Stu's visit to Egypt (year 2)
03/21/2003
I just got home from dinner with friends. Jodie had arranged a surprise birthday dinner for her husband at a nice downtown restaurant in Zamalek. I had a frustrating taxi ride because traffic patterns had been changed. I crossed the Nile river four times on three different bridges. When I finally got to the right neighborhood I got lost and took an extra ten minutes looking for the entrance. A thirty minute taxi ride took an hour. On the way I saw a large number of policemen wearing helmets and holding shields. They were barricading streets near the Embassy and Tahrir Square. I didn't see a single protestor though.When I walked in to the restaurant there were only three others waiting. There were supposed to be twenty of us. I asked what was up. They said that the manager told them the reservation had been canceled so they called Jodie on the phone. Jodie cancelled the dinner at the last minute because of the protests in downtown Cairo. She tried to reach as many people as possible but a few of us had already left. This is the first we had heard of any protests today. Apparently the protestors were burning bridges or busses or something.
That would explain the police presence but I could attest to the fact that all of the bridges were intact. I was a bit miffed that my friends cancelled suddenly, but the few of us that were there made the most of it. We went to a shisha pit next door and drank and smoked for a couple of hours before returning to Maadi.
When I got home I turned on the TV. There was Cairo on CNN! How exciting! When I saw the clip I immediately recognized the place. It showed the Nile river in the background and the Al-Tahrir bridge with the two big lion statues. The Corniche el-Nil was visible in the foreground. It looks like the video may have been shot from the roof of the Nile Hilton Hotel. (That's where we went on St. Patrick's Day. It's right next to the Egyptian Museum.)
There was even a car fire. It looked like a normal day, except there were people already trying to put out the fire. Usually they just let them burn out on their own. It was probably because there were five hundred policemen hanging around with very little to do. The reporter said there were "tens of thousands" of protestors and that they tried to get to the US embassy but they weren't allowed.
I learned more in two minutes watching CNN than I did during an entire evening hanging out on the town. There is no local news broadcast in English and the English newspaper comes out weekly. There really is no way to hear about stuff that happens in Cairo except through gossip. So let me know if you see anything else.
Let me give you an idea of the geography of Cairo. I live about a thirty minute drive south of downtown in a sleepy suburb on the Nile called Maadi. Not a cultural or urban center by any means and a very unlikely location for a riot. The island of Zamalek is the modern part of the city where all of the trendy restaurants and nighclubs are. The US Embassy is also here. Downt own is across the river from Zamalek. It's where the Museum and large hotels are. Tahrir Square would be considered the focal point of downtown.
Imagine a superimposed map of Cairo on a map of Monroe county. The Nile river and the Genesee river each bisect the city. Zamalek would be on the West side of the river, perhaps Brown's Race and Frontier Field. Tahrir Square would be Liberty pole Square on the east side of the river with the Convention Center and large hotels on the river. Maadi would be where Rush is. My school is 27 km out on a desert road northeast of the city so it would be like Webster. Giza, where the pyramids are, is southwest of the city so probably like Chili.
My apologies to readers who are not familiar with my hometown, but my point to the story is that I live and spend most of my time in a place that is very far from downtown Cairo. I am still safe and taking precautions. Even so, if you hear "Maadi" in the news let me know. Just because I live here doesn't mean I'm informed