last night in Tahrir

The stalemate continues, but as of yesterday afternoon it looked like this might be a decisive day, so I thought I should go down there. It’s approximately 25-30 minutes on foot from my front door to the edge of Tahrir. I did take photos but the quality turned out fairly poor, so I won’t bother re-pasting them here from Facebook.

Once you cross Qasr el-Nil Bridge, you come to a loosely manned protestor checkpoint where everyone shows ID’s. I was simply waved in. They did frisk one burly-looking young Egyptian guy, who was of the right build and demographic group to be a State Security agent provocateur, but they found nothing and decided he was OK and let him on through.

Crowds very large, and Tahrir itself is perfectly safe– a kind of carnivalesque atmosphere, and close enough to family friendly that I saw a few kids in the crowd, though not more than a few. You could buy popcorn, Egyptian flags, and tear gas masks, among other things.

I was drawn like a moth towards Mohamed Mahmoud Street, both because that’s the storm center currently, and also because it used to be the major artery of university life back when AUC was located solely in Tahrir from 1919-2008. It’s a familiar, cozy street for all of us that has suddenly been turned into the world center of street violence, and I wanted to get some sense of what it’s like now.

Approaching towards south Tahrir, close to Mohamed Mahmoud, the scene begins to resemble Dante’s Inferno. There’s a now permanent, choking cloud of tear gas, and almost everyone had a mask on in that area. Several blocks in the distance you can see flashes of light, like a distant electrical storm.

There was an empty corridor through the huge crowd, and a man holding a sign over his head that said, in Arabic, “Clinic.”

Every few minutes, a small train of motorcycles would emerge from Mohamed Mahmoud and head straight down that corridor past the “Clinic” sign. They looked like devils, hooded and wearing masks. Behind them was always a passenger, and the passenger always had a wounded protestor either on their laps or thrown over their shoulders.

Image of the night: an unconscious protestor thrown over the back of a motorcycle passenger, with dark curly hair and wearing a red jacket, probably about 20 years old. He was completely unresponsive but I saw no obvious wounds as he passed, so I can only hope he was still alive.

Not just motorcycles are braving the area. A surprising number of ambulances were streaming into the area and driving straight down Mohamed Mahmoud into the midst of the combat, with protestors clearing the way for them as they arrived.

The ledge outside the AUC Science Building is covered with non-uniformed people. I would assume they are protestors, partly because they just have that look about them, and partly because it’s a protestor area.

Approaching closer to Mohamed Mahmoud, the crowd is so heavy that it’s like swimming in a strong ocean current– you can’t always choose where to go. I was swept away from that entrance and thought I’d seen the last of the street for the night.

Carried along by the crowd, I happened to pass the exact street corner featured in the famous recent video of a body being thrown in rubbish in the gutter. There’s now a table there, but I can’t remember what it was selling.

Then the idea occurred to me of walking down Tahrir Street, parallel to Mohamed Mahmoud, and seeing what was there. To my surprise, the crowds were small on Tahrir Street, and it was not easy to move rapidly down it, one long block to Yusuf El Gindi Street.

Taking a right on Yusuf El Gindi, the old AUC Library is right there, and to my astonishment, you can walk straight up to Mohamed Mahmoud without difficulty. If you would reach that intersection, you could simply look to the left and see the heart of the battle.

However, about 10 meters short of the intersection, tear gas hit. Everyone calmly turned and walked slowly in the other direction. I was coughing pretty badly, but a young man came up and sprayed water in my face with a plant sprayer, which did help.

Face-sprayer is simply one of the many improvised careers that can be seen down at Tahrir. Another was the guy who was just walking the street with a huge wad of cotton, inviting everyone to rip off small pieces and put them in their masks for extra protection.

If you then cross Qasr el-Nil Bridge out of Tahrir back to the Nile, it’s a normal Cairo evening, with people going to restaurants and taking cheezy musical boat rides up and down the river. Less than 10 minutes away on foot, people are being injured and killed.