My Heart Breaks for Egypt

I have left Cairo, but it seems Cairo will not leave me. The truth is, my heart is breaking for Egypt.

Yesterday I wrote paragraph after paragraph of the kind of personal essay material I’ve been writing for the past year. But the poetry of it seems wrong. What is happening is horrible and there is no way to write about it “right” that isn’t simple and raw.  The whole year (the year I was in Egypt) seems pointless, wasted. It’s even more painful to watch the country fracture into smaller and smaller pieces, each calling the others traitors or infidels, when I think about the moments and hope and promise (January 25, February 11, June 30). All this “eid wahda” – “one hand” – stuff: it seems so empty now. Yes, I felt a pit in my stomach on July 3, but it didn’t seem like a point of no return. Now more than 700 people are dead in two days, and it does.

Certainly democracy is a pipe dream, but even peaceful coexistence seems far-fetched. Why would anyone think participation in the political system means anything now? There is no game in town except the army, and they will make sure that doesn’t change. In any case, it seems that no one’s hands are untarnished.

Of course, I’m no longer in Cairo. And for the first time, I am really glad I am not. It’s not the lack of security that makes me suddenly glad to be far away, but this: How can anyone go about the day with such searing divisions hanging between friends, neighbors, colleagues? Even between those so-called liberals, the kind of people I knew or who lived in my building or shopped in the same stores and ate in the same cafes: Some stand by the military and some have changed their mind. For those, I think it must be a bitter pill to swallow. But how do you just look the people around you on the street in the eye and carry on? It’s no longer just a matter of political differences, but a matter of moral conscience.

How can Egypt possibly move forward? How can anyone forgive or forget?

On Wednesday morning, I woke up early for work and scrolled groggily through Facebook statuses about beaches and babies and haircuts. Then suddenly the Arabic posts appeared, a lot of them all at once. The order had finally been executed to clear the sit-ins.

Any elegance, any grace that had attached itself to politics – the kind of healthy and hopeful protest that saw Cairokee weaving through Tahrir singing about the Voice of Freedom or ballet dancers pirouetting against the Culture Minister on a makeshift stage outside his compound – had dissolved. In its place was something ugly and divisive, mangled bodies, a video of an APC being thrust off a bridge and pelted with stones, pleas for mercy from doctors at a field hospital showered with bullets.

I saw a photo Tweeted from Mostafa Mahmoud mosque in Mohandiseen, where Morsi supporters began to reassemble after their previous camp was bulldozed. I checked the article several times – how was it possible? This was the spot where twice I had met friends as they joined the secularist protests against the Morsi regime. It was also where there was a Cilantro cafe where I’d done a Princeton interview with a well-groomed teenager with a designer purse. Nearby was the new H&M store where I’d gone shopping just before I left; the BMW showroom where Seeko and I once pretended to be customers. I tried to imagine a gun battle on the leafy streets, or empty and barricaded and covered with debris. I couldn’t.

I also heard reports of the Nahda Square sit-in being dispersed. Its human contents were spilling out – some limping and bloody, others bearing weapons – into surrounding neighborhoods. What lay between my calm pocket of Dokki and Cairo University were the Orman Botanical Gardens. I’ve written about them before -- dry, overgrown, forgotten –  and, since July 3, guarded with a tank. “Bulldozers in Orman” I read somewhere, and the flower show I went to just a few months ago floated into my mind. There were waterfalls for your backyard, exotic cactuses, and even a man with a cage full of doll-like Persian cats. Families strolled in the aisles planning their gardens in the suburbs and young guys dashed around with wheelbarrows offering to take your purchases (or you) for a ride.

I also remembered how Magdy had promised me, when I first started seeing him, that we would take a picnic to Orman. Later I reminded him, but by this point the protests had started. “Of course,” he had said, “We’ll go after the revolution.”

The relationship ended before that revolution did. Now there were guns and bulldozers.

I’ve had such a hard time reconciling these images because things like this just don’t happen in places I know. They happen far away, where anonymous people kill another anonymous people.

On July 1, the military had just made its ultimatum, and the air was tense but hopeful. Change was coming. I told Magdy I was nervous about the military’s intentions – was it really interested in democracy? I doubted it.

The only way left to go is Left, he told me. We’ve tried everything else.

Like so many people I talked to in those days, he was sure that the military had learned its boundaries. SCAF rule had been tried before, and it hadn’t worked. The people had spoken again, and this time they would be heard.

But who are the people, really? I think this latest episode has shown that the people who revolted on January 25, 2011 were not just one thing rising up in harmony against a shriveled autocracy. The harmony was, it seems, a tragic illusion that could only last so long. There is no consensus about what Egypt should be.

The devolution into smaller and smaller factions is horrible. ElBaradei leaves and is accused of being a traitor by his own Dostour Party and the Tamarod Movement – all those bright young people who led millions of people to the street and now refuse to acknowledge that the military has betrayed their ideals, defending the military’s actions with a stomach-turning absolutism. Or maybe their ideals are different than we thought.

What’s next? Baradei & his cohort have made their exit. It seems he thought this was finally his moment, after rejecting a few others. Turns out he was wrong. Likely he’ll try again later. Who else is waiting in the wings? Nobody, it seems this time. In any case, I can’t imagine there is anyone who could unite factions so rudely torn apart  

At work, I plugged in my headset and streamed OnTV, a post-revolution satellite channel that was supposed to represent the new wave of independent media. Instead, it is a new kind of propagandistic drivel. Before we could ridicule it, but now it made me nauseous. Carrying a weapon is an undemocratic act, said one of the pundits knowingly, before correcting himself to specify civilians. All these people are carrying weapons. They’re terrorists. Of course the military must respond with force. Then came the West-bashing segment, a favorite. The West wants to compare us to Rwanda! Said a voice off-screen. They issue statements comparing our clashes to the Tutus and the Hutsis, he added incredulously, mixing up the names of the tribes. Dealing with the Egyptian people as if they’re a savage people?! This is not acceptable. Ah, racism to stoke the fire.  A little later in the programming, the presenter brought up the burning of a police station in Kerdasa. A handful of conscripts were killed. There should be a public funeral for these martyrs of duty and honor! he proclaimed, lauding them for fighting attacks that were the utmost of horror and ugliness. The tagline at the corner of the screen read: The people’s word against extremism.

I had to shut it off. The whole year I lived suddenly felt like a sunny anomaly in a pressure cooker destined for incineration. Was this what lay below the surface all along, waiting for the right moment to bubble up?

As I closed my eyes to sleep, a giant airbrushed portrait of El Sisi floated before my eyes. It was unfurled – one of three – across the façade of the villa across the square from my apartment. He stared (not quite at me, but slightly averted) into the distance, his expressionless face and uniformed chest floating on an empty white background. I tried to block it out.

Goodbyes

It has been a week now since I started my new job, my new life. I'm in Atlanta -- househunting, driving to Whole Foods, and laying out my business casual attire. My job at The Carter Center was the one I wanted, and keeps me connected to Egypt. I didn't want to let go completely, but even though I sit at my desk writing memos about political protests in Tahrir and Rabaa El Adaweya and wiring money to consultants in our field office in Zamalek, in some ways I couldn't feel farther away. I put up one of my favorite posters on my desk, the pink one that reads: "Without the 'teh marbouta' [the feminine ending], the country is not whole." Beside it is the piece of white computer paper with my name written in calligraphy as a flower, a slightly crumpled memento from my day in Tripoli, Lebanon last summer. I vacillate between relief at the clean break I made with Egypt, leaving the emotions behind in my apartment on Medan El Mesaha and quickly slipping into a 9-5 routine -- and flashes of regret or anxiety that my life is suddenly so much more mundane.

The weeks before I left Egypt, I sometimes cried at night because I was worried about losing my sense of adventure. I felt the late nights in slightly seedy cafes with wisps of shisha smoke and little glass cups of tea already slipping into the past; the anticipation just before dusk as I waited for the azan to sound and the fasters tear open their plastic bags of juice; the walks across Qasr El Nil or 15 May Bridge, the Nile's grime hidden below a glistening surface. I remembered my first few months in Cairo, how I had struggled to form close friendships with other people. Now I wonder how I will ever find people again who understand me so well.

I had thought it would be more jarring, the sudden transition to America. Of course, I did marvel at the broad, sterile sidewalks (no feral kitties here), the cars gliding along in straight lines and pedestrians paused obediently at crosswalks. I was also (and still am, 10 days later) giddy about the food -- quesadillas, mac 'n cheese, apricot beer, veggie burgers -- everything seemed to take on new significance. At lunch with a friend in Washington, I gleefully photographed my dessert pizza covered in raspberries and mascarpone cheese.

The first night was fitful. I heard a plane and immediately made a sarcastic note to myself that the military was once again on an inane power trip. I dreamt of demonstrations and tanks barreling down the streets -- more dramatically, in fact, than anything I actually experienced in Cairo. Two days later, I was sitting in the shampoo chair at a hip salon in Washington. MSNBC was on, and though I could hardly hear the pundits' voices, "Cairo Clashes" was scrawled at the bottom of the screen. The day after I had returned, El-Sisi had called on Egyptians to go to the streets again to give the army a special mandate to "fight terrorism". Now those rallies, a massive celebration of the military, were underway. I remembered the party I attended before the coup, before he became a national hero, where I'd met an archaeologist who claimed to be El-Sisi's nephew, and cracked a half-smile. I dipped my head back. As the hairdresser shampooed me, I was brought back to my last couple of nights in Cairo. I had sat with Ada on the roof of El Tonsy hotel, surrounded by high-rises and a moonlit Nile, a cantaloupe shisha between us. El Tonsy and King Hotel, a few blocks away, were crappy hotels with beautiful rooftops where expats sought refuge and Stellas. We had walked afterward to City Drink, where I'd taken a drastic step and ordered kiwi juice with Snickers, rather than the usual strawberry with Snickers. My favorite juice man Noss, in his orange and blue uniform, had insisted we take a photo together. The other City Drink employees gathered around: I'd been a regular.

I'd met up with Seeko sometime toward midnight and driven to Khan El Khalili. It had the air of a circus, rippling with energy -- bright lights and fat ladies and mustachioed men thrusting their wares out into the alleys of the bazaar. I thought of my first trip, in 2006, when I'd proudly carried home a bag of dried hibiscus leaves so I could brew karkadei at home (I never did). As Seeko and I drove back through Cairo, toward Mohandiseen where I could enjoy one last order of cheese sambousek at Abu Ramez, the late-night classics were on the radio. The deep voice of Mohamed Abdel Wahab crooned into the darkness... Patience and faith are the paradise of the oppressed.

The next day, my last, I wondered what to do. I hadn't planned out a last day, and certainly not one with most of my friends evacuated and a country hanging very barely onto stability. I went to Zamalek to see Dr. Iman, the head of CASA, and my teacher Nermeen. There were no students, because they'd all been sent home. Nermeen told me about a US scheme to set up a shadow government with Morsi, warned me not to marry a Muslim man, and made me promise to watch plenty of Ramadan mosalsalat so I wouldn't forget my Arabic. I had invited my friends that evening to break their fast on a felucca. The place we usually went, Dok Dok, was in Garden City in front of the Four Seasons. But an hour or so before eftar, my friend Farag called to warn me that cars were halted on the Corniche: Morsi supporters were marching to a sit-in at the American Embassy nearby and gunshots had been heard in Tahrir not far off.

So we met in Zamalek, where things were quiet as usual. I stopped first at Zooba, purveyor of "nouveau Egyptian" fare, to pick up some pita sandwiches. When I got to the Corniche, a dozen friends were already there -- some my oldest friends (Yehya and Ryme) and others friends I'd made just in the last few weeks. There was an unusual cool breeze on the Nile as our boat puttered out from the island. I stood on the bow of the boat, dancing with my friends to Cheb Khaled and Amr Diab. I felt a sense of contentment I hadn't expected: it felt like the right time to leave, but surrounded by good friends.

Back at my apartment, Ryme and a few of her friends sat with me as I added the last few things. The memories of my dinner parties, laughs, romances flitted through my mind. They seemed far off. The life of the place was long gone -- it had seemed cavernous and empty for a while. Downstairs, Nasser was on duty, the soft-spoken, moon-faced doorman in his pressed blue uniform shirt. He had been my favorite. He stood outside as we packed my suitcases into Yehya's trunk. In his fashion, he told me quietly to travel safely, and goodbye.

From the backseat of Yehya's car, I watched the giant billboards advertising Ramadan mosalsalat fly by. This year's slogan was Ramadan kareem -- el sanadi, Ramadan dream: "Happy Ramadan -- This year, Ramadan dream." It didn't make sense, but it rhymed. As we crossed the 6 October Bridge, a crowd of young men came running in the opposite direction. A few were waving banners. What would my last night in Egypt be without driving past demonstrations? I thought. We drove on, the traffic undeterred.

My last few hours, a bit poetically, were at Yehya and Nada's. This is where I'd begun my year, and where I was ending it. We ate nuts and drank juice on the roof, and Yehya told me I had grown into a balady accent -- I spoke like a peasant, in other words.

I sailed through the airport, my overweight bags and expired visa both overlooked. The immigration officer had scowled at my residency permit, which had clearly ended on June 30 (what a day to go the Mogamma!) -- or maybe it was my Israeli stamp on the next page -- then looked up and expressionlessly told me to have a good day. At the gate, Adel Imam's series was playing. I wasn't following it, but it seemed an appropriate send-off: the ageless Egyptian megastar, impeccably toupeed, acting his way through the wee hours of the morning. Just before boarding was announced, my last dawn call to prayer sounded over the airport PA system -- Allahu akbar allaaaahu akbar! I stood up and walked onto the plane.