Hello friends and fellow posters on Israel-Palestine.
We had no internet for quite a few days here in Cairo and even when it did come back I was so overwhelmed with work I didn't have time to look at it.
Anyway, I've been smack in the eye of the storm: My Arabic is very good, my apartment is downtown only a few blocks from Tahrir Square, and I've been going down to check on the protests nearly every day and have drunk lots of teargas trying to see what was going on. The last time I went into the square was on Thursday. Maybe I'll go again today (it's now Saturday about 5:00 am).
The Egypt I have lived in and loved for years has been transformed, but in a curiously Egyptian way. Despite the utter chaos of this society, Egyptians have always been some of the most gracious people I've associated with, and now I've seen a new, wonderful side to them.
As you may know, the government opened the doors of all the prisons a few days into the crisis. Friends of mine in a ritzy gated community in Cairo's Sixth of October suburb told me that the men in their compound caught two prison escapees trying to get in, and they tied them up and handed them over to the army (not the hated police). The curious thing was their story. The prison officials had starved them for two days, then dumped outside the prison in the desert, pointed guns at them and told them make their way to Cairo and if they tried to come back they would be shot.
Many of the prisoners were political, but others were hardened criminals of the worst kind. From other other accounts I've heard, many couldn't figure out how to get home because of the vast changes at the city's fringes in the years they were incarcinated. But now we have tens of thousands of nasties deliberately loosed upon the city.
At the same time, the government has built up an army of thugs. It seems they are three types: low level policemen in civilian clothes, internal intelligence and normal thugs hired from the poorer neighborhoods. The going rate is said to be about 50 Egyptian pounds, or about 10 dollars, a day.
During the crisis I've been working at the office until late at night, and several times I've had to walk home late at night after curfew, sometimes alone, and I stick out as foreigner. Even though my office is only a few blocks away I've often had to take circuitous routes through very poor neighborhoods because streets were blocked off by the army.
This is the great thing: All the people, well off and poor, had banned together into neighborhood watch groups and were manning posts outside their buildings and streets. They were nervous but in high spirits and totally kind and gracious, and make sure you are okay. I felt safer than I would have in your typical North American city so late at night, even without criminals roaming the streets in the total absence of police.
At night, groups of nasty young men have been roaming about, apparently looking for easy targets for looting. From my apartment at night I sometimes hear nearby shooting -- to repel looters, I'm told by my neighbors. And because the area is so close to Tahrir, it has also been infiltrated by big numbers of government thugs who have been told foreigners are enemy agents trying to destabilise Egypt. (The thugs aren't real bright, and many can't even read.)
So here I am in the surreal situation where the poor normal folk of Egypt are protecting me from the Egyptian government, which in turn is being protected by my own government.
I will post more later, but I should get back to bed for a while.