Reflections on my first stampede

An unsettling thing happened last night.

I'd gone for a Friday night shisha with Ben and some friends of his in the stock market area of the city (Boursa), in or near Downtown (not very far from Tahrir Square). We were sitting out on the street, beside the road which was lucky, but on the outskirts of the cafe. The place was packed and lively, groups of people enjoying shisha and tea or coffee.

It was still early - maybe 10pm - when there came a ripple of shouting and motion. Cries tore through the buzz of conversation and people scattered in what seemed like a perfect slow-motion domino effect.

The reality of course was not poetic at all. Everyone responded as you would in such a situation - with panic. Tables were overturned, glasses and shisha pipes smashed, phones and bags abandoned as people scrambled to get out of harm's way. Ben had grabbed me and pulled me behind a parked car before I even fully realised what was going on. We snatched our things, located the other members of our group, and walked away.

In fact the incident passed very quickly. After the initial wave of fear, which must have uprooted and dispersed 200 people sitting outside the cafe, it wasn't clear what was going on. We'd walked down a side street by the time we heard gunfire. To be honest though, that's not such an unusual sound in Cairo. Just the other day I was playing tawla in the well heeled area of Zamalek when we heard gunshots. "It will be a wedding" my friend Dawood said casually. "Remember in Egypt we like to celebrate with a bang". Cue accompanying cheeky wink.

There are different theories as to what happened, and why. Ben, a journalist, later went back and spoke to some people who said that a fight had broken out in the area and that the police had been called to break it up. A report from a well-regarded Egyptian newspaper claims that the cafe was attacked by people with knives and that the police were sent to rescue cafe-goers. This could be true, but it's interesting that just two days previously there had been clashes in exactly this area because the police and military had raided cafes trying to clamp down on outdoor seating (theoretically illegal, in practice widely accepted, as the cafes' main source of revenue comes from large numbers of customers being able to sit outside, especially at weekends).

Here's the link to the Al Masry Al Youm article:
http://www.almasryalyoum.com/en/node/498845

What I find interesting but frightening is how quick people are to panic. It surprised me that I didn't panic more than I did, especially watching the reactions of all the other girls in the group. The whole incident showed how something small can provoke a huge and disproportionate reaction in a group of people on edge. Understandably, because the whole of Egypt is on edge at the moment. No one knows what will happen when the elections take place. Everyone is a little scared; many fear the worst, even as they hope for something better.

What can we do but watch, wait and try to reduce the scaremongering? Especially the non-Egyptians, who would have to leave if anything went badly wrong.

An answer to a question

I didn't expect to like Cairo as much as I do. It's often a difficult city to live in - hot, dusty, polluted, so full of people and vehicles all trying to get from one place to another it can make you boil with frustration. As with all capitals, it has a lot of stressed people working, jostling on the metro, doing their best not to be worn down by the daily grind. Sometimes I wish there was a mute button for me to press and I've never had to clean a flat so much in my life.

But still. Still. There's a reason this city is called Om al Donia, the Mother of the World. It is majestic, life affirming, heartbreaking, mysterious and can often in unexpected ways reveal a beauty that makes your head spin. Sunset over the Nile. The winding old streets of Islamic Cairo evoking images straight from a Naguib Mahfouz novel; houses, shops and the city's most famous market crouched beside the two towering mosques of al-Azhar and al-Husayn. The churches of Coptic Cairo, adorned outside and in with mosaics and intricately carved words in Arabic and the Coptic alphabet. Elegant post-colonial French style buildings in Nasr City, out towards the airport - an area I'd always considered functional and charmless...I was so wrong. Out on the river in the evening you feel encased in a calm, still bubble though the ripples of the sleepless city wash over you. Ceaseless car horns; snatches of music from passing cars or boats - rhythm and beat demanding to be listened to whether you understand the lyrics or not - your senses are seized and you want to dance.

Driving fast at night, everything is ablaze with life and colour. Or sitting in a coffee shop having lost track of time, cocooned by shisha smoke and conversation. I've become addicted to tawla (backgammon) recently, accompanied by the voices of other cafe goers, low and humming or loud and raucous.

My relationships with places are as intricate as my relationships with people. And I was talking last night with an Egyptian friend who asked me whether I still noticed all the things I had liked about Egypt when I first moved here, an insightful question. I went to Alex ten days ago to see Khaled, Karim and the others and spent my first hour there blown away by how beautiful it is. After a few months between visits, I'd forgotten.

And though I don't always look on Cairo with fresh eyes, or fully appreciate it all the time, it has taken me hostage as it has charmed, perplexed, enticed and baffled visitors for centuries. The dirt, the lack of systems, the bureaucracy, the overcrowding are very real but Cairo still gets under your skin.

I can say all this as someone who has the luxury of choosing to be here. There is danger in romanticising a place, especially when as an expat in Egypt your life is often marginalised and very privileged. I have people I care about a lot here who I see not being given the opportunities they deserve because of circumstances they can't control and the unfairness of it eats away at me. They deserve better. And the country deserves better.

In the run-up to the elections my posts will become more political. And anyone who cares about the region will be waiting to see what comes next and whether these problems, which seem so entrenched, have a short term solution. I don't have any answers.

But this is a country that has gone through huge changes but never descended into anarchy. With police gone from the streets and (theoretically) no law and order, the country still functioned in an almost normal way. During the 18 days of the Revolution, people took matters into their own hands in a very visible way; for weeks after Mubarak stepped down everything from safety on the streets to regulating traffic still depended on ordinary people and it worked.

You could just say that what makes this country special and so intriguing is its contradictions, that you may spend years here and not get to the bottom of all of them. But somehow it still matters to you enough to keep trying.