The AC Revolution

Just a month after graduating from Tufts, I am now back in the midst of academia. Classes have picked up, and I took a weekend trip to Alexandria last weekend that prevented me from posting anything new on the blog. Today, however, is the closest thing we will ever have to a snow day this year. Clashes occurred between protesters and the police in Tahrir Square last night and this morning, and the program has canceled classes today due to ongoing uncertainty about the situation there. I would recommend logging on to Al-Jazeera or BBC to follow the situation, and for those of you who use twitter the best hashtags are #tahrir and #jun28.

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Speaking of revolutions, I was involved in a mini-uprising last weekend on the train from Cairo to Alexandria. While many aspects of Egyptian public transportation either don’t work or are very uncomfortable for anyone with long legs, the train between Cairo and Alex is a clear exception. Roomy, air-conditioned, and fast, it is by far the easiest and most comfortable way to travel between the two cities.

Last Friday, however, the train service fell short of my high expectations. After leaving 30 minutes behind schedule (no explanation given), I and my fellow passengers soon realized that the air-conditioning in our car did not work. While a broken air-conditioner would not have been an issue in the winter, riding a train in the early afternoon on a summer day without air-conditioning is not very fun.

Ordinarily, this would have been what I call a “Maalesh” moment. Maalesh is a staple of Egyptian dialect, which means, in this context, “oh well, there’s a problem but it’s not going to get fixed and we’ll just have to grin and bear it.”

One woman, however, decided that she was not going to surrender her right to air-conditioning without a fight. She looked to be about 50 or 60 years old, from the middle or upper class, and spoke both English and Arabic. She began to complain right when the train left the station, and she continued to do so until the ticket-taker walked down the aisle in our car about five minutes later. “Where’s the AC?” she demanded to know. The ticket-taker shrugged and was about to continue his journey down the train when the woman piped up again, “How is it that the AC always work on these trains during the winter, but it breaks during the summer?! Go bring the maintenance man and fix this, please!”

The exasperated ticket-taker sighed and asked her to please calm down. That was a mistake. “Calm down?! The AC is broken and you refuse to do anything about it! This is not right!” The woman then turned to the rest of the passengers in the train car, who, up until this point, had been quietly listening to her exchange with the ticket-taker. “Nobody should be silent right now!” she said. “We cannot accept this sort of second-class treatment. We have to demand our rights as passengers!”

“Demanding rights” was one of the trademark phrases of the January revolution, and it effectively stirred up feelings of indignation amongst the other passengers on the train. Amidst a chorus of calls demanding that he bring the maintenance man, the ticket-taker retreated from the train car and muttered that he would be back soon.

After the ticket-taker had left, everyone on the train worked themselves into a frenzy. A woman in a niqab (a full-face covering with a small slit for the eyes) stood up in the aisle and encouraged everyone to get off together and demand a refund when we arrive Alexandria. Several riders used newspapers to fan themselves as the temperature continued to rise. A few men joined with the woman in the niqab in calling for everyone to work together in order to secure a refund in Alexandria.

A few minutes later, the ticket-taker just came back to tell us that the AC was broken and that neither he nor the maintenance man could fix it while the train was running. Before the entire car erupted in fury, he assured us that we could get a partial refund in Alexandria. "How can we be sure that is going to happen?!" simultaneously cried the woman in the niqab, the father of two young girls sitting next to me, and the middle-aged woman who started the whole issue. “Don’t worry,” the ticket-taker said, “everyone who has a ticket showing that they rode in train car number five can bring it to the ticket office and they will give you a refund.”

About twenty minutes later, with the temperature continuing to rise and perspiration visible on everyone’s foreheads, the maintenance man came back into the car and tried to improve the situation by opening up the four small windows in the front and back of the train car. The plan backfired. Upon opening the first window, a cloud of dust blew into the train, further agitating the riders in the front of the train car. Then, as he went to open a window at the back of the car, an old man began to yell at the maintenance man that he didn't want that window to be opened. The maintenance man claimed that it wasn't the man's choice, the whole train needed air, which only made the old man angrier. As the maintenance man left the car, the man continued to yell at him, screaming “kalb!” (dog!), which is considered a serious insult in Arabic.

As the journey continued, the train car remained abuzz with chatter. People declared that they were tired of things not working, we planned our group march to the ticket office to secure a refund, and others inveighed against the employees of the train company. There was an army officer on the train, too, and as the chatter continued one of the riders asked him to speak up: "Are you not a citizen just like us?!" The woman in the niqab led the charge, standing up next to her seat in the front of the car and exhorting the rest of the riders to be sure to stay together when the train arrives in Alex and march together to the ticket counter to get our refunds. "We won't accept this kind of second-rate treatment from the train company!" she asserted.

Train trips are usually solitary adventures. While I sometimes strike up a short conversation with the person sitting next to me, I often spend the two and half hours between Cairo and Alexandria reading, sleeping, or gazing at the scenery outside the train car. On this journey, however, everyone in the car became the best of friends. I spent a few minutes talking to the woman in the niqab (the first time that I had ever spoken directly to a woman wearing one), and I schmoozed with the other passengers for the remainder of the journey as well.

As the train pulled into Alexandria, I hurried out and onto the platform because I had to buy a ticket for my return journey and I didn’t want to get caught up in the mass of humanity that surely had the same idea. I reached the ticket office before the rest of my compatriots from train car number five. After a few minutes of standing in line, a group of the train revolutionaries suddenly appeared inside the ticket office and instantly recognized me (probably because I was the only tall blond in the building). I waved them over to my line, and was planning to wait with them until it was our turn to talk to the ticket agent. The woman who started the AC revolution, however, was not as patient. She forced her way to the front of the line and rapped on the glass with her wedding ring, instantly gaining the attention of the bewildered ticket agent. “Refund! Refund!” she demanded. The ticket agent, after consulting his colleagues for a minute, returned and proceeded to disburse the refunds. Each of us received 6.50 Egyptian pounds (a little more than $1), which was 20% of the original ticket price.

The middle-aged female revolutionary received her money first. As she turned to walk away, I congratulated her on a job well done. She turned to me with a mischievous gleam in her eyes and said: "Nobody messes with Egyptian women! We get what we want!"

While maalesh moments still happen quite often in post-revolution Egypt, I do not think that this AC Revolution would have happened last year. It would never have begun without the middle-aged, upper-class female revolutionary, but when she began to speak up everyone soon joined in. This type of mini-social movement is easily exportable to other aspects of daily life in Egypt. When one person speaks out against injustice or mistreatment, frames it in the context of "demanding our rights," and manages to attract supporters to the cause, things can change for the better. Here's to the continuation and escalation of the AC Revolution!