I flew into Cairo, Egypt on Sunday, Jan. 23. The revolution began on Monday, Jan. 24, but I didn’t start it.
I had just concluded a wonderful 10-day tour of Israel. What an adventure. I looked forward to a peaceful visit in Cairo and Alexandria, touring the pyramids, the Sphinx, mummies, the Nile River and many other Egyptian attractions.
I experienced that … and a revolution.
The following are my e-mails to family and friends during the trip:
Monday, Jan. 24
First stop was the Egyptian Museum, which looks like a garage sale of the oldest things in the world. I did get to see King Tut’s sarcophagus and the royal mummies.
After that, it was off to the main park of Cairo, El Azhar Park, a wonderful park with fantastic views of Cairo (imagine 18 million people all living and working in buildings generally no more than five stories tall) and beautiful fountains and greenery (probably the only fountains and greenery in all of Cairo).
I had heard so much about Cairo being difficult to navigate, but everyone has been very helpful, and a lot of the taxi drivers know English and love telling you everything about the city as they drive. My tour guide for the pyramids (on Tuesday) even offered to let me stay at his house for a while if the roads were closed due to the demonstrations going on in Cairo.
Tuesday, Jan. 25
I got up early for a full-day guided trip of the pyramids (more than just Giza). Everything here is very specialized. I wanted a guided tour and I got a driver, a tour guide, and separate tour guides for many of the stops. Jobs that one person could do are often divided into four or five separate jobs.
It was a good day, and I’m safe, even though my guide and driver said the demonstrations turned violent.
Apparently the president of Egypt has been president for 30 years and is very corrupt. There was a 90,000-person demonstration in Cairo to protest this. They want a term limit for the president, higher minimum wages, and other seemingly reasonable things. From my very brief stint here, I’ve seen that the government has a lot of power and a long reach. There are a completely unnecessary amount of police officers. They are everywhere. You pretty much have to bribe for everything here.
Wednesday, Jan. 26
The day started realizing I had one more day in Cairo and wouldn’t leave for Alexandria until Thursday. It ended up being a good thing I was here an extra day because I got to see all the riot commotion I missed out on the day before (darn pyramids). Everyone else in the hostel had some story of being trapped inside a store with the big metal grate shut until the riot passed. One of the guys was even lucky enough to get tear-gassed.
Today was my turn. In addition to the 2 a.m. wakeup call by the marchers going down our street, I happened upon a small gathering of protesters outside some government building near where I was grabbing lunch. I waited (sorry, Mom) until the crowd grew and grew, as did the police, all dressed in riot gear.
The protest eventually turned into everything I hoped it would, with tear gas, running from the police, people hiding in stores, and everyone yelling at me to put my camera away. I guess the police here have been caught on tape being “overly aggressive” and they don’t take kindly to cameras anymore.
Thursday, Jan. 27
I explored downtown Alexandria, but it doesn’t have quite the same bustle as Cairo, kind of like an Indianapolis to a Chicago. No riots here, though there were a number of police trucks lined up around a main square area.
Thursday night at my hostel, I was informed the government had shut down Facebook and Twitter. I realized I had underestimated the oppression of the people in Egypt and the extent of the revolution that was taking place. I had never considered the government to be so strict that they would restrict access to parts of the Internet.
Friday, Jan. 28
I learned that the government had, in fact, shut down all access to the Internet. I went out to explore Alexandria only to find that Friday is their day of rest and very little was open. The Alexandria Library was closed until 3. I came across a protest walking down the main road that borders the Mediterranean. I followed the protest for about a mile as it grew. It was peaceful but growing rapidly. Eventually the police arrived and started forming a riot line behind the group of protesters.
There was a large drop-off on one side of the road and a large wall on the other side of the road with few outlets. I did not want to get caught between the police and the protesters, so I hustled toward the police and was able to get past their line just before it was completely formed. The police started moving in on the protesters, who, for the most part, ran away from the tear gas that was being fired at them. There were some people who did not run away and instead hid in a KFC restaurant. As the riot line walked past the KFC, they took whatever they could find and started throwing it at the police; the police returned fire with rocks. This battle lasted for about 10 minutes and at least a couple of people were taken out of the KFC and placed immediately into an ambulance. I watched all of this until about 3:30 when I decided to head back to the library which is supposed to be an impressive sight.
On my walk, I passed a number of groups (usually in the hundreds) on their way to meet up with the big group. I stopped to get some food and apparently the entire protest reversed direction and walked back in my direction towards the center of town. As I ate, I saw what was now a conglomerate of all the protesters (probably in the tens of thousands) walk past my restaurant. I continued my walk to the library, which was in the direction of the protesters, and on the way saw the remains of a pretty gruesome fight: huge rocks and destroyed police kiosks. To add to the ambiance, huge plumes of smoke were filling the sky in a number of different areas around the city.
I decided to skip the library and head back to my hostel, which was on the other side of the protesters. I left the main street that shadowed the Mediterranean in hopes of getting around the protest. Instead, this path led me straight to one of the plumes of smoke: two burning police trucks. I thought I’d rather not be found anywhere close to burning police trucks, so I turned around and tried to go further inland to avoid the protests (my hostel, however, was on the Mediterranean, so I was getting farther away from it). As I tried to walk inland I saw a huge group of angry protesters coming my way. A bit cornered, I ran past the burning police vehicles (snapping a couple pictures along the way) and back to my hostel.
The view from my hostel balcony was amazing. Ordinarily one could look out over the beautifully green Saad Zaghloul Square and the Mediterranean Sea. That night, there was a small police building on fire and chaos enveloping the area. Later in the night, after the army came, there were tanks.
I met some people at my hostel and with all the violence, the five of us decided we should probably leave the country. There were two women, one from France and the other from Italy, and three men, a Canadian, a Brazilian and myself. We all spoke English. Unfortunately, a government-mandated curfew had taken effect and everything was closed, including the train station. We called taxi services to drive us to the Cairo airport (about a four-hour drive), we tried renting a car, and we tried various other options. We eventually decided to go to bed so we could wake up early and beat the protesters to the streets.
Saturday, Jan. 29
We got up at 5:30 a.m. and started our walk to the train station, which, after no luck with taxis, we hoped was open. We passed tanks, ransacked police stations, and little else on our way. Luckily, the train station was open, and there was a train leaving at 7 a.m. (when the curfew technically ended). This meant we would arrive in Cairo at 10 a.m.
The train station was in the heart of Cairo, so we immediately took a taxi to the airport, which, thankfully, was a distance from the demonstrations. The streets were clear of protesters but full of destruction from the night before. There were dozens of tanks, burnt cars, burnt police trucks, and even entire burnt buildings.
At the airport, the scene was chaotic. The quarter of the country that wasn’t trying to burn down Egypt was at the airport trying to leave it. There were thousands of people trying to depart without reservations, myself included. My flight to Tel Aviv was not scheduled to leave Cairo until late Sunday night (about 36 hours later). A day and a half is a long time when you are worried the government will close down the airport.
Without Internet, the airport was unable to book/change flights or accept credit cards. Also, the ATMs did not work. So we were left with whatever money we had on us and whatever flights we had previously booked. To compound the problem, many of the airlines were cancelling their flights into Egypt. This meant there were no planes for the scheduled departures, much less the thousands of additional passengers wishing to leave. Most international flights were canceled. Luckily, the phones had started to work again. So I called home and my parents were able to book a flight for me on the Internet to Amman, Jordan.
The only international flights still running were ones around the Middle East, since those airlines were still sending planes into Egypt. I was scheduled to fly to Amman at 8 p.m. The problem was that the people at check-in could not access the Internet to see my recently-made reservation. I couldn’t purchase a ticket because I didn’t have enough money on me. There was, however, an intense feeling of camaraderie among the people in the airport; two people even offered to loan me the money for a ticket. I politely refused as I was still naively hopeful that I would be able to use the ticket my parents had purchased. I pleaded with the man at check-in to call his company to verify my ticket, but the craziness that overwhelmed the airport at the time was too much. I called my parents and broke the news. So they canceled that reservation and booked me on a flight to Romania leaving at 3:30 a.m.
Sunday, Jan. 30
I intently watched the departure board as scheduled flights before and after mine were canceled or significantly delayed. Somehow, my flight was never delayed and I had no problems at check-in. I had a short stint in Bucharest, then on to Zurich.
I’m 21 years old and I experienced more in the past 21 days than I ever expected to live through. Now that I’ve recovered from these travels, I’m off on Feb. 20 to live in Buenos Aires, Argentina for five months. I just hope the Argentinian government is very stable and responsive to the needs of its people and its tourists. Where exactly is the U.S. embassy in Argentina?
Jared Rifis graduated from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 2006 and from Butler University in 2010. He’s taking a year off to travel before starting law school at Georgetown in August 2011.