The concrete.

11 Days Ago:
I've learned to recognize myself lately as a college student that lives with her mother. My mother is an emotional woman with reactions that are double what they should be, but with a heart that is triple what it thought it could be. We live in an average sized apartment in Mohandeseen. We drink tap water and make fun of those who spend money on bottled water. My mother only quit buying milk from the milk man because her doctor told her to. We eat with spoons most of the time, and we eat in front of the TV. We know all the hour long ads that are aired on Panorama Drama by heart, because we enjoy the fact that we don't believe anything they try to tell us.


That's the way I saw my life as I was waiting in MacDonald's gam3et el dowal. There were some anomalies to that pattern of thinking. On the 24th of January I was trying to get a new ID card because my original one was stolen. And that didn't mean I was standing in long lines sweating and thinking of my aching feet. I was sitting in an air conditioned room, with 4 police officers which thought I'd never stepped foot outside of my house. As I was waiting for them to get my papers ready so I can just go to the police station, give them my thumb print, and wait for my ID card to be delivered home. So there I was listening to a conversation about drugs. And all the stories I'd heard about police officers taking the drugs they'd taken from drug dealers as evidence and keeping it for themselves. And it was interesting to hear a full conversation that was built on the assumption that I couldn't substitute the word "7aga" with "mo5adarat" in my head.

And that was just one more reason to let go of everything holding me back from being part of the 25th of January movement. I didn't want to be this person. I did not want to have to shut up about that kind of thing just because I knew it was wrong in the first place to be taking red tape short cuts. I didn't want to have to have to take a police officer with me while I get my ID card, and I still don't want to do it one more time when I'm trying to get my driving license. I didn't want to teach my nephew to take the same shortcuts, and I couldn't stand the thought of having to sit quietly, listening to such a disgusting and shameless conversation. So I had to do it. And I was part of the January 25th movement.

And that's how simple it was to me, there was nothing more to it. I was a normal girl who lives with her mom, and who was fed up with how the world went round in Egypt. And until I arrived in Sudan on the 30th of January, I thought my dad's job was to ride huge cars with the Egyptian flag waving wildly at the front. His job was to live in houses that could fit 25 five member families with plenty of breathing room. His job was to go to "the embassy" every morning and everyone would smile at him like he was there to save their lives. His job was to have people suck up to him, and to us, whenever they got the chance.

It wasn't until I watched beads of sweat trickle down his face as he tried to reach some kind of compromise between what he felt and what he should be feeling, that I realized what my father's job was. My father represents the Egyptian government in other countries. And I watched him day after day, for 11 days in a row, answering phone calls and hanging up looking more worried than he did before. And everyday he'd try to convince me that he really was against the 25th of January movement. And I'd watch him sigh at the thought of how unconvincing he was. Press conferences would be held and he'd be repeating the lies that everyone was asked to repeat by the Egyptian government.

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