Stories from the Street

Tomorrow marks two weeks since January 25: the date many are calling "the start of the Revolution." There are rallying cries for a general strike on this anniversary and people are divided: to go or not to go.

The other day a friend who has been in Tahrir (Liberation) Square every day since it started wrote, "On Saturday as I was walking around with my flag in Tahrir Square, an old man came up to me and tried to kiss my hand and told me ‘Thank you for giving me the chance to taste dignity again.’ I kissed his head and told him it wasn't just me, but all of us. But he told me that we young people did what his generation dreamed about all their lives." I don't know how many people will go tomorrow, but I have no doubt that those who are there will not leave. As Heather's post mentions below, in the square they have written a Chinese proverb: "Half a revolution only leads to coffins." The government has betrayed them time and time again and there is little trust left.

Amidst it all, there are many more beautiful stories from the streets:

Yesterday, a couple were married in the middle of Tahrir Square. "These protesters are family now. We have lived, laughed and protested together in this square for the past weeks. Ola and I wanted to share our happiness with everyone," said husband Zaafan, 29, a psychologist.” I don’t know this couple, but they’re basically my new heroes.

Yesterday, Coptic Christians held a Sunday mass in the middle of the Square. The mass was meant to pray for freedom, but also to remember those who have died in the protests (see a memorial to them here). Muslim prayers were also held in memory of the dead. Someone who was there wrote, "Today, our church went to Midan el Tahrir to pray in public for freedom and for Egypt at 1 pm, and we were joined by thousands of people there. After this prayer, Dr.Mohamed Selim el Awa [a prominent Muslim leader] went to one of our leaders in the church and gave him a hug and he told him: "I am sorry for any offensive word I have written about Christians.” May the spirit of the square spread throughout Egypt.

During the height of the protests, when fear of the riot police (and later of the pro-Mubarak/pro-government protesters – or, rather, thugs) was at its height, Christians formed a human chain around Muslim protesters as they prayed. Muslims later did the same for Christians.

Egyptian political dissent has been brutally silenced for a long time, but now they’re finding creative new ways to speak out. Check out the entire square breaking into song (with English subtitles) here.

And last, because they’re the most important: My neighbours

They should have been the people I posted about long ago. I wrote about them on Facebook, but somehow I haven’t written here yet: I owe my neighbours, and thousands of Egyptians like them, much gratitude. After the police locked up and left and the government had literally released thousands of prisoners on to the streets, groups of men took whatever weapons they could find and set up roadblocks and checkpoints in neighbourhoods across Cairo, hour after hour, night after night, for almost a week straight. Defying the curfew, with stories of violent looters circling through the streets, they protected their homes, their businesses, their families, and their neighbours. When I brought my students back to my neighbourhood after spending a night stuck outside in a train station (that’s a whole other story) we found a few brave taxi drivers at 7:30 am, half an hour before the curfew ended. I ferried students back and forth from train station to home through checkpoint after checkpoint after checkpoint of these “Neighbourhood watch” groups: men with sticks, butcher knives, and even numb chucks (despite the seriousness of the situation, I admit that last one made me laugh). At each checkpoint once the men realized we were clearly not looters or escaped convicts, all they could say was, “Please! Go through!”, “I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry this is happening! I'm so sorry for this disturbance!”, “Are you OK? Is there anything we can do?” as if it was somehow their fault that their government had betrayed them. I talked to one of the priests at my church on the phone later that day, and the checkpoints had been the same in his area of the city. He said, “Dena, last night, I could have cried. To see people come together, to see them risking their safety for us and for everyone else in our neighbourhood: I will be forever inspired by their example.” I had friends in the checkpoint groups in their neighbourhoods too, and I could hear the exhaustion in their voices when I talked to them, but it was never even a thought to them to leave.

The night before we left Cairo, my co-workers and I walked around with a kettle and sugar and bags of Lipton yellow label – the only way we could begin to say thank-you – and we must have given out at least 70 cups of tea. The mood was good then – the fear had lessened, and at some points it felt like a little block party on the streets, even 4 hours past curfew. Everyone was thanking us profusely (as if we were the ones doing everyone a great service) and the last people we gave tea to before we ran out said, “We just want to know: why are you doing this? Why are you out here when you know the streets could be dangerous?” and all we could say was, “We’re not afraid – because you’re here.”

Egypt, you are beautiful. Thank-you.