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Cairo
run back for her. ‘I can’t,’ she’s whispering, ‘I can’t.’ We find her shoe, grab an arm each and run. We run down the slope of the bridge and straight into another cordon of Central Security soldiers. They’re meant to block the way. We are three women, dishevelled, eyes streaming. We run right up to them and they make way. ‘Go!’ they urge us. ‘Quick!’ Eye to eye with one of them, young, brown, open-faced, Egyptian, I pause, just for a second. ‘What can we do?’ he shouts into the smoke. ‘If we could take off this uniform we’d join you!’ Stuck. Stranded. For a moment as I was running down the slip road with my eyes closed holding on to my nieces I had the – typical – thought that we might nip into the Ramses Hilton and wash our faces, maybe even get some tea. Down on the embankment, with the soldiers facing us and behind them the Corniche road littered with stones and charred cars and the Hilton dark and shuttered, it was clear that a five-star interlude was out of the question. We run down the embankment steps and jump into a boat: to Giza, please. Drop us next to Gala2 Bridge. We’ll go home. But: as we get further from the shore our coughing and choking subsides. We can draw breath, even though the breath burns. And we can open our eyes. And when our eyes meet we change direction and head, again, to Tahrir. On the traffic island at the Qasr el-Nil entrance to Tahrir you turned 360 degrees and everywhere there were people. I could not tell how many thousands I could see. Close up, people were handing out tissues soaked in vinegar for your nose, Pepsi to bathe your eyes, water to
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07/12/2011 13:56:33