SPIEGEL ONLINE INTERNATIONAL: SPIEGEL's longtime Cairo correspondent has spent more than five decades living in the city. He describes Egypt's decline under a leader obsessed with discipline, calm and stability who lost touch with his people and allowed the Arab world's most vibrant country to stagnate.
Volkhard Windfuhr, 74, has been living in Cairo since 1955. He joined SPIEGEL as its Middle East correspondent in 1974. Since then, he has reported on the major crises in the region and met as well as interviewed nearly all Arab leaders, including the three Egyptian presidents Gamal Abdel Nasser, Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak. In an essay for SPIEGEL, he describes the changes that have taken shape in the Egypt in the decades he has spent in the country.
I am among the oldest in the crowd to cross the Nile Bridge and enter Tahrir Square this Wednesday morning. I have lived in Cairo longer than nearly everyone else who strolls along peacefully beside me: women, men, young people, old people, educated and less educated, workers, preachers and engineers. We talk about this and that. I know their language. I know their jokes. It is also my language, and they are my jokes, too.
But what befell us three hours later, seemingly out of nowhere, shattered my image of this country in which I have lived for the past 56 years. This was not the country I know and love.
"Al-Maut lil-Kilab!" shouted two young men who suddenly appeared in front of the Sudan Air offices on Talat Harb Street, with their fists flying: "Death to the dogs!" One wielded a butcher knife, the other started beating up a demonstrator. "Down with the regime" it said on the cardboard sign that he tore from the man's hands. At first, I didn't understand what was happening. What did these people want? Where did this aggression come from?
But then people started to scream, horses and camels galloped across the square, and it slowly dawned on me: This was a gang of thugs sent to break up a peaceful demonstration. They tore off women's blouses and headscarves, knocked over people in wheelchairs, and even kicked children aside.
I fled to an archway and took a closer look at them: They were, without a doubt, men who belonged to the regime -- some had even sewn onto their jackets the emblem of the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP). I know that this government doesn't tread lightly when it breaks up demonstrations -- but having such a mob rush a crowd like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse? I have never experienced anything like it. An older man, a law professor who had been hit on the back of his head, fled with me into a small side street and said: "I don't understand my people anymore." They were my thoughts precisely.
I feel ashamed of this country, which I see as my second homeland. How could the government allow something like this to happen? How does the tank commander feel who is not allowed to prevent the massacre? What higher standard allows soldiers to look away who only one day before were hailed as the people's protectors? >>> An Essay By Volkhard Windfuhr | Tuesday, February 08, 2011
