On Revolutions, success, and failure

I think it's interesting when so many events in my life blur together.

I read the first book in The Hunger Games Trilogy in January and started reading Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea right after. It was amazing to see the similarities in the two books and realize that the world portrayed in The Hunger Games, a world I thought was too fictional to exist, exists. Minus the whole gaming part. But seriously, North Korea is in a bad way.

And while I was plotting in my little mind how to shout out to North Korea: Hey, you guys! There's a whole world out here! (And we have the internet!) You can be free! You all just need to join forces and pull down the regime. That's all...

(That's kind of where my message fizzled because I don't really know how to overthrow a powerful government so could offer North Korea no good advice on the matter.)

Anyway, while I was plotting in my little mind about how to overthrow North Korea, Egypt started its revolution. And I thought to myself, "If only North Korea could do this, too!" It seems that almost anyone who saw anything about the Tunisian and Egyptian revolutions, and who were fed up with being oppressed by tyrants, decided that overthrowing the government was the thing to do in 2011. If only North Korea knew about it; I'm sure they would have hopped on the band wagon, too.

Egyptian meal

Today is February 25th which means it's been exactly one month since January 25th. Obviously.

The reason it's significant, though, is that January 25th was the start of the Egyptian Revolution. I'll admit that that might not be significant for you, but it is significant for our family. So we decided to celebrate.

We got out every pot we own and made koshari. I know it doesn't technically need to involve every pot you own and when I learned how to make this from a very cute, elderly Egyptian woman she only used one pot. But we were already hungry when we started cooking and wanted the koshari to cook three times faster so instead of cooking the lentils and then cooking the rice and then cooking the noodles we went all in and cooked the lentils, rice, and noodles at the same time. In different pots.

We also made sauce and caramelized onions and hummus.

So we'll probably finish doing the dishes by sometime early next year. Thanks for asking.

He's gone!

Today was a momentous day in history—Mubarak abdicated his presidency at 6:00 PM, EET.

That was the first thing Andrew told me this morning and I quickly went to Al Jazeera to watch the jubilant celebration in Midan Tahrir. Rachel joined me.

"That's Egypt," she said, "Are the people still angry?"

"No. They're very happy. They're celebrating."

"It looks the same as when they're angry," she pointed out,  "They're lighting fires and yelling."

Everything ██is█████ ████ ████fine ███ █ ████ love. ████ █████ the ███ Egypt ███ ████ government

A friend on Twitter recently...uhhh...tweeted*...that she spoke with an expat friend who had been in Cairo but recently returned to the United States due to the revolution. She said that it "sounds much worse than they all let on."

I think that's definitely true—now that my friends are returning to the States I'm hearing a lot more about what was going on in their lives I'm seeing the same trend. When they were in Egypt still they were so...silent. Part of that can be blamed on the internet blackout, I'm sure. But after it was back on I expected more facebook updates, more blog posts, more tweets, more...anything.

I received a couple of emails from friends but most of my friends waited until they were standing with two feet firmly on the ground before they gave the world an update of how they were feeling. Many of them were still distressed at having to leave a loved-one (in most cases the husband and father of the family) in Cairo, but the relief they expressed was almost palpable.

In Tahrir Square

I still feel guilty for writing about anything else when people are being shot at, run down, and beaten up. The world is still spinning but somehow I'm stuck on #Jan25 and even though the future looks grim and unbearable I can't look away. Here, life seems surreally calm.

The sun is shining, the birds are singing, the...wait! The birds are singing!?

The birds are singing and Miriam is rather excited about it.

Food Storage

I just heard from an Egyptian man who belongs to our church. He bore testimony of the principle of provident living:

I am so gratful to Gordon B Hinckley. I stored food and medicine for a month. I hope the branch to stay in Egypt.


Shortly before we left Egypt we had a fireside about provident living—living within your means, setting money and supplies (food, medicine, clothing, etc) for a "rainy day," learning first aid, and so forth. We talked about how important it is for those living abroad to have a three month supply of food and water and things. In North America we're encouraged to have a year's supply but when you're living in a tiny apartment it's pretty difficult to store enough food to last your family for very long.

A letter from Egypt

For some reason the internet is back on in Egypt. No one quite knows why—things are getting rather violent today! Still, at least it is something. I was able to hear from several friends still inside Egypt, whether by their own choice or because they have no means of leaving. Here's an [edited] letter from a friend who is married to an Egyptian:

Hello Nancy!!!

YOU got out in a good time. LUCKY YOU!!!

It is so great to have Internet back again. Thanks for your concern about us here in Cairo. We are just staying home as much as possible and staying off the street. Most of the families in our already small branch have been evacuated and so we are down to 4 ladies and the husbands of many of the families that left. ( me, ———, ——— and ——— ). It is quite sad really. I think that if things calm down then in a month maybe some of those families will come back to Cairo. I hope and pray that happens.

As for school we have not been evacuated and it didn’t seem like the administrators were planning to do so. Even if they did, I was not hired from abroad so I would not be included in those that could get evacuated. I will just hang tight with my family here and keep a low profile and out of harms way as much as possible! We do have small protests happening in my neighborhood and they have caught several thieves or men that were trying to break into places. We have a neighborhood watch out every single night, which consists of the men in the neighborhood armed with long sticks, baseball bats, kitchen knives and poles. They have the streets blocked off with anything that they can find to make a roadblock. Mostly fallen trees, old pieces of wood and piles of bricks. Between the men guarding the streets and the blocked streets, we feel pretty protected.

Evacuations

There have been some questions floating around about the LDS community in Egypt. Not all my friends left in Egypt are LDS but naturally many of them are. With the recent evacuations, I think most of them will be leaving Egypt this week, but perhaps I'll share a few anonymous-like stories.

The LDS humanitarian (not proselytizing) missionary couple are leaving Egypt this week. The mission office has decided that this will mark the end of their mission, instead of sending them back when things stabilize over there.

More on Egypt

What felt all-consuming before is now absolutely mind-boggling.

You just have to wonder about Mubarak—what did he tell his thugs to do? They all seemed to have turned at the same time and are now looting the city, trashing museums, terrorizing citizens. In my mind I picture him saying, "This is the end: take whatever you want," as if it is his to give.

They've smashed two mummies in the Egyptian Museum—they only had like five mummies to begin with—in addition to smashing several other items, though apparently nothing has been stolen.

They've wreaked havoc in downtown Cairo.

The scariest part is that I can no longer tell Rachel that "our house" is safe. It probably isn't. The thugs—who seem to mostly be upper-division police officers and security officials for the National Democratic—are now entering upperclass residential areas, including Maadi. Apparently Carrefour is ablaze, Maadi Grand Mall and Road 9 are being looted, and residences are being broken into as well.

There's absolute chaos everywhere.

Home is...

Today when the girls and I were walking home from playgroup we ran into one of our neighbours.

"Good thing you're back from Egypt!" he called out, "They're really messed up!"

"Things are pretty tense," I agreed.

"The whole region is going crazy! The world is going crazy!"

"It is, it is," I agreed.

Sometimes it's hard for me to discuss politics with our neighbours, who welcomed us "home" with open arms from our "trip" to Egypt. They don't understand that it wasn't a trip—we lived there; it became part of us; Miriam has an Egyptian birth certificate. Egypt was our home. We love Egypt.

#Jan25

My heart goes out to Egypt today.

Last March, shortly before we left Egypt, Mubarak got sick. Of course, the word on the street was that he had gone on a little "vacation." Luckily, we had access to international news and it didn't take us long to confirm that he had gone to Europe for gallbladder surgery (with rumors of more). While he was recuperating we had several conversations with people about what would happen if he died while we were there. I feared the political unrest. Would there be a military takeover? Would his son start ruling in his stead? What would happen?

I'm glad I'm not there because I'm stressed out enough from here.

Andrew, on the other hand, yearns to be part of something historical, something revolutionary. He wants to be there to see it happen.

In all our discussions about "what would happen if Mubarak died" we never once suggested that perhaps Mubarak wouldn't die—perhaps there'd be a national uprising against the government. I don't see why we didn't think of that. Egyptians are passionate enough, brave enough, oppressed enough—and here they are, making it happen.

At least, I hope they are making it happen.

I've been watching the #Jan25 feed on twitter every spare moment I get since, well, January 25th, watching things unfurl. Now, though, the government has plunged the country into a media blackout: there's no internet, no cell phone service, no contact with the outside world...for anyone.

Like I said, I'm glad I'm not there because I'm stressed out enough about it from here.

It's so hard not knowing what is going on. Seeing pictures of Midan Tahrir swarming with people, police, tear gas, and anger and recognizing landmarks is rather surreal. I've used that metro stop. I've been to the restaurant. I let my girls run amok on that sidewalk. There's the Egyptian Museum, AUC campus, the mugama. We have so many happy memories of the place that it doesn't seem possible for it to be taken over with an angry mob.

Once, my brother and I tried to catch a taxi from Midan Tahrir to the Khan, during ramadan—we couldn't because the area was mia'b'mia empty. There were no cars or people as far as the eye could see. That, itself, was odd because Tahrir is usually bustling. We took a minute to meander on the square—in the middle of the road—just because we could, while we tried to figure out the best way to find a cab.

That calm, peaceful evening is such a contrast to the pictures I've seen of people lining the streets, praying, shouting, walking, fighting—thronging, thronging, thronging—trying to pressure the government to give it up and get out.