Another Day of Anger.
Thousands descended into Tahrir Square. The moment the imam ended the Friday prayer, feet started moving. Though some people did stay back to say a single prayer to a single God to supply a single moment of calm. I could have sworn the imams in the mosques rushed the prayer through a little. As I sat in my living room with the window open, the call to prayer seemed more frazzled than usual, as though the caller really had somewhere more important to be.
I prayed with my mother in her room. We don’t usually pray together, but we decided to on that Friday. We prayed for each other, our family and the people we knew. We prayed for the people we didn’t know. We prayed for the men in the mosque opposite, kneeling down in unison, and the women beside them in the Square, to give them a dignified victory. I prayed they wanted those things too.
Chaos. I felt it in my bones … in the walls. A noise descended that I hadn’t heard before. A noise of information. I picked up bits of information without partaking in a single conversation. It was all around me. I knew when the first rubber bullet was shot within five minutes of it missing its target. I knew when the cannons were switched on as if the police were using our kitchen tap as their main water supply. I knew when the tear gas filled the air with a suffocating smoke. I knew when the army were deployed. And I knew when the first protester of the day fell … I never did catch his name.
I will forever remember hearing on state television how the army had surrounded the Egyptian Museum to protect its thousands of antiquities. And hearing from Mustafa how the protesters had joined arms with the soldiers who protected it. At that moment I knew I was with them. I knew it was my fight. They, the protesters, standing side by side with the army to ensure no one went in or out of the Museum, proved something to me about their intentions and allowed me to trust them a little more.
The curfew was designed to give the regime further legitimacy to shoot people. If people defied the curfew they were criminals. Suddenly, we were all criminals.
The curfew was a joke. My mother broke the law in the evening when she popped to the shop to see if they had any milk left. Mustafa, the fruit seller, broke the law by closing his stall two hours past curfew. He actually just moved it to under the stairs of our building. The neighbourhood watch patrol broke the law in order to ensure law and order.
People weren’t flippant about it. After all, if the police saw you out after curfew they really might shoot. But the neighbourhood was out, choosing to ignore what was doomed to be laughed at from the beginning.
Everyone except me. I wasn’t allowed out, beyond the building. The Wednesday and Thursday I had been allowed to join in with the neighbourhood. Sit with people, walk to the shop, but on that Friday I didn’t leave the house. My father did and my mother did that one time for the milk. Her first act of civil disobedience, directed at both the regime and my father.
My father wasn’t home at the time. He returned from who knows where, long after curfew. We grilled him. Where had he been, what had he seen, who had he spoken to? We never asked him why he broke the curfew as it seemed like an antagonistic question. He was on patrol and things were still tense, we had to be extra cautious.
The day had made its point. Mubarak was still in power, but the protesters were still in Tahrir Square. The line had been drawn.
I asked him if he had been to Tahrir Square. His moustache twitched downwards, not upwards. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I haven’t been back and I won’t go back. It is one thing to protect your family and to protect your home, it is another thing to put yourself in a direct line of fire.’
I was sick of his pretence. I was desperate to say to him. ‘Father, why are you keeping up this pretence? Is it to protect us? You are not the only man with a wife and a daughter to protect in this country.’
Instead, I challenged him. ‘If we don’t put ourselves in a direct line, who will? And how can we live with ourselves knowing we never did?’
‘I can live with myself just fine thank you,’ he retorted. ‘I support this protest, I support those protesters. You think I don’t protest? I protest every day I go to the government hospital to perform surgery. The light in the operation room sometimes flickers, the supplies are low and the instruments are old. I protest every day by turning up and performing surgery. I protest that this man or woman’s life lying in front of me is worth living and worth fighting the system for. Is that not a protest?’
‘I’m sure there are people in Tahrir Square that need your help, baba, your skills. You don’t have to stand in the line of fire. There are other things you can do.’ I wonder why I am trying to persuade him to go, when really I want to persuade him to let me go.
‘Yes, I am sure there are people who need my help. But they chose to go to that place and should I just follow them, without checking first if it is a snake pit?’
‘No, of course not,’ I reply, dented by my failure.
‘I am working with the neighbourhood people. I am defending my home, my community. That is my protest.’
I understood what he meant, but I knew in the end it wouldn’t be enough.