Egypt Revolts: Day Six

Sunday, 30th, January, 2011

I’ve spent the safest night of my life yesterday; our neighbors did an amazing job, a lot better than the police. We heard gunfire three times in our street; looters came three times and were shooed by shooting into the air. It was scary to hear gunfire every thirty minutes in the neighboring streets, and of course to hear it right below our window, but you get used to it. The military has finally brought more soldiers to the streets last night and they helped the people’s committees to protect their neighborhoods.  All the thugs that were arrested yesterday will be prosecuted in military courts and of course most of them were police without uniforms.

There were many protests in solidarity with us today all around the world. Here in Egypt, demonstrations continued in Tahrir square, where many spent the night, in front of Qa’ed Ibrahim Mosque in Alexandria, (Qa’ed Ibrahim is Ibrahim Pasha , son of Mohamed Ali Pasha). There were other demonstrations in Suez, in Arbeaeen Street, in Mansoura, and other cities. In Tahrir today, there were inspection helicopters flying around the square. Later two F11s departed from the Air Force headquarters near where I live; they made a very loud sound. Minutes later, they arrived in Tahrir, looks like they’re trying to scare people. The good thing is, no one was sacred, they even started waving to the planes.

The numbers of protesters were in hundreds of thousands today. Tahrir alone had at least 150,000 protesters. Most shops were closed; some people are having problems buying food. ATMs are closed and so are banks. More prisoners were freed and more looting and vandalizing happened today. Gunfire is still heard every now and then all across Cairo. Some prisoners tried to go back to prison, but couldn’t find anyone to take them back.

The internet and SMS are still cut off and now the Egyptian authorities have closed Al Jazeera Arabic bureau in Egypt. This was very bad news, Al Jazeera did a great job; it had the best coverage.  They still worked though; protesters called them and gave them news. But then they cut off its signal from Nilesat too!

The state TV showed pictures of Mubarak and his vice president in a meeting with the minister of defense and head of the military in an operation room. This is scary, they’re trying to send us a message that the army is on their side. Could the army open fire on the protesters?!! After the meeting Tantawy, minister of defense, went to the streets in front of the TV building to greet his soldiers. Speaking of fire, there was a document from the ministry of the interior that BCC showed, that ordered the police to use brutality on the protesters on Rage Friday.

Opposition has made a coalition today to have a dialogue with the military, but never received any invitation from them. Baradei, who’s the head of the coalition, has said that he’d like to speak with the military, but received nothing either. Clinton said that what Mubarak has done is insufficient, I wish the Obama administration would shut up; they’re useless.

Fathy Soroor, head of the parliament, was on TV today. We thought he’d say that they’ll dissolve the parliament, but he didn’t! All he said was that if the Supreme Court says that some of the members’ elections were forged, then there will be reelections only for these members. More bad news, the police will be back in the streets tomorrow, but won’t come near Tahrir. The police are useless, we’re better off without them.

We can still hear gunfire every 30 minutes, but it feels normal now. Snipers killed people today by the ministry of the interior, which is very close to Tahrir. Doctors have used a mosque, Omar Makram, as a hospital to treat whoever was shot.

Mubarak and his gang are working to slowly, and it’s normal that the protesters’ ceiling would increase with every passing day. They only show how stupid they are by hiding their heads in the sand and doing nothing about these huge protests. I don’t think that’s news to anyone though, we all know how stupid our government is. The question remains, will we ever hear Mubarak saying “ana fehemtokom”?