Mohamed Mahmoud Street never was what you would call an ordinary street. Even amidst the surreal jumble of the old and glorious colonial buildings of downtown Cairo, now covered entirely with a permanent frown of soot and dust, and juxtaposed with run-down shacks, kiosks and donkey carts clogging each and every vein and artery the city needed to survive; even amidst all of that, the Street held an undeniably disquieting character.
The Street runs from one of the world’s most opulent palaces of the golden era of the Kingdom of Egypt, Abdeen Palace (completed in the late 19th century by French architect Rousseau), to the now infamous Tahrir Square. It is studded with unkept yet splendid architecture, the impeccable carvings and magnificent doorways heavy with the burden of nostalgia and year after unrelenting year of burgeoning population growth and a culture of neglect.
I knew the Street well. I attended university on Mohamed Mahmoud Street. The American University in Cairo was founded in 1919 by missionaries from the United Presbyterian Church of North America. Though increasingly regarded in the Mubarak era as the ultimate symbol of Western neo-colonialism, the university was built by those missionaries in hopes of contributing to the education and standards of Egypt’s future leaders. And whilst it is arguable how true to that aim the university has been since its inception, the Mubarak era, characterized (among many other things) by the gaping abyss that separated the 1% haves from the 99% have-nots, shaped public perception of the expensive university such that it was regarded by most as a rich-kid party-school.
And sometimes that was not entirely false. I used to joke, when I thought it was funny, that walking through the gates of the Main Campus out onto the Street and into the city was similar to putting on the Ring of Sauron – like Frodo Baggins in the Shire, the carefree tranquility and peace behind campus walls immediately evaporated as you were consumed with an onslaught of distorted noise, bizarre visions and sweltering heat. You waded through the cars, people and other random objects in search of the safety of your serene, air-conditioned car, often driven by your grossly underpaid driver.
But unlike Frodo, the more we experienced the harsh reality of the world outside our comfort zone the less able we were to clearly see it. Access between the university’s Main Campus, facing Tahrir Square, and the Greek Campus and Library was only possible by traversing the Street – and many of us did so on a daily basis. And every day, in those few hundred yards, we saw it all. The beggars, children barely in their teens and their mothers standing by the campus gates (unless they were shooed away by security guards, in which case they stood a few more yards away) persistent in their solicitations. The self-employed valets, who over many years established a degree of notoriety for their trustworthiness (and the size of their daily revenue), picking up and dropping off shiny cars to bored girls who are usually too distracted on their cell-phones to notice either the individual handing over the keys or the incongruity of their tight, ripped jeans and bright low-cut tank tops in the otherwise conservative, poor neighborhood. The street vendors, catcalling and whistling at the blonde women, all the while wiping away the day’s dust and despair from their foreheads.
At the time, nothing in what I saw around me seemed unusual – I grew up in Mubarak’s Egypt. I was not alarmed by poverty or the obscenity it often created. I did not think twice about how garish the smallest display of wealth was to the ordinary passer-by. But in the wake of the uprising and revolution that toppled Mubarak, the more I think back on the sights and sounds, the vivid emotional memories that the Street produced, the more I realize that the Street was a microcosm of the ailments of Mubarak’s Egypt.
And when Tahrir Square overtook Tiananmen Square as the symbol of an intrepid and a fundamentally human resistance against tyranny, the Street became a focal point in the battle. And rightly so, after all, the evil of the Mubarak era was not all encapsulated in Mubarak – the tyranny was perpetuated by those of us who cared too little to change the world around us, even when we had every ability and influence to do so. The tyranny was perpetuated by the sense of entitlement many of us held, and the apathy we displayed to those of us who were less fortunate. Now as I see to this day (with the rise of the godless Islamists and the hopelessly inept leader they produced) young men and women fall to their death, coming from every background and creed our ancient country has produced, I cannot feel anything but immense pride at what they have accomplished, and immense shame at how long it took many of us to realize there was something fundamentally wrong in our society.
Mohamed Mahmoud Street, at this moment in time, and in every sense of the word, is a battlefield. The walls of the university are covered with bullet holes and freedom graffiti - the asphalt with blood, stones and broken glass. But this, too, shall pass. And when it does, let us not forget the love of country and of our fellow man, which we now have all learned at a dear, dear price.
