Yesterday’s Times reported the Egyptian army’s escalation of its crackdown on street protestors. Military police clubbed unarmed civilians, ripped the clothing from women as they beat them, threw stones and blocks of concrete from rooftops on protestors below, and burned a small tent encampment on Tahrir Square, leaving ten dead and hundreds wounded. The prime minister on Saturday morning denied the use of military force and, in an ominous return to the days of military dictatorship, blamed third parties for the violence.
None of this was apparent to us either on Friday, when we flew from Abu Simbel, close to the Sudanese border, to Cairo, or on Saturday, when we boarded a plane for New York. Indeed, our visit to Egypt was remarkably peaceful. Tahrir Square boasted only a few demonstrators when we visited the nearby National Museum, with its spectacular (if poorly displayed) collection of antiquities. We saw, near the museum, the shell of the building that housed Mubarak’s political party, torched in the February demonstrations that had toppled him from power. There were no demonstrations when we passed by. The elections seemed to have sucked the wind from the protests.
It was an exciting time to be in Egypt, when the second round of the country’s first free and fair elections were being held. In Aswan, we saw the stadium in which the province’s votes were being counted, and the cars of the representatives from the various political parties who had come to oversee the counting. It was the first election, our guide told us, in which he’d ever voted. In the past there was no point in doing so since the outcome was preordained. This time, people waited in line for hours to vote, and even so, only about 50% of eligible voters turned out. The elections under Mubarak and his predecessors claimed a 90% turn out, but in fact there were never ever any lines for those elections.
In Cairo, we passed a long line of men and a separate, shorter line of women waiting to buy propane gas, used for cooking. These people, too poor to afford the jacked up prices charged by companies that make home deliveries, waited for hours in line. The Muslim Brotherhood, our guide told us, buys propane gas and delivers it to people’s homes, taking a very small profit, but either that service had not reached the people waiting in line or even the small additional profit made the service too costly for them. In addition to its propane gas service, the Muslim Brotherhood operates low- cost medical clinics, and on Thursdays, the day before the Muslim day of rest, it delivers gratis food to the poorest families, so they too can enjoy a festive meal on Friday. In the first and second round of voting, the Muslim Brotherhood’s party has won about 40% of the vote.
Our affable, supremely competent guide, is no fan of the Brotherhood and didn’t vote for its party, but he believes it will be moderate in the social changes it exacts. He believes the party’s statement that it will not forbid the consumption of alcohol at home or in hotels, although it does plan to close liquor stores. Islam in Egypt, he told us, is moderate. But the second most popular party, the fundamentalist Islamic Al Nour, won 20% of the vote, and it remains to be seen whether the Brotherhood will form a coalition with Al Nour or with the liberal parties. One of our lecturers, a professor of sociology at the American University of Cairo, is not as optimistic as our guide that the Islamicist parties will enact moderate policies and that they will not curtail the hard-won rights of women.
Because of the political unrest, our children tried several times to dissuade us from traveling to Egypt. But one needn’t travel to Egypt to find violence. On our way home from the airport, our taxi was forced to make a detour about 200 yards from our apartment house, because fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were blocking the street. Yesterday’s Times reported the reason. A woman entered an elevator, where a man, dressed as an exterminator, doused her with a flammable material and set her ablaze. The woman burned to death. We worry about the wrong things.
Our affable, supremely competent guide, is no fan of the Brotherhood and didn’t vote for its party, but he believes it will be moderate in the social changes it exacts. He believes the party’s statement that it will not forbid the consumption of alcohol at home or in hotels, although it does plan to close liquor stores. Islam in Egypt, he told us, is moderate. But the second most popular party, the fundamentalist Islamic Al Nour, won 20% of the vote, and it remains to be seen whether the Brotherhood will form a coalition with Al Nour or with the liberal parties. One of our lecturers, a professor of sociology at the American University of Cairo, is not as optimistic as our guide that the Islamicist parties will enact moderate policies and that they will not curtail the hard-won rights of women.
Because of the political unrest, our children tried several times to dissuade us from traveling to Egypt. But one needn’t travel to Egypt to find violence. On our way home from the airport, our taxi was forced to make a detour about 200 yards from our apartment house, because fire trucks and other emergency vehicles were blocking the street. Yesterday’s Times reported the reason. A woman entered an elevator, where a man, dressed as an exterminator, doused her with a flammable material and set her ablaze. The woman burned to death. We worry about the wrong things.
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