It’s ironic how little work I have accomplished this week despite being home for the last two days. As a security precaution, we have had class in the apartments, and have been staying inside as much as possible. I have spent the entire time checking the news, calling everyone, and emailing friends back home. In the midst of all this chaos and uncertainty, the priority has been keeping in touch with everyone to assure my family and friends that I am safe and ok, and to get information from as many sources as possible.
It’s also ironic that the demonstrations began two days after the official inauguration of the partnership between UChicago and Cairo University. I know that the administrators back home are very apprehensive this week, hoping that the events die down soon and that the country isn’t overcome by anarchy, and that, God forbid, they won’t have to pull us out of Egypt.
I’ve been having so many thoughts at once – since I came to Egypt, really – that it’s hard to keep track of everything. It’s a challenge to latch onto some of my thoughts and impressions and put them into coherent words. It helps though, to put some of my thoughts into writing. It’s helping to clear my brain and calm my nerves. I’ve never kept a blog before, but I really want to take the challenge. I’ve been slow to get started, partly because it took a while to find a blog site I like that doesn’t take forever to load, partly because the internet here can be finicky and slow, and partly because my thoughts have been building up and got so backed up that I didn’t know where to begin, and the task seemed daunting. Finally I was able to clear my head enough to just begin anyway. In time I will get around to all the things I have wanted to comment on. I just need to keep writing.
My mind has been racing, especially since yesterday afternoon. At first I wasn’t very concerned at all. Tuesday I slept through the initial action (finally catching up on sleep after an exhausting week), and I shared in the general excitement of the group and reveled in the sense that we are witnessing history. I sat reading the news on Al-Jazeera, eating my ‘aeesh baladi* and marveling that demonstrations of this magnitude have not occurred since the Bread Riots 33 years ago (*“bread of my country,” the whole grain pita bread that is subsidized by the government and which all Egyptians, including myself, love to eat. In 1977, the government suspended subsidy of bread, bringing the cost to 1 LE a piece – way too expensive, especially at that time – which launched several days of bloody revolts in Egypt).
My state of mind switched yesterday when I read on Al-Jazeera that the government is really cracking down on protestors, and I decided to remove my post from the previous day about the demonstrations. My post had made it perfectly clear where I stand on the situation. I decided it best not to risk posting my support of the protest on the internet. I have to be very careful of what I do here lest it affect my ability to return and maneuver in Egypt in the future…
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