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.