evacuation

Where do I even begin? As we took Austrian Air out of Sharm El-Sheik, Dory commented that we just couldn't put this into narrative; we didn't know what came first and what came second. I still feel that way, but I also really strongly feel that I won't begin to feel better until I can figure out what this all means, so I need to try... bear with me.

My version of events

Half of our group was stranded in the Sinai during the revolution, and we jokingly named ourselves the Dahab Contingent, after the chill-out beach town we were stuck in, and the fact that the phone calls we received from Study Abroad always discussed an indefinite “contingency plan” that usually involved us remaining in limbo for one more day in a beach town. Our story is stressful but uninteresting: being stuck in a beach town with a lot of beach bums while Cairo convulsed was insanely frustrating; tensions ran high, and we all dealt with it by weirdly having dance parties and ridiculous sessions of snorkeling or laying on the beach while on edge waiting for the ringtone of our phones to hear what study abroad or our program coordinator would say. Cellphone networks in Cairo were down, so I couldn't get through to my parents, who were visiting me and scheduled to leave on Friday. Obviously, this just made me even more out of my mind with worry, but I finally got through to them on Saturday before they left on one of the last scheduled flights out of Cairo. Meanwhile, we passed the nights at a bar that had a big TV screening al-Jazeera English, worrying and speculating constantly on what every little thing meant: Clinton's initial statement, Mubarak's completely out-of-touch speech, the jailbreaks that happened across the country, El-Baradei's return... the government cut out internet late Thursday night. I've realized that I will never again say a bad word against Facebook or Twitter; while in the States they seen inane, in Egypt and the Middle East, they play crucial, crucial roles in organizing people and informing them when other outlets completely fail.

We were evacuated from Sharm El-Sheikh, which is apparently to Russians what Cancun is to Americans. After seeing a Russian man in a Fresh Prince of Bel-Air windbreaker bribe a policeman to cut in security in front of us, I became insanely prejudiced against the entire country and the ridiculous outfits I saw. Observation about crises: when you can't deal with the larger situation, you can deal with particular minute details and hate the hell out of them to take out all your frustrations. Russians, I'm sorry, but you were it.

Dory didn't have a passport; she lost it and it was supposed to be delivered to the Embassy on the day we were evacuated from Sharm. She literally showed up to the airport for a flight to Vienna with a photocopy of her passport, and explained repeatedly that her passport was in Cairo, and Cairo was unreachable. After two hours hanging out with Colonel Salem of Customs and a nice man from Austrian Air, we finally, finally got her through. I still can't believe we got somebody with a passport photocopy onto two international flights. Being in Vienna was surreal; being in Paris more so. We arrived on Sunday night at midnight.

Other people's events

The other nine people on our program (seven students, our program coordinator, and our professor) were in Cairo. Their version of events, as I've heard it from them yesterday when they finally, finally arrived in Paris, is astounding. They went out several times to watch the protests; I know that sounds reckless and stupid from the news coverage, but they reported that protests were actually very peaceful, and as hard as it is to believe, in between frantic periods, protests involve a lot of downtime. Their eyes watered from lingering tear gas in the air, and they were shown shell casings and tear gas canisters printed with “Made in the USA”, but protesters also shared bread and water with them, stopped to chat with them, and very frankly, told them when to run.

Our neighborhood was being boarded up; our supermarket had to obey the new curfew and there was a line of people waiting to get in so they could stock up on food before curfew fell. The last night in Cairo before they went to the airport, our security guards wouldn't let them leave the building. Looting had begun, so our neighborhood formed an impromptu militia, strung chains across the street to keep cars from passing through, and patrolled the streets with sticks, horsewhips (?!), and pipes. The Cairo 9 stayed inside watching Al-Jazeera; apparently protesters caught the few people who vandalized the Egyptian Museum and tied them up; the military and the protesters together formed a ring around the museum to secure it.

They got to the airport the next day seven hours before their flight to Paris, and it was complete chaos. Some of them told me that people couldn't get to their luggage that was five feet from them; when they made it through security, there was apparently piles of luggage people had simply abandoned. To get through, one of them crawled through the luggage x-ray machine; they also had to pass luggage over their heads and over a metal barrier, then hop the barrier themselves. Security and screening was nonexistent; in the mayhem, they lost one of the suitcases (it's a miracle that they didn't lose more!) Unsurprisingly, they missed their flight, and spent the night in the airport. By the next day, the State Department had decided to evacuate the 90,000 Americans in Egypt.

The Embassy only allows one suitcase per person; the Cairo 9 had already packed one suitcase for each of us, making the decision to leave certain belongings behind in our apartments. Now that the amount of luggage was being halved, they selflessly unpacked everything, and repacked, giving all of us half a suitcase. In Dahab, we were all told to make emergency lists of our most important belongings; to get more things out, all of them wore our sweaters, extra pairs of pants, multiple scarves, and hats.

Food wasn't being trucked into the airport, so the prices at airport cafes shot up. While they were first on a supposed list to be evacuated, they arrived at the terminal to be told there was no list, so I think they were on the fourth plane out to Athens. After spending the night in Athens, they finally arrived here, where we were waiting with chocolate crossaints we stole from our hotel's breakfast parlor.

This day has been just as surreal as the past ones; yesterday, we were taken shopping for coats since none of us brought any, but we haven't seen much of Paris besides our hotel and the University's center. Everyone at the Center and back at the Study Abroad office has been amazing and fantastic and incredible, and some of them I know didn't sleep for two to three days getting us out of Egypt. But it's also hard to adjust to Paris, as wonderful a city as it is. I think all of us responded to the stress and constant crisis mode we had been in by focusing on small things. We all complained constantly about things that seem ridiculous to other people: where was the hotel's conditioner? Why is Paris so cold?

We also have all developed hoarding tendencies when it comes to food; I don't know entirely why since we were never deprived of any in Dahab, but hearing about food shortages and telling our friends in Cairo to take our food must have made us really anxious, because we couldn't stop taking the little jams and yogurts our hotel kindly gave us for breakfast.

It's also completely surreal to see what belongings we have left. After surviving off of the backpack and small bag I packed for the weekend, it seems like the world to have more than one pair of pants. My half-suitcase of belongings is random, but treasured; I'm so, so happy to have what I have, especially the ludicrous: my Twins hat made it out of Cairo on the evacuation flight. Samira insisted that Phoebe wear it, and apparently several people wore my scarves. I have a fraction of what I came to Cairo with, and every now and then, I get so sad when I think of what was left behind, but I can also marvel at what I have: a pair of boots! My North Face vest! My favorite green shirt!

We spent the entire day telling each other our stories, just constantly talking, loudly and hurriedly. I think it's because we need to tell one another these stories to keep them alive as they already fade; the Parisian environment is not conducive to remembering the chaotic liveliness of Cairo, or even of the hour-by-hour way we lived these past few days. I'm also awed listening to the Cairo 9's stories; as stressful as we found our experience, it is absolutely nothing compared to what they had to do. We're so, so relieved to be together, and our groupthink tendencies are even stronger now, as our poor waitress found out at dinner when we showed up and requested a table for 18.

We're not totally okay yet, but we're safe, sound, and have enough. I think until we figure out what this experience has meant to us, it's difficult to move on, and I still can't puzzle out what this has meant to me, although I can concretely explain what I lost and what I gained. It's probably even harder as we mourn the new routines we had been slowly building in Egypt, and all the people we had met who are hopefully safe, but perhaps out on the streets with millions of other Egyptians. All I know is, I can't stop obsessively following what's happening in Egypt, I have so much respect for the Egyptian people and the civil organizations they've formed in the wake of anarchy, and hopefully as a group we can find a larger moral to our own personal evacuation so we can digest this and build a new month in Paris. We'll see how this goes.