June 24th

June 24, 2012

This moment feels like everything. And nothing. As if the two conflicting sensations of hope and fear were crashing into each other at once. 

Mohamad Mursi has just been named president and Tahrir is in an uproar.  The wind carries voices of victory in through my open window, followed closely by cries of dissent that makes it impossible to succumb to it.  Car horns blast and tires skid, I can hear whistles in the distance and foghorns blasting even closer than that.  The city is in an uproar.  Nothing as ever been so important as a group of 80 million people waiting 15 months to begin a path towards democracy.  It looks like Mohamad Mursi is it. 

The hour leading up to this was surreal.  Everyone silent and waiting.  In every store I visited today the patrons asked me immediately: meen?  Who do I think will win.  I responded to the man in the Seoudi Market, the grocery store across from my building, who was selling me meat by saying that I thought both candidates were bad.  He said I was very smart and that that was the right answer and that I would make a better president than both of the men running.  I asked groups of men huddled around speakers on the street the same question: meen?  Lessa, they said.  Not yet.  We waited.  I am waiting, mostly to see what will happen next.  Will the flool, or old regime, supporters retaliate and will the nation devolve to that of Algeria in the 90s, a borderline civil war state? Or will they accept that this is the function of a democracy and even when two less than desirable candidates run, the outcome is still a popular, free election for the people and by the people?  Lema nshoof.  We shall see what happens next.

There is no parliament, there is no constitution, there is no prime minister.  Lessa.  Not yet.  But for now we can be happy that Tahrir is full of people rejoicing at this new beginning, rather than bloodshed.  

Al-Jazeera Updates  

 

Metro

June 10, 2012

I’m sitting on the metro trying not to sweat.  It’s not as easy as it sounds.  The wind is buffeting me around like I’m stuck smack dab in the center of a convection oven, but at the same time I can still feel little beads of wetness sliding down my spine.  They’re warm, like summer rain, those cerulean droplets.  I lean back into the bench behind me and close my eyes. 

The people are staring at me.  Some men have been staring for the better part of half an hour.  UNBLINKING.  I’d like to say it’s because I look particularly charming, but its not.  I’m hot and sweaty and covered in dirt.  I remember what a friend of mine said once when we were stuck on an eight hour ferry boat ride from hell, traveling from Aqaba in Jordan to Nuweiba in the Sinai Peninsula. “I feel like I’m in a fucking zoo.”  It’s difficult to truly express the striking accuracy of that statement.  But I’ve gotten used to the staring and sometimes I even have the audacity pretend that I’ve started not to mind. 

The metro’s windows are open behind me and the wind is ravaging my mahogany curls.  I feel dirty and sweaty and beaten by the sun and the wind and the elements and yet somehow all of these things come together and I find myself feeling a deep, earthen brown, and singularly beautiful. 

The Sadat station coming up.  I’ll get off and walk up into Midan el-Tahrir then down Shariah Talat Harb until I realize that Jeremy was probably right and Horreya is actually the next street over.  Then I’ll cut through to Shariah 2aser el-Nil.  I’ll probably be accosted by at least two or three Egyptian men who are trying to help me—genuinely, they are—but I’m feeling less than friendly.  I’ll pretend I don’t speak Arabic or English, and that I’m from France.  It usually works.  Only one time did I ever shoot myself in the foot, when I discovered that the guy spoke French fluently. 

I’ll make my way through the packed downtown streets that are illuminated by the harsh fluorescents of the storefronts—so bright that on the ground darkness cannot touch us.  I’ll find Jeremy and Dan, who lived with me in Egypt and in Jordan after we were evacuated at the onset of the Revolution, at Horreya.  Freedom.  Horreya is the divey-est place imaginable.  But the drinks are cheap and the people, always interesting.  It’s one of those places that I never actually want to go to, but always enjoy once I’m there.  Being there feels like being in a grade-school cafeteria except the only thing on the menu is your choice of Egyptian beer.  Sakkara and Stella.  I like seeing those large, green bottles.  When I see them, I know I’m exactly where I want to be with the people I want to be with.  Someone once defined “home” to me using that exact expression.  I suppose that is how I feel, a little bit, when I visit Cairo, when it revisits me. 

Home. 

Whether it be at a fancy club in Ein Sokhna where I have the privilege of meeting a famous belly dancer, eating Kombella at Karnak in Saida Zeynab, walking across the Nile, weaving through the streets on the back of a Pizza Hut delivery boy’s motorcycle, or sitting with old friends at Odeon or the Rooftop or L’Aubergine or Horreya.  Just a little bit of me feels that everything is as it should be, and the world is right again. 

Midan al-Tahrir, a snapshot

June 7, 2012

Me and Omar, my guide, in Midan el Tahrir

I’m sitting in a conference in the Intercontinental hotel at City Stars. Al mow2tamer al dooli masr ta3ood. Egypt Returns International Conference. The room is very official looking, but mostly empty. It fills up only when we’re served food. It’s strange looking up at this panel of Arab men, and one woman, with English words buzzing in my ears. Though the translation services hardly help. I still am not really sure what they’re talking about. The relationship between Turkey and Egypt. The relationship between Egypt and Iran. Problems, problems, problems and more lists of problems. Maybe the solution workshop comes later. Somehow I don’t really think so.

Anti-SCAF graffitti (right caption: "Do you see?")

People still linger in Tahrir. Ala tool. Always. My guide took me two days ago and it was incredible. They’re called Ultras. Supporters of the Egyptian Ahly football team and rivals of the White Knights, who support Zemelak. The Ultras are the ones leading this protest, among the others I’ve seen streaming through downtown and other centrally located neighborhoods. This time they're demanding an end to the Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), or the military rule that governs Egypt currently. It seems tricky, these days in Cairo. Everyone is against everything and supports nothing. Thus, what options are left? 

"Unite or Die, Egypt Deserves Compromise"

p.s. When writing Arabic with English characters the numbers are used to represent sounds that don’t exist in American. The numbers are as follows:

2: Qaf, or in Egyptian a glottal stop

3: Ayn, which makes an A-ish sound

5: Khaf, which makes a kh sound

7: Hof, which makes a really deep H sound

There are more numbers, but they’re not used that often and I don’t know them. Just fyi.

Arriving in Cairo

I’m fascinated by what’s happening in Egypt right now. 

The people are calling it a second Revolution.  It’s all that’s on anybody’s lips. Revolutions and reminiscing about freedom. Horreya. Al khamsa wa ashreen yaneir. Tahrir. I met a man from Libya today. He is living in the Safir Hotel with his family and has been there for the past year.  The first thing he told me was that he was injured early on in the Libyan Revolution, the Jasmine Revolution, and he had shrapnel scars to prove it.  I tried to look away from what was left of his right hand and wrist, but couldn’t. He told me not to worry, he was going to Italy in three days to have a surgeon look at it. And by look at it, he meant amputate the rest. His little brother, about 6 was playing in the pool.  Too cute, really.  He looked like he was missing part of his bottom jaw, and somehow his smile seemed fully whole regardless. Heshal did not hesitate to tell me about how a missile had crashed into the car that his little brother had been in.  He seemed upset by the damage, but I could sense that underneath he was glad it hadn’t been worse.  It could have been.  Much worse. 

Skipping backwards through my day, I spoke with a woman about her opinions of the Revolution and the elections. She spoke with both resignation and frustration as she molded melted globs of sugar in her hands and used it to rip the hair off of my arms. Al sweed can hurt, but its too strange in Cairo for women to have arm hair not to risk it. I asked her who she had voted for fii al intikhabat al owal, in the first elections. Sabbahi, she said. I asked her who she would vote for now and she told me she wouldn’t vote, because both options were wehish. Ugly. I agreed with her. Then she elaborated. Shafiq was just more of the same, like Mubarak. But Mohamed Mursi was worse because the Muslim Brotherhood was just a name. Ism bas, she said. She called them haram, or against Islam. This surprised me. A taxi driver I spoke with later in the day on the most absurd ride from Dokki to Maadi, confirmed this point. Then he stopped along al Corniche Maadi and bought me umm ali. It didn’t make up for the hellatiousness half as much as the conversation did. 

Outside my hotel window. Small group, advocating for Shafiq.

I went home but was locked out of my apartment so I ran to this Italian café I’ve come to love in the two days I’ve been in Maadi, and ate rabidly. I’m less pleasant to talk to hungry than I am any other time of day, and these days that’s saying something. I’ve missed Cairo since I lived here before the Revolution, but it never seems to be easy on me. The table next to me was full of men discussing the Revolution. Eid Al Shorta. Day of the Police. The waiter came over and asked, in English that was only slightly less broken than my Arabic, if I believed in freedom. I nodded and showed him my tattoo confirming it. Horreya, in my childish Arabic scrawl, written on the inside of my left ring finger. He laughed and said he’d like to take me to Tahrir Square to see for myself. I told him I’d been on the twenty-fifth of January, but I’d like to go again. He then told me about how his friend was recently shot by police and that he was disbanded from the military under Mubarak for supporting the Revolution and the last time he was in Tahrir was cut along the back of his arm by a policeman wielding a knife, but I’m still optimistic.

Lema nshoof. We shall see.