Revolutionary up and downs in an ever more vibrant city

Cairo at its best

I've always loved this city for its vibrant character. Cairo is the most colourful city (the grey buildings let aside for one moment) I know, it's the city that never sleeps (in these days this is only true for Midan Tahrir and the close surroundings) and its full of amazing, interesting people that are always free for a glass of tea.... 

Enthralling encounters in times of the revolution

As you can imagine in times of the revolution the daily encounters are even more fascinating than usually, among the most interesting people I met for example was Bacha who is currently working here as a cameraman for a German documentary about Egypt. He describes himself as someone who can do 5 things at time. Unfortunately I do not recall all of the 5 things, but I remember that among them is filming, reporting the story, cutting the film and taking care of the technical equipment. He learned filming when it was still some kind of handcraft. 

Reporter in the Lebanon war

Actually he started his career as a reporter in the Lebanon war 1982, himself being born in Damascus. He had at that time started to cover the war for ABC, receiving his training from BBC. He later served as a correspondent and filmer for various international and German Channels, among them AlJazeera as well as ZDF, ARD, Sat1 and the Deutsche Welle. Today he seems to earn most of his money with a dubbing company based in Syria – apparently the Syrian accent is popular in the Arab world and thus this business with dubbing Turkish, Iranian and Brazilian movies is going well. The next big project for this company shall be to dub „intelligent“ children's TV programmes from Germany, who in Bacha's opinion other than Asian cartoons or American series do promote curiosity and critical thinking. So watch out for the first edition of the „Sendung mit der Maus“ in Arabic....

Of course Bacha has much more to tell, about his experiences in the Algerian civil war, the Bosnian and Czechnya war, the Second Gulf War (the one started by George W. Bush and still lively in the memories of my generation, indeed was already the third one...) and his German step-parents who still not accept him as a Muslim and Syrian as the man of their daughter. (According to him the best indidcation and at the same time reinforcement of this rejective stance is the repetitive consumption of movies as „Nicht ohne meine Tochter“- Not without my daughter...)

Dramatic scenes: individuals still "disappeared"

Then there is this girl, whose brother Ziad Bakir has disappeared on the 28^th of January. Remember: this was the bloodiest day of the revolution when protesters clashed with police men before they disappeared all at once few hours later. Ziad has not been seen since – the family searched for him in every possible place, from police stations, prisons over hospitals to the city's morgues. Yet, till now they have not found a trace of their son and brother. Not knowin what has happened to him might even be worse than receiving the message of his passing away. As an Egyptian told me today: If they knew he was dead then he'd at least be honoured as a martyr, and the family would have the chance to slowly „process“ this loss... what they are stuck with instead is the gnawing uncertainty...

There is also a facebook page supporting the search and spreading awareness about Ziad's disappearance. He is also listed in the Guardian's missing protesters database.

In the meanwhile Ziad's sister and her friends print leaflets to be ditributed at Midan Tahrir. Their intention is to raise awareness that Egyptian's are at risk of losing their revolution. Ziad is the one example that should suffice to at least cast doubt on the army's and transitional government's intentions...if real change is aspired, why have political prisoners taken since 25 January not been released? If justice is to reign from now on, why has the persecution of all the human rights violations that happened in the last weeks (and in the years before) not yet started at a large scale? If political rights and the rule of law are to secure fair and free political competition from now on, why has the army tried to disperse protesters with force on Friday night?(See articles on AlMasr AlYoum and AlJazeera).  It is also quite remarkable that an army general is to head Egyptian TV for now, someone remarked wittingly that the army seemed to settle in.... 

On Friday Ziad's sister was very upset when I met her: the attempt to gather large numbers of protesters to oust Shafiq, the prime minister which had been appointed by Mubarak in an attempt to satisfy protesters' demands, ended up in a huge "carnival". Indeed, when I arrived on Midan Tahrir sometime Friday afternoon, it rather felt like the celebrations of winning the soccer world cup or in Egypt's case, the Africa's cup: people where selling revolution merchandise of all sorts, making noise by all means and stuffing themselves with all kind of treats (ranging from the very local grilled sweet potato over ricepudding to popcorn). 

Carnival or demonstration?

Political discussions were going on in many corners of the Midan, but similarly you could find people playing music, dancing, chit chatting or posing for pictures everywhere. The most popular motive still were the tanks posited at every access street to Midan Tahrir, followed by the sea of flags held up by the crowd in one part of the Midan, directly succeeded by myself. This might not even be an exaggeration: at some point we (me, two friends of mine, and two of their friends selling Tshirts for charity) where surrounded by so many people that an army officer showed up and with a stern expression on his face asked for our passports. Holy shit. This is not an encounter you wanna have these days. 

Especially as we were kind of a suspicipous composition: besides one totally "normal" Egyptian we were two German women, one Egyptian man who had been living in Germany for most of his life, another Egyptian who after years had just returned from the states, with three of us having arrived right in time or straight after the revolution....yet my Egyptian friends took it easy...the only wrongdoing the army officer could eventually find was us selling Tshirts without a permission, so he asked us to move (i.e. get away) with our pile of shirts....yet, of course the officer's presence had of course attracted an even larger crowd, so my friends saw their time come, moved (literally) 20 meters to the left, followed by the crowd, then dropped their bags with shirts on the ground and immediately started to shout again "Tshirt, Tshirt for 20 pounds"....what else would you expect from people who had been harassed by Egyptian police officers all their lifes?

Danger of the revolution being halted midway
 

Ziad's sister and many other people I met were seriously concerned that this carnival atmoshpere was fully inapropriate – not because it didnt do justice to the martyrs but because it enhanced the risk of loosing sight of the real goals of this uprising and forgetting about the tasks right ahead of the Egptian people....Yet, the events Friday night again alerted many people.

Above that the reform council has today announced officially the proposed amendments to the constitution. This news of this recent development also reached many Egyptians who had lost interest in the revolution and the political developments since life returned back to some fragile form of normality...Facebook (again it's facebook) is bustling with debates on whether these constitutional amendments will suffice to guarantee free and fair competition in the next elections.

(That shall be it for now. Much more to follow soon with some stories from those who have been camping out in Midan Tahrir for weeks now....)