I returned
to Alex a couple of weeks ago following a not uneventful month in the UK. My
first Friday back at church found me greeted on almost every front by ‘we saw
you on TV!’, and from one of the leaders an observation that they would need to
find a new church celebrity when I left… But any fears of my life back in Egypt
being mundane were swiftly dispelled: riots and gas continued as if I’d never
left (though my landlord tells me that they weren’t gassed in all the time I
was away); I witnessed a stabbing; I managed to get lost in hitherto
undiscovered (by me, at any rate) labyrinthine back streets of the city.
The riots
started early last Friday, and with no apparent order. They started over by the
train station around 3.30 (or first came to my attention then) with a
carelessly thrown petrol bomb coating the wall in flame, and continued on and
off through until about 10pm. Things would be calm for an hour at a time, and
then suddenly out of nowhere there would be gas and fire. We managed to escape
the worst of it: apart from the general tinny smell of the tear gas in the air,
only one canister landed particularly close, but the wind blew it all into our
neighbours’ building. About 7pm I went shopping with my landlord; in the back
streets life continued much as normal, with the melody of sirens, percussion of
tear gas launchers, and chorus of yelling and chanting added to the general
soundtrack of street sellers and livestock. It was livestock that we were after
– chickens, in particular. Now I’ve only ever bought chicken that has already
had its doings done to it, so this was a bit of an eye opener. Essentially, the
process works like this:
One chooses
one’s shop. There are quite a few to choose from, and one knows when one is
nearby: they stink. One chooses one’s bird: turkey, pigeon, goose, duck,
chicken and more. If one doesn’t fancy bird, rabbit is always an option, and no
wild bunnies these: sleek, in a variety of colours and patterns, large, small,
Flopsy, Mopsy, Cotton-tail and Peter - one would have thought one had walked
into a pet shop. No rabbits for us though. Apparently they’re expensive. The
price is determined by live weight, so three chickens are selected, and thrown
roughly onto a scale. Oblivious to their doom, poor things, they look around in
the inquisitive way chickens seem to have. One caught my eye; I stared him
down. Price determined, they’re taken into the butcher’s room, heads held back,
and throats neatly slit, before being dropped unceremoniously into a big
barrel. I wondered for a split second what the purpose of this was – but then
the barrel started to shake violently, and continued to for about three
minutes. I take it that the birds were unhappy with their lot… Three blood
soaked carcasses are duly taken out of the barrel, and thrown into a big metal
contraption in the corner, which starts to whir and gush out quantities of
water. When it is done, it emerges that the chickens have, by some act of sorcery,
been entirely plucked. They’re then gutted, quartered, vigorously scrubbed with
salt water, and bagged. Nothing going to waste, there is a whole army of cats
waiting to snatch the scraps. The whole process takes about ten minutes – now
that’s what I call fresh chicken.
The next day
I had arranged to meet a friend to go exploring the area that best equates to
old Alexandria. (It isn’t really an ‘old city’ in the proper sense, mostly
because the British, as was their wont, flattened the place in 1882 to teach a
local ruler a lesson.) As I walked down from my flat to the seafront a chap
started out in front of me across the road. This could turn into an object
lesson in looking both ways before crossing the road; certainly there was a
squealing of breaks, and something that came very close to the classic action
sequence chase involving the protagonist taking a shortcut across a car bonnet.
I was preparing to give an internal tut-tut and carry on when I noticed a man
and a woman attempting to hide behind a palm tree. Now the classic image of a
palm tree as tall and thin is not far from the mark; this would not be an apt
description for the couple in question. As a hiding place, it left something to
be desired... As the first fellow managed his negotiation with a moving car, the
other man let out a yelp, and made a run for it. He slipped, a knife appeared
in the hand of the former, and a struggle ensued on the ground – again not
dissimilar to a film in which the victim struggles valiantly to hold off the
wrist of the chap trying to force a knife in. The victim’s wife jumped on them
both, but to no avail – a scream, and the scuffle broke apart. Bystanders came
and took the knife from the first fellow, and kept him there; the victim’s wife
went off and talked to another bystander; and the victim himself sat on a kerb
clutching his blood soaked leg, and letting out frequent shouts. Deciding that
the volume of the shouts probably meant that he was okay, I carried on my way.
When I came back a few hours later there was no evidence of any quantity of
blood on the ground, so I presume all was well.
This
unpleasant little episode is a small example of a widely noticed decline in
security over the time that I’ve been here. This doesn’t include the riots –
they’ve been going on all the time I have been here – but rather individual
petty and violent crime. Egyptian friends, and others who have lived here for a
long time talk of pick-pocket gangs, drug crime, and muggings on the increase.
This could have various causes. One is that the police are feeling bereft of
support since the revolution, and have frequently been on strike – with the
obvious consequence that fear of consequences of crime declines. Another would
be that it is a response of individuals to an insecure feeling in the country:
all the old certainties have toppled, and very little has replaced them. This
kind of thing can conceivably lead to societal breakdown. A third could be the
fact of the revolution itself. The driver of the revolution was a sudden falling
away of fear of the authorities, including (indeed, largely) the police. One of
very few advantages of an authoritarian regime is that only the really
desperate will run the risk of incurring its displeasure. Apart from in cases
of more general social breakdown (authoritarianism combined with incompetence
or pure rent-seeking), this generally equates to low crime rates. Of course,
the disadvantages of authoritarianism may be said to counter this.
The decline
in security accompanies a continuous and increasing decline in the economy.
There are constant queues at petrol stations; it becomes impossible to get hold
of dollars, pounds or euros from official sources; the black market in both
thrives. The state can’t afford the subsidies it offers on fuel or food, but
nor can the government afford to stop them if it wants to survive – and yet if
it doesn’t move some economic reforms, it won’t be eligible for the IMF loan it
has negotiated, which would in turn open up loans from other sources. The
government instead turns to the rich Gulf states, appealing for loans and aid
in the name of Muslim unity. Qatar has stepped in offering large loans and a
guarantee of a natural gas supply, but this itself arouses suspicions among
Egyptians, with a rumour, among others, of their demanding a twenty year lease
of the Suez Canal in exchange for their help. (I am certain that this is
untrue. Given the British acquired it in a not dissimilar way, a government
that acquiesced to such a deal would be risking their lives as well as their
posts.) All together, this contributes to a depression in the country,
destroying the optimism that I found post-revolution.
On that
rather pessimistic note, I shall leave this edition of Alexandrian Notes. I
shall be leaving Egypt for good before the end of the month, and will endeavour
to write another before then. But no promises…