Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle East by David D. Kirkpatrick

Author:David D. Kirkpatrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: 21st Century, Egypt, History, International Relations, Middle East, Political Science, Social Science, Sociology
Publisher: Viking
Published: 2018-08-07T03:00:00+00:00

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Ibrahim and I met again the next day, Friday, December 7, near Al Azhar to join a funeral march for Islamists killed in the fighting. A parade of thousands snaked through the medieval city wailing, chanting, and seething. Ibrahim’s beard fit right in. I felt safer having him with me.

Then an Islamist neighbor pointed him out to a friend. Moments later a tall man much bigger than either of us stepped out of nowhere, grabbed Ibrahim by the arm, and held up his wrist. The cross tattoo.

A small mob formed around us. They were sure Ibrahim was an infiltrator, a Christian spy. Why else would he disguise himself in a Salafi beard? Hands were all over him. A man slapped him hard on the ear. Ibrahim bent over in pain. I grabbed him and held up my press card.

Sahafi, sahafi—journalist, journalist—I said. The Islamists tried to pry me away. They meant me no harm, one of them told me. I was a guest in their country. Ibrahim was an Egyptian Copt. That was a different story.

Someone behind me lunged for Ibrahim, shoved into me, and knocked my eyeglasses off my face. They disappeared under the throng of marchers. I squinted and clutched at Ibrahim.

The mob parted for an older man with a graying beard and stern face. More trouble, I thought. The new authority figure took Ibrahim by an arm and pulled him through the crowd. I hung on to his other arm and bounced along behind like we were playing a game of Crack the Whip.

Trailed by a deferential posse, our captor dragged us past a chain-link fence into what appeared to be a schoolyard. The Islamists pulled up a pair of chairs and sat us down for an interrogation. We were journalists for the New York Times, I kept repeating, in English and Arabic. Ibrahim was murmuring in Arabic too fast and soft for me to follow, and a young man was using a mobile phone camera to film our interrogation. Was he hoping to record a confession? His video of my babbling, broken Arabic would turn up on the website of an anti-Islamist newspaper, Youm el-Saba—7 Days. The cameraman was the real spy.

The big man in charge grabbed Ibrahem and me by our elbows and we were on the move again. This time he found an Egyptian police officer and turned us both in. Moments later all three of us—Ibrahim, our Islamist captor, and I—were up several flights of stairs in the office of the chief of the local police precinct.

He had no interest in Ibrahim, but was I a spy? The chief peered intently at my Egyptian press card.

I breathed a sigh of relief. This happened all the time. Another policeman had taken my iPhone on the way in and, with typical professionalism, asked me if he could play games on it. So I borrowed back my phone and called the Egyptian government’s foreign media director. I knew he would vouch for me.

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