The Revolution Continues...

On our first few nights here, as Anya and I looked for apartments, we ran into or heard a few protests. Amusingly, one of the simsaars (rental agent) took us to look at an apartment that he said was "behind the Turkish embassy," which is a polite way of saying "overlooking the ministry of the interior." In March, protesters ransacked the ministry of the interior, which had run domestic surveillance and torture in Egypt under Mubarak... later in March, parts of the ministry were set on fire. As we walked to this apartment to take a look, we passed by the burned out cars.

Later that same week, we were heading back from the apartment hunt in Maadi (where we eventually found an apartment), and the Metro got unusually crowded for a weekday night. To avoid a potentially problematic harassment situation on the Metro, we hopped off early and walked the rest of the way to our apartment, which brought us past the interior ministry. Low and behold there was a small protest in front of the ministry. Apparently someone died in police custody recently (a sign that extreme torture took place), and so protesters unsatisfied with the direction of change under the new military order demonstrated in front of the interior ministry.

We've also heard chanted slogans from afar and passed by small soap-box speeches in the subway station. Each was well-attended by police.

Yesterday (Friday), Anya and I headed down to Tahrir Square to help out the project "Tahrir Documents." It was a pretty calm day with different political parties marching in circles around the Tahrir traffic circle or holding small rallies. I picked up a handful of documents, often not from the people who were handing them out but from Egyptians who had come to listen or participate in the rallies themselves. After a while under the sun, we headed to a coffee shop to chat with some very nice young guys whom we met in the square, one was a high school student and the other a 30ish guy who wanted to talk all about Islamic geography with me.

It's really fantastic to see all this political participation going on. From what I read in the pamphlets I picked up and from my conversations with people in Tahrir and elsewhere, the main concerns are economic and about getting a government in place that can produce a job opportunities for everyone, though there's also plenty about Egyptian unity (between Christians and Muslims), about Democracy, etc.