Witnessing a Revolution

Who knew that my decision to study abroad this semester would be a story to tell for the rest of my life? Last night, watching Egyptians in Tahrir Square celebrate the feat they had accomplished, I was stunned. My eyes watered. I couldn't believe what was happening. Even though I am not Egyptian, I felt as if a huge weight had been lifted from my chest and I could breathe. I can only imagine how the people in Tahrir felt! Yaaa Masr! Look what people can accomplish! Last night confirmed for me that humans can do anything. I cannot wait to go back there.

A couple days ago, I took it upon myself to do something I had been meaning to do for a long time: type up my journal entries from the four days I was locked in an apartment with 20+ people, watching the beginnings of the people's revolution unfold in Egypt. I finished it last night before Omar Suleiman's statement, so I think it is fitting to post it now. Here goes... (It's really long!)

Almost exact words from my journal, with a few added commentaries by me. Sorry it's not the prettiest of wording, but I wanted to convey how I was feeling at the time. I didn't change the order I put anything in, I just took out some parts I didn't think anyone reading my blog needed to know about, like my rants about certain things. 

[Mumkin a little background: guys' apartment is on the 16th/17th floor of an apartment building in Dokki, Giza, about a block away from my apartment. Located in Mesaha square, about two miles away from Tahrir Square (downtown) and Cairo University. Matthew is our awesome program manager who stayed with us in the apartment the whole time. Salma is the program assistant and also a really really good friend. Mariam is another awesome person and Egyptian friend. Other people mentioned are fellow AMIDEAST students.]



Friday January 28, 2011
Cairo


This is crazy. From where I'm sitting on the guys' balcony, I can hear the shots of the tear gas cannons and sirens and people chanting and Al-Jazeera English inside. Internet and cell phone service were completely out this morning when I woke up. That actually made me a little nervous. We prepared for the day and got to the guys' apartment by noon.

Then the call to prayer started and we were all on the balcony to listen and see people pray and just waiting for the noon prayer to end… it started slow. We started hearing shots and seeing teargas smoke coming from by Cairo University.

Aah, I can see people walking down Giza Street (I think that's what it's called?) along the Nile from CU towards Tahrir Square and chanting. It looks like a river of people. We can see the smoke from the unknown thing on fire on the 6th of October Bridge billowing past the Sheraton and the Cairo Tower. It's hard to process. We are witnessing a revolution. Or at least the beginnings of one.

We've been watching Al-Jazeera all day. At one point a crowd marched right down the street and through Mesaha Square going to Tahrir. There were no police following them, but the tear gas from CU was starting to waft up the balcony. It felt like onions wafting into my eyes. My eyes were watering and my nose was running and stinging. Everyone grabbed their cameras and video'd/took pictures. Jeremy grabbed his Egyptian flag and waved it, along with other people on balconies in Mesaha Square. I got a couple pictures and videos.

The chanting from Tahrir keeps getting louder. No more tear gas from CU though. Lots of sirens. It still hasn't really sunk in what's going on here. But I'm still so excited for the Egyptian people! It's crazy that this has been going on since Tuesday! I bet Mubarak is kicking himself right now for ever making "Police Day" a holiday. What a holiday this has turned out to be for them!

Apparently the landlines still work even though all cell phone service is down. We were all told to call our parents to tell them we are ok. I called around 7:30am Chicago time. Dad answered. They'd heard last night that today was going to be bad, so he wasn't that surprised. When I was on the phone with him, he kept saying "Do you want to come home? If you're scared, I can get you home," and it actually made me really emotional. I don't know why it made me so sad. I do miss the easy life at home, especially now that I realize how easy it really is. But at the same time, my life's not in danger here. But when I think about it… if something does happen… it could affect me. And we do have an evacuation plan, should it come to that. But that's highly highly unlikely… but moreso on people's minds now as opposed to before.

Morocco or Jordan? Is the question. Every time something else major comes up on Al-Jazeera, we ask each other that question jokingly, although people are getting more tense about it. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I think if it did come to evacuation, I would really just want to go home… :( I don't know how that would work with graduating but… it'll just depend on how I feel when the time comes, if it does.

I'm trying to think of any other events of today to report on… El Baradei was here, but now is besieged? arrested? in a mosque. Suez is crazy. My favorite news video is the one of the masses of people outnumbering the police, making them run away. So powerful. Also, there's a video of armored cars on fire and being pushed over, and one driving right into the crowds and almost running a person over… We did see a person get legit run over live on the 6th of October Bridge.

Now, Al-Jazeera is talking about the possible presence of the army. No one knows what side the army will come out for when they do (probably later tonight). The army doesn't like the fact that Gamal, Mubarak's son, is being groomed to be the next president, because he's a businessman and doesn't have any military connections.

Another thing I've heard about on tv: a girl was killed when she was hit by a tear gas canister. Others have been killed.

Just now: Alexandria reports that police are leaving the streets and that the protesters have control. Apparently in Alexandria, protesters were helping injured police… I like that.

The government just employed a curfew in Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez from 6pm-7am… it's 5:30pm now. We're not leaving this apartment today. I want to go home and eat! Dunno what's going to happen. More police are being called in. Where do they all come from???

But seriously… what the hell, what the hell, downtown is two miles away from us… omg… the protesters are organizing a prayer and getting people to stop throwing rocks.

State security just entered Al-Jazeera's building, might be trying to shut down the news agency.

Official, we have to spend the night in the guys' apartment. At least the police aren't firing on the praying protesters…

6:40pm - NDP HQ torched, completely in flames. Cairo Museum across the street.

6:50pm - protesters stop to pray… I'm worried about how Americans will take the scene. (Think they're Muslim terrorists?) I think it is beautiful.

6:55pm - prayers over, shooting and tear gas, Al-Jazeera lost their footage.

I guess I can live one night without my pjs and baklava. We keep seeing all these cars going across the bridge with the police and protesters and wondering, what the hell? Where are these people going right now? haha.

But for reals, no one has come to put out the fire yet… the NDP's HQ is literally across the street from the Egyptian Museum. I will CRY. No, I will grieve and mourn and cry and scream if the museum is lost. Seriously.

Just now, Al-Jazeera Arabic has been taken off the air. When will Al-Jazeera English be next? We can actually hear a loud rumble outside from the balcony every now and then… This is the craziest day ever. We have been comparing this day to 9/11 in terms of news coverage and just all out craziness. They're def using live ammunition and not just rubber bullets now.

7:07pm - Obama just received 40 page briefing on Egypt

7:08pm - Clinton speaking live… asking to refrain from violence… universal human rights… (so why do you support the regime?)… asked regime to bring back communications, violence is not the answer… reform… not taking sides… blabla… ok so that was basically pointless.

7:15pm - protesters stormed the foreign ministry building

7:38pm - curfew applies to all of Egypt, not just Alex, Cairo, and Suez. Clashes between military and police? Hearsay now, want to know for sure.

7:44pm - NDP on fire for an hour, still no sign of fire trucks…

Al-Jazeera said that it seems like all semblance of state control is gone. I could totally go for some fried chicken right now. Headache is coming back.

It's weird… even though I'm happy for the Egyptians, seriously excited for them, but I'm actually starting to get worried now. Are we going to be evacuated? How much longer is this going to last? The newscasters keep saying that Egypt is not the same country it was yesterday. I keep thinking of my Dad asking me if I want to come home. It's easy enough to pretend like I'm isolated from these events when I'm just sitting in the guys' living room.

8:00pm - can hear helicopters overhead. Kuwait stopped flights to Egypt. Who's next? It's for sure now that the military in Alex and Suez are greeted very happily by protesters. What about Cairo?

9:15pm - I got so fed up with sitting in the same place and watching the same news that I had to get up and do something, so I made Gina's banana dessert-thing! I was feeling half-conscious, like being on an airplane all day. I need to get my blood moving, or at least my brain.

9:42pm - Protesters looting the NDP HQ and also protecting the Egyptian Museum from fire and being looted. No news yet about if/when Mubarak will address the nation via the state television network. I would really like to shower.

10:07pm - EgyptAir suspends all flights into the country and US advises citizens to cancel non-essential travel to Egypt.

I really don't want to be evacuated and go to Morocco or Jordan… :( Not so sure it's not going to come to that anymore… I guess we'll see… we were so sure three days ago, yesterday, that that would not happen.


12:30am - Mubarak addresses the public with a BS speech, (Him: I am dismissing the government! Us: What does that even mean?!?!), interrupting the climax of the movie Seven we were watching because we couldn't handle the news anymore. "Do insane people realize they are insane?" Just realized I don't have my glasses with me, so I'll be sleeping in the contacts tonight. Ugh.


Saturday January 29, 2011

1:30pm - I barely slept last night. I did manage a little, so I'm surprisingly not a zombie. Bread and apple juice for breakfast, pizza hut and pop for lunch. Cell phones are back, so I texted Mom on my iphone. Abhi's MCAT is today… I want to let him know that I'm alright but I also don't want to disturb him if he hasn't been watching the news!

Since last night… China blocked all online searches for "Egypt" and "riots"… ha! We all had a good chuckle about that one. Also, more pressing, state curfew is now 4pm-8am… I cannot stay in this apartment another night without my: laptop, glasses, sweats, and toothbrush. And a book. Then I will be fine, really. (And food, of course.)

Anywho, cabinet officially stepped down. 95 confirmed dead, over 1,000 wounded. Already 50,000 people in Tahrir Square and it's only 1:52.

2:13pm - Mariam called and is talking to each of us to make sure we're ok, that we can come to her place to stay if we're scared, and she said if we need anything, to call and tell her and she'd do anything she could to make it happen! I think a combination of culture shock, frustration, restlessness, and lack of sleep and food made me cry when I talked to her. She is so sweet and I love her so much. Egyptians are the best people in the world.

On the news, they just said a four-year-old and a seven year old child were killed. And a man who was supposed to get married in 2 days. Hearing this makes it that much more real. These are real people putting their lives on the line for their country.

3:42pm - 20 minutes until curfew. Not leaving the apartment again today. I feel like everything now is just a waiting game, and I have nothing to do but journal, bejeweled, and Al-Jazeera.

Just overheard Matthew that all flights into Egypt (I think) are canceled, and Egypt's economy (aka tourism) is freefalling. Yikes.

5:30pm - Matthew has gone to get my glasses, yay! But more importantly, Mubarak has appointed his first vice-president, Omar Suleiman, the intelligence/spy chief. Apparently Suleiman is a military man, so I'm thinking maybe it's a move to placate A) the military, obv, and B) the people, because Suleiman was slated as a possible contender in the upcoming presidential elections. But he waited too long, it's not enough to satisfy the people anymore. They want Mubarak gone.

It's almost 6pm now… so it's been just about 37 hours now since I've brushed my teeth. Eew.

6:15pm - Talked to Abhi for a few minutes! He said he'd update my fb to let people know I'm ok.

6:17pm - gunshots outside, towards the Nile… Lauren and I got up to go outside to see what was going on but Matthew yelled for everyone to stay inside… yikes. Salma said people are defending their neighborhoods. She said people had guns, dogs, knives, and swords. Apparently there's a battalion outside this apartment. Someone has a whip and a battle-axe! So I guess I'll be ok. And our stuff in our apartment will be ok, so that's good too. I was actually worried because looting was reported in Mohandiseen because of no security forces anymore because the police are nowhere to be seen!

Going to watch Super Troopers now, we've reached the OD point with Al-Jazeera.

12:10am - 2 tanks roll into Mesaha square. Jeremy gets word that Alexandria Middlebury has already evacuated. Rumor that City Stars (the giant mall) has been completely looted and destroyed. There's gunfire all over the place and people are yelling all over Dokki. I'm worried about our apartment getting raided. All of a sudden, this has become too real. I'm excited for Egypt and all the changes it's going through and will continue to go through in the near future. It's great if you're Egyptian. But this was not how I expected my study abroad in Egypt to be! It doesn't help that I cannot stand being in this apartment anymore, I just want to scream. I really just want to be home right now. I don't want to go to Morocco or Jordan or Kuwait. But I don't know if I want to stay in Egypt anymore either. I can't go home though.


Sunday January 30, 2011

1:17pm - Surprisingly, I actually slept last night. Currently sunning on the guys' balcony, listening to Lady Gaga, waiting for something to happen. The city is quiet and smog-free. Mesaha is pretty deserted. Very few people on the street. The parking attendants are still at their posts, watching significantly fewer cars than usual. I saw a guy walking 2 dogs earlier, and a woman walking with grocery bags. We've also seen men roaming the streets occasionally.

I'll try to sum up all of tod--

2:20pm - Had to break there because Matthew called us in for "the talk." Evacuating to Athens on a chartered plane as soon as we get safe transport to the airport secured.

3:04pm - I really can't believe this. My mind cannot wrap around it.

I'll try (again) to sum up what has happened today, with no interruptions insha'allah… Matthew woke us all up at 7:30am today to tell us that we'd have less than an hour to go to our apartments, pack up everything, and bring an overnight bag back to the guys' apartment. At about 8:00am, we walked over to our apartment, and knocked on the locked apartment doors to get Hamada (our bowab aka doorman) --

Sorry, talked on the phone with Mom for a bit. Two fighter jets flying low overhead, so loud they shake the apartment. I've never seen fighter jets fly this low before, not even in the air and water show. I was on the phone with Mom when they made the first round. It scared me so much that I screamed and ran inside, while still on the phone. It was absolutely terrifying. People started crying, including me. We thought they were going to bomb Tahrir Square, however rational or irrational that reaction is. They're just circling downtown.

Turkey and Iran are flying planes to Egypt to get their citizens out. US is calling for all citizens to come home, and has evacuated their embassy. Clinton says, "We don't want a takeover, that does not lead to democracy." Fine, but say something about the internet still being down, the use of live ammo on protesters, the fighter jets!! We are all livid right now. The embassy is apparently sending out communications to citizens via email. Why?!?! We have no internet! What are they doing right now that makes sense?!

Anyway… Al-Jazeera officially closed their Cairo bureau. There's helicopters now too. Salma just got off the phone with her best friend. The military officially came out on the protesters' side. Yay!! So no worrying anymore about the fighter jets or live ammo! Woo!!

6:57pm - I haven't been able to write because I've just been too worried/freaked out about everything… I am definitely coming back to Egypt at some point. OK, let me try one more time to summarize today:

---->7:30am - wake up
---->8-8:45am - my apartment, shower, pack, leave lots of stuff behind, don't know where I packed my credit card, regretting not packing my cute flats and running shoes.
---->9am - back in guys' apartment, chill out on the balcony to sun a bit.
---->Throughout the day - Matt goes to get food, raid the girls' apartments for more food and water because grocery stores are either looted, closed, empty, or all three, get the Morocco/Jordan question posed for real, freak out a bit, don't secure transportation to the airport before curfew, so waiting until morning to go to Athens.

I was surprisingly fine until we got the official news. And I just broke when I had to explain the situation to my mom, Abhi, and Mariam.
__________________________


There ends my record of the days we spent in the apartment. The times I wasn't writing was spent either watching Al-Jazeera numbly, watching Sex and the City or Black Swan (such a creepy but good movie!), or hanging out with the other students. After days of watching the news and writing everything down, I couldn't handle it anymore. The next time I wrote in my journal was February 8th. For the benefit of the people who want to know what happened to me after my journal record ends, I'll try to give a short-ish summary. 

The next day (Monday January 31) we were woken up at 7:30am and told to get ready to leave by 8. 8am Egyptian time turned into 11am. Secure transport never happened, but AMIDEAST needed to get us out of the country that day, so we took a wild cab caravan adventure to the airport. Because of the roadblocks set up by communities to protect their neighborhood, it took us much longer than usual. As we weaved through the districts of Cairo, Jeremy acted as a tour guide for me and Lauren and pointed out Old Cairo, the Citadel, Heliopolis, and other areas. It was probably the most of Cairo we'd seen while we were there.

I made two observations in the cab ride. One, the Egyptian people really stepped up to take care of their city. Traffic in Cairo is notoriously terrible, and traffic cops are usually everywhere. State security, aka cops, at this point had all but disappeared, so ordinary citizens stood on the roads all day long to direct traffic so life could go on as normal. Seeing a man in jeans and a plaid button up shirt wave our cab forward to make a left turn at a nasty intersection made me so proud to have known some of these people.

Two, despite the fact that tanks dotted the highways and roads, life seemed to be going on as normal. People were taking Facebook pictures with the military. Grocery stores had reopened, and Dokki Street looked completely normal. Even our favorite koshary place was open!

We got to the airport around 1pm. We had a chartered plane, so we didn't have to wait in line for a commercial flight. But getting on the plane right away would have been too easy! Instead, HTH, our security company, was also in charge of several kids at AUC. We lucked out in having Matthew do everything for us, but the AUC kids knew nothing. Because of that, Matthew had to get everything arranged for them as well as us, meaning we didn't get on the plane until 4:30.

We were supposed to pick up the Middlebury students in Alex, but the air force demanded our plane not take off that night. Their reasons were: it's after state curfew, the airport has too much traffic, and our pilot had flown too many hours today (even though he flew from Greece to Cairo and that was it.) We thought we would have to spend the night in the airplane. I was happy, at least I was out of the apartment. Matthew worked some black magic with HTH, the US embassy, and the Egyptian air force somehow, and managed to get them to let us leave. The stipulation though, was that our plane leave the Alex kids behind to find another evacuation flight. (Sorry Parsa!)

We left Egyptian soil at 8:00pm and arrived in Greece as refugees at 10:30pm.

I don't remember when during this whole ordeal we had to make the official decision of Jordan or Morocco. I think it was waiting to get on the plane. But Jordan I chose, for many reasons. Mom was a bit worried at first, but the situation in Jordan is stable.

We spent the next day (Tuesday, February 1) in Greece. We got to see the Acropolis, the Temple of Zeus, and a couple other places. My roommates Shama, Christine, and I had a goodbye dinner at a cute authentic Greek restaurant. Shama went to Morocco and Christine went home. I hope we can all meet up again sometime in the future.

The next day half the AMIDEAST Cairo people and I went to Jordan. Just getting to the airport was another adventure, because Greece was experiencing a strike, but at this point we could really care less about much of anything. We almost lost half our people because the time we were leaving for the airport changed suddenly, and then on the plane we experienced the worst turbulence ever. I was on the wing and it was a-fluttering, in a way airplanes are not supposed to do. But we survived, just in time to start our next adventure in Jordan.

I think that's enough for one blog post. Cheers to anyone who made it all the way to the end. Stay tuned for new adventures in Amman. Hopefully they'll be less exciting than my last week in Cairo.