Press Pass

I took a walk along the Nile yesterday, admittedly it was to the Ministry of Interior to apply for a press pass, but still, I can at least claim that I saw something of the sites in Cairo.

The government had decided that as of yesterday, all journalists who wanted to enter Tahrir Square --- where all that wonderful colour and all those passionate voices are --- would need to register with the ministry for a pass. Up until that time, it had been somewhat random in whether the military would ask you for credentials. So off we went, clasping our photocopies and official letters from the paper.
The area outside the ministry, defended by a dozen or so tanks, is the same area where my colleague was beaten up a few days ago, as police and soldiers looked on. He was understandably a little spooked, but that day, the area was full of people, heading to work, selling cigarettes and drinks and of course, foreign journalists all clutching their papers.
As we entered the ministry, our passports were handed like a baton from one person to the next as they led us through a warren of rooms until finally, upstairs we were given a form to fill in. Names, addresses, media we work for, purpose of our visit and who we wanted to interview.
The women working in the press centre seemed remarkably efficient.
We asked them how long the pass would take and they told us a couple of days. "So we can't go to the square without it?"
No, they replied, but you can go anywhere else. That seemed a little illogical, but nevertheless, we decided we would try to get in to the square without the pass.

Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays are the "million man" days at Tharir and when we got there, again there were thousands of people queuing so patiently, just waiting to get in. We pushed our way down to the front, squeezed through the barbed wire, in between the tanks, many of them covered with graffiti, and without so much as a question from the military, we were inside.  So much for the official bureaucracy that was supposed to make our lives much harder.

The atmosphere was even more electrifying than before, and much more organised. The night before the Google executive. Weal Ghonim, who had been detained several days ago, had been released and given an emotional interview on TV. His speech and possible presence that day galvanised the protesters -- people are talking about him as the voice of the revolution. Yet for many young people I spoke to, there was a sense that he alone could not be the opposition leader.
"This revolution is for all people, and we must have a leadership that is reflective of everyone's interests. Ghonim can talk for the young, and the elite, but there are Muslims and Christians and women and workers," said one rather erudite 17-year-old girl.
I spent a couple of hours wandering around, got caught up in a women's march, which had stunned the men who were frantically taking photos of them on their mobile phones.
What do you think of women taking part in this protest, I asked one guy, a mechanical engineering student at Cairo University. "Women have as many rights as men do," he told me, pointing out that his sister was also part of the protests. Again, he also told me. "This revolution is for everyone."
Every time I ask someone about women's participation and the role of women in the protests they tell me that women are not oppressed in Egypt. They are in control of their lives, can work, can drive, can say what they want. Yet, that very fact that their protest around the square that day drew so much attention from the men, makes me think that perhaps it is not quite as free as they make out.
I read somewhere that in the early days of the protests, women were told by female organisers to wear two layers of clothes, in case pro-Mubarak thugs tried to rip one layer off. When I put this to one woman, a well-educated saleswoman, she said "this is war, the vulnerable are always targeted. If the men are fighting, they too have to take precautions to protect themselves".

But the role of women is indeed something new. Previous protests have garnered about 10 percent female participation. These protests in Tahrir, I would say about 40 percent are women.

It's unclear what is happening with the movement now. The US seems to have backed away from demanding an immediate transition ... are they worried that Mubarak will refuse to go which could force them into taking action they do not want to take? Or are they just being pragmatic, they do not want to atagonise an ally in the vastly anti-US Middle East? There is also the issue of Israel, America's other ally in the region, with its powerful Jewish lobby. Mubarak has honoured his predecessor's peace deal with Israel, something the US s loathe to upset, while Israel fears a greater role for the Islamic Muslim Brotherhood.
These are oversimplified thoughts, I'm sure, but it's worrying to think that these people who are protesting with so much heart and strength -- last night they went to Parliament -- will lose everything in the coming months because of internal US politics.

Cassie

The army and the matchbook

I woke up yesterday morning thinking I would work on a story from the hotel. I needed to make some calls, and just rework what I already had.

I washed my clothes in the sink (saving on extortionate hotel laundry costs), and hung them out to dry on the balcony. Predictably, just a few minutes later, my colleague rang.

“(the foreign editor of the paper) wants us to go to (can't mention it as we haven't run the story yet). How soon can you be ready?”

We had been ding a lot of stories about the people at Tharir square, getting colour and quotes on a daily basis. Now it was time to see how other parts of Egypt were reacting. 

Five minutes is what I wanted to say, but I thought a senior editor shouldn't sound that eager about a little day trip, so I said I'd be down in 30 minutes. Then I worried about how I was going to wear my boots without socks – my only pair being sopping wet and drying on the balcony. I came up with a cunning plan to wrap hand towels around my ankles to beat the chafing, and hurried down to the lobby where my colleague had already lined up a car and driver for our journey.

The hotel desk had told him XX was only a 45 minute drive from Cairo, it was actually about 2 hours away. My colleague wanted me to sit in the front, as a woman with a headscarf he thought I would attract less attention.

But really, headscarves, or the hijab, are worn different depending on what country you are in. Egypt is much more flexible when it comes to pious dress; many Muslim women do not wear a headscarf at all, despite being what they would call devout. So while in Afghanistan where the hijab is mandated, and of course many women are forced into wearing a full burqa, women push the boundaries (much like you would with a school uniform), allowing wisps of hair to escape their confines and often allowing the scarf to slip down the back of their head.
In Egypt, or Cairo at least, it makes no sense to wear a hijab improperly if you don't have to wear it at all, and properly here means tight under your chin, and pinned tightly around your head. So with my loose head dressing, I wasn't fooling anyone.

As we left the city, it was obvious that Cairo was very much getting back to work. Several banks were open with a few dozen people cramming inside and around the ATMs. About 50 percent of shops were open, including the glitzy City Stars mall, where everything is “imported and expensive” according to our taxi driver, Tareq.

But what really made it clear that the city was back to normal was the traffic. Honking streams of it clogging the roads; black and white Lada taxis and battered and scraped Honda civics, beetles and Corrollas and Landcruisers. Compared with Kabul and the ubiquitous Toyota, it was a delight for my eyes, if not ears.

The day was grey and overcast, misty and full of potential.

The buildings we drove past; modern I was told, but built 30 years ago, some were grey concrete blocks, crumbling and unappealing. Others had beautiful iron balconies, and porticoes that gave them a colonial European look.

As we headed out over Nasr bridge and towards the memorial of Anwar Sadat, the former Egyptian president assassinated in 1981 (the year Mubarak came to power), there was a worrying development. Nose to bum, along each side of the road were hundreds of tanks and armoured personnel carriers, all pointing in towards the city. They had not been there before when I arrived in the city just a few days earlier. At any other time, I might have though the army was preparing for a coup, or worse, to attack the protester unrelenting in their protests in Tahrir Square.

But our driver seemed to think nothing of it. It was the army after all, and they were on the side of the people.
I find this love of the army interesting. Egypt is ruled by former generals and military men. Mubarak is a former air force commander, the new vice president, Omar Suleiman, is head of the military intelligence and the new prime minister is also a former air force commander. Yet still, the people believe that the army is their saviour.

As we neared our destination, we were stopped several times by the army, by soldiers in jaunty red berets, and our passports checked. But each time, the soldiers were polite and apologetic. At one checkpoint, we were asked to get out of the car and enter the army post, I left my bag in the car, with my notebook and point and shoot camera. As we walked into a small empty room, where two men sat frowning over our passports, I smiled and my colleague was able to chat to them in Arabic. They smiled back, apologised for causing us any problems and asked if we had a laptop or camera … nope we replied, and they waved us through. “Welcome to Egypt,” a refrain I have heard time and time again.

Perhaps it's because everyone must do mandatory military service at some point, except women, so Egyptians feel a certain amount of empathy with the army. But also, there's a structure within the armed forces, and a leadership that has not been corrupted, at least not in the ranks, unlike the police, whose sole job seems to be harassing and brutalising civilians. 

The army told us our destination was now calm, and we could talk to whomever we liked. But at a tea shop in XX, as we sat drinking sweet, black tea and chatting with men over a game of dominos, two patrons slipped quietly out the door and came back a few minutes later with the army.

We were beckoned across the road towards an armoured personnel carrier – there were several on the streets of what had just a few days earlier been a scene of intense violence. The commander, looking rather suave in his neat camouflage and red shoulder bands, unfolded himself from the front seat of the apc and took our passports. What are you doing here? he asked. We explained that we were journalists working for an Abu Dhabi newspaper, and again, I was pleased that I still had that visa in my passport (no one seemed to click that it had been cancelled a year ago).
There are no protests here anymore, why do you want to talk to the people, he asked, and we explained that our intention was just that: to explain to the world that the place was calm, to counter some of the wrong media reports about parts of Egypt.
He nodded, apologised that he had to check with his commanding office, and after asking if we had laptops or cameras (did I blink when I said no?) handed us back our passports, and wrote his name and mobile number on a Marriott matchbook which he said we were to use if we ran into any trouble. After that, there was a lot of smiling, shaking hands, apologies, welcome to Egypts, and off we went.

At first we did not want to go back to the same cafe, fearing perhaps our brush with the army may have tainted us with our new friends. But our driver insisted, he said we needed to show that we were ok, plus we had the matchbook.

People were noticably hesitant. There have been so many stories in the Egyptian state press about foreigners stirring up trouble, acting as spies for countries such as Israel and Iran, that they were unsure about who we were. “Are you Israelis?” one guy asked … .a word unmentionable in most Muslim countries. But after a while, they relaxed, helped by the countless cups of coffee and tea we bought, and of course the matchbook, and the stories that were told kept us enthralled for hours.

In general, while the protests in Tharir Square are a call for the removal of Mubarak, in more remote parts of the country, they are after more practical demands. Higher salaries to counter rising prices, an end to police brutality and corruption. Better job security and opportunities.

Many people still like Mubarak. "I have a picture of him in my house," one man said. But they feel he is too old to lead anymore and is being misled by his lieutenants. Elections may bring some relief, but for many it is more about survival. 

When we left, our notebooks, and bladders, were bulging. 

They are not stopping

If Mubarak though that by opening banks and urging everyone to go back to work on Sunday it would stymie the momentum of the protesters, he must have been sorely disappointed. Three of us headed down to the square on Sunday afternoon. Our taxi driver told us how he had been at the square every day since Jan 25, but needed to go back to work to earn some money. He showed us marks on his hands where he had been hit by rocks. When we go to the bridge that leads across the Nile to the square, we were surprised to see the tanks had gone. For the last two weeks, two tanks had cut the entrance to the bridge where soldiers checked IDs. We thought the fact they had gone was a positive sign, that the protesters were winning and the army was now on their side. But we were wrong.

All along the bridge a single file of people snaked. Hundreds of people waiting; patiently waiting, laughing, holding bags of food and  medicine for those who have not left the square since Jan 25. As we moved our way towards the entrance, the crowd thickened and we saw where those two tanks had gone. There were now three tanks and an armoured personnel carrier blocking the entrance to the square. It took us maybe half an hour to get from outside into what felt like a holding pen. Tanks on one side barricading the entrance to the square and barbed wire behind us and about 500 people in between. For anyone whose ever been in a crowd/protest, this is probably the scariest moment, where more and more people pour into a restricted area, where protesters are relentlessly chanting, "We won't go until Mubarak goes", ignoring the army shouting through bullhorns; where the soldiers, standing on top of their tanks, young and armed, looking jittery can't control the crowd; more people pouring in, pushing towards towards the entrance ...

But as has happened every day here, Egyptians have surprised me, both the protesters and the army. One protester hoisted his two-year old girl up on to a tank and the soldiers loved it.

So after about an hour and a half, we finally pushed our way  through into the square. It was incredible, the number of people in there.

If Saturday was like a carnival, with people sitting around and chatting and eating and chanting. Sunday was like a football match .... the chanting didn't stop, flags waving, fists pumping n the air; anger and passion. There was no where to stand, or to sit, people filled every space.

There were Muslims and Christians sitting together, Christians standing in a protective circle around Muslims as they prayed.

Families; husbands and wives, boyfriends and girlfriends, so many children. Conservative Muslims with long beards and tight hijabs, the protester cut across all social classes, religions and genders. Tuesday, Sunday and Thursday have been designated "one-million" days, and it certainly looked like they had achieved that.

I stopped to talk to one man, Ahmed. He told me he had been at work that day as a supervisor of a university hotel and had come down to the protest when he finished. He asked me what I thought of the protests and where I was from, and when I told him the UK, he said "Please tell the people of England that the people in Egypt want freedom.

"We do not eat Kentucky Fried Chicken (state media has been trying to downplay the economic demands of the protesters by saying they eat KFC so can't be that bad off). We eat foul (beans) some bread (at this point another protester gave him a bit of his bread) and very little water. Please tell people of England that."

We talked a bit longer, but I did not get out my notebook. With so many people, it was one of those days where the atmosphere could change on a dime. I moved away and found a quiet place on a step and pulled out the tiniest scrap of paper I could find in my bag and started to write. Two feet appeared in my line of vision, and they seemed to stay there for a while. I looked up, and a guy was watching me write. I smiled, he smiled back, but still, I thought ...

Unlike on Saturday, I hadn't seen any one with notebooks out. There was a radio crew or two, and a few foreigners wandering around, but perhaps we all had the same thoughts ... today, was not the day to make yourself known as a journalist.

It is true that reporters are still being harassed. But mostly they are wondering around areas that are controlled by pro-Mubarak supporters when they get attacked.

Back at the hotel, it was interesting to see how many journalists were checking out ... do they think that the story is over? Today showed me that it certainly isn't.

Breathing

My cowardly side struck this morning. The crazy Moroccan radio/Spanish journalist with whom I spent all day yesterday in the square, interviewing women and actors and protesters, who was supposed to move into my hotel room today, to share the inflated $250/night cost, and whose name I still don't know, was arrested by police this morning.

I had wanted to go down to the square to see a Christian Mass, it was a brilliant, sunny day. So I texted my friend. No reply. But her English is not so good, so I figured she didn't have the time to text back. I called several times, no reply. Then finally I got through. Police sirens filled the phone. "Are you in the square? I shouted. "What's going on?"; "I am with the police. They have arrested me," she shouted back.

And then the phone went dead. I tried calling back several times, but no answer. I don't even know her name.

I decided the square could wait this morning, and I would work on a story back at the hotel.

Tahrir Square

After two hours sleep, I headed down to the hotel breakfast room to meet a colleague. It was surreal. From the emptiness of last night, the cafe was packed: with journalists. I eavesdropped on a conversation about a correspondent who had been roughed up by some plain clothes security a night or two before at Tahrir Square, at the heart of the protests.

So when my colleague told me he was going down to the square that day, my heart skipped a beat. Two Irish reporters from RTE had secured a car and driver, and it was “safety in numbers at least”. As we headed out of the hotel, we met a Spanish woman for Moroccan radio and the five of us squeezed (and I mean squeezed) into the driver's compact car. He drove us though the back streets, avoiding checkpoints, he told us, but later, when I walked from the square back to the hotel, I realised just how badly he had ripped us off. The streets were still empty – trees and branches blocked the roads , but we were stopped only once by the army who checked our passports and apologised for doing so.

We planned to be there only an hour. I thought it was all my heart would be able to take. But I ended up going home about five hours later, my notebook full of quotes from women whose passion and commitment was inspiring and addictive. By the time I left, many hundreds more were queuing in the drizzling rain, chanting “Out, Out Mubarak. We want in”.

I spoke to university students, doctors, teachers .. women in their 20s, 30s, 40s. All told me: "We want free elections, we want a Parliament, we want a better life!”

It was hard not to get caught up in the atmosphere. People sat on the ground painting protest pictures, painting on the cement ground. Hoisting their children on their shoulders, they waved Egyptian flags, they prayed, they laughed and they debated … so many discussions about the future, about politics. As I sat on a step making sense of my notes I was handed a raisin pastry and a cup of black, sweet, hot tea. When I tried to give the guy some money, he laughed and shook his head. A free clinic was set up for those who had been injured. And everywhere you looked there were people with bandages on their heads, eyes, with broken legs or arms from where they had been injured Thursday and Friday when the thugs on horses and camels poured in.

One 72-year old man told me he had seen with his own eyes (?) that the thugs had been given money, between 50 and 300 Egyptian pounds ($8-$50) and food, to attack the activists inside the square. “Why do they do this?” he told me, struggling to make me understand what was needed. He drew on my notebook a hierarchical drawing of Mubarak at the head of a connected state apparatus, the army, the police, the Interior ministry. Then he drew an X over Mubarak, and said all the others would fall too.

On stage, a six year old girl led the chants against Mubarak. A woman stood up next and said she was a doctor in a hospital in Mubarak's home town. “We have no medicine, no IVs, how can Mubarak care about the country when he doesn't even care about his home town.”

A farmer then took the microphone and spoke about how the soil used to be healthy, but now, Mubarak had allowed his cronies to build on the land. "We cannot grow food, the people are hungry, but Mubarak is making money.”

The crowd shouted their empathy.

No one believes that the concessions Mubarak has made, announcing that neither he nor his son will stand for president are worth considering. “We have heard so many promises from Mubarak, why should we believe him now?” one woman told me.

“We want a transitional government. We want free elections. We want a better life. We deserve a better life."

But there also isn't any single character they want to lead a transitional government. Most are lukewarm about Mohammed ElBaradei, the former head of UN weapons inspections, and Amr Moussa, the head of the Arab League who joined the protesters on Friday.

I was interested in what had given the protesters this unshakable belief that if they stay, Mubarak will eventually leave. Back in 2008, the protesters came out on to the streets in support of labour unions. Like now, it was organised by bloggers and through Facebook. But they fizzled out when the state started rounding up the Internet protesters. This time, there are thousands more and they are unrelenting in their protests.  "Tunisia of course was a spark. People now see that protesting can bring change, " a researcher at a think tank told me. "But also we are fed up. We want change.  This is a revolution."

The government is still trying to make it difficult for journalists.

Organisers were asking for press passes. None of us had brought ours fearing they could be used to identify us as journalists if we were stopped, and I had thrown all of my business cards away in the Abu Dhabi airport toilet. When asked why they had changed the rules, one organiser said it was a new request by the military because many infiltrators from foreign countries were acting as spies for other countries.

I asked if they thought that about British passport holders. Come on, Britain doesn't need spies here.

“Remember when Mossad used British and American passports to kill that Hamas leader in the UAE, that's what they think is happening here,” the organiser told me.

Inside, a plain clothes policeman approached me. I know he was a secret policeman because he was clean, well dressed and his hair was combed."Is any one arresting you, intimidating you, kidnapping you?" he asked me as I sat on a step, my notebook out and chatting to a university student. "No," I said, somewhat bewildered by where this was going. "Well, make sure you write about that!" And then he was gone.

Kabul to Cairo

It started with a pre-dawn rush through the swampy mud streets of Kabul, the rain still drizzling, to the Serena hotel, where I hoped the internet would be working so I could print out my plane ticket for the first leg of my trip to Abu Dhabi.

Less than 24 hours later, I was making my way slowly, through the grey dawn and eerily empty streets of Cairo, scene of a historic, if often violent, uprising that for some reason I felt compelled to see for myself. I have to admit there were times, many, many times over the past week that I questioned my own judgement about going to Cairo. How would I get to the hotel if there was a nighttime curfew? What of the vigilantes and police who were targeting journalists? What would I do when I got there?

 I had half expected Etihad to cancel the flight from Abu Dhabi, but was surprised, and perhaps relieved, to see about 100 people on board. All Egyptians, all clutching their green passports. If they were going back, perhaps it was not so bad as the media was making out.

My first real wobble came when I went through immigration at Abu Dhabi, and the guy looked at my passport, at my old visa for the Abu Dhabi Media Company, and said, “Oh, a journalist. Good luck.” Fuck, I'd been lumbered. I then went through my bag, throwing out all the name cards that labelled me as a journalist, something I would regret a bit later.

Four hours later we were in Cairo, and from the pilot's announcement , you could be forgiven for not knowing there was an uprising. “The time is 3:20am and the weather is 16 degrees. Have a pleasant stay in Cairo. We hope to see you again.”

I breezed through immigration and customs. and found a taxi almost immediately. Megahed Zaghloul, my driver, not only kept up a running commentary of Cairo's sights .. "This is the military academy, the biggest in the Middle East", "This is the soccer stadium .." but his easy going attitude with the countless military blockades ( I lost count after eight) meant we stayed out of trouble for the most part.

Every 200 metres or so, two Bradley tanks blocked our way forward. On the first couple of stops, the military barely glanced in my direction, just checked my driver's ID and waved us through. Some of the soldiers were sleeping on top of their tanks, wrapped up in blankets against the chilly night air. “The army are good, friendly,” Megahed said. He then pointed to a few guys in plain clothes ... “those are the police, see they are not doing anything”.

As if to emphasise this point, we approach our first police checkpoint. One man holds a long iron pole on the top of which he has attached a serrated knife. They peer into the car. I wave and say salaam. They check my passport, and I hold my breath. Please, please don't look at my Abu Dhabi visa. Since the protests started Jan 25, one journalist has been killed and nearly everyone I know has been roughed up in some way. Others have been detained by the military police or roaming groups of vigilantes.

They take away my passport and there is some conferring, before it is handed back to me and we move on.

As we trawl through the night-time streets, all along the roads are small bonfires, and groups of men with baseball bats and sticks .. .protecting their homes from looters and the thugs hired by supporters of the president, Hosni Mubarak. “I have been a driver for 35 years and I have never seen it like this,” Megahed tells me time and time again as he points out how the streets are usually full of people on a Friday night. "Cairo is a 24-hour city."

Another checkpoint, more tanks and armoured personnel carriers. Several men gather around the car and my driver, bless him, laughs and jokes with them. My passport is once more spirited away through the window More conferring and then a guy in plain clothes leans in through the window. “Why do you want to come to Egypt now?” he asks.

It is a question I had been thinking about. I initially thought I would say I was a nurse, or medic, but decided to play the foolish tourist. He looks sceptical, “But things are very bad here,” he tells me. I tell him I think it's important to be here, not to shy away and to support Egyptians. He nods, and apologises, saying he will have to check “everything”.

I climb out of the car, and the guy introduces himself as Capt Wahid, head of the military intelligence, and soon we are on first name basis. As he hands me back my bag, he says: “Welcome to Cairo, Cassie.”

The next checkpoint, a big, burly camouflaged soldier is called over to look at our car. I wave and salaam, adjust my headscarf, which I decided might actually help in this case, and he doesn't smile. He again, rifles through my bag, pulling out my laptop, a pile of clothes which he dumps on my lap and I am thankful I did not buy that new camera I had hoped to. He leaves me with a pile of clothes on my lap and climbs into the front seat, waving us through another two more checkpoints, before he climbs out, also welcomes me to Cairo, and lifts up our windscreen wiper to signify we are “ok”.

As we pass the Egyptian museum, at the heart of where the protests are taking place, and cross the bridge into the leafy green residential island of Zalmanek, we are stopped another two times, this time by young kids, manning ad hoc roadblocks. They carry baseball bats, and this is possibly one of the most worrying as they are unpredictable, local vigilantes. But they all smile when they see me, and like all boys, giggle when I wave and smile back.

It is hard to see much of Cairo in the dark, and with my focus just on getting through the checkpoints, I don't know whether I love it or not. I can't tell whether the rubble that litters the streets is remnants from the stone-throwing battles between pro and anti-government activists, or this is what Cairo is like. Bands of dogs roam the streets. The Nile seems quiet. Stores are shut. Megahed tells me this is a good time to visit the pyramids.

After two hours, all I want to do is get to the hotel. I am worried my luck will soon run out.

As we draw up to the Novotel, where I have a booking, it is ominously quiet. Not a light in any room or a person outside. Granted it is now 5:30am, but it looks shut, so we move on to the Marriott where I know another friend is staying. They almost fall over themselves to welcome me. The bellhop tells me they have over 1,000 rooms, but occupancy is just 18 percent. I'm not sure how they can justify $250/night, but for the moment, the journey is over.