Egypt - One Week Before 9/11

Bridge spanning the Nile - Photo by JoAnn Sturman

by Kanwarjit Sufi

The world has been captivated by the protests taking place in Cairo’s Tahrir square over the last three weeks. Ordinary Egyptians rose above the general torpor that infects the Arab world to say they had enough of the political repression and economic stagnation that has plagued Egypt for decades. Signs of this were only too apparent on my visit to that country in August 2001.

Several recollections of my arrival to the Cairo International airport still vividly stick with me. I cannot forget the blistering desert heat which greeted our midnight arrival, the Egyptian Air Force jets visible along the runway in their protective revetments, and the stern, omnipresent portraits of Hosni Mubarak looking down at us.

The drive to our hotel on the Nile lasted about half an hour. In the careful hands of our government vetted tour rep, we could not help but notice the near empty streets and the young AK-47 toting policemen at every major intersection. Only when we arrived downtown did we notice anything different. Whole families filled the parks and squares, trying to enjoy the relatively cool night. Young men milled around aimlessly, amped on cigarettes and strong Arab coffee. Two things we in the West take for granted, bars and couples holding hands, noticeably were absent.

On arrival to the Sheraton Hotel, we immediately headed to the bar for a cold gin and tonic. Next to us were wealthy Cairenes and obese Gulf sheikhs guiltlessly imbibing their favorite alcoholic drinks. Security was tight with armed guards outside and metal detectors inside. Female employees were nowhere to be found.

The next day we toured Cairo, and Mohammed, being our only guide, was able to speak freely. A PHD graduate and speaker of four languages but with no high level or influential contacts, this job was the best he ever could attain. He stated he made more money than his physician cousin, but in his mid thirties, unmarried, and living with his parents, the accumulation of wealth was a distant dream.

The Cairo we saw was not the one the regime wanted tourists to see. The endlessly sprawling suburbs consisted of mazes of haphazardly built brick tenements which were hidden under a thick, acrid haze. Cars shared the road with donkey driven carts and motorcycles carrying
whole families. The police threw rocks at street children trying to sell us trinkets at the Pyramids. Four government employees performed the same job a single man could do, and the culture of 'baksheesh', the middle eastern way of circumnavigating the corrupt ponderous above ground economy of Egypt, abounded.

The second part our trip took us to the southern antiquities at Aswan, Abu Simbel, and Luxor. When boarding our internal airline flight, the Koran was taped to the airliner door which lent a hint of fatalistic acceptance and provoked me to wonder “should we be getting on this plane?” The young all male aircrew reeked of sweat and cigarettes and glared at the liberally dressed female tourists. I looked out of the window and saw the Nile’s narrow band of green on either side of the river, yet where the water ended there was only desert. The marvelous ruins of the ancient Egyptian Empire and the large military cantonments full of military hardware both baked in the desert sun, but it did not require an unusual amount of incite to realize which was more permanent.

The protests in Egypt are not an unforeseen phenomenon. The signs have been there for over a half century. The promise of a new Egypt which accompanied the overthrow of King Farouk in 1952 has instead become a 50 year military led dictatorship. Economic stagnation, political repression, and endemic corruption has been the result. Perhaps the self immolation of a desperate fruit seller in Tunisia will be tipping point not only in Egypt but elsewhere in the Arab world - a world so ossified and moribund that as we speak, continues to fall farther behind the rest of the globe. The problems were apparent ten years ago during my visit. My only surprise was why did it take so long for people to rise?