In the capital as well as in governorates, life proceeds as usual whether politicians agree or disagree, but in hotbeds that witness direct reaction to what has been going on since the January 25 Revolution the picture is completely different. Mona Abdel-Aziz, a middle-aged civil servant who works in the mammoth Tahrir Square-based governmental office building commonly known in Arabic as El-Mugamaa, experiences a hard time “when the square is full of protesters". Since the outbreak of skirmishes with the police in the past few days, she has been inhaling tear gas which has turned red her sensitive eyes that are allergic to the gas, not to mention the husky voice she has to put up with. Mona has been hesitant whether to go to work or not, given the escalating events in Mohamed Mahmoud and Qasr el-Aini streets, but she decided to go after all because as she told this paper, “I can't just skip work for days when I have lots to attend to." The Mugamaa employs some 9,000 civil servants in different departments offering services to around 30,000 citizens from throughout Egypt every day. “Given such daily pressure, the disturbance caused to workers and the public is quite perceivable", Mona says. As of yesterday, Mona and her colleagues in the Youth and Sports Department in the Mugamaa were temporarily displaced and working in an old building in a youth centre away from downtown Cairo, until the situation returns to normal in Tahrir. However, the Ministry of Education has had to think of a way out for students of the Lycée, the school on Youssef el-Guindi Street which has turned into a battlefield in a violent confrontation between the police and demonstrators. The damage caused to the school whose desks and boards were used as ammunition and the risk involved has caused the ministry to transfer the students also as a temporary measure to Port Said School in Zamalek. The suggestion was that they would attend classes for three hours only from 1.30 to 4.30 p.m., but parents found the solution impractical because such a short school day would offer little to their offspring. As for kindergarten pupils, they have been given an open-end, vacation. Parents of primary and preparatory stage students have reservations about their children having to travel to Zamalek every day, since most of them are downtown Cairo residents. Scores of parents therefore gathered in the vicinity of the premises of the National Institute, to which Port Said School is affiliated urging the police forces stationed in the school to evacuate it. “The Interior Ministry has to bear the repair costs because its forces broke into the school to throw stones at demonstration from roof tops," Doaa Bahig a mother of a first grade student told Al-Messa Arabic evening newspaper. Some parents suggested that students attend a full day at the same school in Zamalek on Fridays and Saturdays to make up for the classes they had to miss by force majeure. The Lycée el-Horriya (ironically its name in Arabic means freedom) has l,000 students. All the students and the administration have alot to cope with at the moment.
