I am excited to be here and proud to be living though these events. But it also seems that I am more worried about the situation than the rest of my peers. I have been getting information from the internet and also from my Egyptian family, who I am sure have access to information that we don’t know how to find. I have also heard much more about the Egyptian government’s dysfunction and irrationality over the years. Ibrahim’s (my cousin’s) warnings were a wake-up call. He cautioned that things could get ugly tomorrow, that the police might shoot people, that the government might start cutting off resources like internet, mobile service, electricity, or water. That was when I realized the severity of the situation. Perhaps he was being slightly overdramatic, but also judging from what I know of the government and Egypt’s history, I know that he wasn’t being unreasonable. He wasn’t trying to scare me, just warning me to be prepared for whatever might come. There is no way to know when and how this will end, and what conditions will be in Egypt when it does. I can’t even process it all right now; the fact that we will have to be extra careful from now on, many of our plans may have to be altered, that everything might change while we’re here. I just have to take it one step at a time and deal with the developments as they come. The best thing is to remain flexible and cautiously optimistic and hope for the best.
Sara (one of our program coordinators) shared the Egyptian activist perspective on this week’s events with me in the car (she personally escorted me to and from Arabic class today, for safety). She made me fully realize the amount of pent up anger and frustration that is igniting this week. I cannot even comprehend the amount of suffering and oppression that Egyptians have been living with for the last 30 years. She told me about Khalid Said, an average middle class Egyptian who, because of an unwarranted skirmish with the police, was brutally beaten and murdered. Apparently this incident made activists out of many who had been frustrated but reluctant to get involved, including Sara. She kept saying, “It could have been me! I could have been one of my cousins! There was no sense in it at all!!! It was pure injustice! It made us all SOoutraged, and we all decided to say, ‘We will not be treated this way! We cannot live like this!’” That was about a year ago. Now, with the Tunisian revolts coinciding with Eid al-Shorta*, everything is finally igniting into the protest that everyone has been waiting for. I don’t know if anyone anticipated the extent to which it would continue. As apprehensive as I am about tomorrow’s demonstrations, I am truly praying that the protesters will continue and prevail until they force Mubarak to step down for good. Egyptians are finally breaking the crust of malaise and despair and showing the world their true colors.
* Eid al-Shorta (“Holiday of the Police”) is a national day off in honor of the police, whom everyone detests. Thus, it has become a day of protest against the government – though never before to this extent.
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