An American Professor in Cairo

I've found it difficult to keep the blog going, mostly because of the time it takes to upload the videos. The internet in Cairo isn’t nearly as fast as the cable internet I’m used to in the US, and I get frustrated waiting on everything to upload.

Yet, the events of the past 18 days seem a special occasion. And mostly, I want to write this down so that I will remember it more clearly years from now.

The easiest way to get my memory organized is to remember the timeline:

The catalyst:

It all started when the police in Tunisia closed down the shop of a poor street vendor named Mohamed Bouazizi. Evidently, it was the final straw in a long line of difficulties in his life, so, feeling powerless and hopeless he set himself on fire. His final desperate act ignited the fury of the Tunisians and they took the streets and overthrew their government a few days later.

As an aside, I should point out that in the past decade the US has talked a lot about bringing democracy to the Middle East. We even invaded Iraq to do it (at the cost of billions of dollars and thousands of lives), with (in my opinion) not much to show for it.

Yet a single poor street vendor in Tunisia, by sacrificing his life, inspired the people in 2 Arab countries, including the most populous (Egypt), to throw off their dictator and demand democratic government. And I’ll bet there are more to come.

"The good news is that Hosni Mubarak may step down. The bad news is that he may be replaced by his idiot son Hosni W. Mubarak." –David Letterman

Day 1, January 25, 2011

After the events in Tunisia, the Egyptians planned a rally for the next national holiday, which rather ironically was Police Day, January 25. All the ex-pats joked that it was just like Egyptians to decide to do something but then put it off for a week, and we didn’t expect much from it. Thousands of people showed up, however, surprising all of us, and I think, the Egyptians themselves.

The Egyptians are now printing t-shirts with this date on it.

Day 2 & 3

Not much happened after the Tuesday rally, although we did hear of plans for a big protest after prayers at the mosque on Friday. I spent Wednesday and Thursday at the university. A professor who had not yet returned from the US emailed me asking if he should come back and I told him everything was normal and to come on back. (He is still speaking to me, but may never ask for my advice again).

Thursday night I played poker at a friend’s house and came home around 11:30 PM. At exactly midnight my internet quit working. I thought it must be some problem with my system and went to bed, hoping it would sort itself out by morning.

Day 4-7, January 28 – February 1

I slept late on Friday (Friday is our Saturday here). I checked the internet when I got up and it still wasn’t working. I tried to call a friend and my cell phone didn’t work either. I plugged in my landline and called a long-time Cairo resident who told me that the government had turned off the internet and cell phone service for all of Egypt.

"Egypt has responded to hundreds of thousands of protesters by shutting down the internet. Listen, if you want people to stay home and do nothing, turn the internet back on." –Conan O'Brien

I walked outside and immediately noticed that my neighbors were in an apprehensive mood. I said I was on my way to the café for coffee, and they suggested I stay home. But I went anyway, had coffee and came back to my flat about an hour later. My phone rang (the landline) and it was another American who lives down the street telling me I should come down and see what was happening on TV.

I walked down to Mike’s house and we spent the day watching the news reports. This started a pattern for the next several days. His apartment building is home to several other Americans, and a central location for all the ex-pats in Maadi. I joked that their building became “revolution central.” Every afternoon for the next few days their building would fill up with people from the US, Britain, France and West Africa, watching the news, drinking beer, discussing the situation, and sharing a dinner in the evening.

It was, in a weird way, a lot of fun. We were all in this together, and while we were occasionally worried about what might happen, we were all looking out for each other and making the best of the situation. One problem was that the banks were closed and the ATMs were out of cash. I had enough cash to get by, but I know that the people with extra cash on hand were sharing money with those who were caught short. We all pitched in and made sure everyone was accounted for and had what they needed. On Saturday night there were 10-15 people in Amanda’s apartment, and Pierre, who is from France, made a wonderful French dinner. It struck me as a strange scene: the revolution in full swing all around us, but we are sitting together enjoying a wonderful meal. It is something I will never forget. It was neat to be a part of it.

On Sunday afternoon we started talking about getting out. Mike and I decided that we would rather leave and wish we had stayed than to stay and wish we had left. The university had closed for the next week, so we decided to book a flight to Istanbul and stay for a week. Upon hearing our plans, most of the others decided to join us.

I want to point out that I was never worried about the Egyptians wanting to harm us, but just about the uncertainty of the situation. There was no money in the ATMs and long lines for food at the stores. Things were still OK, but I was worried that the situation could get worse and I didn’t want to be around if it did.

Day 8-15, February 2 – February 9

We flew to Istanbul the morning of February 2. The ride to the airport was uneventful, but we did pass a lot of tanks on the street.

We all got together Thursday night in Istanbul because it was Pete’s birthday. We took over this bar in Istanbul and stayed out all night, blowing off a lot of steam in the process. It was great to be somewhere normal. Mike and I spent the rest of the week wandering around the city seeing the sights.

Gavin, our friend from Scotland, joined us on Saturday. The week there was a very pleasant escape. We watched the news closely, but by the end of the week the banks were open, the ATMs were distributing money, and the internet was back on. By all accounts things were stable enough to return.

Day 16-17, February 10 – February 11

We arrived at the Cairo airport at 2AM on February 11. We took a cab from the airport. I got home and went to bed and slept until about 11AM. I got up and went out, and things in Maadi seemed quite normal. I got cash out of the ATM and stocked up at the local market. In the afternoon, I started receiving calls saying that Mubarak was giving a speech that night and was expected to step down. All the Egyptians I talked to in the street were excited and happy that things were going to be over. We all gathered at Mike’s house to watch the speech on Al Jazeera, ready for this to all be over.

Then we were gobsmaked and stunned by the speech. The old man wasn’t going anywhere, and was downright patronizing.

We couldn’t believe it.

This was the only time I was really, really worried. It seemed that Mubarak was determined to stay, and that he had the army behind him. My guess was that meant that the army was going to have to act to disperse the crowds. And I knew that they were expecting hundreds of thousands in the square tomorrow, and maybe even a million plus. If the army was determined to move them, they would have to use live ammunition, and who knows what happens after that. I went home in almost a state of shock. I checked to see if there was a flight back to Istanbul the next day and almost booked it for early Friday morning.

But I decided to stay. I woke up Friday morning and nothing was happening, which calmed my nerves a bit. I met some friends at the local watering hole and we decided we could ride it out.

I went home in the early evening, and Mike called me and said get down here! Mubarak is leaving! So I walked to Mike’s at about 7 PM and saw the replay of the VP announcing Mubarak’s departure. The crowds in Tahrir were celebrating, and then we began to hear the locals in our neighborhood honking their horns, lighting fireworks, and getting out on the streets. Here is a video of the celebration in Medan Victoria, which is the square just down the street from my flat:

I went home and went to bed relieved.

Day 18, today, February 12, 2011

I got up Saturday morning and decided to go to Tahrir. I took the metro to downtown and walked about half a mile to the square. The entrance to the square was being controlled by citizens, not uniformed police, and they asked to see my passport and searched me before they let me in—in a very friendly way. They said they were happy to have an American here but they were just trying to be safe. No problem.

I went in and took some pictures and videos:

Everyone was happy and relaxed. Not for a single second did I feel any animosity toward me. In fact, they were glad to have foreigners there because they were so proud of what Egypt had accomplished all on her own.

I walked past a small group gathered together chanting something. I noticed a well dressed Egyptian man nearby and took a chance on his English skills and asked him what they were saying. He said they were chanting something like “Muslim, Christian, we are all Egyptians.” I took another look and noticed the group was made up of both Muslims and Coptic Christians.

It was also encouraging to see both rich and poor in the square. There is a stark contrast between the haves and have-nots in Egypt, and you don’t typically see the two groups mix. But I noticed most of the volunteers who were collecting trash and sweeping up were young, wealthier Egyptians. It was strange to see so many of the poor Egyptians standing around while the wealthy Egyptians were picking up trash! It is usually the other way around, as you might expect. This is another sign to me that this generation of Egyptian youth, the ones responsible for the revolution, has potential.

The future as I see it:

Who knows? But I am optimistic. Many people in the Western world seem worried about what kind of government will take shape here, especially the possibility of the Islamists taking over. But I don’t see that as a concern. Watching the protest closely, I was struck by the lack of ideology in all of it. There were no signs about Islam, or the Muslim Brotherhood, or hating Israel, or the Palestinian cause, and certainly no anti-foreigner sentiment.

Which all makes sense, because the people who are so driven by those ideologies are old. But that generation had their chance, and they spent 30 years living in a dictatorship without ever making a concerted effort to change it.

The people who made this happen are the Egyptian youth. And it happened because they have grown up with the internet and satellite TV, and they want what we in the West have. Mostly they want to know that if they play by the rules, finish school and work hard, then they will have at least a reasonable chance of having some economic security in life. Things we take for granted. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness stuff. I am actually quite proud of them.

(All of this youth comes at the cost of a growing population--here is a more pessimistic article about that.)

I have a friend here who lives in Dar El-Salaam, which is a suburb of Cairo. He is a driver for an Egyptian bank and his wife is a school teacher. They are a wonderful hard working couple with two beautiful children. Together their combined monthly income is 1,300 Egyptian pounds per month. That amounts to about $230 at the current exchange rate. Multiply their story by about 10 million and you can understand what is going on here.

One of my favorite maps illustrates the point. It is a map of the US with each state's name replaced by a country with the same size GDP (for those of you who are not econ geeks, GDP is a measure of how much wealth a country produces in a year):

Egypt isn't on the map, but the GDP of Egypt is almost exactly the same as Saudi Arabia's, about 340 billion dollars, or about the same as the state of Tennessee. But the population of Tennessee is roughly 7 million people; Egypt's population is 80 million. So there is a lot of work to do to improve the economic well being of the average Egyptian.

I was also encouraged by how the protest was carried out. There was some violence, but only when the police were deployed to stand in the protesters way. Once the police left and the army came in, the protests were almost entirely peaceful. I am convinced that the looting and chaos that occurred (almost entirely in a single 24 hour period) was instigated by Mubarak’s security forces in a last desperate attempt to take the momentum from the protestors. Once they were out of the way, thousands gathered in the square only to peacefully voice their displeasure with the current regime.

And I saw that today in Tahrir. Nobody was carrying signs supporting a particular ideology. Most of the people had come back downtown to get started on cleaning the place up. Tons of trash was being collected and hauled away. People were out sweeping the streets. As I walked through the downtown neighborhoods, I saw the mechanics shops open, the cafes open, the clothing stores open—people getting back to work.

So I am hopeful. I also realize that the different factions are organizing right now and maneuvering to claim what power they can. And that could turn out ugly. But I also know that the genie is out of the bottle: everyone realizes that the status quo is no longer allowed. If another authoritarian regime tries to take power, you can be assured the Egyptians will hit the streets again. They are young, and I don’t think they can be outlasted.

My hope is that the army will maintain order while they put in place a process that will allow political parties to form and also allow fair and open elections in a few months. It is a monumental task, but they have a lot of youthful enthusiasm at their disposal. I wish them the best, in shallah.

The first week in June 2010 Jen & Jesse, Lindsey, and Mary joined me in Egypt for some time sightseeing in Cairo and a trip down the Nile on a cruise boat. Jen, Jesse and Lindsey were in graduate school with me at UF. Mary lives in Italy but travels to Cairo often.

We spend the first part of the trip visiting the sites in Cairo. We visited the Khan El Khallili market, the Egyptian museum, and the pyramids at Giza. An AUC colleague, Amanda, has a friend who operates some stables near Giza so we decided to view the pyramids on horseback. It was a neat way to see the pyramids, traveling through the desert on horseback.

A picture of the gang on the horses, with a nice backdrop:

This was my second visit to Giza, but the first time on horseback. I enjoyed the horses, and that is an easy and inexpensive thing to do in Egypt, so I will ride again this fall.

After 3 days in Cairo, we flew from Cairo to Luxor. Luxor is the home of the famous tombs in the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens. The Valley of the Kings contains 57 known tombs, the most famous of which is Tutankhamen. There is some interesting history here. The early Egyptian pharaohs built pyramids as their tombs. Pyramids serve as spectacular monuments to the pharaoh's greatness (even 3,000 years later), but they also served in ancient times as enormous beacons saying “treasure located here.” In spite of all their best efforts, the ancient Egyptians couldn’t keep the tomb raiders from finding their way into the pyramid tombs and plundering them. So in later times the pharaohs tried a new strategy of building their tombs in secret, carving them out of the limestone in the desert deep underground. Egyptologists speculate that the tombs were built by prisoners of war who were all killed when the tomb was complete to keep its location hidden. But it is impossible to put that much treasure in one place without someone knowing about it, so even with all the stealth most of these tombs were eventually discovered and plundered. That is the reason Tutankhamen’s tomb was such a spectacular find. As pharaohs go, he was a minor king, but his tomb is the only one to date discovered untouched.

Sadly, we didn’t have enough time in Luxor to visit the tombs, but we did see the Luxor Temple and Colossi of Memnon.

Some pictures of the Luxor Temple. I hired a private guide to give me a one hour tour (for 100 Egyptian pounds, which is about $18). I learned a lot, but too much to go into here.

This temple later served as a Christian place of worship, and here you can see where the original carvings were painted over with Christian imagery:

Below is a picture of the "Avenue of the Sphinx." The Temple of Karnak is located about 3 km up the Nile from the Luxor temple, and the two temples were once connected by a broad avenue lined with sphinx statues. These statues were covered up over time by the flooding of the Nile, and in recent times houses and other buildings were built on top of them. This section has recently been excavated, which involved removing a lot of houses and relocating the population. Good for archeology and tourism, but the locals I talked to did not seem too happy about it.

It is hard to tell from the picture below, but each pedestal has a sphinx. They stand about 4 feet high, and each sphinx is about the size of a large golden retriever. I think there are plans to excavate the entire avenue all the way up to the Karnak Temple, which will require displacing a lot more Egyptians from their homes.

The next day, the car picked us up from the hotel and drove us down to Esna to get on the boat. I saw a friend from AUC on the plane from Cairo, and he told us that there is a temple in Esna near the boat dock that is worth a visit. This is the Temple of Khnum, and we made a visit there our first morning before departing on the boat.

We boarded the boat around noon and began our journey down the Nile. There are a myriad of cruise options on the Nile, mostly on large cruise ships. But we opted for a smaller sailboat and I cannot think of a better way to make the trip. The boat has 8 cabins, so it can transport up to 16 people. When we got on board, we asked how many other people would be on the boat with us, and were told that the 5 of us would be the only ones on the boat. Our captain said, “You are the royal family this week.” And we were literally treated like royalty for the next 4 nights. There were 5 of us on a boat with a crew of 8, and the crew met our every request quickly. The food was terrific, the sights were amazing, and being on the smaller boat meant we could stop at a lot of places the larger boats cannot.

Here was the itinerary for the week:

Day 1

Pick up from Nakhil Hotel at 9am travel to Esna arrive at 10am. Set sail after permissions from the police and spend the day sailing down to El Kab, moor for the night.

Day 2

Visit El Kab in the morning after breakfast then sail down to Edfu and visit the temple late afternoon, moor at Fowersi Island for the night.

Day 3

Sail down to Silsila Quarries arriving after lunch, visit the temple of Horemheb and then sail down to manea Island to moor for the night.

Day 4

Visit Komombo after breakfast and the rest of the day sailing down to Aswan

Day 5

Transfer from the boat into Aswan and your hotel.

Each night the captain would ask us when we wanted breakfast in the morning. We could say 5AM or 11AM, but whatever we chose we would have more delicious food than we could eat delivered to us on deck just when we were ready. After breakfast we would visit one of the nearby ancient temples or tombs, return to the boat and be served ice cold lemonade on deck, eat a delicious lunch, and then spend the afternoon sailing south. We would usually visit another sight late in the day. We moored for the night at sunset, had dinner, and after a little social time turned in for the night. The cabins were all very comfortable with a private bathroom in each.

I cannot say enough about the service on board. One member of the crew, Ahmed, seemed to be there solely to meet our every need. Thirsty? There was Ahmed with lemonade, tea, coffee, water or beer. Hungry? Ahmed would start bringing up courses of fish, chicken, beef, lamb, potatoes, rice, salads and fruit. Ready for a shower? Ahmed would turn on the generator and see that the water was warm. I'm sure that Winston Churchill was no better attended to on the Nile than we were this trip.

Mahmood was our cook, and while it was nothing fancy- roasted chicken, fried fish, potatoes, fruit salad, cucumber salad, rice, etc. it was all delicious and we were always served twice as much as we could possibly eat. I think even I gained weight on the trip. Here I am spending some down time on the Nile. I read "The Red Badge of Courage" on the trip.

One night we were docked at a remote place, so the crew played music and gave us an impromptu party:

We saw so many temples and tombs that I've kind of lost track of them all. If I had it to do again I would take notes, or take a guidebook with me and make notations. But I think from the pictures and the videos you can get some idea of how spectacular the sites were.

Here is the Temple of Horus:

My best Indiana Jones look:

The boat pulled over by some old rock quarries where the rock for the pyramids was cut and floated up the Nile to Giza. It is in the desert, and we took a long walk through the quarries and saw some old tombs and an old temple that is not very well preserved.

Here I am sitting where a the stone has obviously been cut out. I don't know exactly what this stone was used for, but it was quarried between 2000 and 3000 years ago!

The temple at Komombo:

Being UF grads, we all noted how many alligator scenes we saw in the temples:

Before we left, we read all this stuff in guidebooks about the health issues of swimming in the Nile. And we all decided we would skip it...but then, man! it was so hot, and that Nile looked so inviting. And westerners in Egypt have told me that the Nile isn't bad once you get near Aswan. Our captain pulled over at a place that he assured us was very clean water, so:

Strange creatures in the Nile!

We left the swimming area and sailed to just north of the Aswan bridge where we docked for out last night on the boat:

Here is a picture I took of all of us right before we got off the boat:

We reluctantly left the boat in Aswan and spent the day there before catching an evening flight back to Cairo. While in Aswan we went to the Temple of Isis: