Since last Friday, Tahrir Square has once again become the center of the Egyptian revolution. What started as a nationwide day of protest calling for police officers and government ministers accused of murder and corruption to be brought to justice has now turned into a full-fledged movement demanding the resignation of Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi (the leader of the ruling military council) and Prime Minister Essam Sharaf.
I am not going to spend a lot of time going into the specific political demands of the protesters. For that information, I suggest Al-Jazeera or the blog of my housemate Chris, both of which provide constant analysis of the latest political developments. Instead, I want to provide some general perspective on the overall environment in the square.
While Tahrir is technically a public place, a strong security contingent has sprung up at every entrance to the square. In order to avoid potential conflict, there is absolutely no police presence in the square. Instead, the protest organizing committee has enlisted groups of young men and women to check ID cards, search bags, and perform pat-downs for everyone entering the square. When I attended the protests on Friday, the makeshift security apparatus was initially hesitant to let me in to the square, but they were mollified when an Egyptian friend who I was with vouched for me. In what seems to be a holdover from the Mubarak regime, there are still people who believe that there are rogue actors and foreign conspiracies attempting to hinder the revolution. Nevertheless, despite a few wary glances and three requests to see my AUC ID card, I found nearly all of the protesters whom I talked with to be quite welcoming and interested in hearing my perspective on this new occupation of Tahrir.
During the large protests last Friday, Tahrir resembled a summer music festival in the U.S. There were stages in various parts of the square with politicians and activists addressing the crowd and chanting slogans. Large, colorful banners adorned all parts of the square, echoing the chants of the protesters who were calling for justice, freedom, and an end to military rule. Some vendors, taking advantage of the mass of people and the oppressive heat, hawked drinks and food throughout the day, and others sought to capitalize off the revolution by selling patriotic flags, shirts, and hats. It is impossible to estimate exactly how many people came to Tahrir on Friday, but the number was certainly in the tens of thousands.
It is hard to generalize the types of people who have been in Tahrir for the past few days. While there is a large youth contingent, I also saw plenty of middle-aged and older protesters, too. While there are women in Tahrir, the square remains largely male-dominated. I would estimate that it is about an 80/20 ratio of men to women. Public space in Egypt is often male-dominated (especially at night), and Tahrir is no exception.
Although the Friday protests came to an end and there were no specific activities in Tahrir on Saturday, a diehard group of revolutionaries continued to occupy the square. They have set up a large tent camp in the middle of Tahrir, and the square has remained under the supervision of the volunteer security guards and closed to traffic. The protesters intend for their occupation of Tahrir to be a symbol of resistance to the military council, but they have achieved another significant accomplishment: there has been a dramatic reduction in traffic and noise-pollution in downtown Cairo. The dowsha and zahma that often characterizes the square has been replaced by lively political conversations, live music, and poetry readings. While Tahrir will certainly re-open to traffic at some point, I can’t help but wish that the square would be made into a pedestrian-only area…
As Egypt is back in the middle of the work week, the square is fairly calm during the day. Everyday after 5 PM, however, when most Egyptians have finished work and the weather has cooled off, the square comes back to life. While it is unclear whether these protests will actually force the military council to bend to the demands of the protesters, it is undeniable that the spirit of the revolution has once again returned to the center of Cairo.
Showing posts with label revolution. Show all posts
Showing posts with label revolution. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 13, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
The Focus Turns to Midan Al-Tahrir (Again)
"Friday, July 8 is the single most important day in Egypt since Mubarak's ouster on February 11." -- Alaa Al-Aswany, Egyptian writer and political commentator
Hundreds of thousands (possibly one million) Egyptians are expected to descend upon Tahrir Square tomorrow in what will likely be the largest protest in the square since Hosni Mubarak relinquished power in February. The protest enjoys the support of all the major political parties in Egypt (including the liberals and the Islamists), and the parties are claiming to have cast their ideological divisions aside in order to come out as a unified force tomorrow. All the groups have gathered under the banner of economic reform, freedom, and social justice. There is also a big focus on pushing the military council to speed-up the judicial process for both the elements of the Mubarak regime charged with corruption and the police officers charged with murder during the January revolution.
In general, many Egyptians that I have talked to over the past few days feel that this is their best chance to "put the revolution back on the right track." There have been several clashes between protesters and police over the past few weeks - largely in response to several trial postponements that have been interpreted as attempts by those on the military council to protect their former cronies. In addition to the growing discontent with the military council, many people have become disillusioned by the petty fighting between the many political parties and the growing rift between the liberals and the Islamists. Furthermore, the country's economy is still suffering from a drop in tourism and foreign investment after the revolution.
Over the past month, I have felt that Tahrir has become more of a "Speaker's Corner" than the center of a revolution. Everyone is always eager to talk, but it is unclear that those gathering there have anything to show for it. Tomorrow, however, may well be different. The sheer spectacle of a mass of humanity once again in the square, united by a list of simple demands, might push the military council to bow to the will of the protesters. On the other hand, there is also a chance that tomorrow's protest could lead to violent clashes (especially if a group of people try once again to attack the Interior Ministry). As Egyptians like to say: "rabina yestoorna" (may God protect us).
I will be back with an update tomorrow. For those of you following on twitter, use #tahrir, #jul8, and #egypt
Hundreds of thousands (possibly one million) Egyptians are expected to descend upon Tahrir Square tomorrow in what will likely be the largest protest in the square since Hosni Mubarak relinquished power in February. The protest enjoys the support of all the major political parties in Egypt (including the liberals and the Islamists), and the parties are claiming to have cast their ideological divisions aside in order to come out as a unified force tomorrow. All the groups have gathered under the banner of economic reform, freedom, and social justice. There is also a big focus on pushing the military council to speed-up the judicial process for both the elements of the Mubarak regime charged with corruption and the police officers charged with murder during the January revolution.
In general, many Egyptians that I have talked to over the past few days feel that this is their best chance to "put the revolution back on the right track." There have been several clashes between protesters and police over the past few weeks - largely in response to several trial postponements that have been interpreted as attempts by those on the military council to protect their former cronies. In addition to the growing discontent with the military council, many people have become disillusioned by the petty fighting between the many political parties and the growing rift between the liberals and the Islamists. Furthermore, the country's economy is still suffering from a drop in tourism and foreign investment after the revolution.
Over the past month, I have felt that Tahrir has become more of a "Speaker's Corner" than the center of a revolution. Everyone is always eager to talk, but it is unclear that those gathering there have anything to show for it. Tomorrow, however, may well be different. The sheer spectacle of a mass of humanity once again in the square, united by a list of simple demands, might push the military council to bow to the will of the protesters. On the other hand, there is also a chance that tomorrow's protest could lead to violent clashes (especially if a group of people try once again to attack the Interior Ministry). As Egyptians like to say: "rabina yestoorna" (may God protect us).
I will be back with an update tomorrow. For those of you following on twitter, use #tahrir, #jul8, and #egypt
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Across the Egyptian Twitterverse
Tonight I attended a “Tweet Nadwa” in Cairo. This nadwa (which translates into English as “seminar” or “conference”), as its name suggests, was organized via twitter and facebook and brought together Egyptians for a discussion about social justice and the future of Egypt. Try as I might to summarize the meeting in 140 characters or less on twitter, I simply cannot do it. Instead, I’ve turned to the blog, which gives me much more space to discuss and analyze tonight’s nadwa in detail.
The event was held in a theater nestled in the alleyways of downtown Cairo, and the room was already packed when I arrived a few minutes before 6:30. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to find a spot on the floor – a few minutes after I sat down, the theater was filled entirely to capacity with people in seats, on the floor, and in the aisles. This being my first twitter-organized event I didn’t quite know what to expect…I assumed that everyone might be spending the entire time with their noses buried in their blackberries, focusing more on their tweets than on the actual content of the discussion. As the moderator explained, however, the event was meant to be much more of a town-hall style meeting and, while a projector screen displayed a live feed of tweets from the audience members, audience members who wanted to contribute would be given a microphone instead of a smartphone. The moderator posed a topic for discussion, and then passed the microphone around to audience members and five prominent tweeters who were sitting on chairs in the front of the theater. Each person could speak for no more than 140 seconds (a nod to Twitter’s 140 character limit). Knowing what sort of rhetorical gems town hall meetings in the U.S. have yielded (e.g. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”), I was quite excited to see how this concept would play out in an Egyptian context.
Before getting into the actual content of the discussion, a few observations about the overall feel in the room. The audience was generally young, quite politically and socially liberal (both from the nature of the discussion and their preferred styles of clothing), and clearly very tech-savvy. As far as I could tell, there were no Salafis (who often sport long beards and traditional robes called galabiyyas) and no one who publicly identified with the Muslim Brotherhood. A sense of excitement pervaded the room as the discussion began, and as an outside observer it was hard not to get swept up in the moment. I never imagined last year when I was in Alexandria that this sort of discussion would be taking place just one year later in a post-Mubarak Egypt. It was impossible not to be inspired by several hundred people voluntarily coming together to talk about the future of their country. The level of energy and passion in the room – fed by the feeling that there is a real window of opportunity right now to shape Egypt’s political and economic future – was infectious.
Tonight’s topic was social justice, and the conversation mainly focused on economics. The microphone swiftly changed hands in the beginning of the meeting, with most of the attendees striking idealistic notes about the necessity of improving healthcare and education, raising the minimum wage, etc. Nothing revolutionary, but nevertheless a good way to start the program. After a brief digression in which the attendees argued amongst themselves about how the stock market functioned and whether it was or wasn’t necessary for the country’s future, the discussion heated up when a proud Communist stood up and admonished the crowd for not focusing on the real issues. “You all are forgetting the critical problem here,” he declared, “we need to stop talking about the minimum wage and the stock market and start talking about how to end the capitalist plague that is destroying our country! We must return to the basics and realize that capitalism is inherently unfair!”
The crowd’s attention instantly turned to broad, ideological issues. Instead of clapping, the moderator told the audience members to raise their arms and wave their hands when they agreed with a certain point, and judging by the amount of raised hands and smiles after that mini-Communist manifesto, the man had many allies in the room. Several like-minded thinkers expressed their support for the idea of completely overhauling Egypt’s system, inveighing against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (among other foreign countries and institutions) for making the rich richer and the poor poorer while tacitly approving the pervasive corruption in the Mubarak regime.
The capitalists in the room were not as vocal, but a few brave souls did stand up to defend their position. “What we had in Egypt for the past 30 years,” one said, “was not capitalism. It was simply despotism.” Another chimed in: “we’ve tried socialism and it didn’t work!” While nobody endorsed the Mubarak regime’s version of capitalism, the capitalists did win a fair amount of head nods and raised hands during their responses to the communist and socialist salvos.
The back-and-forth debate between the capitalists and the communists/socialists continued for some time, but there were two speakers who I found particularly engaging. One man stood up in the middle of the debate and, quite calmly and skillfully, attacked both the capitalists and the communists at the same time: “This question of whether we should have a capitalist or a communist system here in Egypt is not as important,” he declared, “as this question: who will administer the system? If there is anything we have learned in the past 60 years, it is that no matter what ideology we follow, we are ultimately doomed to fail if we have bad leaders. Pick either one of these ideologies, but remember that our success or failure will ultimately be determined by who is making the decisions and not some theoretical framework for how things should work.” While I didn’t speak at the meeting and generally refrained from reacting to any of the statements from one side or the other, I couldn’t help but raise my hand in support of that statement. Soon afterwards, another man stood up and brought up an equally important point: “While it is important to talk about macroeconomics and large companies,” he said, “we also have to focus on small-scale issues. So many young people have business plans or inventions that they want to capitalize on, but our system makes it unbelievably hard for anyone to open their own business. Why should we have to get 15 permits from the government to open a small shop, and why is it so hard for us to get any start-up capital? Change has to come from the bottom, too, and we need to start by completely overhauling the system to make it easier for us young people to go into business for ourselves.” I, and many of the other people in the room, raised our hands in support of this point, too.
Finally, I was very interested by the constant comparisons of Egypt to other countries. Many people backed up their statements by saying “in America they do this” or “in Scandinavia they do that,” and there were several points in the discussion when people used specific examples from American political or economic history. Many of the moderates in the room advocated that Egypt look to northern European countries as models for how to balance capitalism and social justice, but just as many people shook their heads emphatically whenever someone said that Egyptians should look to foreign countries as they design their own system. One speaker garnered a sea of raised hands when he declared simply: “screw capitalism and communism, let’s invent a new and better system here in Egypt!” Nevertheless, America was certainly the most commonly referenced foreign country throughout the discussion. Interestingly, while there were occasional mentions of developing countries such as Brazil and Korea, no one said anything about the Chinese model.
As a whole, I would characterize the discussion as decidedly more focused on social justice and closing the gap between the rich and the poor than most discussions about economic issues in the U.S. Despite a rising culture of consumption here in Egypt and a tendency for the rich to flaunt their wealth, I think people are very conscious of the huge class divide that emerged during the Mubarak regime, and they want to take definite actions to solve the problem. “We must judge our government,” one woman declared, “on the basis of how it treats the weakest people in our society.” If this twitter nadwa is actually representative of the Egyptian liberal movement as a whole, I would expect to see a definite shift to more populist policies if they liberals gain a significant amount of seats in the parliamentary elections.
As I have written before, someone walking the streets of Egypt these days who didn’t know about what happened in January and February would probably not think that this country is undergoing dramatic changes. There are specific times, however, when the gravity of what is happening in Egypt hits you like a tsunami. Tonight was certainly one of those times, and I will certainly be returning to the next twitter nadwa. The attendees’ enthusiasm, optimism, and genuine desire to change their country for the better was truly inspiring.
The event was held in a theater nestled in the alleyways of downtown Cairo, and the room was already packed when I arrived a few minutes before 6:30. I was one of the lucky ones who was able to find a spot on the floor – a few minutes after I sat down, the theater was filled entirely to capacity with people in seats, on the floor, and in the aisles. This being my first twitter-organized event I didn’t quite know what to expect…I assumed that everyone might be spending the entire time with their noses buried in their blackberries, focusing more on their tweets than on the actual content of the discussion. As the moderator explained, however, the event was meant to be much more of a town-hall style meeting and, while a projector screen displayed a live feed of tweets from the audience members, audience members who wanted to contribute would be given a microphone instead of a smartphone. The moderator posed a topic for discussion, and then passed the microphone around to audience members and five prominent tweeters who were sitting on chairs in the front of the theater. Each person could speak for no more than 140 seconds (a nod to Twitter’s 140 character limit). Knowing what sort of rhetorical gems town hall meetings in the U.S. have yielded (e.g. “Keep your government hands off my Medicare”), I was quite excited to see how this concept would play out in an Egyptian context.
Before getting into the actual content of the discussion, a few observations about the overall feel in the room. The audience was generally young, quite politically and socially liberal (both from the nature of the discussion and their preferred styles of clothing), and clearly very tech-savvy. As far as I could tell, there were no Salafis (who often sport long beards and traditional robes called galabiyyas) and no one who publicly identified with the Muslim Brotherhood. A sense of excitement pervaded the room as the discussion began, and as an outside observer it was hard not to get swept up in the moment. I never imagined last year when I was in Alexandria that this sort of discussion would be taking place just one year later in a post-Mubarak Egypt. It was impossible not to be inspired by several hundred people voluntarily coming together to talk about the future of their country. The level of energy and passion in the room – fed by the feeling that there is a real window of opportunity right now to shape Egypt’s political and economic future – was infectious.
Tonight’s topic was social justice, and the conversation mainly focused on economics. The microphone swiftly changed hands in the beginning of the meeting, with most of the attendees striking idealistic notes about the necessity of improving healthcare and education, raising the minimum wage, etc. Nothing revolutionary, but nevertheless a good way to start the program. After a brief digression in which the attendees argued amongst themselves about how the stock market functioned and whether it was or wasn’t necessary for the country’s future, the discussion heated up when a proud Communist stood up and admonished the crowd for not focusing on the real issues. “You all are forgetting the critical problem here,” he declared, “we need to stop talking about the minimum wage and the stock market and start talking about how to end the capitalist plague that is destroying our country! We must return to the basics and realize that capitalism is inherently unfair!”
The crowd’s attention instantly turned to broad, ideological issues. Instead of clapping, the moderator told the audience members to raise their arms and wave their hands when they agreed with a certain point, and judging by the amount of raised hands and smiles after that mini-Communist manifesto, the man had many allies in the room. Several like-minded thinkers expressed their support for the idea of completely overhauling Egypt’s system, inveighing against the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (among other foreign countries and institutions) for making the rich richer and the poor poorer while tacitly approving the pervasive corruption in the Mubarak regime.
The capitalists in the room were not as vocal, but a few brave souls did stand up to defend their position. “What we had in Egypt for the past 30 years,” one said, “was not capitalism. It was simply despotism.” Another chimed in: “we’ve tried socialism and it didn’t work!” While nobody endorsed the Mubarak regime’s version of capitalism, the capitalists did win a fair amount of head nods and raised hands during their responses to the communist and socialist salvos.
The back-and-forth debate between the capitalists and the communists/socialists continued for some time, but there were two speakers who I found particularly engaging. One man stood up in the middle of the debate and, quite calmly and skillfully, attacked both the capitalists and the communists at the same time: “This question of whether we should have a capitalist or a communist system here in Egypt is not as important,” he declared, “as this question: who will administer the system? If there is anything we have learned in the past 60 years, it is that no matter what ideology we follow, we are ultimately doomed to fail if we have bad leaders. Pick either one of these ideologies, but remember that our success or failure will ultimately be determined by who is making the decisions and not some theoretical framework for how things should work.” While I didn’t speak at the meeting and generally refrained from reacting to any of the statements from one side or the other, I couldn’t help but raise my hand in support of that statement. Soon afterwards, another man stood up and brought up an equally important point: “While it is important to talk about macroeconomics and large companies,” he said, “we also have to focus on small-scale issues. So many young people have business plans or inventions that they want to capitalize on, but our system makes it unbelievably hard for anyone to open their own business. Why should we have to get 15 permits from the government to open a small shop, and why is it so hard for us to get any start-up capital? Change has to come from the bottom, too, and we need to start by completely overhauling the system to make it easier for us young people to go into business for ourselves.” I, and many of the other people in the room, raised our hands in support of this point, too.
Finally, I was very interested by the constant comparisons of Egypt to other countries. Many people backed up their statements by saying “in America they do this” or “in Scandinavia they do that,” and there were several points in the discussion when people used specific examples from American political or economic history. Many of the moderates in the room advocated that Egypt look to northern European countries as models for how to balance capitalism and social justice, but just as many people shook their heads emphatically whenever someone said that Egyptians should look to foreign countries as they design their own system. One speaker garnered a sea of raised hands when he declared simply: “screw capitalism and communism, let’s invent a new and better system here in Egypt!” Nevertheless, America was certainly the most commonly referenced foreign country throughout the discussion. Interestingly, while there were occasional mentions of developing countries such as Brazil and Korea, no one said anything about the Chinese model.
As a whole, I would characterize the discussion as decidedly more focused on social justice and closing the gap between the rich and the poor than most discussions about economic issues in the U.S. Despite a rising culture of consumption here in Egypt and a tendency for the rich to flaunt their wealth, I think people are very conscious of the huge class divide that emerged during the Mubarak regime, and they want to take definite actions to solve the problem. “We must judge our government,” one woman declared, “on the basis of how it treats the weakest people in our society.” If this twitter nadwa is actually representative of the Egyptian liberal movement as a whole, I would expect to see a definite shift to more populist policies if they liberals gain a significant amount of seats in the parliamentary elections.
As I have written before, someone walking the streets of Egypt these days who didn’t know about what happened in January and February would probably not think that this country is undergoing dramatic changes. There are specific times, however, when the gravity of what is happening in Egypt hits you like a tsunami. Tonight was certainly one of those times, and I will certainly be returning to the next twitter nadwa. The attendees’ enthusiasm, optimism, and genuine desire to change their country for the better was truly inspiring.
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
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!
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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!
Friday, June 10, 2011
Not Your Average First Day of School...
Ever since I started pre-school, my mom always took photos of me in front of our house as I prepared to go to the first day of school. Usually I posed for these photos complacently, although there were a few years in high school when I had a distinct scowl on my face (clearly too cool for school). I was always in front of the house, and, while I looked a little different in each one (taller, new clothes, new hairdo, etc.), there was not much to distinguish one year from another. When school began last Tuesday, however, I decided to carry on this tradition, albeit in a slightly different setting.
I am standing in Tahrir Square, in front of one of the walls of the American University in Cairo, and the Arabic writing behind me reads "Live the Revolution."
While I often feel like this country is pretty much the same as the Egypt that I experienced in 2010, there are times when the magnitude of what happened between January 25 (the start of the protests) and February 11 (Mubarak's ouster) really hits home. Every morning on the taxi ride to school, we drive past the burned out headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Ironically, that shell of a building sits right next to the Ritz-Carlton, which is also a shell of a building because it is in the midst of a giant renovation. Walking around downtown Cairo, nearly every available wall facing the street has turned into a a space for public art commemorating the revolution, calling for national unity, and urging Egyptians to take pride in their country. In class this week, the revolution came up in nearly every discussion. And every day dozens of people gather around newsstands in the morning to read the latest headlines about political and economic developments.
Anybody who claims to know how all of this political, social, and economic upheaval will play out is simply lying. But while there is a great deal of uncertainty about this country's future, there is also a distinct sense of accomplishment and optimism that the forces that led to Mubarak's downfall can be channeled to build the new Egypt, too.
I am standing in Tahrir Square, in front of one of the walls of the American University in Cairo, and the Arabic writing behind me reads "Live the Revolution."
While I often feel like this country is pretty much the same as the Egypt that I experienced in 2010, there are times when the magnitude of what happened between January 25 (the start of the protests) and February 11 (Mubarak's ouster) really hits home. Every morning on the taxi ride to school, we drive past the burned out headquarters of Mubarak's National Democratic Party. Ironically, that shell of a building sits right next to the Ritz-Carlton, which is also a shell of a building because it is in the midst of a giant renovation. Walking around downtown Cairo, nearly every available wall facing the street has turned into a a space for public art commemorating the revolution, calling for national unity, and urging Egyptians to take pride in their country. In class this week, the revolution came up in nearly every discussion. And every day dozens of people gather around newsstands in the morning to read the latest headlines about political and economic developments.
Anybody who claims to know how all of this political, social, and economic upheaval will play out is simply lying. But while there is a great deal of uncertainty about this country's future, there is also a distinct sense of accomplishment and optimism that the forces that led to Mubarak's downfall can be channeled to build the new Egypt, too.
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