Demonstrations

مظاهرات

muzhaharaat = demonstrations

Today before heading to church, as I ate some cold dinner leftovers out of my new favorite steel bowl, Enas and I heard the beginnings of a demonstration from the street below our seventh-floor balcony. We hear so many of these at the university alone that it's not a terribly unusual sound, but this one seemed huge. And it was; at least several hundred people making their way down shaari3 Port Said shouting "al-sha3b yureed isqaaT almusheer" (The people want the fall of the musheer) The musheer refers to Tantawi, the military leader and default current Egyptian ruler. Some Egyptians, young people especially, believe that the government, under his leadership, is moving too slowly in its planned shift from military control to civilian control. 

Observing the demonstration for a while, Kelsey and I remarked that we were glad it was on a street opposite the direction we head toward to get to church. We head to church, per the usual on Sunday nights, walking in precisely the opposite direction of the Port Said spectacle. After the service, we talked with some folks who had friends or family participating in the peaceful nation-wide Coptic (and Evangelical, Catholic, Protestant, really just Christian) demonstrations. Upon returning home, however, we find Enas glued to Al-Jazeera news and we realize, lilaasif (unfortunately) that the demonstrations had morphed into a situation more violent and more serious than expected. The clashes between the soldiers and the Christian demonstrators had left 12 dead by the time Kelsey and I walked through the apartment door from church, and we watched the number climb to 22, then to 23 over the course of an hour. Without internet in the apartment, we only got our information from Al-Jazeera in Arabic and boy, when you REALLY want information, and your inability to comprehend all the vocabulary is your only barrier between understanding such important info, you focus and learn new words REAL fast.

Here's my current window to the world, in the apartment:

Surreal, to watch such horrifying news with such foreign pictures and realize it's not foreign at all. It's just Cairo, a couple hours away, and we're just blessed that the demonstrations in Alex didn't escalate. I wish I could say that having lived in Egypt for a month, I have some sort of understanding as to why this could happen, but of course I don't. It's pretty dumbfounding. How do peaceful demonstrations turn into catastrophes? Who shot whom first? And worse, between people who profess to follow the same God? 

 Strange, too, to hear slogans chanted on TV and then hear the exact slogan with my own ears, chanted loudly in the street outside my apartment.

This country is bursting at every possible seam with energy. I do understand where some of the anger at injustice and thirst for change is coming from, just having witnessed some of the broken-down bits of the country over these four weeks. Young people want jobs, opportunity, voices, education, stability, progress. Older people want the same but just don't as often take to the streets to demand it. Since the 70's the population has exploded and the Nile Valley, though formidably large, doesn't have the infrastructure (yet) to support the burgeoning population in every necessary way.

Selfishly, I of course don't want to leave Egypt at all right now, so I'm hoping and praying such tragic events don't affect our privilege of studying and living in the country. But it's a transitional place, and I'm realizing that more and more. (And to family and relatives, yes, I'm staying far away from the actual demonstrations! I don't want to see how pissed off my resident director would become were he to discover that we were anywhere close to a demonstration. Nor do I have interest. No need, I can see them from my balcony!)