Emese Benko - Tagebuch / Journal: September 2013

Sunday, September 8, 2013

06/09/13

Cairo. Friday means prayer and protest.
As we saw the snipers ready to shoot on the top of a building next to the street blocked by the security forces and I was thinking, ok, that was it, we are surrounded and they can start to shoot anytime without any warning or explanation, they have done this before and they will do it again - in this second, I understood something important about life. Something that cannot be put into words. And I was also thinking, even if they don't start to shoot now and I leave Egypt the next day, what about these protestors? They don't have a chance against the guns. Nobody has a chance against guns. And those two women crying at this protest because their sons got shot by the army at the Rabaa massacre - all they have left is to protest.
Yes, the second we saw the snipers ready to shoot, I think I understood what is going on in Egypt and what all these protests are about.

05/09/13

Cairo.

30/08/13

Friday, protest day again. We are getting tired of this military show everywhere. A lot of streets are blocked, you can't move at all. But, of course, if you run a dictatorship, you block everything.

29/08/13

Ahmed, my husband.

The cat and the curfew
It's only a picture of a cat here around the corner. But there's a story to it.
Have fooled my husband tonight, told him that I have to buy nailpolish really urgently but I actually wanted to see how the Egyptian version of a curfew looks like. So, until we waited for our dinner (because I got hungry too, accidentally where there would be a checkpoint in about 20 minutes, it was close to 9 pm when the curfew starts), have watched the Egyptian comedy. I thought curfew means that everybody disappears from the streets. In this case, it looked like a traffic jam. Some bored neighbors hoping for action tried to help the guys with the guns telling them which cars they should stop to be checked. Heading home on the blocked empty street (which was nice because we were walking in the middle of the street and there were no cars that wanted to kill us), we found one of the most important check points in Cairo on our corner. That's because General Sisi lives a few streets away. There were also a wedding party waiting at the checkpoint, with the guests singing on the top of the cars. After some quarreling, the soldiers let the wedding people through but blocked the way right after that, not even the very quick ones managed to get through. After a few minutes, there was a lot of agitation, didn't understand why and anyway, I was thinking that I would like to eat some chocolate too. It was, in fact, general Sisi with all his bodyguards driving through really fast, with all the soldiers really nervous that something could happen. But nothing happened. I was able to take my photos of the check point only from the our bedroom window later on. Because this is not a joke, you know. If I shoot, they shoot too. So, I took only this pic with the phone of the cat with the checkpoint in the background.
Forgot to buy nailpolish, though.

28/08/13

At the end our street, El Andalos. Former dictator Mubarak had his apartment a bit further away. In the meantime, he is out of jail. A part of the Egyptian comedy.

26/08/13

Cairo, Tahrir Square. The tents are still there. These people are not protestors, on the contrary, they seem to have an agreement with the police. The police lets them make illegal money (for example, these people are asking for money from drivers that want to park their cars in the Tahrir Square area) because they are "protecting" the square from being "invaded" by the real protestors. The whole area is surrounded by tanks anyway.