Day 490 (January 29, 2011)

The Day The Police Abandoned Their Posts - Part 2

Or 

Egyptian Neighborhood Watch Best Practices

Time line of my day:

07:30 My husband went to the Maadi Club to play tennis.

10:34 My USA iPhone is working.

Midday: Car ride around Maadi and Maadi Gedida. Streets were empty. No police and few drivers. Road 9 wasn't as busy as usual, and much easier to cruise through. Our friend who works on Road 9 and whom we stop by to see every week was not at work. His business was closed.

I saw him on January 24th and asked what he was doing the next day (Police Day Holiday, and also the first day of the demonstrations - January 25.) He said he'd be at work as usual - "I work everyday." He'd like to slit Mubarak's throat, but I did not want to mention, in public, the demonstrations for fear of getting him into trouble. 

So when he was not around, I was hedging my bets that he was probably on Tahrir Square.

13:53 95 dead here in Egypt announced on Al Jazeera. Al Jazeera showing morgue scenes from Alexandria. No police anywhere now. Al Jazeera reports there are more people in the streets today than yesterday. They estimate 50,000 people in Tahrir Square right now. (In a city of 16 million and when previous protests only had a handful of people, 50,00 is a big number!)

15:01 Just heard gunshots. Our boab says they come from Torah prison, in the southern part of Maadi.

21:10 A message I tried to send with a photo did not work.

Notes I jotted down:

Again no Internet and no phone service except with our local land line, which BTW everyone who does not have, now wants to use. People knock on our door unexpectedly (it's kind of hard to call ahead with no mobile phone service) and ask to use our land line to "phone home" (where ever the hell that is.) 

This is the day I decided that if I had to do another crossword puzzle I would rip my eyes out.

My husband went to play tennis with an Egyptian friend "F". My husband said he has never seen "F" more upset. His sons heard about the uprising. Three of his sons (all army boys) wanted to go down to Tahrir Square. "F" locked the doors, got a knife out and said, "If you leave I will slit your throats! Better for me to kill you than the police!" ("F" hates Mubarak, and would like to slit his throat too.) On top of that, the police station near his house in Maadi was set on fire. One of the workers at the Maadi Club had a brother who was shot by the police as he was driving his cab the night before along the Corniche in Maadi. For us, life was boring albeit the events-preoccupying. But for the everyday Egyptian, life was getting a bit more complicated and violent. 


The curfew was set by the government for 16:00 in the afternoon through 08:00 in the morning. As it got closer to curfew and with no police in sight, make shift road blocks were set up and the neighborhood boabs planned their evenings. As it would turn out, we ended up with more security than we ever had with the police.


And strangely, I felt safer with all these guys around too. 


We walked our dog around the neighborhood (breaking curfew) that evening while shooting photos, and talking to all the neighborhood watch guys. 

Afterwards we went back into our apartment and continued to watch Al Jazeera until we fell asleep. 

The Boabese of the neighborhood. AKA Neighborhood Watch. Since the police disappeared, it was everyone for himself. These guys provided the security for a good part of our road. (Ignore the kawaga.)

The boabese again. One has a home made spear (very front) the other carries a samurai type sword in his hand, and a molotov cocktail in his pocket.

Yes, it is a bit primitive, but I still wouldn't recommend driving over it. If you look closely, you can see another group of baobese at the next intersection.

Another street blockade around the corner from ours.

And yet another makeshift blockade.

One block away, these guys are out on patrol. One is a policeman (he proudly showed me his I.D.) and he's carrying a gun. The guy in the back says, "Peace" or is it "Victory."  

Day 489 (January 29, 2011)

The Day The Police Abandoned Their Posts - Part 1

Egyptian police are disliked, if not hated by almost every segment of Egyptian society. They have a bad reputation involving torture and corruption. Their behavior during the January 25 Tahrir Square protests was culpable. I have never been able to decide what to make of their tragicomedy life. I see them sleeping, eating, digging dirt out of their boots, and lolling about at their posts. On the other hand, I have few photos of them as they despise cameras. It's also not a good idea to take pictures anywhere near them, as they jump out of nowhere and threaten to confiscate your camera, screaming "No taking of pictures!"  While some of the uniformed police seem mild mannered and friendly with directions, I have found they take orders from the plainclothesmen holding the walkie-talkies. And these guys are not nice (I often hide my camera when I walk by them.)


They are everywhere.  

They perform many duties (a review.) 

They sit among the audience for important speeches, like Obama's, and give people (like me) the stink eye (Cairo University June 2009.)

They block traffic and serve as protection  (Cairo University after Obama's speech June 2009.)

They start riots by tearing down "illegal structures" (like someone's house), and angering communities (Mokkatam Mountain October 2008.)

They protect antiquities (Giza 2007.)

They direct traffic (Maadi Corniche 2008.)

And they push their own broke down vehicles, blocking major intersections, where they have a checkpoint (Lasilky Road checkpoint 2008.)

But on January 29, 2011 they abandoned their posts (Lasilky Road intersection checkpoint.)  They were nowhere to be found.

More on this day later.

Day 488 (January 28,2011)

I had another photo pegged for this day, but it got sidelined due to circumstances beyond my control (see below.)  And anyone who has followed this blog is aware of my absence for over a month starting on January 28. I'm still trying to gather my thoughts, and remember as best I can the sequence of events (photos are excellent for that) in order to reconstruct my days since then. 


January 28, 2011

On January 26, I posted information on my FaceBook profile (I had been posting information regarding the Tahrir Square Demonstrations since January 20, as it seemed to be massive and so much different from the typical Egyptian protests), and I sent a few belated e-mails out to friends (keeping up with a revolution takes up a lot of time.)  I also messaged Connecticut Bob with some links that I had found useful. It was rumored, mostly via Twitter (#jan25 and #egypt) that the Internet might be closed. I had trouble later the evening of Thursday January 27 connecting to Twitter and FaceBook.  MSM on my mobile wasn't working either. So it seemed the rumors were coming to fruition. I found a way around the  blocked Twitter (TweetDeck) and FaceBook (www.lisp4.facebook.com) sites, sent off what messages I had, read what I needed to read, and went to bed wondering if my friends would still be there when I awoke. They weren’t, or vice versa, I wasn’t there. I was completely off the grid, so-to-speak. Internet, MSM, and then mobile phones were all shut down one by one, via orders from President Mubarak. Wow! Am I living in Iran or Myanmar now I wondered?  


Early in the morning we were able to call the kids on our mobile phones, and let them know we were alright.  I thought, with the Internet down, this would be a good time to catch up on some reading, but quickly discovered an immediate onset of ADD. Going between the bedroom, where we could get Al Jazeera and the TV Room, where we had CNN soon became a ritual. Al Jazeera had the best reporting by far, and the Arabic channel (Al Jazeera Arabya) was taken off the air sometime mid-afternoon to NileSat subscribers.  We knew the real action would start at 1:00 PM after prayer services were over. We could hardly wait! Anticipation was high for this was to be "a big day."

For a few minutes early in the morning, I watched Glenn Beck on Fox News who portrayed the demonstrators as "communists and socialists", and then out of the other side of his mouth complained about Mubarak shutting down the Internet and added, “This is what President Obama wants to do to you!”  I’m not sure how Glenn Beck's brain synapses work, but I’m pretty sure they’ve snapped. I changed the channel and started memorizing news channels on my Showtime Satellite subscription: 36 (CNN), 44 (BBCW), 80 (Al Jazeera English),  104 (Sky News), and 126 (Al Arabya).  And since it was before 1:00 PM, I decided to watch the Australian Tennis Open for a while, and proceeded to work on some NYT crosswords I had either downloaded or from one of the many crossword books I have on hand. After that became boring, I took a nap, awoke just in time for the action to start, flipping on Al Jazeera and CNN, until I decided Al Jazeera was definitely on top of the game. They actually had cameras and were embedded (so-to-speak) with the crowds. Al Jazeera had been criticized in Egyptian blogs, and on Twitter for practically ignoring the Tuesday demonstrations, so they were out to make up for that mistake.

As this lazy assed day developed, it looked as if the protests could develope into a violent situation, though no one would know exactly how bad until the next morning.

I showered and ran up to KIMO, the local grocery store to fetch a few items. The streets were empty, or as my mom would say, "dead." Not only did no one try to run me down, but there was barely any traffic, to begin with. The night before we had received an e-mail stating that Victoria Midan (the traffic circle by KIMO) would be a protest area. My bubble thought, “Are you shitting me? Why? There’s nothing there except a few flower shops, cigarette kiosks and KIMO." Sure enough, the Victoria Midan circle was practically empty, as well.

After I returned home, I decided to start my heavy drinking for the evening, progressing on to drinking a full bottle of wine all by myself (I kid you not!)  I thought I heard firecracker type sounds later in the evening, and went out to ask our boab (doorman/caretaker) who said, “Corniche.” I asked about the smell in the air, and he indicated it was coming from the Maadi Police Station straight down the road from us. 


I took some photos of the empty street and the boabs on our road (both below), and went back inside to watch more news.

After dinner, we retired to the bedroom where we continued to watch Al Jazeera, now awaiting a speech (concessionary?) from Mubarak. Nonsense! He didn't show until after midnight and his speech was insulting. Obviously, we were in for a much longer haul than anticipated.

Day 487

Sheesha Smoker

Day 486

Pigeon

On my friend's roof. He raises them, as do many Egyptians.

Day 485

My Friend's Lamb

My friend has his own little farm. It's on the roof of his house. He raises chickens, has fresh eggs, pigeons, lambs, and an occasional goat.This is one of his animals. Say goodbye, ("Masalama,") because he is dinner for Sham al Neseen, or as they call it in Azerbaijan, Bayram Novruz. Or to translate both of those, it's basically "smell the air" day.  I'm not sure when exactly the date is, but it  usually falls in March, about this time of the month. 

Day 484

Sheesha Cafe