Matthew Davis lived on Mercer Island from 1998 to 2001. He attended West Mercer Elementary and Islander Middle School. The family lived on First Hill, and moved to Leavenworth where he attended Cascade High School. Matthew is 21 years old now, and recently experienced the revolution in Egypt first hand.
Q: First off, why were you in Cairo?.
A: “I was in Cairo for four and a half months roughly, studying Arabic at the American University in Cairo (AUC). I chose Cairo as opposed to Fes, Damascus or Dubai for many reasons. The first was the dialect. While there is no standard for spoken Arabic as there is for written Arabic, Egyptian Arabic is as close as you can get because it’s understood everywhere in the Arab World because of influence in the media. Another reason is that Egypt is a moderate Arab country. Religion plays an important role in society for both Muslims and Christians, but it’s not enforced in the legal system like in Saudi Arabia. Also, the large Christian minority (ten percent) living in a Muslim country was an aspect of Egyptian society that I was very curious about.”
Q: Your Mother also said you were staying with an Egyptian family. How did you come to know them? Do they have a son/daughter your age that you had some connection to?
A: “While in Egypt, I lived in the AUC dorms for most of the time. However, I did stay with two Egyptian families while I was there. The first was that of my roommate, Mohamad. During Eid Al-Adhaa, one of the most important Islamic holidays, we went down to his village near Aswan in the south together and I stayed with his family. They were very hospitable. Anytime I sat down, I was welcomed with a glass of tea and a pillow to rest my back on.
“None of the people in the village spoke very good English apart from Mohamad. The local dialect was also quite different from what I was used to, but I managed to communicate just fine. At night, all of the men would sit outside chatting while smoking shisha (a waterpipe) and drinking tea. As a foreigner, everybody in the village was very curious about me. One night, I got to sit with a group of the village elders drinking tea and talking about all sorts of things for hours. It was a really great opportunity to see Egypt in a way that few foreigners are able to.”
“In the middle of the first week of the revolution, the police officers disguised as thugs were looting in upper-class neighborhoods trying to intimidate people. The regime was either paying them or blackmailing them into doing this so that the situation would seem worse to both the Egyptian people and the West in hopes that either party or both would give support to Mubarak.”
“Since my roommates and I lived in an upper-class neighborhood, we decided it would be best to leave. Our friend Mustafa’s family heard about our situation and offered to let us stay at their apartment above a hospital in El Manial district. That area experienced the worst looting early on, and then a very strong community guard militia was formed to keep the streets safe at night, not to mention the family’s flat’s location above a hospital, which was well guarded and on an island with only two bridges on either side of the river and seemed a strong night watch. So we walked along the Nile past all of the very well guarded foreign embassies (US, UK, Italy all in a row) and then crossed the Abbas Bridge over to El Manial where we stayed for two nights. When we arrived, we were welcomed with a big plate of ‘mahshi’ (vegetables stuffed with rice and meat) along with hotdogs and french fries which I took as a kind attempt to accommodate our Western palates and appreciated after a day of protesting and a long walk.”
Q: What was your first clue that something profound was about to happen?
A: “My first clue should have been hearing about the revolution in Tunisia, but I never thought it would spread around the entire Middle East like it has. I wasn’t in Egypt at the time, but rather spending my winter break traveling around Greece and Turkey. Perhaps if I had been in Egypt, I would have seen the signs more clearly. My first learning of protests in Egypt was when I stepped off the plane and called my roommate. ‘There are huge protests in Tahrir,’ she told me.”
Q: “Were you in Tahrir Square with the protesters? What did you witness?”
A: “As soon as I got back from the airport and put my stuff down in my apartment, I headed out to Tahrir Square to meet my roommate who was there with her boyfriend. She said it was pretty calm and that I should come check it out. I arrived a block away from the square at half past midnight on the 25th of January. The cab stopped under the October Bridge, about two blocks from the square. I stepped out of my cab and my eyes started to burn from the tear gas wafting from Tahrir Square. The police had just gassed the sleeping protesters camped out in the square. People were flooding out of the square. I could hear guns and tear gas canisters being fired in the square proper. Then people started to run. I started to run in the same direction with them. As soon as I found a calm place, I tried to calm my roommate, Tamera, but cell phone service was cut off. I had no way of contacting anyone.
“The 28th was when the revolution really started. The 26th and 27th saw some protests, but they were small and broken up quickly with tear gas. My roommates and I all got up early to go to the Friday prayer at a mosque in Giza with Mustafa, his mother and brother and our Egyptian friend Dina. But this was not just any mosque or Friday prayer. Mohammad El Baradei, one of the most prominent opposition leaders in Egypt, was at this mosque and he was about to lead a march to Tahrir Square in protest of the Mubarak regime. This was happening all over the city, but Mustafa chose to stick with Baradei because the media coverage around him would prevent the police from going too far.
“As soon as the prayer ended, the chants started. The police started firing water hoses at the crowd from fire trucks outside the mosque. This split the crowd into two groups heading in opposite directions. El Baradei was with the other group.
“Everything was fine after we got away from the police. The chants started up again and we marched down a wide avenue between Cairo University and the Giza Zoo. It was very peaceful. Egyptian flags were being waved out of pride and hope for the country and its future. This didn’t last long though. The police were waiting for us at the next intersection. A tear gas canister landed a meter away from me. Our group huddled together to try and wait until it passed, but it was impossible to breathe. Our faces were burning underneath our scarves and gas masks. I wanted to cough up everything in my lungs, but still had to breathe. We couldn’t take it and we broke, stumbling away choking and hacking up the gas. Dina got lost in the chaos. One of my roommates, Amanda, had asthma and she couldn’t take the gas, so I had to help her over the 12-foot-high-wall into the university to find a place to breathe.
“Then we made our way over to the Faculty of Engineering. Mustafa’s mom works at the university, so she was able to get in and buy some pepsi to pour on our faces to stop the burning. Luckily Dina was able to catch up with us there. My other roommate, Tamera, was on the verge of tears, real tears, not just from the tear gas. We did our best to comfort her.
“The next plan was to escape the street, which was bordered on each side by high walls protecting the university and the zoo with riot police at both ends. However, a group of 20 or so men were able to break open the gates to the zoo and we went in to seek some safety. Surprisingly, the zoo was quite busy, not just with protesters but with actual families with young children who went to the zoo seeking a day of family-friendly fun. Did these people not know about the planned demonstrations, or did they think the zoo would be a safe place to spend the day? I will never know. We stocked up on Pepsi for the day ahead and then exited the zoo and walked up Charles De Gaulle Street, which was calm, trying to get somewhere.
“We stopped by the Nile for a break, and could see smoke coming from somewhere near Tahrir Square. Cell phone service was down everywhere, so we had no clue what was going on in the rest of the city. Our imaginations started to go wild. We all feared for the safety of whoever was facing the police there and also for the safety of the Egyptian Museum and the history inside it.
“We finally got to Galaa Square in Doqqi (about a mile away from our apartment) to find that the police there had switched sides and started helping the protesters. There were people on top of police vehicles chanting and waving Egyptian flags. I saw an older lady on her balcony watching the protesters and crying. She’s probably never seen freedom of speech like this before in her life. One teenage guy started smashing an electric traffic signal, but a huge group of people went up to him and told him to stop. ‘This isn’t Mubarak’s anymore. It’s ours. Don’t destroy it.’ In the minds of the people, they weren’t just overthrowing an oppressive ruler, but rather they were retaking their country which Mubarak had stolen. We stayed in Galaa for a while, and watched as crowds of protesters came in from all of the neighborhoods West of the Nile; Harem (in Arabic, it means Pyramids, not a brothel), Giza, Mohandiseen and Agouza. The square was filled with chants. However the tone and mood of these chants were much lighter and cheerier. One chant consisted of one line, followed by three claps then another line and three more claps. It reminded me of something high school cheerleaders would chant. One chant sticks out in my mind for it’s sheer humor like the following:
“Ya Gamal! Ya Mubarak! As-Sayaarah fii intiZaarak!”
“Hey Gamal! Hey Mubarak! You ride is waiting outside!” (It rhymes in Arabic.)
“Then we headed over to Tahrir Square. Mustafa’s mom and brother stayed behind in Galaa. As soon as the square came into view, tear gas came out again. It was so crowded that the four of us just had to huddle together and try not to get separated as the crowd of people fleeing the Square pushed us in every direction. We had no control over where we were going. I saw a guy being carried away from the square. I don’t know if he was still alive or not. I don’t think he made it.
“Then more gas came and we had to flee down to the Corniche (the street on the Nile). Police vehicles were driving by firing bullets. Rubber or live, I don’t know. We didn’t want to find out. We hid in the Nile Ritz-Carlton, which was under-construction and we were safe there for a while. We watched the police vans drive by. The last one was riding just rails after hitting a rock in the road and blowing out its front tires. It was spitting sparks and then crashed on the side of the road. Protesters rushed over and started throwing more rocks at it before the police inside could fire any gas. The police inside gave up and switched sides. Then the van was set on fire to prevent it from ever being used against the Egyptian people again. We would have left, but on the other end of the street, the National Democratic Party headquarters was burning too. We were trapped. We waited in the shell of a hotel until things were calm enough to leave.
“Eventually, we made our way over to Tahrir Square, which by then had come under civilian control. We arrived just as the army did, with tanks and all. The crowds of protesters went wild when they saw the tanks driving buy. Then we went up to a safe rooftop to watch everything from above. After a few hours, the tanks moved over to the end of the square near the old AUC campus (I don’t go to school there and never did). The police were still guarding the Ministry of the Interior which controls the police. The police were firing on the tanks. And then a soldier would go over and talk to them. Then the police would fire again and the army guys would talk to them again. Repeat ad nauseum.
“There were some Egyptian guys up on the roof with us. They were throwing stuff at the police who then reacted and gassed the entire building. It sucked, but it wasn’t that bad. We closed the doors to the hotel whose lobby we were watching AlJazeera in. After a few hours more of watching crazy police firing at tanks, we stared walking back to our apartment in Doqqi.
Q: What was the mood of the crowds during the protests and after Mubarak stepped down?
A: “I’m sad to say that I wasn’t in Egypt after Mubarak stepped down. I would have loved to see the reaction on the people’s faces in Tahrir Square when they got the news from Aljazeera which was reportedly playing on a huge screen set up on the side of a building. However, my exchange agreement with UW was canceled in light of the State Department’s announcement of a travel warning for Egypt, which makes it very difficult to transfer college credit from any university in a country with a travel warning. So I took a US Embassy emergency evacuation flight to ‘a European safehaven.’ Beyond that, I didn’t know where the flight was going to take me. I was only informed that my destination was Istanbul after I had gotten through security.
“While I was in Egypt, the mood changed quite a lot as the events unfolded. The first day of the protests, January 25th, the mood was one of anger, hence the name Yom El-Ghadab or Day of Anger. Police cars were being burnt and the chants had a rhythm reminiscent of a war drum. At the same time, fear also made an appearance: A fear of the regime’s retribution if the Mubarak stayed in power. When one person started to run, the whole crowd followed suit. People were on edge and uncertain of what was to come. January 27th, the Friday of Anger or Guma’ Al-Ghadab, was actually not that angry, at least where I was.
Q: Do you think that democratic elections will be held in Egypt soon? Who do you favor to be the next leader of the country?
A: “I think there will be democratic elections in Egypt within the next 12 months. This was the estimate given by Muhammad El Baradei, a prominent opposition leader in Egypt, in an interview with AlJazeera right after Mubarak stepped down. I think that the first step is to create an interim government to administer the elections and start undoing the damage that was done during the Mubarak regime and the revolution.
“I don’t feel like my opinions about who should rule Egypt matter at all. That’s for the Egyptian people to decide, not for foreigners. This is their chance to have their own democracy. Nevertheless, I feel that El Baradei is the best qualified candidate for president of the new Egypt because he has lived outside of Egypt and worked in the UN, which gives him a perspective of how successful democracies function both politically and socially. Not to mention his strong anti-nuclear weapons stance, which is something I agree with and think would be beneficial in the region.
Q: Your mother, Cynthia, said you plan to return to Cairo after you graduate from UW. What will you do there for work? Will you stay with your host family again or get your own place? Do you miss the United States?
A: “I would most likely get my own place. One of my old roommates is planning to return to Egypt as well, so it is likely that we could live together. I’m thinking of teaching at a private school, either English or social studies of some sort. I’m also going to apply for a fellowship to study Arabic in Cairo.
“After living abroad for so long, you start to realize that people from different cultures have more commonalities than differences. For that reason, I’d say I don’t miss the US so much as I miss people and things that are in the US. I miss my family and friends: Blanca, Val and Brett. Of course, coming from the Seattle area, I miss the coffee from my favorite cafés: Trabant and Bauhaus. But more than anything, I miss being in the same country for more than four months.”
