor protests since 2004, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. January 25 onward has been an extension of those movements.

Unlike their contemporaries in Tunisia or Syria, for example, Egyptians did not face much Internet censorship. Social networking and video websites have been open to the public. Although bloggers have been arrested and abused, their blogs still remained accessible. Despite this, Egyptians would have found a way around censorship. They have certainly faced more difficult barriers from an oppressive government and shameful economic conditions. And when the Internet was shut off, a new way to post on Twitter appeared, such as the Tweet to Speak program of calling in tweets by leaving a message on an international number.
Discussing 'what ifs' is moot–not only because the regime acted differently–but because the government could not have shut off communications. This could have crippled the economy.
The first two days of the revolution, the Egyptian stock market lost billions. It's not sure why the stock market remained open, but if it wasn't to give time for investors with deep ties to the government to pull out their money, then at least it was from the idea that shutting down the stock market–like shutting down communications and banking–is inconceivable in the modern age. Although Egypt's government and sections of the private sector work in a large, antiquated bureaucracy that still rely on fax machines and face to face interaction, cutting off communications could have a crippling effect. It's not coincidental then, that communications cut on a Friday, which is not a business day.
Noam Cohen of the NY Times recently interviewed me about the impact of shutting down technology, particularly the Internet. He wondered if Egyptians' lack of a computer hacking culture was the reason why they could not get around the cuts in the Internet. Firstly, I don't know if Egypt has a hacking community or not, simply because I'm not connected to that world. I don't think it's safe to assume that either it does or does not exist, but I would tend to think that just like everywhere in the world, there probably is some hacker community.

Secondly, hacking or software would have had little impact on the Internet outage. The issue was a matter of engineering rather than programming. The government likely cut off the by severing the physical connections of the Internet itself. As Cohen's colleagues point out in "Egypt Leaders Found ‘Off’ Switch for Internet," the state-run monopoly on landline telephony, Telecom Egypt (TE), oversees Internet routing through its infrastructure based on Ramses Street. TE distributes the Internet routing to its branches around the country, each known as a "centrale." Therefore, the state needed to only cut off the Internet by flipping the switches on the routers at each centrale. No amount of hacking could have stopped that. And as Cohen's colleagues also point out, the Egyptian state managed to cut off the country to the outside because it controls the underground and undersea cables that run through the country's territory–and connect the world to the Internet.

These points make it all the more relevant to end the state-run monopoly of Telecom Egypt. Not that censorship disappears through private ownership. The Egyptian mobile operators capitulated to government demands to shut off mobiles on January 28. In the USA, AT&T cooperated with the NSA in unwarranted spying on millions of Americans. As such I can't argue that privatization would be the solution to this, but that an end to a monopoly on communications would decrease the chances of controlling citizens' right to free expression.

مظاهرة النقابات المستقلة امام اتحاد العمال

From a friend:

تنظم النقابات المستقلة للضرائب العقارية والفنيين الصحيين والمعاشات والعديد من القوى العمالية تظاهرة ضخمة أمام إتحاد العمال بشارع الجلاء الساعة 11 صباح الأربعاء لإعلان تأييد الحركة العمالية المناضلة لثورة الشعب المصري والمطالبة بمحاكمة رموز الفساد في إتحاد العمال الرسمي الموالي للنظام.

فلنشارك جميعا ونساند هذه التظاهرة العمالية ولنلتف جميعنا حول عمال مصر.

الرجاء إرسال هذه الدعوة الي كل من تعرفه.

Maher's misleading corner

Since Bill Maher unexpectedly cornered Mona Eltahawy on his show I'd like to give my answer to his use of a Pew survey to explain the sentiments of Egyptians:

1) Surveys are a deceptive tool used by journalists and pundits to try to make sweeping generalizations about large groups of people based on misleading questions of a small sample of a population. They are junk science with little basis in truth. Since the members of the audience and viewers of Maher's show are supposed to be educated, he should consider not insulting their intelligence or his guests by claiming such surveys have any relevance to reality.

2) I wouldn't know if Egyptians support stoning adulterers because I've never had a conversation about the topic with one. The few thousands of Egyptians I've met from different classes and religions were interested in other matters in their lives like eating, working, taking care of their families and making jokes. The few people wielding rocks in the last weeks amid hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of peaceful protesters were doing so for protection from the police and state security while rising up for basic human rights and to create a democracy from the people. The Egyptians I know are too dedicated to leading dignified lives and dignified deaths to consider such medieval European ideas.

3) I wonder why a presenter would ask such questions. If it is to give the audience the impression that Egypt is a backwater ruled by barbarians, then he is reducing thousands of years of culture and civilization, discrediting the urbane nature of many Egyptians while ignoring that his own country was founded only two hundred years ago on the genocide of tens of millions of Native Americans, built on the backs of African slaves shipped to the New World as commodities, formed on the basis of economic disparities and still employs capital punishment with support from a large number of citizens. If his purpose is to insinuate that Arabs or Muslims are incompatible with human rights or democracy then maybe he should take a history lesson from a legitimate scholar who aim is not to denounce billions of people and their culture and beliefs. Or even better, maybe he should get up off his lazy white ass, spend a bit of his fat paycheck to meet these people face to face like human beings rather than condescendingly talk about them from the comfort of his elitist television studio.

Egypt and America

This is the most ignorant blog I have ever read in my life. It's absolutely shameful. I live in Egypt and this is so far from reality, to talk about how America can fix the Egyptian elections yet push for "Democracy" at the same time.

"Micro-managing political outcomes and manipulating politicians is a delicate task," Atlantic.com blogger Matthew Yglesias wrote.

This guy is ridiculous. I don't think he can actually be serious about what he writes. Has he ever been to Egypt? If you read this Matthew, please tell me you have.

"The main thing to keep in mind for anyone's pet schemes for US-driven political change in Egypt, Pakistan, wherever. The United States is a much more powerful country than are those other countries," he wrote.

I've never read this guy before. I've been a subscriber of the Atlantic for a few years now. His former blog says that he was blogging for a bunch of websites but he's leaving for something else. I guess that is blogging for the Atlantic.

The Atlantic has a long tradition of contributors that are influential thinkers and brilliant writers. If Yglesias is the best the Atlantic can find in the blogosphere to attract attention, then it must be a sad state of affairs at the magazine. And if I were editors at the Atlantic, I'd stay as far away from Yglesias as possible. It's obvious they are, as this entry is not edited well, if at all.

Yglesias made a huge grammatical mistake and constructed a very confusing sentence when he wrote, "My read of the report, which, as is frequently the case with CRS reports, is a very useful summary is that we should be skeptical."

'MY strikes again' posted a good response: "You should brush up on your grammar & sentence construction. Maybe re-read Strunk & White. Or something, anything."

Since I haven't read Yglesias before, I must only assume this guy is really, really, ironic. Cause if not, he has no idea what he is talking about. Maybe he knows that. A headline for one of his blog postings is "Why, Yes, I am An Asshole."

Don't read this:
http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/01/a_river_in_egypt.php

In the armpit of an Egyptian giant

Originally published April 9, 2006
It was an interesting Sunday. I didn't have anything in my planner, and I'd hoped to stop by the office and do some writing (in addition to picking up my sunglasses that I left last week and a copy of this month's magazine, which I haven't read yet). On my way to the office I was sidetracked by a visit to a Sudanese man I ran into a few days ago at a bar. He met me at the train station and I bought some small peaches and cantelopes while I waited for him. We crossed the bridge over the train tracks because I didn't understand that was where I was supposed to meet him.

As we walked to his apartment, the conversation was mostly about how the Egyptian authorities keep tabs on him and hawk him about everything he does. He said that he doesn't trust anyone, not even other Sudanese, who he said are the ones telling the police his whereabouts.

We went up to his apartment and a woman living in the building was questioning him about me. She said, "Who is he? Who is this guy you are with? Why is he here?" As I deciphered in my head what she was saying in Arabic, the Sudanase guy explained that I am an American who is friends with his flatmate, a doctor.

We chatted for a bit in his bedroom and sipped on tea. He gave me two CDs with video from the protest in Mustafa Mahmoud. I gave him two of the peaches I bought. He showed me his tattered yellow refugee card, issued more than two years ago as a temporary application for refugee status determination until UNHCR approves him for a more permenant blue card. His story is like many Sudanese. He fled his country for a thousand reasons and fears a return will lead to imprisonment, conscription and/or death.

Two of his friends arrived. One named Andrew, but he could never be confused a short white guy like me. Sweat was beading along his hairline and pieces of white tissue stuck to the side of his face as he blotted off the droplets. They showed me some pictures and I told them about my difficulties getting a Sudanese visa.

They are wanderers in Cairo. Without a job and a permenant home, they migrate from place to place. They can't afford to maintain a regular residence so they rent out beds and rooms in modestly-furnished apartments. They move around so the authorities don't always know where they'll be. They were both eager and cautious to give me the disks with video of Sudanese refugees in Cairo. They trust me; they welcome me into their world. I don't worry for myself; but I fear that they will be questioned for talking to me.

I left the apartment with the intention to meet them tonight at a cafe downtown where I have seen several Sudanese hang out. I decided not to go to the office. I picked up the next train home to burn copies of the video.

The train was more crowded than usual. One of the doors didn't open fully and I didn't notice that a man pushed up against the doorway had somehow lodged his forearm between the handle and the wall. He grimaced in pain until about three of us pulled the doors shut so he could get free and then we quickly boarded. I caught the train a few stops closer to home, which at the time seemed like the reason for the full car. I was still about 6 stops from the Sadat station, so I hoped some people would get off on the way back.

Cairo is warming up now, the winter is long gone, the spring rains have certainly passed, and the sun is heating the mornings earlier. I looked around and noticed the man across from me was sweating profusely. The fans mounted to the walls weren't spinning, and each station brought more passengers, not less.

One stop away from the main station, one of the few with a transfer, the car was about to explode. For most of the ride, my front, sides and back leaned against someone else. I had been continually pushed until I was now against side door. The wind shooting through the space between my car and the one behind me was like gushes from a cool oxygen tank. I looked up and saw the tallest Egyptian man I have ever seen holding his arms above my head onto the wall behind me. He stood in an akward Gumby pose, curled and bent, and the loose sleeves of his blue-green tee shirt were closer to my head than his skinny arms.

When the doors opened many passengers rushed out aggressively. I was the last of the herd to make it to the promised land, and the small pocket that had formed in front of the opening was closing fast. I tucked my arms in, put my head down, and volleyed through a sea of arms and bodies like a
pinball bouncing off rubber stumps.

I never looked so happily up the stairs of the metro into dusty beams of sunlight as I did today.

Back in Cairo

For all of you I have emailed and all of you I haven’t I must say that I haven’t been blogging much either. So I’d like to tell all of you about my last few weekends. I’m chilling in Cairo. It’s Thanksgiving. I’m picking up a live bird tonight and having a dinner party tomorrow.

Last weekend started as a normal trip to a beach town called Port Said (Sah-eed). We took the train to the end of line in Cairo for 50 piasters (8 cents) and apacked into a large old white extra long station wagon for 12 pounds ($5). Everyone slept on the ride. We left late because I had to drop my awesome professor Steve off at the airport. He was going to visit my favorite person in Kenya, Africa–Calabrese.

In Port Said every telephone pole, tree and post had white cloth banners stretched across every street. I decided I was going to write an election story when I saw an old man putting up an ad for his campaign on what was probably the last place to put his name in the whole city.
We checked into a very modest hostel with no hot water for $5 a night. My roommate Dan went to sleep and we went to a shisha cafe and met a really cool guy named Fat-hee. He runs the place. It’s named after his father Abu Shelebi.

In the picture he is smoking flavored tobacco out of a homemade water pipe, or hubbly-bubbly, as he and his fellow smokers call it. Egyptians normally smoke tobacco from a shisha, or nargila, as it’s known elsewhere. It’s made of glass at the base and the long stem is made from sugar cane, which basically is like hollowed out hard bamboo that gets skinnier toward the end of it.

Anyway….So I did some reporting from Port Said. Interviewing Muslim Brothers, men on the street, and some politician who’s doing his best imitation of a low-class New Jersey mafioso.
The next night I’m back at the same cafe. While smoking some shisha I notice a very large man hurrying down the street wearing nothing but tighty whities while brandishing a huge knife and yelling someone’s name. I later saw this man at the cafe fully clothed with a long scare down the entire side of his g-eye-normous head.

Port Said is a free zone, that is, consumer goods are not taxed. This status will remain for the next year and a half, but in the mean time there’s much to buy. A large part of the town is an open clothing market, with name brands for really cheap.I got a pair of new balance slide-sneakers for like six bucks. They’re probably fake, but they’re not bad for knock offs. You have to be careful cause there’s lots of fake shit. Some of it is more obvious than others.

For example, they have both kinds of Adidas: Abibos and Adodis. There’s also Nika, Reaback, Desel. No kidding. They actually try to sell shit with the wrong name in big ass letters. My friend Mohanned has a pair of fake Nike sandals with the word “KIKE” in big letters. They messed that one up pretty bad….I took the station wagon back to Cairo late at night. We took a cab from the station back to our apartment. I realized I’m getting used the crazy driving when I barely flinched as our driver came within inches of striking a cement truck.

So I wrote the story and it was published. I reported from Cairo on the elections. Normal stuff for a country with a 24-year dictator attempting to have its first open elections:

Vote buying, intimidation, rigging, busing people in from other districts to vote, preventing opposition voters, fights, riots, rumors, fires. No biggie. I didn’t see most of it, as I seem to always be a step behind the violence. Probably a good thing.

Last weekend I went to Alexandria. It’s so beautiful and peaceful. I met a guy who grew up in Philly. We went to a bar, the closest place to a western (more european, actually) bar you’ll find in Egypt. We played cards. I ate tons of fresh whole fish, calamari, shrimp, soup, fried, grilled, ahhh, it was so good.The picture next to this is me at Muslim graveyard by the sea.

Now I’m in Cairo. I can’t wait to get back to Alex and Port Said. But there’s so much else to see in Egypt. Although there’s so much desert, there’s coastal towns on both the Mediteranean and the Red Sea. I hope to make it to the Red Sea before I come home for Christmas. BTW, I’ll be in Philly from Dec. 20- Jan 4, with a brief visit to NY of course.

I don’t know what else to say. I’m staying here indefinitely. I’m ready to start a life here. It’s amazing. I’m learning some Arabic. Made some great friends. Overall “masr gameel wa momtez!” (Egypt is beautiful and excellent).

Paris->Copenhagen->Cairo

I’m typing this as I’m sitting an internet cafe in Cairo at 9pm listening to the Eagles football game on the internet.

So Paris is totally overrated and dirty. But I had great fun with Marcel, Scott, Karen and the rest. Excellent two weeks of spending too much money.

I got to the airport early to leave. Now folks, anyone who has ever spent time with me–let me correct that–anyone who has ever met me–knows how painfully late I am to every thing I have ever done in my life. I was born a few weeks premature and that was the first and last time I was ever early to anything. While I did decide to get early to the airport, it was mostly b/c I woke up hung over on a few hours sleep. I’m waiting in line to check in and people keep moving in front of me. By the time I get to be the next person this women shuffles in front of me and I lay it into her. I say something like, "Do you always jump in line or is only when there’s 50 people behind you." She speaks a little english and didn’t really understand the expression "jump in line" but with further elaboration she moved behind me ungraciously. As I’m about to get my ticket the police come and close off the section for some sort of bomb scare. Anyway they tell us that if we have a connecting flight we should just go through security. I make it there and go through only to have them send me back to check in. By this time the area is clear and I’m in the back of a ridiculous line. I go up to the front to find out if I’ll be able to make it on the plane and the lady is really rude. The woman who is next in line tells me I’m holding up the plane and I just start cursing and screaming b/c I’m in no mood for it. I get to the back of the line and in about 20 minutes they usher me ahead to check-in because my flight should have already taken off. They tell me that because I didn’t come straight from the united states I have to pay for the excess weight of my luggage. I won’t tell you how much it was, but the only reason I flew on Maersk Air (Denmark) is because it was so cheap. Anything resembling the money I saved was completely lost. I had no argument to not pay. The nice man at the counter told me if I couldn’t pay I could remain at the airport with my luggage.

I don’t really remember the flight to Copenhagen. But I’ll describe what I noticed at the airport.

The Jetson cartoon-like airport/mall was a cross between bad nightmare of lousy euro-techno club and rounded ikea architecture. Some electronics store was playing a pop song on the speaker with a singer named Sven doing a dutch version of "hotel, motel, holiday inn." Four non blondes followed it.

I sat down for lunch next to a table of three large stocky guys with bald heads and thick goatees (sp?) listening intently to a wide-eyed man speaking passionately. He could have been talking about starting a hitler youth rally for all I know, but probably were describing the state of the dutch mercantile industry or some other innocuous subject no one outside their bubble of scandanavia cares about. I don’t want to generalize about an entire country/region based on fascetious observations in an airport, but I will anyway. The large Danish guys probably were completely wussies. I was also sitting next to a couple manicured skinny blondes sitting with four guys in pastel button downs and neatly spiked hair. To my left were some heavy metal rockers, who again, were so weak. One of the largest of them had long rocker hair, but was wearing sandals with black socks. One of them, a tatooed guy, came over and politely asked if he could take the extra chair at my table. At the table across from me an older gentleman sat dressed in a corduroy (sp?) vest and a polka-dot bow-tie. Far across the room, a stereotypical northwest european man with a perfectly short white hair and wire frammed glasses worked on his slim laptop. So I will say that all I saw in my brief layover in Copenhagen was slight shades of white people.

On to Cairo.

The airport was super easy to get through what one could barely call security. To get a visa I had to go to a window called a bank and pay US$15 to get a couple of postal stamps placed in my passport. Several booths ushered the people through lines as men quickly stamped passports. Customs was in front of the outdoor exits and they basically tapped on my bags and told me to continue. Swarms of people stood on the outside of the glass exits looking intently inside. I slipped my way through the crowd as men yelled "taxi, you need taxi?" every five steps until I met my contact from the Associated Press. Mostafa took me to the hotel and we had a nice chat in the car. He was supposed to help me find an apartment, but he had to cover the border at Gaza, I think, and left me at my hotel with advice not tell let anyone take advantage of me, and if they did he would be "very very mad at them."

I went apartment hunting today. On the way I met a kind engineer in town who bought an english newspaper for me as we talked about US politics. I found some apartment rental place, but before I got in, an Egyptian man lead me to his apartment, which was barely a room in a dark basement, and then to what seemed like a legitimate apartment rental place. A Sudanese man who spoke English brought me to see a few apartments. The first one was huge, three bedrooms, but the building was undergoing construction and some things like the gas and shower was not working. We went to another place that was tucked into garden and seemed nice, but the landlord was sleeping and we couldn’t wake her. We went to another place across from the Italian cultural center, but the doorman, or boweb as they say here, was nowhere to be found. We went to a fourth place. Across from the Zamalek Hotel, which sits on an island in the Nile and used to be a palace, it is supposed to be the best neighborhood in Egypt. Zamalek is a nice neighborhood with several diplomatic headquarters/villas, but this building was pretty bad. The elevator was broken. We took the stairs up the 7th floor, stepping over debris that sometimes consisted of used spare rib bones. On a platform next to the steps was an empty bombshell that I think was decoration. We entered the apartment with a large older woman sitting on the couch watching tv. She had made a home out of the vacant apartment, as her stuff was in the kitchen and living room. The place was nice, but I still want to see the other place. The Sudanese man and I chatted about Sudan, and the situation in Darfur, and refugees in general. He’ll make a good source for an immigration story, as there are many refugees from Sudan in Egypt and some in Chicago. Unfortunately, he’s trying to rape me with commission fees, which I won’t pay, so I’m hoping he’ll still be willing to work with me after we do business.

I found a good food stand that was making something that looked like cheesesteaks and smelled amazing, but I couldn’t order it correctly, so I got a hybrid of steak sandwich and a gyro. It was amazing. I also went to a bar last night that was apparently "western style," as in Europe and America, but was not even close except that they served alcohol. Groups of europeans sung karaoke until the heavy-set dj sung the love song with the refrain "Lady" to an embarassed girl named Sarah. The bill was 15.55 egyptian pounds, with service included, and since I had to yell to the bartender for a beer after ten minutes and I had just gone to two places that should have accepted visa but didn’t, I left the 15pounds in my pocket. He chased me down for the 55piasters (egyptian cents) which is the equivalent of about 12 american cents. I went back and paid with my card and left two pound notes to show I wasn’t cheap.

Cairo is a dynamic lively city. I hope I don’t get hit by a car; few of them have their lights on at night. In sha’allah, which means something like "God willing." Things really get going at night. I’m listening to the Eagles. It’s a good game, but I’d love to sit at a cafe outside and puff on some shisha (flavored tobacco) out of a water pipe and watching the Egyptian world pass by me. People love to scream and celebrate at night. It’s going to be fun once I get some companions to run around the city with me. My Arabic is ok, I only know a little, but people keep telling me my pronunciation is very good. I just wish I knew more. That’s about it folks. I hope you enjoyed another long post. Can I a man get comment on his blog?