CAIRO – The area in front of the State Radio and TV Building on the Nile Corniche, better known for Maspero, has been closely linked to the popular protests that toppled the Mubarak regime. Ever since the revolution, this spot has been a rallying point for protests and sit-ins. Over the 18 days of the January 25 revolution, the Egyptian State media played a definitive role, spreading propaganda and issuing misleading reports. The protesters soon responded. On the evening of the Friday January 28, one of the bloodiest days of the revolution, thousands of protesters walked from Al Tahrir Square, the epicentre of the anti-Mubarak demonstrations, to Maspero, to express their anger at the State media for supporting an outdated regime and neglecting a critical moment that has reshaped the history of the country for long decades to come. Since then, Maspero has been making a big noise in the media, in and out of Egypt. The area around the building was named after Gaston Camille Charles Maspero (1846-1916), a French Egyptologist who served as director of the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, where he established the French School of Oriental Archaeology. Maspero introduced many of the artifacts he discovered in Egypt to the world, through his many publications and the establishment of an academic journal and annals for reporting scientific work in Egyptology. That very same evening (on January 28 this year), the police withdrew from the streets, creating a security vacuum, and soon the military was summoned to take over. The first place the military decided to protect was the ‘very sensitive' Radio and TV Building. In no time at all, the Corniche was closed in both directions, and members of the public were not allowed to walk past the huge building, where more than 40,000 civil servants work. Since then, the area outside the Radio and TV Building has become an iconic site for protests and sit-ins. Blocking the road is an easy way for protesters to draw officials' attention to their demands. Hundreds of people from Madinet el-Salam, northeast of Cairo, have been camping outside the Radio and TV Building for more than a week now, demanding that the Government give them flats. You can see them washing themselves and their clothes in the Nile. Regrettably, one of the protesters drowned in the river the other day. All these demonstrations have had a negative impact on the owners of the cruise boats in the Nile, just in front of the Maspero Building. “Since people started protesting and holding sit-ins here, our trade has been suffering,” says a tall, swarthy young man called Sayed Karim, standing on the edge of a boat that takes people on cruises down the Nile and back again. Karim, 18, is the boat owner's assistant. Like dozens of other men working on the Nile boats, Karim spends his days on the river, letting their passengers enjoy the cool breeze on the river's peaceful waters. Usually people hire their boat for an hour or two, for special occasions like a small birthday party, for instance. “We used to be busy all day, but most days we don't get any passengers at all,” he says dejectedly. Karim and several of his colleagues stand on the pavement on the Corniche, inviting people to go on a Nile cruise for only LE2 (about 30 US cents). When no-one was allowed to walk down the Corniche, “things were very bad”. “For about six weeks, we didn't have a single client, as the Corniche was full of tanks and other armoured vehicles. The owner and I had to borrow from friends to survive,” added the teenager, who's been working on this boat since he was only eight years old, in remarks to the local newspaper Al-Shorouq. His only income is what the boat owner, an old man, pays him every day. He remembers the ‘dangerous night' of May 9 when ‘unknown elements' attacked Copts protesting outside the Radio and TV Building against the torching of a church in the working-class district of Imbaba. Several cars were set on fire and many people were injured. “That night, we all had to sail our boats into the Nile for our own safety. "We were afraid that the Molotov cocktails being thrown at the protesters might land on our decks,” he says. Supporters of the defunct Mubarak regime also smashed the windows of a computer company adjacent to the building, the company's director, Amr Mahmoud, says. They had to close for some days. The company too is suffering from lack of custom, just like the boats.
