Victory in Tahrir!

So much more to write about the fabulousness of the Egyptian revolution, but briefly ....

Remember I showed you my Tahrir? Here's how Tahrir was organized toward the end of the protest:

My Tahrir

That Tahrir Square, that Egypt, you're seeing in the headlines, watching on TV?

That's not my Tahrir Square.

This is my Tahrir:



The only battles I fought were against oncoming taxis, traffic, and savvy vegetable guys.

Birth pains or breakdown?

*** This blog post is transferred over from my new blog, Voracious, T.

This post is long overdue, but forgive me - I've been a little distracted the past few days.

A quick summary, just in case you're living in an ice cave but faithfully following this blog. Last Tuesday Egypt was rocked with massive protests against the 30-year-old Mubarak presidency. Inspired by the Tunisian uprising last month, civil unrest in Egypt had been growing for several weeks, and was fueled through the organizing and grievance-airing capabilities of social media such as Facebook and Twitter. Wednesday and Thursday were relatively quiet (except in Suez), but on Friday the country exploded after prayers. The security police had been using water cannons, tear gas, and rubber-coated bullets (and possibly live bullets) on protesters since Tuesday, but the deployment of the military into the streets of Cairo, Alexandria, and Suez seemed to change things.


Except it didn't. For reasons that seem inaccessible to the American mind at first glance, the protesting Egyptians cheered the arriving military, welcoming them with flowers, kisses, handshakes, hugs, and vows of solidarity. Violent protests continued throughout Friday. The Cairo and Luxor headquarters of the National Democratic Party - Mubarak's party and the only legal political party in Egypt - were burned to the ground, and the flames in Cairo threatened the Egyptian Museum right next door (more on the museum in a minute).

Then things went from bad to bizarre. Finally, after days of violent protests, Mubarak appeared on television Friday early afternoon my time - the middle of the night in Egypt - and delivered this speech:



Basically, Mubarak spent 11 minutes claiming that he's always understood the Egyptian poor and has done nothing his entire life but work for them. He pointed out that the protests could only have occurred thanks to the extensive - !! - freedoms of press and assembly - !!! - that Egyptians only enjoy thanks to him and his tireless work for them - !!!!. And then, the coup de grace was delivered when Mubarak announced that he was dissolving the government and that a new one would be appointed by him on Saturday.

Cue the filling of posts with military cronies, the surrounding of foreign embassies (in my old neighborhood) with tanks, and the deployment of fighter planes into the Cairo skies this morning.

I actually had my hands clutched to my face while I listed to the live feed of Mubarak's speech. The level of delusion, backwardness, and outright contempt for the people that were exhibited in that speech were truly shocking. That sounds trite, I know, but true - the hair stood up on the back of my neck and I couldn't seem to get my eyes to focus. The sheer audacity of ignoring tens of thousands of people chanting "Go away Mubarak!" while simultaneously claiming to have your finger on the pulse of the nation ... I'm tempted to say that I haven't seen this much disconnect from reality since W's administration, but I think Mubarak wins the prize here.

It's not my intent to fully or accurately chronicle the last week's events, because Al Jazeera has been doing a masterful job of it, and the New York Times hasn't been too sloppy either. Too good a job, actually, as evidenced by the Egyptian government's forceful closure of the Al Jazeera bureau this morning. Rather, I'd like to write a bit about what I've been seeing and feeling. Which is mostly exhaustion (I've been glued to Al Jazeera's excellent streaming coverage of the events), pride, worry, and deep sadness.

I'm going to start by expressing my driving pride in the people of Egypt. To be perfectly honest, based on my experiences living there for two years, I wasn't sure the people had it in them. That's what happens when you live under authoritarian regimes for something like 6000 years - you learn to cope, and if you're a little person you move on with your life the best you can and try to avoid attracting the attention of the powerful. I wrote about this a lot when I lived in Egypt. So yes, I'm proud of their resilience and their refusal to take what Mubarak's dishing out - but I'm horrified when I think about my students being shot with tear gas and rubber bullets.

Let me clarify one thing here, so I don't give myself airs. I had a fantastic life in Egypt. I lived in a beautiful apartment in a posh neighborhood, I ate at fancy restaurants, I hired drivers to take me places, I went scuba diving when I could, and I traveled as much as was humanly possible. I taught at a private university where the language of instruction was (supposedly) English, and my students were the English-speaking elite of Egypt.

To be blunt, I did not walk like an Egyptian. But I had eyes, and ears.

I'm also worried as hell about what's going on over there, both in terms of the politics/future of Egypt and in terms of the friends and colleagues I left behind. I'm only going to address the second part here. Why so worried? Because on Friday afternoon (my Friday afternoon, the middle of the night in Egypt) the government shut off the internet and mobile phones. No kidding. So although I'm glued to Facebook and Al Jazeera, I can't get any direct news from my friends in Cairo. Thank God for Facebook, though - the band of ex-AUCans scattered around the world has been really diligent in posting news gathered first- through fifth-hand about the safety of our friends.

Speaking of social media, it's really striking that I, ten thousand miles away, probably have more information than my friends in Cairo. These events - I suppose it's only a revolution if Mubarak leaves - have been happening on television. I've been watching them. Which makes Mubarak's anachronistic conviction that he can control the flow of information all the more puzzling. Hell, if you're going to shut off the internet, you might as well wear a t-shirt that says "Evil Dictator."

All this information also meant that I could see the flames reaching for the Egyptian Museum, home of Egypt's phenomenal cultural heritage. I'm too tired to summon the words to describe my visceral connection to this museum, how it feels to have childhood dreams laid out in front of you, how many hours I spent exploring the museum. What I can tell you is that I actually cried yesterday when I saw this footage:



I can't imagine where Zahi was Friday night - I would've expected him to be laid out on the steps of the museums himself, or hiring a private army to protect the museum. Ordinary Egyptian protesters and the military formed a human chain around the museum to protect it from looters, but that heartbreaking show of solidarity just wasn't enough - the looters may have come in from the roof or the ticket office. It seems that they were arrested, but the damage has been done. Why would you rip the heads off two mummies? What does that accomplish?

My faith in humanity is shaken when I hear about things like this.

The second time I cried yesterday was when I spoke with my father on the phone. He made a few comments about watching the Egyptian events on TV, but I suddenly felt exhausted so I changed the subject. I told him about the string quartet we'd seen on Wednesday, and the play we volunteered at on Friday. My father responded by saying, "Well, I'm glad you're living a good life in California while your friends are dying in Egypt."

I got off the phone as quickly as I could, and then I burst into tears.

I'm sure he must have been joking, but his comment thrust right to the heart of the maelstrom of emotions I've been experiencing for the past few days. I've had a lot of friends contact me for my opinion on events, and I'm glad that they did. I've noticed, though, that my friends - none of these friends have lived in Egypt - have split about 50/50 on their assumption of my emotions. About half have said something like, "You must be glad you're not there!" and the other half has said, "You must be disappointed that you're missing such an historic moment!"

I don't know how I feel. Or rather, I'm feeling too many contradictory things. I'm glad I'm not in physical danger (there, I said it). I'm glad I have access to information because I'm here in the US. But I'm ashamed that I encouraged my students to think for themselves and to demand access to information, then walked away. I obsessively watch real people fighting to determine their future from the safety of my house in California, and I talk as if I were right there with them. My heart hurts to see flames and pockmarked buildings and burning palm trees along the streets I used to walk every day. And then I walk out of my house and try to go about my business.

I want to say, Kollena Masryeen! We are all Egyptian!

But then I hit "publish post" on my live internet connection, open my window to the rain, and walk downstairs for lunch.

Keeping up?

Have you been reading Voracious, T?

Your faithful author has been trying to blog more, but it's hard when I feel like I'm shouting in the dark!

Miss you, dear readers!

To Summarize

These and other wanderings have been the high lights of the last years;

when I turn from them the sky darkens.

--Edith Wharton, A Backward Glance

The end of the beginning

As I'm sure you've guessed, these Americans are outta Cairo.

I've been back in the US for about two and a half weeks now. I've had all kinds of adventures in that time frame: travel, reverse culture shock, food, employment.

But of course, this is not the place to recount the beginning of the rest of my life!

(Whatever that means ....)

So please update your blog reading software. To remain plugged in to the continuing adventures of my life (under new management), set your sights and sites on my new blog:

Voracious, T

Can't wait to see you again!

The Flying Cat Circus

My family grew a bit while I was in Cairo - it definitely got fuzzier. I adopted India in October 2007, and Zanzibar joined us as a tiny baby this past December. Cairo simply crawls with cats, so while adopting 2 cats was basically pissing into the ocean, at least I felt good that these two cats got off the streets.

As you might suppose, India and Zanzibar are mortal enemies. To be precise, Zanzibar is India's mortal enemy; Zanzibar's arch-nemesis is the washing machine. He's really not very clever.
















There was never any question of leaving the cats in Cairo when we moved back to the US. The question, of course, was we had to do to actually accomplish the fact. And there were multiple layers of strategy required - exiting Egypt, physical transportation, and entering the US.

Physical transportation seemed the easiest to take care of first. We booked flights on Delta - we had to get all the way to San Francisco, and we needed to avoid the UK and the EU because neither cat is microchipped. Delta has a pretty extensive website dealing with "jet-set" pets. My cats weren't headed to Monte Carlo; they just needed to get to the US in one hop. We could have taken EgyptAir to JFK and dealt with fewer restrictions, but I didn't intend to pay a pet fee for EgyptAir and then another pet fee for Delta - one $150 (per cat!) was all I was willing to shell out for those little beauties.

That's right. Delta charges $150 per pet ... the pet has to stay in the cabin between May and September (no baggage checking) ... and only 2 pets per flight (economy class) are permitted. KC had delayed in getting his flight tickets, so we ended up having to fly on separate days because the second pet space on my flight was filled by the time KC booked. Maelesh.

I took Zanzibar to the vet to get his rabies shot and to ask about the protocol for getting the cats into the US safely. Dr Rafik spent a long time explaining an incredibly detailed process to me that had appeared nowhere in the research I had done. According to Dr Rafik, I had to leave the cats' vaccination records (they have kitty passports) with him, and he would generate a health certificate for each cat. His certificate was only good for 15 days, and had to be taken, with the kitty passports, to the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture for exit papers. Those papers would have to be presented in Egypt and in the US to clear customs. Dr Rafik also wrote out a series of instructions, in Arabic and in English, with the names and office locations of the various officials we'd have to visit at the Ministry.

I picked up the certificates a couple of weeks later. Dr Rafik had gotten the year wrong on India's last rabies shot, so that had to be fixed (a simple typo that could have been catastrophic). We also had to be very careful that KC appeared as Zanzibar's owner, and I was listed as India's, so there'd be no question of proper transport of the cats. A few hours later I realized I'd forgotten to pick up the sedative that Dr Rafik had offered me for India, but I decided to just make do without it.

The Sunday after our aborted trip to Abu Simbel, we headed to the New Campus to take care of some final things. Then we decided to take the bus straight to Mohandesin to the Ministry, rather than go back to Garden City and then schlep back out to Mohandesin. By some miracle I had the kitty passports in my purse, but of course I did not have Dr Rafik's instruction sheet. We figured, how hard could it be? Dr Rafik had promised it'd be nothing like the Mogamma.

You can see where this is going. For that matter, so could we.

We easily found the Ministry of Agriculture. I'd remembered vaguely that Dr Rafik had said there were multiple ministry buildings (possibly four) and that the office we wanted was in the building perpendicular to the street, not parallel to it. Right.

We picked a building, I showed the doorman the vaccination certificates from Dr Rafik, I explained in my very simple prepared Arabic what we were trying to do. The gentlemen appeared to understand us and gave us a set of detailed directions (lots of arm waving) to direct us to the office we wanted. When we finally navigated the warren of the building and arrived at the office, we discovered that it was absolutely not the office we wanted, and the occupants of the office (usually a director) were completely puzzled as to why we were such idiots. We then explained everything again, showed the certificates, and were directed to another ministry building.

Take that last paragraph above. Repeat it four times with four separate buildings scattered among a few blocks in Mohandesin. Oh, and turn the temperature up to about 100 degrees fahrenheit and have four lanes of speeding traffic come straight at you, horns blaring. Then you'll start to get a picture of how we spent our afternoon.

At one point a puzzled director said to us, "This is the animal production department. Do you want more cats?" We also got into a huge fight with a guy who wanted to test the cats for avian influenza and couldn't figure out why we hadn't brought the cats. "Because we don't want the cats tested for avian influenza", we replied. "Then why are you here?" he responded. In his defense, it turned out that we'd been erroneously directed to an avian influenza lab. And so on.

Finally, we did actually managed to find the Quarantine Office (we did not want the cats quarantined) in a building that lacked a Ministry of Agriculture sign. This office consisted of about six people sitting around in a stiflingly hot room. We spent the next forty minutes walking back and forth between this office and the office next door. The protocol went something like this: get signature from woman in office 1. Go to office 2 to buy stamp. Get signature from man in office 1. Go to office 2 and buy another stamp. Return to office 1 and get third person to sign forms. Bring forms to fourth person in office 1 (sitting right next to persons already visited for signature). Verify with another person in office 2 that another stamp was not needed. Help woman in office 1 (with apparently no function) read her English language newspaper ("What is 'cherish'? What is 'flora and fauna'?). And so on.

Eventually all the papers were stamped and signed and ready for departure. I swear I checked them before we left the office and I swear I didn't see any mistakes.

The next day, Monday, we had our smashing coup at the EgyptAir office and our final trip to the Khan al Khalili. Tuesday we had a last dinner with friends upstairs and I made a valiant effort to finish the alcohol we'd brought to share. It was really, really hot when we made our way back to down to our flat a half hour before KC was scheduled to be picked up and taken to the airport. One last time I checked KC's stack of papers -

And saw that the people at the Ministry of Agriculture had swapped the names on the cats' papers. KC was listed as India's owner, and I was paired with Zanzibar. After a frantic consultation, KC dashed over to the Four Seasons business center and had photocopies of all the papers made, so we could show Customs exactly where the mistake happened.

I didn't hear anything from KC the next day, so I assumed everything was fine. At 11 pm I wrangled India into her carrier and headed for the airport. As I entered the terminal, a military policeman barked at me, "Cat? Papers?" I responded, "Yes" and kept walking. Clearly I'd been in the country too long.

At Delta's ridiculously extensive security counter I forked over the $150 for the cat, checked my bags, and walked onto the plane. The flight from Cairo was one of those cattlecar planes (I think a 767). I was two or three rows from the back, on the aisle. Being on the aisle was good; it meant that India was subjected to more of the traffic in the aisle, but it meant I could get her in and out more easily. During the flight I draped a blanket over my legs and over the carrier, making a tent. We do this a lot at home - India likes sleeping under the covers. I think it helped keep her warm and sensory deprived. She really did not like take off or landing, but in general she was well-behaved during the flight. It was uncomfortable for me, and one of the flight stewards offered to move her up front, but I declined and kept her with me. The plane was noisy enough that I'm pretty sure I was the only person who could hear her when she cried.

Four times during the flight to JFK I took the bag into the lavatory and let her out. I tried to do this while most people were sleeping. She was shaking like a leaf and she looked like a rabbit, with big rolled up dewy eyes. She wouldn't drink any water and she would only eat a few bites of her dry food if I held it in my hand and put it right under her nose. All she really wanted was to be cuddled, which was really pathetic. She was trying to purr but she was shaking so hard she could only produce odd little sounds, but she constantly nuzzled me and made her scratchy paws. She didn't fight very hard when it was time to go back in the bag.

At JFK I checked the "transporting animals" box on the customs form. The passport control guy looked at India, looked at the form, and told me to keep walking and someone would stop me. The woman ahead of me in line had a cat too (she was the reason KC couldn't fly with me) and she told me that she'd never bothered to go to the Ministry of Agriculture; she just had the vaccination record and the certificate from her vet. After passport control I got my bags and went through customs. Nobody stopped me. I even handed my form - with the checked box - to a customs officer who waved me through.

I rechecked my luggage, then headed back through security. Here I had to put India's carrier through the scanner and walk through the metal detector with her in my arms, which I stupidly did with my cell phone in my pocket (so I had to do it twice). Everyone in line, including the agents, was cooing over India and so they helped me get her through (she still managed to scratch my arms up through my jacket). At JFK I tried to find a bathroom that had dividers that went to the floor, or a single-person bathroom, but I couldn't find any, and the janitors said they were all open on the bottom.

At the gate in JFK I got permission from one agent to preboard and then was told by another that I couldn't preboard with a pet. Again I was about 4-5 rows from the back on the aisle. Before the flight took off I took her into the lavatory and she drank a little water and ate a little food, but still wasn't interested in her custom-made litter box. People were always using the bathroom on the flight to San Francisco, so she stayed in the bag for 6 hours. At SFO there were still no separate bathrooms and no one asked for any papers on that end either. So we just walked out of there.

All told, India was in the bag for almost exactly 24 hours. She was unsedated, surprisingly well-behaved, and didn't create any biohazards during the flight.

All that effort, and the papers didn't even get checked once. KC said that his customs agent did look at Zanzibar's rabies vaccination record, but that was it. Yeesh. Now I have a contraband cat.