How did Mary's garden grow?

It's been far too long since my last post. I leave Cairo in five days, and then it's back to the US to start writing... a daunting, but exciting task. I have a couple thoughts about war/revolution and memorialization that I've been meaning to post, but while those are still in the works, here is my most recent entry from the Maadi Messenger. The April issue was on gardening, so I did a bio of one of my favorite former residents - Mary Stout.

As I have learned more and more about the history of Ma’adi, there are a few distinct figures who manage to emerge from the sources, and the more I read, the more I get a sense that I know them. Among Ma’adi’s strongest historical personalities is Mary Stout. She was a wife, a mother, an American, and a world traveler. More than anything, however, she has left a trail of sources that present her as Ma’adi’s consummate gardening expert.

In a town of gardens and gardeners, appropriately residing in Cairo’s garden city, Stout continues to be an authority on gardening in subtropical climates. Sir Robert Greg, chairman of the Egyptian Horticultural Society wrote of her, “Mrs. Stout is one of the pioneers of modern gardening in Egypt, and persons like myself, who had the privilege of visiting her garden at Maadi before and during the war, must remember with gratitude the wonderful display flowers, creepers and shrubs in that small earthly paradise on the edge of the desert that it then was.”

Greg is referring to the First World War here, and describing Stout’s home at a time when Ma’adi was on the verge of its own spring. After its founding in 1904, Ma’adi remained largely in the background of Cairo’s noteworthy places for nearly two decades. It developed gradually, and Mary and her husband Percy Wyfold Stout, were among its earliest residents. While they first purchased land in Ma’adi in 1910, it wasn’t until the 1920s, after the Ma’adi Sporting Club was built in 1921, that the town really began to bustle.

In those in-between years, Ma’adi was known for its villas, with their large gardens -- Stout’s being among the most reputable. The same year the club was built, Stout also began more publicly making a name for herself as a gardening expert. In 1921 she co-wrote a guide for gardening in Egypt with well-known British gardener Madeline Agar, most famous for designing the War Memorial Garden in Wimbledon, UK.

Greg described that initial volume as both a guide and a despair to Cairo’s gardeners. A despair, he explained, because “so few of us have been able to to reach the lofty standard not only preached but practiced by the gifted author and experienced gardener.”

Demand for Stout’s expertise was high. The garden in Egypt already figured prominently in the expatriate experience. Articles like “In an Egyptian Garden” compared the dynamics of gardening in Egypt to those in England. The author begins by stating, “An Egyptian garden has one great advantage over an English or German one—it is beautiful the whole year round.”

The article’s author, the sister of a botanist, goes on to describe the variety of flowers that bloom in Egypt over the course of a year. In January the garden is a “blaze of poinsettias,” which give way to the “purple glory of the bougainvillia, which pours a great cascade of bloom over the western verandah, and up to the very roof of the house.” By summer, the garden “gets its crowning glory, the great white magnolia.” And in the fall, “the passion flower is in full beauty, and the starry blossoms of the climbing Jessamine shine out a pale green mist of foliage.” These kinds of landscapes were common in Ma’adi, where residents were committed to cultivating the space around their new homes.

Stout followed up her initial handbook with a larger, more detailed volume in 1935, titled Gardening for Egypt and Allied Climates. The Egyptian Horticultural Society supported the production of this expanded work, and Stout, in turn, addressed the essentials of proper gardening in Cairo.

Gardening opened with ten “do not’s” for garden planning. They include “Do not make curved paths where straight ones are of more obvious use;” “Do not make a path end without any reason;” and “Do not overplant. The effect is as unrestful as an overfurnished house.” Of her ten points, perhaps the first was most significant, “Do not forget that the house and garden belong to each other, and that the garden is mostly seen from certain fixed points within the house.” The list, she concluded, could be summed up with three words: “Utility, Proportion, Unity.” Stout continually recommends designing a garden that ties flowery aesthetics to social uses.

As intertwined places, the home and the garden provided the setting for the interactions of everyday life, and a successful garden accounted for the people who would live and play within it. Stout repeatedly emphasized the importance of designing the garden with human interactions, especially the perspective of guests, in mind. For instance, “picturesque” flowers should not be planted too close to the house because they evoked the best effect when viewed from a greater distance. Likewise, seats were to be placed “in shelter, shade and privacy, where good views of the garden can be had.” Such locations offered an intimate setting for close, personal interaction, surrounded by foliage. She also accounts for entertainment, instructing readers to design their lawns with particular games in mind, having to be watered continuously to ensure they kept their green color.

With Ma’adi’s reputation from early on as a haven for gardeners, it is not so surprising that today it is home to some of the city’s most active environmental groups—the Tree Lover’s Association, and the Environmental Rangers. These organizations pour their energy into preserving the suburb’s identity as a garden on the edge of the desert. Their efforts continue the work that Stout began nearly a century earlier. For them, the suburb’s British roots are secondary to Maadi’s significance as symbol of Egypt’s natural resources richly cultivated.

Abu Simbel, life in a modern village

I am back in Egypt. After two and a half months in England, I returned to Um al-Dunya, where hopefully I can tie up some loose ends and then go home to the US. Before I could sit down and write about Cairo again, though, I left again! I returned last Friday, and by Sunday night I was back at the airport, this time to fly further south, to Aswan. I had never been to Upper Egypt before, and when Marty (my Um fi Masr) generously offered to take me along, I couldn’t resist.

I am currently writing from Daraw, a town near Aswan, where we’ve spent the last 24 hours, staying with a German nurse. Before arriving here, we were in the Nubian village of Abu Simbel, where we spent the previous two days.

The time in Abu Simbel was not like anything I have experienced. The homes are a series of rooms surrounding an open-air courtyard in the center. There is no sense of ‘my room’ or ‘your room’ -- the spaces are shared, and people sleep where the temperature best suits them.

We stayed with Marty’s friend Azza, whom she has known since first coming to Egypt nearly 30 years ago. Azza recently moved with her children from Cairo to Abu Simbel so that her four kids would grow up in a healthier environment and attend better schools. It is so different from Cairo -- so quiet, the air clean, and the social relations closely knit, as most people in the village are related in one way or another. The main activity of the day is sending the kids off to school at 7 a.m., and then feeding them when they return in the early afternoon.

It would at first appear that the place is wholly removed from some of the more burdensome elements of modernity. It is tempting to idealize it as an escape. No one has to run off and check their email. The very notion of a schedule is silly, and we were regularly teased for having some sort of plan.

The tell-tale signs that we are all part of the same, shrinking world exist there, however, just a bit below the surface. Everyone has a mobile phone, and each house has a television, equipped with a satellite dish. We went to one woman’s house, where after sitting on the floor and sifting through corn kernels, we went into the front room where we drank Sprite and watched a soap opera. The villagers in Abu Simbel strike a balance between the traditional and the modern.

Yet cell phones and satellite dishes are just the beginning of the village’s modern existence. If you wander the streets of Abu Simbel, it is difficult to get lost, because off of the streets are arranged in a perfect grid. Every few streets a large manhole cover peaks out from the dust, and you can tell that the road was once evenly paved, and has eroded into mostly dust over the years. The manholes are accompanied by a modern sewage and water pumping system -- so that the homes have running water.

The village exists in this orderly fashion because it was built by the government. This is the second Abu Simbel. The original village is now under water. It was relocated in the 1960s, after Nasser heightened the Aswan Dam. The government rebuilt villages, and with the assistance of UNESCO, moved the people to new homes north of the city. Families were then assigned to homes that corresponded with their size -- a small family receiving a smaller house, and so on. The village continues to exist, with the state’s permission, more closely tied to state intervention than quarters of Cairo populated mostly by squatters.

The transplantation of Abu Simbel and other Nubian villages transformed village life. Where their former homes, near the Sudanese border, were in green, vegetated areas, this new village was in the desert. The village was no longer self-sustaining, but more of a government housing project. To support their families, men left the village and found work in Cairo, Alexandria, or near the Red Sea. This added another modern element to village life as the family became a mobile entity -- moving between the village and urban centers, depending on the season, and communicating largely by mobile phone.

Azza’s husband works in Cairo for a tile-making company, where he runs errands. He calls his wife on her mobile probably five times a day, but only sees her every six weeks to two months. Similarly, I was woken up one night at 2 a.m. when Azza’s niece Samar got a call from her fiancé, who is in Hergada. They hope to get married in two years, when they have saved up enough money to build a house in Abu Simbel. The village is a place of women, children and old men, and life there thrives on ties provided by modern communication.

Are these couples so different from my aunt and uncle, who spent the last few years doing a ‘hitch’ with an oil company -- where he worked for a month in Pakistan, and then would return to the US for a month off, only to return back to Pakistan and start the routine over again. The income levels are night and day, yet the strain on the relationship, and the type of commitment formed because of the distance might not be all that different. Perhaps my aunt and Azza would find a lot to talk about. We think of the oil company ‘hitch’ as especially modern, with all of the air travel, and networks of global commercial connections implied. Yet this village life might be all the more modern, when one considers that the village’s very existence is based on the state’s construction of it. What does this say about our notion of what constitutes modernity? and what is required to have it?

The villagers have struck a different kind of balance between the modern and the traditional. In some ways they are more embedded into systems of modern state-craft than most Westerners. At the same time, however, their dress, diet, and household structure have remained the same for centuries. If they are able to carry out this negotiation, then what does that say about modernity and modernization?

Perhaps the most modern element at work here is the ability to choose between elements of modernity, and how they will be adapted to a life. To raise a family in a village, while income comes from the city; to use the mobile phone to ease the tensions of that dual-existence -- these are the kinds of negotiations and choices that go on in the modern village. These choices show a kind of sophistication that do not seem as apparent to wealthier consumers. We cannot see the satellite dishes and mobile phones as a betrayal of village life, but as a sophisticated adaptation of the modern to meet traditional purposes.

Intersecting revolutions -- this isn't the first time

It does not sound exactly logical that events in Egypt would affect a revolution in Hungary. What stretches the imagination all the further is that the same historical moment transformed life in Ma’adi.

The events of October 1956 show the historical precedent for the kind of interconnected change we watched unfold in the last two months. A dictator is overthrown in Tunisia, thus sparking the revolutionary zeal in Egypt, then the Gulf, Libya, and so on. Networks of information and ideas exchanged over the internet have undergirded much of that activity. So it appears that while the authoritarian regimes controlled so much of society, they could not stop the airwaves themselves, nor the movement of information through them.

Throughout the 1950s the Soviet Union was similarly unable to control information sent through the air. Where we have the internet today, Western powers used the radio to send pro-democracy messages into the Eastern Bloc.

For years Hungarians heard messages from Radio Free Europe, offering the hope of Western military support if they opposed the Soviet regime. The critical moment came on October 23 when students took to the streets of Budapest. Word of their protest quickly spread throughout the city, and soon more than 200,000 people had joined in.

They stormed parliament, demanding the end of the Soviet occupation, fair elections, and a free press. Two days later, Soviet tanks were upon them, opening fire and killing hundreds of demonstrators. The oppressive strong arm was not enough, though, as the revolution spread into the countryside. By October 28 the revolutionaries were swearing in a new government. In the span of a week the Hungarians had done the unthinkable -- toppled Soviet power, and established an independent government.

Then they waited, hopefully anticipating the Western military support that would confirm their revolution, and prevent the Soviets from returning for an evening bloodier offensive. However well-intentioned Western promises, neither they nor the Hungarian people anticipated Egypt would have its own revolutionary moment in the same week.

While Hungarians stormed parliament, Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal, taking a definitive stance against Western imperialism. Where the British and French might have otherwise aided Hungary, they set their focus on Egypt instead. On October 29, the day after Hungary established its new government, the British, French, and Israeli militaries invaded Egypt. One Hungarian leader later told Nasser, “You stole our revolution.”

Rather than successfully thwarting Soviet oppression, Hungary became a bloody example of what happened to states that balked at their control. By November 11, the Soviet Union once again controlled Hungary.

For Egypt, the moment was more transformational. When the British and French took action, they anticipated the United States’ support. After all, Nasser had shown his own Soviet-leaning sympathies, so it appeared that the Cold War balance would swing in their favor.

U.S. leadership saw it differently. Wanting to avoid Soviet involvement in the Middle East, they sided with Nasser, and demanded that the foreign armies withdraw. To Britain’s chagrin, the loss of the Suez Canal marked the their empire’s setting sun. After Egypt, British power continued to fall throughout Africa and Asia.

This post-colonial turn not only altered Egypt’s position on an international scale, but also deeply affected the personal lives of those living within Egypt at the time. Throughout the nineteenth and early-twentieth century, Egypt and especially the cities of Cairo and Alexandria had been cosmopolitan hubs. Foreigners from throughout the Mediterranean, Near East, and Europe made homes for themselves there.

Ma’adi was a product of Cairo’s cosmopolitan past. In addition to the Egyptians and Britons living there, its residents hailed from Italy, Greece, Germany, France, Austria, and throughout the Levant. While these various nationalities appear to have coexisted fairly harmoniously in peacetime, their neighborly ties were quickly threatened during periods of global conflict. During the first and second World Wars, for instance, Ma’adi residents saw the homes of Italian and German neighbors quickly become “enemy property.”

So when Britain, France and Israel threatened Egypt, Nasser turned his eye on the British, French and Jewish populations within his borders. He ordered the repatriation of all British and French nationals -- some of whom had lived in Egypt for centuries. The Jewish population was not ordered to leave, but was increasingly targeted by oppressive moves, so that the majority elected to leave.

For a place like Ma’adi, which was home to so many foreigners, its demography was transformed. Stores were shuttered, never to open again. Homes were abandoned, and then sequestered by the government. The synagogue went from being a center of Jewish social life, to a relic of a largely forgotten past.

While Ma’adi remains a haven for expatriates today, 1956 marked the end of an era where Europeans made long-term homes for themselves in Cairo. The gap left by European repatriation was largely filled by Americans. These new residents came with a more itinerant agenda--coming to Cairo for several years, but then leaving again for a new post or to return to their country of origin.

We still see remnants of pre-1956 Ma’adi when walking through the neighborhood. The abandoned villa on the corner of Roads 83 and 14, for instance, was once a lovely home with a large garden. Now it stands as a kind of decaying monument to Ma’adi’s former existence. It is physical proof of a historical change that was at once intensely local, and wholly global.

An inestimable number of lives were changed by the nationalization of the Suez Canal. It marked a new era in national politics -- claiming a renewed role for Egypt as a regional leader. It dispersed European and Jewish populations throughout the world, and it simultaneously dealt a crushing blow to Hungarians’ dreams for democracy.

We have all just lived through a similar turning point in Egypt’s history. I am writing this article, however, not from Ma’adi, but from Oxford, England, where I evacuated to in early February -- creating yet another link between Egypt and the world. Like those Ma’adi residents of 1956, our individual movements into and out of Egypt, the mobilization of local and foreign military power, and the movements of democratic messages through the airwaves are all part of the story. Once again, a revolution in Egypt is a deeply personal, national, and global event.

In the cross hairs of global events - Ma'adi's solar engine

It didn't seem the right timing to post this earlier, because the revolution and my own evacuation were still unfolding. It seemed more pressing to put my immediate thoughts to words, and recall my experiences. I was thinking about it today, though, and this article perhaps should have been among my first posts. It's my Maadi Messenger article from the February issue. Unfortunately, I have yet to see the hard copy, but the theme that month was 'desert.' I wrote about the solar-powered engine that was built in Ma'adi in 1911.

The article is below. What I don't fully elaborate on there, however, is the extent of the First World War's impact on Shuman's invention. His work was backed by both British and German financiers -- a relationship that became untenable in 1914. Then Shuman himself died in 1918. Even if he had managed to coral new support, he was no longer around to carry out his vision for harnessing the Sahara's solar power.

What strikes me about it now is how accidental it all seems. Here is a man working successfully to find a sustainable energy source, yet as his work progresses he runs headlong into "the war to end all wars." The conflict was so devastating, his project was left almost wholly forgotten. Shuman's work somehow appears less relevant after the war. Why is that?

As we continue to hear about this new era in the Middle East, most of those affected were caught by surprise. For me there is an accidental feeling -- How did I get here? What is going on? You think you are living one story, and come to find out things are very different from what you previously supposed. I think the same was true for Shuman -- at once he is an up-and-coming inventor, and then because of a variety of circumstantial factors that were completely out of control, that part of his story just ends. With that, here is the Maadi Messenger story from February:

"Harvesting the Sun: Maadi’s early-twentieth century solar engine"

Much of Maadi’s history has been about expansion into areas that were otherwise desert. Throughout the twentieth, and now twenty-first centuries, Maadi participated in greater Cairo’s outward spread, as the city gradually swallowed up its surroundings with people, roads, buildings, and lights.

In Maadi’s early years, however, before the automobile dominated Cairo’s traffic, and when coal still burned within most engines, Maadi’s desert surroundings provided the opportunity to capitalize on a largely untapped energy source -- the sun. By 1911, Maadi was home to one of the world’s first industrial-sized, solar-powered steam engines. The machine pumped Nile water into the land south of Maadi, so that it might sustainably convert the desert into agricultural land.

Understanding how this story began requires a trans-Atlantic trip to Tacony, a neighborhood south of downtown Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. There, on the corner lot of an average-looking residential street, stood a large, three-story, red-brick house. Enclosed under its gray roof was the home and workshop of American scientist and inventor Frank Shuman (1862-1918).

Shuman began work on a solar-powered engine in his Tacony workshop in 1897, hoping his invention would curb coal consumption. He started with a series of ether-filled pipes, ether having a relatively low boiling point. The pipes were strung through a series of water-filled boxes, which were then heated by mirrors, angled to reflect the sun. The construction generated steam, which then powered a water pump in Shuman’s backyard. In favorable weather, the pump could lift 3,000 gallons per minute to the height of 33 feet. To prove the pump’s durability, Shuman left it running continuously throughout the winter and spring. Even on cold days, so long as there was sun, the pump worked.

After this initial success, Shuman founded the Sun Power Company in 1908 and began plans for expansion into warmer climates. Three years later construction began in Maadi. This time, rather than putting ether in the pipes, Shuman used water. No longer constrained to the dimensions of his backyard, this new engine was significantly bigger, so that the total heat-catching area was more than 10,000 square feet. It was capable of pumping 6,000 gallons per minute.

Popular Science reported at the time that Shuman had “suddenly amazed the world by constructing a sun-power plant which promises to turn the deserts of the tropics into centres of industrial activity.” The magazine projected that the area 20 degrees to the North and South of the equator would be ideal for the engine’s use.

When the engine was formally unveiled on a sunny June day in 1913, Lord Kitchener, the consul-general and head of the Egyptian government, attended. Kitchener was hoping to expand cotton cultivation in Egypt and the Sudan. While coal-powered irrigation pumps seemed the only way to increase agriculture in areas remote from the Nile, upon seeing Shuman’s engine, Kitchener ordered the construction of a similar apparatus in Khartoum.

Another British observer, J. Astley Cooper reported back to the Foreign Office in England, suggesting that the solar engine be employed throughout Africa and India. “How valuable this invention will be, in the Tropical parts of the Empire where irrigation is required, and fuel rare, I need not point out,” he wrote.

While it appeared that Shuman’s success was imminent, solar energy was not without its competitors. In 1908 -- the same year Shuman founded the Sun Power Company -- oil was first discovered in Persia (present-day Iran), and served as the basis for the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, the progenitor of BP. One of the company’s biggest customers soon became Great Britain’s Royal Navy.

In 1914 Shuman said of the human impact of his work, “One thing I feel sure of, and that is that the human race must finally utilize direct sun power or revert to barbarism.” Prescient words when one considers that the world erupted into a bloody war powered by oil and coal by July of that same year -- little more than a year since the Sun Power Engine’s unveiling.

Shuman did not survive the First World War, passing away in 1918. It appears that his solar-powered engine and the hopes associated with it died with him. Today, discussions of energy extracted from the desert continue to focus on oil rather than the sun. Similarly, no physical trace remains of Maadi’s solar engine. Its site has been built over as the city found a different way to conquer that section of desert.

For more information on Maadi’s Sun Engine, also see:

www.sun1913.info

www.eoearth.org/article/Shuman_Frank

www.renewablebook.com/chapter-excerpts/350-2

Revolutions Roundtable, a cento

A cento based on the notes I took during a roundtable on the revolutions in the Middle East, hosted by the Middle East Centre at St. Antony’s College, Oxford.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the rhythms of life -- from day to night, and back again, from one season to another. A revolution also implies a cyclical movement. The long hand of the clock, for instance, makes one revolution in an hour, and then begins again. Recollecting my notes this way started to shed some light on the rhythm of the Arab world’s revolutions, or at least the pace of our discussions of them. There are the parallels between Tunisia and Egypt, the new vision for the region, and the two lingering questions -- what comparisons can we make? and what about Israel? Our thoughts about these events continue running in these currents. I wonder what these patterns really mean.

17 Feb 2011

Introductions

Tunisia

Egypt’s Tahrir Square, labor movement

Strategy

Turkey

Israel

Tunisia set the bar

successful - ?

# of old regime in the new

3,000 monitoring the internet

Rise of criminality, wave of emigration

Italy

Tourist sector --> collapsed

Parliamentary system or presidential - ?

5th Republic, France

political exiles return

Islamists to Marxists

Free press functioning

Algeria & Morocco

“anything could happen anywhere after Mubarak’s fall”

president, army - Algeria’s separate fronts

Morocco’s political stasis

“But not the kind of stasis you had in Egypt.”

Next six months, the least secure

Precedent in Egypt -

Political and artistic expression

25 Jan. - 11 Feb.

Football - nationalist expression given new meaning

National unity apart from Mubarak

cross and crescent

mass in Tahrir, victims of 31 Dec. bombing

humor, Egyptian identity

history of Opposition

politicized Militias

children leading chants

cultural revival for the last 10 years

Museum of the Revolution

Upper Egypt’s traditional dances

“The people became the guardians of Egyptian-ness”

Labor strikes continued

defying army, pro-democracy demonstrators

Media, governments downplay labor

focus on Muslim Brotherhood, youth movement

15 years of labor activism continues

Brotherhood in Parliament

more Party than opposition movement

losing peasant, worker support

joined labor movement, late-1990s

Most grassroots movement was the workers

April 6 movement saw this

Divide between labor and youth continues

“new face of the Arab world”

awakening

new “End of History”

ends perspective - Arab world as staid, incompatible w/democracy

Secular, focused on ‘dignity’

government initiated attack on Copts

Needs ongoing unity

change of strategic environment

! - Revolutions in US-ally states --> ‘moderate’ states

Egypt’s foreign policy - ?

Gaza blockade

support for Iraq war

Restoring Egypt’s regional role

emphasizing “national” interests

Opportunity

Israeli “revolution” - paving way for lasting peace

Haaretz’ positive coverage

US follow-through, human rights emphasis

partnership, not aid dependency

Turkey - acute sense of analogies

Rightly predicted Egypt

demand they listen to people

Mubarak couldn’t die in office

Changes in policy

“democratic instincts”

“Turkish Model”

army guarding civilian democracy

soft Islamist take over

Turkey and Iran - solidarity?

Israeli self-image

“island of democracy in sea of authoritarianism”

hasn’t supported Arab democracy

Outsider

Ashkenazi elite, Ben-Gurion

preference for Arab dictators

unnecessary wars

“Israel is the penis through which the imperialists piss on the Arab world,” allegedly Ben-Gurion

1979 peace --> defense budget from 30 to 8 per cent GDP

Israel belligerent

Mubarak - peace treaty sub-contractor

Fear of Iran, 1979

Binary vision

dictator/Islamists

No lasting peace w/o Arab democracy, Netanyahu

Should see opportunity

hard-wired not to see friends.

More than a Revolution

In 1952 there was a revolution. By 1956 the entire demography of Egypt had changed, as foreigners and Jews were forced out of their homes, businesses were nationalized, and land was redistributed.

When Gamal Abdel Nasser and the rest of the Free Officers movement toppled King Farouk’s government, they were celebrated for ushering in a new era of Egyptian history -- an Egypt to finally be ruled by Egyptians, one that would no longer cow to western pressure. Hosni Mubarak was part of the movement. An Air Force pilot who would rise among the ranks of the new power structure, and become its leader after the assassination of Anwar Sadat.

Why did the celebrated revolution of 1952 end in successive waves of terror? How can Egypt today be guarded against repeating its history?

In comparing the Russian and French revolution, historian Arno Mayer examines the relationship between revolution and terror. He argues that after the height of regime change, the revolutionary fervor often descends into violence, terror, and fury. When viewed this way, a revolution becomes a cycle, rather than a decisive break. There is hopeful celebration, and yet as a new state emerges, it is not free from the battling the same pressures to resume authoritarian rule that it had once fought against. The word revolution, after all, means to move around in a circle.

Egypt today continues its rightful celebration. Mubarak is gone -- something few would have imagined even a month ago. Whatever the spirit that toppled Mubarak from Tahrir Square, and Egypt’s other public spaces -- that is not the only revolutionary impulse that I hope wins the day in Egypt.

At least two kinds of solidarity formed over the last 18 days -- the vocal and public movement for democracy in city squares, as well as the more subtle banding together of neighbors and communities in defense of their homes. The combination of these two movements has led Egypt peacefully into regime change.

If Egypt is to avoid the cycle of revolution into fury and terror, then it has to continue to remain vigilant on both of these fronts. A public demand for democracy must continue, but people must also remain vigilant in the personal relationship to the state. Now that they know they can defend and support themselves, let them also defend themselves against the encroachment of new state power so that Egyptians will refuse to bend to state violence in the name of ‘security.’

Hopefully this will more than a revolution in Egypt, but a transformation.

Beit al-Umma

We walked past the former home of Saad Zaghloul on what would have otherwise been a beautiful Friday afternoon. Zaghloul was a nationalist leader in the 1910s, and a figurehead in the 1919 Revolution against the British. This house -- about a mile south of Tahrir Square -- was known as ‘Beit al-Umma’ (Home of the Nation) during the British occupation, and has become an enduring symbol of Egyptian national pride. Walking past it on January 28 was a strange sort of historical crossroads. Here was a carefully preserved site of protest against oppression, and as I turned the corner, I watched as Egyptians crowded the streets, shouting as riot police fired rubber bullets and propelled tear gas at them.

A group of us took the Metro that afternoon to Zaghloul station -- the last stop before the Metro bypassed the Sadat and Nasser stations, which fed downtown. We planned to offer some medical assistance to the demonstrators. We were supposed set up shop in an apartment nearby, and offer water, oil, antiseptic, and other remedies for those affected by the tear gas and rubber bullets.

I was drawn nearer downtown for a complex set of reasons. When we woke up that morning the internet was no longer working, and by mid-morning our cell phones were glorified pocket watches. Our only source of information was now satellite television, and landline telephones. Being cut off from information made me want to see what was happening with my own eyes.

As a foreigner, however, it did not feel right to join in the actual protests. Whatever my frustrations with the Mubarak regime, whatever my love for Egypt and its people, this did not feel like my fight. Moreover, foreigners were discouraged from participating because the government often used their presence to discredit popular uprisings. The chance to offer medical assistance seemed like the only reasonable excuse to go. If there was a chance I could help, without joining in the actual demonstrations, I wanted to be there.

When we turned that corner past Beit Al-Umma, it was clear that things were more intense than we had anticipated. The building we were supposed to use was probably 100 feet from the crowd of demonstrators. The boab (porter) wanted nothing to do with us, insisting that we leave. While we stood in the stairwell arguing with him, the riot police pushed back the crowds with a wave of rubber bullets and tear gas.

Suddenly the building’s ground floor flooded with people, clamoring to get up the stairs and escape the tear gas. The gas came with them, wafting up the stairs. We all covered our faces. We grabbed supplies and attempted to offer whatever assistance we could.

I worked as a sort of gopher -- grabbing cotton, kleenex, water, or antiseptic and taking them downstairs. I took a handkerchief from one of the bags, doused it in water and tied it around my face so that I could keep moving without also succumbing to the effects of the tear gas.

The gas takes over your sinuses. First it singes the back of your throat, and then, just as you feel the sensation of breathing it in, your eyes begin to burn. I heard a rumor that someone with severe asthma died from exposure to it -- I can’t confirm the report, but it does not surprise me.

In my memory now, the ground floor is a brightly colored blur, punctuated by faces. A man who had been shot just below his nose with a rubber bullet, and his friend applying ice and antiseptic. A middle-aged woman who staggered to stand and cried out to the people around her. A girl asking me for ‘Kleenex.’ A man, looking exhausted, face red and tear-stained. A little boy, perhaps the boab’s son, who told me his name was Ahmed.

As the riot police continued to bear down on the protestors, the wave of people seemed to dissipate. We saw some new faces after that first group left, but for the most part the crowd thinned. When we realized how close the police were to the front door, we started to fear for our own safety.

The women in our group took cover in an apartment. We could peer down from the bedroom and watch the police draw nearer and nearer. The men, meanwhile, were stuck on a sort of landing outside one of the building's windows.

The police entered the building. We held our breath, unsure of what would happen next. The ramifications of being arrested... I couldn’t think about it. If they tried to arrest the men, what would we do? What could we do? You couldn’t stay inside. Had we endangered this family that had so kindly protected us? I prayed.

Thankfully the police told us to leave. One of the men came to get us from the apartment, we quickly grabbed our things, and made our way back to the street.

I have no idea how long we were there. It probably wasn’t more than an hour. I remember standing, staring at the front door after the last wave of the protestors returned to the street, looking at the blue floor now littered with footprints. There was a sense of awe that escapes words. Perhaps it was an overwhelming sense of possibility -- that the possibility of change had been exhibited right before our eyes.

We walked back to the metro, turning the corner once again at Beit al-Umma. I could not think of a more fitting place to watch Egypt rise up against oppression once again.