Revolution 2.0

 We are still fine. The violence from Sunday, October 9 was once again near downtown Cairo not out in our south suburb. The mood of the country is another story. I have been looking for some way to measure and describe the mood of Egypt since returning for our fourth year. I can only give impressions, but people are feeling uncertain and worried. In response to uncertainty, people draw inside more. They are waiting, so they are living life more cautiously. There are without a doubt fewer foreigners living here than 1 year ago, and even less than 3 years ago when we first came. School attendance is down 25% at Karan's school and probably about the same at church. So the energy level is lower and the stress level higher. I have talked with men who are now here working this year while their families are living back home. The large corporations are struggling to fill jobs because qualified people are reluctant to come, so that means fewer people working longer hours (in industries that already demand 60-70+ hour work weeks plus constantly being on-call). More stress on top of exhaustion for some.

      So we all wait to see what will happen with the parliamentary elections in a month or so and the presidential election next Spring. Then came the worst violence since the Revolution with over 25 people killed--mostly Coptic Christians.  (See the first-hand report below)  Initially the military government claimed that the protestors had attacked and killed soldiers so the army was only defending themselves.  The still state-run media broadcast this news and called for the people to come and defend the army, creating a sectarian frenzy.  Now the military has claimed one solider was killed and the TV stations blamed and over-reactive news reporter for their false report.  The attempt to drive a wedge between religious groups is denied by various voices.  Some are blaming "foreign elements."  One false report claimed the US would send troops to protect the Coptic churches--that would only increase the anger and paranoia of a foreign invasion with religious overtones.  People speculate as to why the military turned on its own citizens, however no one really knows why, but there has certainly been a change in the game.  Will the military dig in their heels and claim they are sick of all the protests?  Was this religiously motivated?  Will the military now have to bow to domestic and international pressure to accelerate changes toward human rights and democracy (remember they are a remnant of the previous regime)?  We wait and see--just like we have been doing for nearly 8 months.

      Most important of all, we remember that God is not frantically pacing back and forth in heaven wondering how things came to this.  He has His hand firmly on the wheel.  He is in control and His purposes will be brought to pass (even if we are not around to see it).  We look for spiritual opportunity.  Our midweek prayer for Egypt last night tripled in size.  We are brought back to remember what made us strong in February--desperate dependence on God and focusing on what really matters.

A Firsthand Account: Marching from Shubra to Deaths at Maspero
by Sara Carr (journalist)

 The march from the Cairo district of Shubra was huge, like the numbers on 28 January. In the front row was a group of men in long white bibs, “martyr upon demand” written on their chests. A tiny old lady walked among them, waving a large wooden cross: “God protect you my children, God protect you.”

The march started down Shubra Street around 4 pm, past its muddle of old apartment buildings, beat up and sad but still graceful compared with the constructions from the Mubarak era next to them - brutish and unfinished-looking.

       A man explained why there were bigger numbers than the march last week in response to the attack on the St. George’s Church in Aswan: the army had hit a priest while violently dispersing Coptic protesters in front of the Maspiro state TV building on Wednesday. A video posted online showed a young man being brutally assaulted by army soldiers and riot police.

      At a traffic underpass at the end of Shubra Street, at around 6 pm, there was the sudden sound of what sounded like gunfire. Protesters at the front told those behind to stop - the march was under attack. Rocks rained down from left and right and from the bridge, underneath which protesters were taking shelter.

Some threw stones back. Behind them, protesters chanted, “The people want the removal of the Field Commander.” The stone throwing eventually stopped sufficiently for the march to continue. A teenage boy crossed himself repeatedly as he moved forward toward the rocks.

      Darkness fell just as the march reached Galaa Street. “This is our country,” protesters chanted, led by a man on a pickup truck full of speakers. An illuminated cross floated through the darkness. At the headquarters of state daily newspaper Al-Ahram, a single rock was thrown at the door, likely a comment on its coverage of violence against Copts.

      Outside the Ramsis Hilton Hotel, the chanting stopped momentarily - the exuberance of having escaped the attack in Shubra faded as the march rounded the corner toward Maspiro. It was immediately met with gunfire in the air. As protesters continued moving forwards, the gunfire continued.

      Suddenly, there was a great surge of people moving back, and something strange happened. Two armored personnel carriers (APCs) began driving at frightening speed through protesters, who threw themselves out of its path. A soldier on top of each vehicle manned a gun, and spun it wildly, apparently shooting at random although the screams made it difficult to discern exactly where the sound of gunfire was coming from.

      It was like some brutal perversion of the military show the armed forces put on for the 6th of October celebration three days before. The two vehicles zigzagged down the road outside Maspiro underneath the 6th of October Bridge and then back in synchronicity, the rhythm for this particular parade provided by the "tac tac tac" of never-ending gunfire, the music the screams of the protesters they drove directly at.

      And then it happened: an APC mounted the island in the middle of the road, like a maddened animal on a rampage. I saw a group of people disappear, sucked underneath it. It drove over them. I wasn’t able to see what happened to them because it then started coming in my direction.

      Later, as riot police fired tear gas at another small attempt at a demonstration and fires burned around Maspiro, I found on the floor part of one of the white “martyrs upon demand” bibs the men had been wearing, and took it home. It had been ripped in half.

       The Coptic Hospital tried its best to deal with the sudden influx of casualties. Its floors were sticky with blood and there was barely room to move among the wounded, the worried and the inconsolable.  A man asked if we were press, and whether we’d like to film the morgue if we “were strong enough.”

      The morgue was a harshly lit two-room building surrounded by men and women screaming and hitting themselves in paroxysms of grief. In the first room there were two bodies, middle-aged men on the floor next to the fridge, which we were told held three bodies. In the other room there were the bodies of 12 men of varying ages.

      A young woman sat by one of them clasping his hand and wailing. Vivian and Michael, who were engaged to be married. Michael had been crushed, his leg destroyed. Next to Michael was the body of a man whose face was contorted into an impossible expression. A priest opened his hands and showed me the remains of the man’s skull and parts of his brain. He too had been crushed.

      Outside a woman said out loud to the dead, “How lucky you are, now in heaven!” A man screamed, “We won’t be silent again.” Even while the wounded were still being brought in, state TV was reporting that Christian protesters stole weapons from the army and killed soldiers, and that the busy foreign hands are back again, still trying to destabilize Egypt.

      There should be a finality in death, an unchallengeable truth when it happens with the simple brutality of last night. But even when death happens on Maspiro’s doorstep, it can be rewritten, in order to lend a twisted sense where there is none, to justify the impossible and, above all, to sabotage any attempt to consider that the problem is within us, not without.