It's slightly embarrassing that, after several days of successfully navigating my way through the chaos of teargas explosions, rock missiles, undercover officers, and stampeding crowds, I ended up getting arrested as I was walking into a five-star hotel on 28 January. Our offices had temporarily relocated due to the country's severely restricted internet access, and I was standing at the hotel entrance with a colleague when I felt a heavy hand land on my shoulder, grip tight, and pull me backward. “You. Come with me,” said the officer, a wolf-faced young man in a tight leather jacket. I asked him what this was about, and if there was something I could help him with, and he replied angrily, “This is for what you're doing to the country, you son of a bitch.” I told him that he was making a big assumption considering he didn't know me, but he rattled my arm and advised me to shut up if I didn't want to get on his “bad side.” He led me across the street to a tourist police booth that had been taken over by a gang of state security officers. They were crowded around an older man, a human rights activist who I had met and interviewed at a previous protest. The activist had also gotten arrested, and was about to be escorted away by two officers in a cab--the back windows were smashed in--but he absolutely refused to leave while I was still in custody. “This young man is a fine citizen, and an esteemed colleague of mine,” he announced to the officers, “and I demand that you stop wasting his time.” He started flailing his arms around and making such a scene that a senior officer had to step in, promising that I was not in any sort of trouble, that we were all friends, and that they just wanted to talk to me like friends do. The officer then offered an alarmingly insincere smile; the fact that the activist failed to notice it explained why he always seemed to be getting himself arrested. Somehow satisfied, the activist nodded and got into his cab, waving cheerfully. I stepped up to the cab to shake his hand and whisper “Don't go,” but he (probably) didn't hear me. The cab hadn't even turned the corner before I felt the same grip on the same throbbing shoulder, and heard the officer sneer, “Let's go, sweetheart.” We walked a few blocks down to Tahrir Square, stopping every few meters at a checkpoint so that the officer could ask where the nearest “arrest truck” was. The final, main checkpoint--three leather jackets, a leather coat, and two thugs in rags and sweatpants--was particularly unpleasant, as I was simultaneously searched, questioned, and slapped around. It got serious when one of the thugs showed an officer the two empty teargas canisters and handful of spent ammunition cartridges he had found in my pocket, which I had picked up in the protests I was covering earlier that morning. The officers quickly huddled around the ammunition, one of them wrapping it up in a wad of tissues and stuffing it in his pocket. They asked me where I got them from but before I could answer, one of the thugs, unable to restrain himself any longer, punched the side of my head, commencing another beating that quickly took precedence over any attempts at interrogation. As I was being led away, Leather Coat wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and smiled gently. “Good luck,” he whispered. Optimistically, I smiled back and asked, “Good luck where?” to which he replied, “In the detention camp,” slapped my face, and called me a homosexual. One of us thought it was hilarious. At the trucks, I was searched/knocked around again, and my hair and pants made fun of. A goofy-looking thug found a LE1 coin in my chest pocket and used all his wit to make a joke about how I was only worth as much. I told him he could keep the coin as a souvenir, and he rammed the tip of his baton into my chest, but kept the coin anyway. Some people... There were five “arrest trucks” parked across from McDonald's, all of which were full. When the officer failed to find a place for me on the last one, I smiled and suggested that maybe God was trying to tell him something, if he believed in that kind of thing. He kicked me. Waiting for more trucks to arrive, I was placed in a minivan, with 11 other “criminals,” as we were referred to. Two men in the back were sobbing loudly, and one eventually lost it and started yelling to a senior officer across the street. Everyone in the van told him to keep calm but he didn't, making the added mistake of calling one of the thugs a “boy.” He was dragged out by his face--the “boy” had freakishly large hands--and beaten. In the midst of this, the “criminal” to my left was making a secret deal with the thug seated on my right: LE500 for freedom. This is when I noticed my wallet had been taken. It would have made little difference: When the time came, the thug, in one graceful move, removed the money from the man's hand, twisted his arm behind his back, and shoved him up into the arrest truck with the rest of us. The truck was parked for a while, and those of us who felt like talking passed the time exchanging stories. The man who had paid LE500 for the privilege of seeing the inside of an army truck described the first con state security officers had pulled on him that day--he had been stopped and asked by a group of officers to drive a stranded woman and her baby to their nearby house since their husband had been arrested. The man drove them home in their car, came back to pick up his, and was immediately arrested. The majority of the truck's occupants were employees at various downtown hotels, all arrested on their way home from work. Except for me, nobody in the truck had been at the protests. After about an hour the door opened and thirty more men were shoved in. I was standing at the time, and any chance of getting back to my seat was immediately lost in the sudden surge. We were all crushed together, stuck into whatever position we had been pushed into, my back curved and my arms pinned to my sides. It was intensely hot, and hard to breathe. I realized how desperately thirsty I was and, mildly claustrophobic, began to feel increasingly dizzy. There were men of all ages in the truck, although I seemed to be the youngest, and they tried to cope in different ways. Some offered jokes that nobody appreciated, others made randomly reassuring statements, and some sobbed openly, making it that much worse for the rest of us. One man repeatedly asked for the best place to hide his watch, but kept getting the same answer from everyone else. After a while, the fog of bodily odors was infiltrated by the far more offensive stench of human feces, prompting one disembodied voice to curse, “Hold it in, you heathens! We're in for the long haul.” At that point, I was not particularly worried: my colleague had seen me be taken away, and I was confident that my boss would alert the appropriate heavyweights. Still, it wasn't a particularly pleasurable experience. To distract myself from the growing sense of panic, I did some mental math problems, regretted it, and instead thought about pretty girls. I thought about the beach, thought about my cats, and then remembered I had forgotten to put food in their bowl. The apartment was empty, and if I was gone long enough, they would surely starve to death. For the first time since my arrest, I began to feel anger towards the current political regime. What did my cats have to do with anything? The truck finally started moving almost two hours later. The sun had set and it was pitch black inside the vehicle. The ride didn't last long--we soon ran into an apparently impenetrable wall of protesters. I only had a partial view of the front window, which looked out onto the driver's side of the cab. News of what was going on outside was reported by other captives pressed up against the truck's windows, but the chanting, screaming, and gunshots told us all we needed to know. Inside the truck, the prisoners started screaming wildly, either for help, or to tell those screaming for help to shut up, and that they were making it worse. Everyone panicked when the teargas started to spill in through the windows. Those that could banged against the walls, everyone else squirming in terror. “We can't breathe,” some cried. “We're going to suffocate in here! Let us out!” A wave of uncontrollable coughing and sobbing spread through us, and I felt a growing sense of dread, surprised at how serious things had suddenly gotten. I started screaming too, even as I saw the driver's door open and shut and heard someone yell, “The police are retreating!”. Pleas for help were replaced with cries of anger: “Come back here, you bastards!” and “you can't leave us here, we're not criminals!” My heart sank when someone yelled “The truck is on fire!” and through a corner of the window, I could see the rising flames. Beyond them, the frontlines of a crowd, and I screamed as loud as I could to get their attention. “Some of us have passed out!” I yelled. “Some of us are unconscious!” Nobody in the crowd stirred, they just stood there, eyes glued to the burning truck. I screamed until I saw a man, in his mid-thirties it seemed, slowly take off his glasses, wipe them clean on his shirt, and put them back on his face, not once taking his eyes off us. It was at that moment that I lost all hope. I stopped screaming, and went completely quiet. An overwhelming sadness swelled up inside me, deep and inescapable. This, I remember thinking, is a horrible way to die. I did not know the names of anyone in the truck with me. I did not even know where it was parked. And I would never find out what all these protests would lead to. I thought about my bed, and wished that I was in it. I thought about my friends, and wondered where they were. I thought about the girl that I love. I thought about my mom, and felt guilty over what this would do to her. Most of the other men continued screaming, and it's probably thanks to them that someone outside was finally convinced to unlock the door and let us out. There were cries of disbelief as the door was pushed open into the crowd, and the nearest captives clung onto it desperately, worried it might be pulled shut any second. We burst out of the truck, climbing over each other, and I hit the ground running, briefly looking over my shoulder to thank the state security officer who had come back to let us out. “Run!” he yelled, and I did, as fast as I could. I only stopped when I felt my legs begin to buckle, and shaking, I asked the nearest bystanders where I was, and how I could get home to Nasr City. The responses were all the same: I was in Abdeen, and getting to Nasr City was apparently out of the question. “The government has collapsed,” I was told by an old man who offered me a glass of water. “All hell has broken loose.” I walked through the streets, asking directions that I was too shaken up to memorize or follow. Paranoia had gripped me, and I was sure I was being followed, even though most people were running around in every possible direction. Gunshots filled the air, and occasionally I would pass crowds huddled around a wounded person, or persons. Eventually, I found a metro station and, praying that it hadn't broken down, went underground. I used my last coin to buy a ticket, and once on board, had to ask an older man for money. I told him all I wanted was LE3 to get me home. This was not based on any conscious calculations, it just seemed like a good amount at the time. He gave me a worried look and asked if I was alright, and I quickly recounted the events of the past few hours, which he relayed to a group of men standing behind him. In the span of a few seconds, everyone in our vicinity was offering me money, with one man insisting I take his coat—my shirt was torn down the side. I accepted LE6, politely turned down the coat, and thanked everyone repeatedly. I got off two stations later, as advised. The Zahraa station was a mess. Shattered glass covered the ground; the ticket machines had all been smashed in and lay crumpled on their sides, hundreds of tiny bright yellow tickets piled around them. Two children danced in the middle of the wreckage, throwing tickets in the air and whooping joyously. Stunned, I pushed through a gutted ticket machine and found my hand sticky with blood. After several failed attempts at stopping any car, I climbed up to the Ring Road and began walking toward Nasr City. It seemed everywhere I looked there were flames in the distance, and cars screeched past me in all directions, regardless of what lane they were in. The highway was crowded with packs of children and teenagers, brandishing sticks, knives, and machetes, and pelting any passing car with fist-sized rocks. They smashed several windows, cheering every time and laughing as terrified drivers tried to regain control of their speeding vehicles. The further I walked, the thicker these gangs became, and the brighter the flames seemed to get. A station wagon, refusing to slow down, tried to swerve through the rock-hurling teens and hit at least one before careening out of control and flipping onto its side. There was an eruption of anger and the crowd immediately descended on the car, and I could hear the screaming of a woman. For a moment, I considered running back and helping, but I didn't. At least a hundred angry people had gathered around it in those short moments, and I was scared. I turned around, kept walking, and quietly hoped that I would see no more destruction, and that, if I ever got there, Nasr City would not be in flames. I walked until I came across two police vans, overturned and engulfed in flames, and I stopped for a moment to watch them burn, to allow everything to sink in, and to tell myself that this was really happening. As I stood there, a young boy came up to me, face streaked with dirt, and waving a pocket knife. “Say you hate Hosni Mubarak,” he demanded, pointing the tiny blade at me. “I hate Hosni Mubarak,” I sighed, and he smiled widely, and nodded his approval. “There is no government,” he boomed. “I am the government now!” He ran back to the crowd, roaring loudly, slashing the air with his knife, and leaving me feeling more helpless than I had ever felt before. I picked up the sharpest rock I could find, turned around, and walked home.
