Amani - February 2, 2011

It’s awkward at home. My brother Sherif wants to walk around in his boxers, but Mona, who is quite conservative and veiled, clearly makes him uncomfortable in his own home.
So they navigate each other politely and warily. She hides in her room most of the day when he’s around.

What am I supposed to do? She can’t go back to work; life has been put on hold for everyone here until things calm down (and who knows when they will). And she can’t go back to her flat in Garden City, because it’s been taken over by my friends.

I’m completely to blame for this. She gave me the house key and said I could use it if I needed somewhere to hide or rest during the protests; she knew I’d be in Tahrir all day every day.
I sort of decided that her invitation was extended to a few friends; then word got out, and now over twenty people are coming and going all day through her treasured family home. I’m sure she must be having a fit about the state of the carpets and her grandfather’s cutlery.

So the least I can do is make her tea. And let her stay here as long as she likes. Sherif will have to suck it up.

He’s been cajoled into standing guard on our neighbourhood patrol from midnight till 4AM. He doesn’t seem to mind it; he’s been chatting with the neighbours and doormen, discussing Molotov cocktails and devising makeshift weapons out of cans, wood and metal. It’s like every grown man’s fantasy come true; or a real-life Game of War or whatever that video game is.

I spend my time between Tahrir and the office. Yesterday, our colleagues went to a morgue in Alexandria, counted the corpses of protesters and tried to ID them. Adham called me up and calmly dictated twenty names down the phone.

The one that made me stop as I typed was ‘Fifteen year-old. Unidentified. Died of asphyxiation from tear gas.’ Someone’s boy is lying in the morgue waiting for his family, dead at fifteen. What if the family never comes? He lies in an unmarked grave?

They’re combining their list with other NGOs and they’ll release a press statement today or tomorrow on the total death count so far; Cairo, Alexandria, Suez, Ismailia, Luxor… The numbers keep coming in. It’s harrowing.

I have to go buy groceries for the house. A friend at the US embassy sent out an email warning that there’d be a food shortage soon and that we should stock up today. With the complete absence of police on the roads, the supermarkets can no longer access their warehouses nor have their suppliers deliver to Cairo.

Armed with Sherif’s credit card, I spend a good half hour at the supermarket wondering what on earth you’re supposed to buy in a war zone when you don’t know when the war will end. Should I buy enough for one week? Two months?

Everyone at the supermarket seems to have received the same warning, haggard faces of the middle class piling up on cereal, soups and gourmet sauces; not really that useful, but I try not to judge. I buy milk, rice, sugar and a bunch of tomato sauce cans for some reason, chocolate (I have my cravings), oil and juices.

Adham calls me when I’m at the checkout counter, tells me he’s going to Tahrir.

‘I’ll join you as soon as I drop the stuff off at home,’ I tell him.

He warns me not to come alone.
‘Even if yesterday was safe,’ he says, ‘I’ve been hearing rumours that they’re preparing for an attack on us today.’

‘What kind of an attack?’ I ask. ‘Yesterday there was a million man march to Tahrir, and it was perfectly safe. What kind of danger are you talking about?’

‘We’ll see soon,’ Adham says and hangs up.
He annoys me. A stubborn Egyptian man who works ruthlessly hard and believes in the cause, but seems to possess some prophetic knowledge that I have completely missed out on. He has his ear to the ground, hears tremors; and always seems to know the danger before it comes.

We had a little flirtation a few months ago, and when that went south quickly and we had to face each other at work every day, the only way for me to move on was to fixate on how annoying he is, which is easy now.

Once I unload the countless bags of food into the kitchen and pile up the three boxes of water bottles, I pick up my Tahrir bag (tissue paper, ID, camera, food, water bottle, scarf and gas mask) and switch on Al Jazeera for live coverage of the square. And there it is. It’s these moments in your life that you later realize are better than fiction. No creative writer could surpass this surreal absurdity.

There are men charging on camels and horses through the crowds in Tahrir Square from the Egyptian Museum’s side, breaking up the peaceful crowd as people scream, running for cover, climbing over walls to escape the horses, bodies getting sucked in underneath them and trampled on. I am watching this with my mouth open. Then I remember, Adham is there.

I call him.

‘Where are you?’

‘I am fine. We’re just trying to get the girls out of the Square, then we’ll go back in.’

‘Have you seen the horses?’

‘Yes Amani, everyone has seen the horses. But we’re trying to figure out a safe exit. They say people are being attacked on the other side at Omar Makram Mosque, and that ambulances are kidnapping people from Kasr El Nil Bridge. It’s a bit of a tense situation.’

‘I’ll be right there.’

‘No, don’t come. There’s nothing you can do here to help. Stay home and work on the press release. I should be out in half an hour.’

I call him twenty minutes later. No answer.

Al Jazeera shows protesters breaking up the pavements with their metal rods to make rocks, then lobbying them back at a line of men standing next to the Museum. Iron planks have been torn off the construction site nearby, and are being dragged over to the frontline as barriers.

Who is the other side? Our battle was so simple on the first day; us versus the police. Civilian versus uniform. Now things are getting messy. I see a man approach the other line of men with his hands up, waving a white flag. Then someone throws a rock at him. Then another. Then suddenly there are Molotov cocktails flying towards him. Then there are gunshots.

I call Adham. No answer. I am not panicking. But I have been rooted in my spot on the carpet in front of the TV for maybe an hour now. Sherif is fast asleep in his room, and Mona locked in hers. What can I do? I curse the fact that I’m a woman in this country, that I’m a liability instead of an asset. How can I help Adham? Who else is stuck there?

I make a round of calls; most of my friends have managed to escape. Leila calls me to say a whole group is hiding out at the Garden City flat, but Ahmed and Hamed are still out there.

Adham calls me.

‘I’m fine,’ he says calmly. ‘I’m at the Museum side, trying to find a way in.’

‘Why are you at the enemy’s side? And who are these people?’

‘They seem to be a few undercover policemen and some people from the neighbourhood who are very angry and aggressive. I’m trying to infiltrate their crowd to see what’s going on.’

Adham, the idiot, is walking into the enemy’s arms. If they catch him, or find his papers, they’ll want to interrogate him. NGOs and human rights activists are the devil these days, in addition to journalists and foreigners; especially anyone from Al Jazeera. Adham is not safe.

When you’re no longer fighting a uniform, and everyone looks the same, how do you know who is on your side? The Mubaraks are playing dirty; I get that now. They’re not going to let go easily. Tahrir will no longer be safe. There will be more dead tonight, more unidentified fifteen year old bodies in the morgue. I have to write the list.

Where the HELL is Adham?

I call him again. He says he’s been escorted out of the crowd at the Museum.

‘They took one look at me and said: ‘You’re not one of us, you’d better leave now’ and I got the threat clearly,’ he says, his teeth clenched.

‘Are they following you?’

‘Yes. But I have someone waiting for me at the end of the street. We should be fine.’

‘Don’t take a white cab at the bridge; they’re all informants and they’ll turn you in.’

‘Sweetie, I told you that. Don’t repeat yourself.’

‘Fine, I’m sorry I worried about you, you ungrateful, annoying piece of –‘

‘You still love me, don’t you?’

This stops the breath in my chest. Where the hell did that come from?

‘What?’

‘I’m joking, Amani; it’s fine. You’ve just called me thirty times. I merely assumed that you still have feelings for me.’

‘Fuck off, Adham.’

‘I’ll take that as a yes.’

I hang up angrily, throw my phone onto the couch, and stand rooted in my spot in front of the TV. The sky has turned to dusk now, and flying Molotov cocktails spin through the air like carousel lights. A fire breaks out in a shop window, on the second floor of a school, on someone’s balcony.

The only thing worse than being in danger is watching it powerlessly from the outside. I have a long list of friends to fret about. Friends who have been beaten and arrested before, who risk their lives every day to demand their basic human rights. I know, in the pit of my stomach, that one day a name will show up on my list of dead, and I will recognize it.

I need Adham. He’s an integral part of the team. He’s aggravating, but he’s the most dedicated man I know.

He was probably just joking. As Egyptians, we tend to laugh in tragedies, cracking up at funerals, mocking death in our typical self-deprecating humour. Of course I don’t have feelings for him; don’t be absurd.

I call him another four times to make sure he got home. Once he reaches his flat four hours later, I stop calling. And go back to the TV.