AN AMERICAN’S FLIGHT FROM EGYPT
By NORMAN R. SMITH
Special to The Advance
Editor’s note: Norman R. Smith, who served as Wagner College president from 1988 to 2002, has been working on a project in Egypt for the last nine months. In this first-person account, he shares details of his narrow escape from the escalating violence in Cairo to his home in Philadelphia.
I’ve just returned from the Egypt revolution, having managed to barely get on one of the last planes to leave Cairo Airport this past Saturday.
My decision to leave, after nearly a year’s work on creating a major new American international university on the Egyptian Mediterranean, was in reaction to an intensifying sense of peril that had been worsening each day since last Wednesday: A national holiday to honor Egyptian police that had instead been a day of violent protests in the heart of Cairo where the civilian population chose instead to clash with police on the day established to honor them.
The day before the police holiday had been remarkably calm and no one with whom I had been talking seemed to expect that anything remarkable would be happening. There was some talk that Egypt was about to become the next Tunisia where, a few weeks earlier, public protestors had successfully ousted their long ruling president who fled the country. But most were declaring that Egypt was different from Tunisia and such a protest could never occur because of the massive police state presence in Egypt.
To the contrary, the large turnout stunned the conventional wisdom and launched a government reaction that closed down Egypt. An immediate curfew was put into effect from dusk to dawn that many protestors ignored.
All Internet access was disabled. The success of the Tunisian overthrow was credited in large part to the way organizers were able to orchestrate mass participation through Facebook and Twitter. If that were true, it wasn’t going to be possible in Egypt. In addition to the Internet, all cell phones were turned off. And many television stations were closed down.
The following day, Thursday, I awakened to what seemed like a quiet morning leading me to believe the one-day protest was over and everyone was returning back to their work week routine, which I did as well. As I drove the streets to my office that morning, I didn’t run across anything unusual — except a lot less traffic than is typical.
The only difference I did note that morning was the crippling effect of having all technology — and therefore all information — closed down. We really didn’t know what was going on and the quiet began to feel like the eye of a hurricane. Like eyesight, the benefits of cell phones, BlackBerrys and the Internet is felt the most profoundly when it is taken away.
By mid-day, the crowds had returned, but in larger numbers. The massive turnout the day before seemed to inspire side-liners to join in on what they now believed was an opportunity to repeat what had happened in Tunisia.
The time had come and the opportunity was now.
ANTI-MUBAREK SENTIMENT
My first six months in Egypt gave me no clue that so much anger existed toward Mubarek who had been president for over 30 years, having taken over from Anwar Sadat when he was assassinated in 1981. No one talked that much about the government or about their unhappiness with it.
I would later learn that their reticence was fear of being arrested. Mubarek had built a massive army of police who were everywhere in the daily lives of Egyptians. There was no freedom of speech when it came to speaking out against the government.
I didn’t know that. I assumed silence was consent, and I was wrong.
I must admit that many things about Egypt had been bothering me since I arrived nine months ago. What jumped out the most was the omnipresent poverty throughout the City of Cairo, a massive metropolis of over 20 million people.
Since 1960, the Egyptian population has nearly tripled from 25 million to almost 75 million. Half of that population is aged 15 to 25, a group characterized as ambitious and “hungry.” Three-quarters of this age group use the Internet, which has greatly stimulated literacy in English among them.
Literacy in general has greatly improved since 1960 when only 25 percent of the population had been considered literate. Today, that rate is 72 percent with the expectation that it will grow to over 90 percent by the end of the decade.
I was surprised to see how English seems to prevail over Arabic in Cairo. The signage in all retailing stores and advertisements presents English above and larger than Arabic — even in neighborhoods where tourism is minimal. Road signage emphasizes English and most highway billboard ads are in English. Movie houses showing American features present those movies in English without Arabic subtitles.
The most popular eateries are American chain restaurants like Chili’s, Ruby Tuesday and, of course, Starbucks, McDonald’s and Burger King. Tens of thousands of Egyptians, mostly young and dressed in western fashions, flock to the CityStars Mall in Cairo which rivals, if not eclipses, the most impressive of American indoor shopping malls with eight stories of mall shopping, each floor larger than a typical American shopping mall.
Employers very much reinforce the phenomenon virtually requiring all young hires to be fluent in English. Egypt is one of the largest “outsourcing” countries in the world, an industry now valued at $13 billion annually, more than North America. Additionally, Egypt’s largest industry is tourism and anyone working in that industry must speak English.
Any family with children and financial wherewithal spends heavily on education. The public schools are considered to be overcrowded and substandard, so private international schools are booming. In Cairo, there are two American international schools full to capacity, a British international school, a Canadian, Scandinavian and just about every other major economic country is also represented, with more such international schools under construction.
Egyptian universities, public and private, graduate over a third of a million students annually, the third largest rate in the region. While 95 percent of those graduates come from the public universities, the private international universities are all full with waiting lists.
POVERTY FUELS UNREST
The overwhelming majority of Egyptians are poor. Two dollars a day is the average living wage and there has been much unhappiness with how Mubarek, 30 years later, has done little to improve the conditions for the majority.
And that is what has been festering for some time, especially among the half of the population under 30 who want a better quality of life and are seeing, through the Internet, what is available elsewhere.
The first time I saw the potential for the uprising was in November during the national elections. Astonishingly, the entire Parliamentary opposition lost all of their seats, nearly 100. The Muslim Brotherhood party is an Islamic extremist group that has a notable following, especially in Alexandria.
That all of their seats could be lost in one election didn’t seem plausible, and cries of voter fraud and government corruption were starting to be heard. The Mubarek government would now have no opposition party in Parliament and that seemed like a guarantee of no improvements on what had been happening in Egypt for over three decades.
Then, in January, the hotbed of the Muslim Brotherhood, Alexandria, experienced a bombing of a Catholic church there that set the stage for continued unrest. Shortly thereafter, Lebanon’s government disassembled. And, of course, the straw that broke the camel’s back and/or launched the past week in Egypt was the downfall of the Tunisian government. Egypt and Tunisia share the unenviable status of being among the poorest of Arab countries. They don’t have the oil wealth of Dubai, Qatar, Kuwait and the Emirates. Most of Egypt’s income is derived from tourism, which bodes ominous for Egypt looking forward.
At any rate, Tunisia’s successful ousting of their long-term president gave the Egyptian oppressed the courage to stand up against the police state they had hated for decades. And stand up they have been doing.
By Friday night, I had been without telephone communication for nearly three days, within Egypt or out of it with the exception, which I hadn’t known, of Skype. For some reason, even with all Internet and telephone connections out, Skype was working for those who thought to give it a try. I had not been among those assuming that if the Internet was closed down, that would include Skype. Luckily, I came across another American who told me he had just been talking to his wife in the U.S.
I rushed to my laptop and, sure enough, I, too, was able to get through to my wife and others, all of whom were able to bring me up to date with what I wasn’t able to get within Egypt.
“Get out of there as fast as you can” was the unanimous chorus from everyone I could Skype. As they recounted what they were witnessing from media reports, I was pretty readily convinced that the worst was yet to come and that I should depart before I wouldn’t be able to depart.
TRAPPED IN CAIRO
“Getting out” was easier said than done. I had learned that the Cairo airport was surrounded by military checkpoints and that access to the inner airport grounds was only possible by presenting a printed ticket. I didn’t even have a reservation, much more a ticket. Through Skype, my wife could make a reservation for me, but without cell phones or Internet, I had no way of getting a hard copy of the reservation to show the security checkpoints around the airport perimeter.
I began to wander about the hotel where I had been residing for most of the past year reporting to all ex-pats like myself that Skype was working. I was telling everyone I had a reservation to fly out but couldn’t print it out for my ticket into the airport.
Then, miracle of miracles, the hotel manager whispered to me that he had access to a secret Internet connection that I was welcome to use for a few minutes. I asked no further questions, including why he hadn’t made that known to his guests trying to get out. Instead, I connected to my airline reservation, printed out the ticket and rushed to pack.
I arrived at Cairo Airport at 8 a.m. Saturday, the earliest I could get there because of the curfew that had only been lifted an hour earlier permitting me to be on the roads to the airport.
Upon arrival, I saw that the board announcing flight departures had a lot of red CANCELED indicators. I noticed that all Delta airline flights had been canceled because Delta had shut down service leaving all their ticket holders stranded. Other airlines, American and European, had also canceled flights. Most of the flights still taking off were Arab airlines to other Arab countries.
I had feared that the American companies might cancel, so I had decided Friday night to book the EgyptAir flight to JFK Airport. If any airline had planes at Cairo Airport, EgyptAir seemed the most likely. I also chose EgyptAir because it was one of the few non-stop flights that Saturday and it was leaving at 10:30 a.m. The longer I stayed that day, the greater likelihood of cancelation, I surmised.
To my good fortune, there was no CANCELED next to my flight. But, instead there was a report of a four-hour delay. That meant a wait into the afternoon and near the curfew. The next five hours were nerve-wracking as more and more flights were being canceled and growing crowds of stranded passengers, mostly American, were gathering in the airport.
At about 1:30 p.m., I saw a massive EgyptAir 777 roll into my gate. The delay, it had turned out, was the result of snow at JFK that resulted in a late takeoff. Needless to say, the plane filled to capacity and we took off appearing to be the last plane of the day.
Landing Saturday night at JFK was one of the more stress-relieving experiences I could recall. By then, I had been up for over 24 hours and, for the first time, I felt safe.
Since Saturday, the situation in Egypt has continued to intensify and I have been unable to be in touch with anyone there.
PROJECT IN PERIL
What happens to the university I was creating is in doubt for sure. The project was chartered by President Mubarek himself and was being funded by some of his richest supporters, all of whom have lost over half of their substantial fortunes in the Egyptian stock market, which has crashed since last Wednesday.
If President Mubarek is ousted, I doubt that his successors will support the notion of a new American international university and the money that was to be spent on the undertaking will probably go instead to the poor who have been at the center of the revolution. So we will have to wait and see what really does happen.
As the American media has been reporting, Egypt and Lebanon have been the two most pro-Western Arab countries in the region. As Egypt borders Israel to the southwest and Lebanon to the northeast, if both countries become more Islamic extremist, Israel will have a major problem on its hands that most in Egypt believe will revert to another war.
If Mubarek was the tyrant that protestors are shouting, he was nevertheless abiding by the Camp David accords that made Egypt one of the few Arab countries in the region that had a relationship with Israel. All I can do now is await the outcome.
Americans don’t appreciate how good they have it, even in these difficult economic times. Having spent the past year in Egypt, where suffering is everywhere you look, it is wonderful to be home.