09:00
We get the news that they are searching for foreigners house by house as soon as we turn on the computer. Hotels get stormed by militias, some journalists got stabbed, others “kidnapped”. As for the egyptians, most of the people we know seem to be taken. Mubarak seems back on track. We get ready to spend the day at home, talk quietly when speaking in english, and hide somhow in case someone comes searching.
O. tells me “you remember the phone on the barracks, the mobile i found on the barracks, the mobile i found this morning, you remember his mother was calling and i did not want to answer because she would fear for her child in vain”. “I remember, yes”. “Well he was the first death yesterday”.
we still don’t know what to do with N.’s injury and we can’t trust hospitals here. we left tahrir this morning around 7 – 8 to lay her in the house, any doctor’s expertise is welcome cause we can’t go out now. soldiers and milias and police, they are all after foreigners and there are check points everywhere (we’re behind Tahrir). N. insists on going back to Tahriri, even crawling.
200 egyptian puonds (20 dollars more or less) is the price to protest for Mubarack, i got the confirm from several “pro-mubaraks” arrested yesterday. But Prime Minister Ahmad Shafiq appeared on tv right now, apologizing for what happened and swearing on god, his family and his children that marches for mubarak are genuine and no one is being paid. This is the government that western countries insist on recognizing.
14:00
here we sit, getting news every half hour about people we know being arrested in areas under army control. we hide here, two activists, one injured, and then there is the foreigner, me. It’s sheer paranoia, and we are running out of bread and beer. i hear shots and tank noises from Tahrir. We’d feel much safer if we were there. A new appeal to come protest was dispatched, but I doubth anyone will ever reach Tahrir.
on the bright side, sorry for the personal parenthesis, i was finally able to eat, sleep, go to the toilet and above all take my nuclear shoes off after two days on the run
.
my joints, especially the legs, are so hurting after the siege, the running and the cold, that i can hardly walk i wonder how are women and children coping?!? …- it’s almost ONE week they are there. such brave people.
16:00
O. finally found a doctor who came to see N.’s injure, he promessed he’ll come back with some portable x-ray and cast to bandage the leg. N., instead, still wants to crawl back to Tahrir and asks every two minutes “shall we go now?”
17:00
I just wish I could get out of here and upload all my footage from tonight’s attack, yalla soldiers get out of the damn street
More lies piling on the egyptian revolution. Tahrir empier and emptier. A new appeal for a million march tomorrow has been spread, but spirits are low and exaustion – and a sense of betraied dignity – burdens all faces. “Where are all our friends, weren’t we all revolutioneers last week”, a friend screams. But we are all so stuck
Suleyman plays it dirtier than Mubarak. Now he’s proposing himself as the man of reform on the path to freedom. freedom my ass. But it’s so hard for a square to keep together once they start breaking it with compromises. And as people is exausted, old fears come back. People are asking me not to take picture of their faces. They are not so sure anymore they’ll get rid of Mubarak’s terror.
12:00
Yesterday’s battle seems three days ago.
They say armoured vehicles are entering Tahrir but we can’t hear anything of the sort. Our friends there say everything peaceful. As for us, not peaceful. Sitting behind the square without any possibility to get down (two activists, one injured, one palestinian refugee, one foreign journalist, aha) is a damn torture. N.’s leg is getting more and more swollen. i’m concerned, but I don’t want to scare her.
12:30
almost one million down in Tahrir square right now. Take this, Hosni Mubarak
“One million, one million, one million, one million, the revolution goes on” we cry behind closed windows where we still hide like rats. it feels like hundreds of thousads of people came to deliver us too. Tomorrow we will all be free.
We cry and laugh in the dark laying next to each other on the pavement. tomorrow is another million march day. we feel such a frustration at being so close and so closed. then, relief. 24 hours under siege and attack waiting for supporters who seemed to never come…and in the moment of biggest fear, when everybody is being witchhunted and attacked in the streets, here they come in thousands and thousands. Once again, hail to egyptian courage.
the check points behind Tahrir, which is all i can see now, look happy and quiet – neighbours lit fires while guarding buildings, for the first time in years they socialize smoking to gether all night and playing soccer. V…ice-President Omar Suleyman attacked this new “fashon” of egyptians socializing, saying it’s very unhealthy for them and it has to stop. Take this, Omar Suleyman. We hear the voices from the square – thousands of voices. And not a single bullet. We were especting a massacre for tonight….instead they came in thousand to celebrate in Tahrir. Take this, Hosni Mubarak.
in the darkness i hear my two companions talk quietly and hug each other talking about revolution and other things i can’t understand. it was a difficult day, the first without street life and alarms and dangers and without “the others”, the thousands of others. every day is impossible to guess what next, in this endless egyptian revolution. yesterday we were going to be slaughtered, today Tahrir was abandoned by everybody, tonight they all came down again from everywhere. And tomorrow they will all be free.
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