Friday 18 March 2011

Letter from Cairo 18th March 2011


The tourists' view of paradise

It is very sad to see how tourism has been suffering since the revolution.  At the time of the uprising, over a million tourists fled Egypt.  This sector represents 11% of the country's income and employs something in the region of one in eight Egyptians.  The hotels, casinos and bars are totally empty.  A British friend and her husband recently spent a weekend in the famous Winter Palace Hotel in Luxor, which was built in 1886 on the banks of the Nile, it boasts 86 rooms and 6 suites but there were only four other guests, giving a total of 6 guests and three occupied rooms.  They visited the temple of Karnak, which is a must, and were the only people there.  They visited the Valley of the Kings, also a must, and were the only people there.  The guides were supremely happy to see them and were under the false notion that tourists were now returning to Egypt and their disappointment was visible when, having asked where the couple came from, they were told that they were residents in Cairo.  The wealth of pharaonic sites and antiquities in Egypt are, at the moment, lonely and neglected.

The Sinai coast, with its year-round sea temperatures averaging between 20° and 29° is void of visitors and such sites as the Giza Pyramids stand ominously empty.  Yet workers in such resorts as Sharm El-Sheikh, famous for its diving centres, are optimistic that tourists will be drawn to a country that managed to rid itself of its dictatorship.  The first two months of the year are usually somewhat chilly yet, generally, hotels have an occupancy of 75% during January and February; sadly this has sunk to 11%.

It has to be said that this is not the first time that Egypt's tourist industry has suffered almost fatal disruption caused by riots or terrorist bombings, but somehow, it always gets back on its feet again; the everlasting fascination with Ancient Egypt always brings the tourists back.

The ‘Bread Riots’ of 1977 only marginally affected Egypt’s tourism as this was a spontaneous uprising by the poor protesting the termination of state subsidies on basic foodstuffs.  This is not to say that the matter was not serious, on the contrary, the country was beleaguered by savage repression resulting in hundreds of deaths. The riots' origin lay in Sadat’s Infitah policy, which was a strategy to "open the door" to private investment. In 1976 Egypt had a large debt burden, and late in that year Sadat took a series of loans from the World Bank with the condition that state subsidies on foodstuffs and other essential commodities would be severely limited. As a result of the riots, the government backed down in two days. 

There was a decrease in the influx of tourists in 1985 and 1986 and this was attributed to the hijacking of the Italian liner, the Achille Lauro, towards the end of 1985, the security police riots in Cairo in February 1986 and the United States air raid on Libya in April 1986.

I particularly remember the police riots as they had a devastating effect on tourism.  The police officers at that time were recruited from the poorest sectors of society and were paid the equivalent of about $4 per month and they began their mutiny when they heard rumours that the government was going to extend their two-year enlistments for another year. They set fire to four luxury hotels in the Giza governorate of Cairo and vandalized other symbols of luxury such as nightclubs. 

What is particularly interesting today, in the light of current events, is that these riots raised serious questions about the stability of the Mubarak regime which was widely perceived as having failed to solve Egypt’s mounting economic difficulties.  There was an enormous amount of frustration at that time among the poor and the opportunity to vent that frustration goaded mobs of Egyptian youths from the poorer quarters to join the riots. They roamed the streets, looting stores and attacking cars and buses and shooting indiscriminately. In my mind, I can still hear the staccato sounds of automatic weapons peppering the night air.

Although the situation at the end of January this year was somewhat different, similarities lie in the fact that once the police force had gone into hiding, a few days into the revolution, thugs began looting shops and businesses and until quite recently either they or ‘friends’ of the NDP were attacking cars and buses and kidnapping their occupants.

However, to return to February 1986, I remember very clearly that my sons’ school closed for some days and that many of the residents of Zamalek could be found lounging around on the terrace of the Marriott hotel at all hours of the day, two doors away from my building.  The stoics amongst us were not particularly frightened by the events and life became something of a holiday.  A curfew was also put in place on the first day of the riots and on that particular day our closest friends were due to hold a party, to which we were invited, for some sixty work colleagues and friends.  The couple in question lived behind us on Saraya Gezira Street, which is the other side of what became known as the ‘golden triangle’.  This is an elongated triangle of buildings which are considered the most elegant representation of 1930s to1940s architecture and which, at that time, were occupied by many journalists, writers and artists and, somewhat oddly, our friends who were diplomats.  Of the sixty people invited only a dozen or so were able to attend the party and these were residents of the ‘triangle’ who managed to reach their destination by skulking through the alleyways between Gezira Street and Saraya Gezira Street.  Needless to say, it was impossible for twelve of us to consume the luscious banquet that my friend had spent days preparing, so the following evening, the leftovers were brought to my apartment and we held another soiree and did our best to devour the rest of the food, washed down by lashings of French wine.  Yet again, we failed!  For a third evening the feast was seen to be moved to yet another apartment on the triangle accompanied by the same clan stealthily moving through the alleyways and ducking into doorways at the first sign of any movement in the streets.

By the end of the riots not a tourist was to be seen and would not be seen in any significant numbers for quite a few months and we were able to turn this situation to our advantage.  A friend of ours owned a travel agency and two or three Nile Cruise boats of varying sizes, the smallest of which he was willing to put at our disposal for a cruise between Luxor and Aswan.  We managed to gather together a group of friends in order to make the most of this offer and several weeks later at a ridiculously low cost we flew to Luxor and boarded the boat.  The captain and crew were entirely at our service and could not do enough for us and meals and drinks were served with great affability. 

As all of has had previously participated in a Nile cruise, we did not have to arise at the crack of dawn and traipse around the sites with a dreary crowd of intense tourists, all masquerading as experienced Egyptologists, while listening to a guide gabbling in a monotonous tone with a heavy accent facts and figures that he has learnt by heart, in the same manner that he has memorized the verses of the Quran. Of course we visit the sites that interested us as many of them are worth second and third visits but we did so in our own time.  We sauntered at our own pace through Karnak and around the town of Luxor, had lunch and a long siesta and spent the evening enjoying our own private party on the boat, consuming cocktails and eating a sumptuous dinner.  The next morning we set off for Edfu at a very leisurely speed, stopping and starting wherever and whenever we wanted to.  In fact, throughout the cruise, we were able to choose where we wished to anchor for the night and naturally chose the most beautiful spots from which to watch sunrise and sunset.  And so to Kom Ombo and eventually Aswan, always at the same unhurried pace and with a wonderful sense of owning the Nile; we seemed to be the only boat on the river apart from the incredibly graceful feluccas which continually glided alongside us.

The tourists eventually returned to Egypt and the industry picked up and surpassed itself with a dramatic rise in the numbers of visitors, in spite of the negative repercussions of the 1991 Gulf War.  But disaster struck in a particularly repugnant manner when, on 17th November 1997, fifty eight tourists were murdered at the temple of Queen Hatshepsut in Luxor.  This time, the impact was prodigious and the country’s economy suffered for some sixth months.

There were terrorist attacks on hotels in Sinai in 2004, a series of bomb attacks on Sharm el-Sheikh in 2005, another in Dahab in 2006 and finally on 22nd February 2009 in the Khan el-Khalili souk in Cairo, which was followed by a second bomb that failed to detonate.

But, the tourists always come back and will soon want to see the country which so exceptionally overthrew its government.

Tomorrow the somewhat controversial referendum will take place and the people will vote for or against the eight amendments to the existing constitution.  More about that later!

WE WAIT YET AGAIN!




Wednesday 9 March 2011

Letter from Cairo 9th March 2011


What an enormous disappointment we had yesterday.  When I started writing some time in the afternoon, I affirmed that, yet again, Facebook had been an invaluable tool for the organisation of demonstrations and that a million women were scheduled to take part in a march at 3 p.m.  To my dismay by 7.30 p.m. reports began to reach me that there were only about 300 women in Tahrir Square.  Messages came from friends on the ground and from Pierre Sioufi, whose name I can now mention and who has gained enormous credit for opening his house, which is on Tahrir Square, to masses of people and which I visited several times during the revolution.  Pierre is the friend mentioned in my previous Letters from Cairo who opened his apartment on the top two floors of the building to reporters and correspondents from all over the world, to members of the youth movement itself, to actors, singers and a to variety of artists and friends. 

The massive street demonstrations that we have had since 25th January and which brought down Hosni Mubarak's regime had raised the hopes of many Egyptian women who have long been treated as second-class citizens.  A very significant number of women took part in the demonstrations from the outset of the uprising and while participating they discovered a sense of equality.  Women, like the men, came from all walks of life including throngs of teenagers, sophisticated women in European dress, veiled women, mothers with their children and grey-haired grandmothers. Some of the young women faced opposition by their families who threatened to disown them were they to take part in the demonstrations, but they defied them.

Women stood shoulder to shoulder with the men throughout the revolution and possibly played a pivotal role in it.  They were equally active with their chants, their banners, their cries for the downfall of the regime and for freedom and like their male counterparts, they spent nights in the square, confronted riot police and were attacked and defended themselves against the thugs.

Yet, on their day of hope for equality, not only were they dismally represented, probably because in this patriarchal society the men in their families simply forbade them to attend, but also those who did attend were sadly abused.  According to a friend of mine who was there, and who I shall name ‘Amina’, counter protesters infiltrated the march chanting against the women and harassing them thus forcing some of them out of the square.  Some of the men were chanting “The people demand the fall of women” and “We don’t want secularism, Egypt is an Islamic country”.  It appears that there was also a group of men in front of the women who were ridiculing them and swearing at them.  Others, who were protesting with the women, formed a cordon around the women to protect them.  At this point some pushing and shoving occurred and Amina had her sign torn up and was hit on the head.  The army then advised the women to leave the square for their safety.

The unanswered question here is ‘Who is giving orders to these counter revolutionaries?”.  There are rumours that these men are baltagies or thugs who remain faithful to the old regime.  One of my informers told me that these men were probably employees of the old regime and that they were or still are being encouraged to continue to cause chaos, with promises that if they do so their names will not be mentioned by those who are facing lawsuits for crimes against humanity, such as the ex Minister of the Interior, Habib Al Adly. 

The women who were demonstrating yesterday were also sexually harassed by the thugs.  I should mention here that prior to the revolution Egyptian women had a tendency to avoid appearing in crowded public places because of the invasive, daily unwanted sexual advances made by men of all ages to women of all ages.  This can range from a clicking of the tongue to unveiled propositions to touching of intimate parts of the body all accompanied with desperate sexual hunger in the eyes of the culprits but who also feel that somehow this is their right.  It can be infuriating, to say the least, especially for foreigners who don't possess enough Arabic to hit back with a range of expletives.  Personally, I simply find it irritating, and somewhat surprising at my age, but quite naturally, after 35 years in Egypt, I possess a wealth of particularly effective vocabulary and, when I was somewhat younger, it was not uncommon to see me react physically with a push or a punch or a knee in the groin.

I have always felt much safer walking in the streets of Cairo than I do in the streets of London where I feel apprehension even during the daytime. There I feel a frisson of fear when I see a bunch of youths approaching from the other direction because the menace of mugging is omnipresent.  Whilst I do not condone sexual harassment, it is far less threatening than the risk of being beaten and robbed.  Sadly, in these post revolution weeks women are feeling a lot less safe and instead of gaining the freedom and equality that yesterday was supposed to instigate, there is a sense of defeat and intimidation.

Women in Egypt face many constraints; they have restricted legal rights, can face domestic violence, are discriminated against in the workplace where their salaries are much lower than those of the men and where chances for promotion are slim. Most importantly, they have little, if nothing, to say in the running of the country.  The Million Women March had six main goals which were printed on banners and distributed on flyers:

1.   The right for women to participate in laying the constitutional, legislative and political future of Egypt
2.   A new civil constitution which respects citizenship, equality and cancels all forms of discrimination.
3.   A change in all forms of laws including the personal status law to guarantee equality.
4.   The playing down of woman’s role as a mother as opposed to all her other roles, whether in her private or public life.
5.   The placing of harsh penalties on all forms of violence towards women.
6.   Allowing women to run for president.

Let us not forget, however, that women in Egypt are far better off than women in some other parts of the Muslim world; they are not forced to wear the Niqab, which covers the entire body and the face, leaving a small slit for the eyes or the Hijab, which covers the hair and the neck. 

I must point out, however, that when I first arrived in Egypt in 1974, I saw very few women wearing the Hijab and absolutely none wearing the Niqab yet now, in 2011 it is unusual to see uncovered heads and the full cover is becoming more and more apparent.  Nevertheless something of a dichotomy exists here and on several occasions I have seen veiled women wearing sprayed-on clothes and thick layers of make-up which appears somewhat duplicitous.  On the whole, however, the women dress discreetly and one might almost say that Western influence has been waning for some time.  This is perhaps not surprising if you look at the behaviour of a certain class of young women in, for example, the U.K. who wander the streets drunk, scantily dressed and whose sexual antics in public, both at home and more particularly abroad, leave a lot to be desired.

Meanwhile, although the news going out of Egypt has been somewhat obliterated by the horrifying events in Libya, the air is still very unsettled.  There have been continual nationwide labour protests all over Cairo and its suburbs and throughout Egypt, with workers demanding better pay and working conditions in a wide variety of sectors.  Hundreds of Copts have held demonstrations before the TV building in downtown Cairo, and elsewhere protesting the torching of a Coptic church in Helwan, and demanding an end to discrimination and fully equal rights of worship.  The 25 January revolution was believed to have brought Muslims and Christians together which led to great hopes especially as last year Egypt witnessed more than the usual incidences of sectarian strife. 

There are very few members of the police force in the streets and as a result traffic is totally chaotic and the number of crimes is on the increase.  There have been many reports of cars being stopped at gunpoint and thugs beating the occupants and forcing them to hand over their possessions.  This occurs mostly after dark on the highways and ringroads.

Until a new government is formed and one which pleases the people we have a long tiring road ahead of us but one must remain optimistic.