عيش, حرية, كرامة انسانية! Bread, Freedom, Dignity!

Well, it’s happening.  Instead of spending the day writing my final paper on ‘The Illusion of Social Class in Two Arabic Short Stories’ (all I’ve got so far is the title) I’ve been glued to facebook, twitter, the blogs, and online newspapers, watching the updates on the continued protests all over Egypt.

My expectations for the “January 25th Revolution” were not great.  The Tunisian revolution turned the head of every person in the Arab world hungry for the same, and of course Egypt is in some ways even more ready for change than Tunisia: Egypt’s population experiences even higher degrees of unemployment and poverty, frustration with the authoritarian president of 30 years, and desperation and hopelessness with their country’s decaying infrastructure and services.  But at the same time, many of the things that clicked for Tunisia are elements that Egypt lacks, like a strong middle class built up by decades of investment in education by the government.  One of the main qualities I’ve noticed again and again in Egypt the resourcefulness  and resilience to keep on keepin’ on in any situation, a characteristic that does not typically lead to standing up and demanding change, and so I, along with many other bloggers and analysts, was shocked by the magnitude and reach of the January 25th protests.

The morning of the 25th I had a four-hour-long MSA exam, then a presentation on my internship, so I returned home at 5, exhausted and disappointed that I hadn’t seen a single protest on the supposed day of revolution.  Not half an hour later, however, I began thinking I was imagining hearing chanting from outside my window, and Mama Azza called to me from the balcony, Katelyn!  Protests on Port Said!  We watched from the balcony as crowds of people marched down the nearby street, chanting and waving flags.  I’m going down!  I told Mama A.  Take care of yourself!  she told me, You’re not going to eat lunch!?

When I got down to street level the bulk of the protest had already moved on, marching East down Port Said, a main drag in Alexandria that runs parallel to the Corniche and the Mediterranean.  A few blocks behind them lumbered several fire trucks, and a group of well-dressed ظوابط, high-ranking police officers.  I decided to trail the protests for a couple of blocks, and was walking behind them snapping pictures when I heard someone call out my name!

Professor Radwa?!  I was incredulous.  My literature teacher (yes, she teaches the class the paper is due for), Radwa, was standing on the corner, and came up to me.  It’s not safe in the back, she cautioned, as the police have been spraying protesters with water to get them under control.  So, we moved up into the heart of the mass of people, ever-growing as more people came down from their lofty balcony perches and joined the march.  I was surprised at the diversity of the people who were marching…women and men, ages ranging from the very young (at one point a boy about twelve years old was sitting on someone’s shoulders leading the chants) to the very old.  As the evening call to prayer began to sound, we passed a mosque, and part of the crowd broke off to pray in the street.

The protesters were organized and peaceful, throwing up peace signs and quieting their chants as we passed the mosque, but there was otherwise not a sectarian feel to the chants or signs.

حرية حرية!  they chanted, Freedom, Freedom!

اسقط اسقط حسني مبارك!  Down with Hosni Mubarak!

حسني مبارك, باااااطل  Hosni Mubarak, obsolete/worthless! (and continued with names of other politicians)

عيش, حرية, كرامة انسانية!  My personal favorite: Bread, Freedom, Dignity!

And they called to the masses watching from the heights of their balconies and rooftops:

انزلوا, انزلوا!!  Come down, Come down!

and, واحد, اثنين, الشعب المصري فين؟!  One, two, People of Egypt, where are you?!

As the group passed by the street where my friends live, I went to meet Monica and Mae, saying farewell to Radwa and wishing her luck.  There I saw the first sign of police presence.  Other than the high-ranking officers walking behind the protesters, I was shocked to not have seen previously a single other police officer or sign of security.  However, here, officers were blocking off the side streets and permitting pedestrians to pass through only one by one.  I met Mae and Monica, and we stood for a minute watching the masses of people go by, before rejoining the group.  After walking a few more blocks, we started noticing several people running back from the front, calling that the police were beating people.  We decided that was probably the point at which we should remove ourselves from the fray, so we retreated to a side street and watched the events unfold.  Almost immediately after reports of police beatings were coming from the front of the lines, a group of around 50 Shurta (police) with batons and shields ran past us toward the rear of the protesters, boxing them in from both ends.  Behind this group followed 7 or 8 large trucks, where we could see more soldiers crowded inside the grated windows.

We received a text message from our teacher, still in the midst of the protests, that the police had beaten the protesters with batons and sprayed tear gas, and that the men in the group had protected her with their bodies.  We later read that there were over 8,000 demonstrators gathered near Sidi Gaber who clashed with the police.  The protesters dispersed, but regrouped later in the evening in various locations, some were detained and arrested in Ibrahamiya, and some continued to march along the tram, which I know because the regrouping was happening just as I was heading home from Monica/Mae/Nada’s apartment.  As I walked back to my apartment to have birthday cake and celebrate Mama Azza’s birthday with relatives and friends, the streets were buzzing about the protests, and the energy was almost tangible.  Even the shop owners, as they were moving merchandise inside and closing their doors in preparation for the masses passing by, were exchanging tidbits of what they had heard and experienced that day.

Protests continued into the night in Cairo, with a massive sit-in at Tahrir square, and the end of what had been relative police lenience compared to the forceful crackdown on protests that Egypt is used to.  The morning of the 26th was quiet, but the rest of the day saw 10,000 more people marching in downtown Cairo, government censorship of twitter and facebook, loss of mobile networks and internet in some areas, police violence toward journalists and protesters, and the number of people who have given their lives in this struggle raised to six.  The most significant protests were in Suez, where demonstrators clashed with police after the deaths of two protesters in initial marches the day before, and attempted to take control of government buildings.  The people forced the retreat of the regular police forces and the army was brought in.  Protests in Suez continue today, and there are rumored to be more continuing in other areas later in the evening.  More nationwide marches have been called for tomorrow after the Friday prayers.

It’s hard to say at this point where these protests will go.  There have been rumors of political leaders and the president’s family fleeing the country on private jets, but I’m still skeptical about that bit of information.  Tomorrow, the Muslim Brotherhood, which until now has refrained from officially participating in protests, is expected to join the masses, and El Baradei, Egypt’s opposition hero, is expected to return to Cairo to join in as well.  I keep thinking back to Tunisia, though, and the period of close to a month between Mohammed Bouazizi’s self-immolation that sparked initial protests, and the culmination of these protests in the 14th of January ouster of president Ben Ali.  Can Egypt hang onto this energy for that long?

Will it turn into a full-fledged revolution, or just scare Mubarak a little and get him to make a couple of key changes?  Who knows.  At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past the Egyptian people, and I can’t wait to see what’s going to happen next.