Heartbreaker: Love, secrets and terror

by Nick Louth

  ‘Of course. My name is Khalil, and you are my friend.’

  ‘Well that’s sweet. I’m Kat Quinlan,’ she shook his hand. ‘I really need to use the Internet now. I have my story on a datastick. It’s urgent that I get it to London. Can I use your computer to send it?’

  ‘Of course. You are my guest.’ Then he shrugged. ‘Except now I cannot help you because Mubarak has closed the Internet and mobile phone system across Cairo.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To stop demonstrators coordinating.’

  ‘They can’t shut do it for long, can they? The country will grind to a halt,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think so. The mukhabarat have their own radio network, the government usually use fixed line phones. It’s young against old, you know? Mubarak is eighty-three, and he and his people have been running the country since before I was born. He was brought up in the age of papyrus. It’s the youth of Egypt who have no jobs and no hopes; they are the mobile phone generation.’

  Kat felt a surge of excitement. If she was having trouble getting a story out, then others would too. Besides, this was turning into something big. Really big. Something exciting. If the authorities were turning off the Internet they must be really worried.

  Two people, a tall studious youth with spectacles and a woman in a headscarf walked into the shop. ‘Salaam, Khalil,’ they said.

  He waved in reply and then introduced Kat. They both gazed open-mouthed at the tall copper-haired foreigner with her bare legs, bare arms and visible curves, standing so close to Khalil.

  The woman, whose name was Basinah, asked Khalil in Arabic if he was coming to Tahrir Square in the evening. ‘Dhuka is coming, Ahmed is coming, and both my cousins. Most people from class are coming too.’ She paused. ‘So who is your immodest friend with the crazy hair?’

  Khalil responded in English. ‘My friend here is a reporter,’ he said proudly, turning to Kat.

  ‘Oh really? Then you are welcome to come with us,’ Basinah said to Kat. ‘We are proud that you will cover our revolution.’ She took out her mobile phone, and showed Quinlan a short and shaky video clip of a policeman with a riot shield dragging a girl by her arm. ‘This is my cousin,’ she said, with a hint of pride as well as anger. ‘She is now in jail, thanks to Mubarak. Come tonight to Tahrir. You can help us get justice.’

  Quinlan felt almost dizzy with responsibility. ‘I’ll do my best.’

  They all agreed to meet at 6pm in the lobby of Kat’s hostel. ‘One more thing my friend,’ Khalil said to her. ‘Please wear long trousers and running shoes tonight. Tear gas burns everywhere, not just your nose and eyes.’

  ‘As a foreigner, you might be targeted by Mukhabarat too,’ Basinah said. ‘You might be…’ she turned to Khalil and asked a question in Arabic. Getting the answer she added: ‘Defiled.’

  In Arabic she whispered to Khalil. ‘She must be careful. The beasts will be drawn to her like wolves to a lamb. Her skin is like fresh milk, sprinkled with cinnamon.’

  He replied with a line from a famous Arabian poem. ‘Doves fly from her eyes with tidings of honey.’

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  It was 3pm. Friday prayers were over, and Kat was nervously anticipating her rendezvous with Khalil, Basinah and their friends, prior to going to the demonstration. She breathed deeply and looked into the mirror. She had prepared as carefully as she could. She had taken all the advice on board, and was wearing a long-sleeved cotton shirt, khaki combat-style trousers with numerous pockets, and running shoes with rubber soles. In a small backpack was a zip-up fleece in case the demo lasted into the evening and it got cold. She also had a bottle of water, a packet of dates, a notebook, several pens, a digital voice recorder and a microphone with cable. In a side pocket was her anti-tear gas kit: a sealed Ziploc bag with a dozen make-up removal pads, damp with vinegar. In another side pocket was her special reserve of courage: a quarter-bottle of scotch, bought in duty free at Heathrow.

  Khalil had told her that Egypt had been run under a state of emergency throughout the rule of Mubarak. She knew that this wasn’t going to be like protesting in London, where a right to a peaceful march had a centuries-long historical pedigree, and was now so routine that it was preceded by exhaustive preparatory meetings between police and organisers.

  This was different. In Egypt all demonstrations were banned, all protest was banned. Elections were rigged and the most coherent opposition group, the Muslim Brotherhood, was banned too. The police who enforced these bans had a well-deserved reputation for brutality. People disappeared all the time. You didn’t have to be a demonstrator. You could be a journalist, a poet, an Internet blogger or a relative of an exile abroad. You could be dumped dead in the Nile, beaten up and left on the street, or anything in-between. There was no redress. Courts routinely threw out complaints against the police, and lawyers who made them were vulnerable to detention too. So no one could know what would happen today. All the protests were organic, an impulsive spontaneous gathering, marshalled on the fringes by mobile phone and Internet, but which had no overall organisers. The experience was certainly going to be unpredictable and frightening.

  Now she had another moment of wondering why was she doing it, and why she was doing it this way. She reminded herself that there would be plenty of carefully-coiffed western journalists in Tahrir Square with their satellite up-links, their video edit vans, their translators, producers, sound recordists and local fixers. Among them would be Chris Wyrecliffe, and she would keep her eyes peeled for him.

  All these reporters would be readily identifiable. Sure, they would get the big picture stories, and presumably the police wouldn’t get in their way. What she wanted was the inside story: what was it actually like to be in the thick of a demonstration, with ordinary Egyptians, being pushed, being jostled, standing up against the might of an authoritarian state. Being right at the cutting edge. If she played it right, it could make her name. Articles in the Observer. The Guardian, perhaps. If she was unlucky, she could be arrested. She tried not to think about what could happen then.

  The room phone rang. Her friends had arrived. She folded a black and white Palestinian keffayah over her hair, to be less conspicuous, tying it under her chin as headscarf. There was obviously an art to this. She didn’t look cool at all. Just ridiculous, like some 1960s housewife. The phone rang again.

  ‘Coming’, she yelled, without picking it up. She picked up her bag and keys, then scampered down the stairs.

  * * *

  Kat Quinlan heard Tahrir Square long before she saw it. After a long, slow and crowded bus ride, Kat, Khalil, Basinah, Antarah and a dozen other students had emerged into the glare of street lights at the grand Al Bustan Road. By 7.30pm, as a chill had begun to descend through the smog of Cairo’s traffic fumes, they had walked past the Abdin Palace heading towards the American University and the central bus station on the far side of Tahrir Square. When they merged into Al Tahrir, the main road leading to the square, they merged with hundreds of others walking in the same direction. Cairo’s enterprise culture was there too: ice-cream vendors with bicycle carts, hot pastry sellers with trays, and small boys selling swimming goggles, at what Basinah said was an outrageous price, to protect against tear gas.

  Every kind of person was there. Most were young, westernised in appearance, but there were many young women wearing the hijab, and older bearded men fresh from Friday prayers chanting the tabkir: Allahu akbar, God is greatest. She was amazed that so many people had brought their children. Some were in pushchairs. Others, with their faces painted with the red, white and black stripes of the Egyptian flag, sat on their fathers’ shoulders. Ahead of them the road was lined on both sides by blue police buses, their windows covered in grilles. Officers in riot gear, with helmets and batons were standing in groups by the edge of the road. Some stared menacingly at the protesters.

  ‘Don’t you think something exceptional is going to happen today?’ Basinah said. Her hair was tightly covered by the hijab and her
cheeks daubed with Egyptian flags.

  ‘Yes, I do. I’m actually a little frightened. I don’t know what to expect,’ Kat replied.

  ‘If we stick together, we’ll be alright,’ Khalil said. ‘If we see troublemakers, we should keep away.’

  ‘Kat, this still isn’t quite the Arab style,’ Basinah said, reaching forward and again re-tying Kat’s keffayah.

  The pace slowed to a crawl as more and more demonstrators gathered, and became a pressing mass of bodies. From ahead of them, a tumultuous cry went up, like a cheer at a football stadium that seemed to flow like a wave right down to them from the square.

  ‘What are they shouting?’ asked Kat.

  ‘Hurriyah. It means freedom,’ Basinah said. ‘Freedom for Egypt, freedom for the people.’ The rhythmic chant of hurriyah continued, and the group of students around them all joined in. Kat found she was chanting too, and as she did so Basinah felt for her hand and grasped it. In that brief clasp, Kat felt friendship, solidarity and even sisterhood. She didn’t think that she had ever felt so alive.

  There was a pinchpoint ahead, where police had barriers partly across the road. Demonstrators were being forced down a sidestreet, away from the square. Thousands of people flowed like viscous liquid along the side street. Chants went up as demonstrators approached the police line; hundreds of officers in riot gear were there. The crowd felt like a single powerful sinuous creature, heart and lungs pulsing together, and utterly irresistible. A hundred metres beyond, in the square itself, thousands of people were already assembling. The metallic boom of megaphones echoed from the buildings. One group waved Egyptian flags, and others had banners written in English: ‘Down with Mubarak’, ‘Let us live’, ‘Egypt = freedom’ and simply: ‘Facebook!’

  Kat was then caught up in the crowd, bodies pressed around her as they were swept remorselessly to the pinchpoint. She still had Basinah’s hand, but could no longer see her easily. Bodies pressed from behind and her shoulders were lodged between two large men who were pushing her forward faster than she felt comfortable. Just ten metres ahead, and to the left, she glimpsed the crowd barrier which was causing the congestion. It was in front of two police vans, and more than a dozen people were crushed against it. A small boy of perhaps seven years had climbed up it and was crying frantically. A woman below him had her face squashed against the mesh. Hysterical screams could be heard, piercing the chanting that throbbed in her ears. Kat felt a rising sense of panic, and the overpowering stink of sweat and fear. Suddenly, Basinah’s hand was snatched away, and she could no longer see her or any of the group. She was swept past the pinchpoint, towards the square.

  Over the next hour she gradually worked her way through chanting crowds around the edge of the square. She posed for photographs with numerous Egyptian men, took pictures and video for an Asian couple from Colchester, talked politics with a Marxist called Michael from Cologne, exchanged pleasantries with an archaeology professor from Damascus, and had her face painted like a flag. Someone, she never saw who, groped her bottom. One restaurateur had driven his pick-up truck into the square and was giving away delicious spicy pastries. A couple of Australian backpackers were drinking beer and offering swigs to passers-by, while dozens of demonstrators seemed to have bottles of ‘freedom’ water, the product of some hurried but enterprising re-labelling by a local shop. Right at the heart of the square a large group of men were dancing around a boombox on which Egyptian rock was blasting out, while a group of hijabed women were chanting and clapping.

  * * *

  It was 7.42pm when the electricity went off. Chris Wyrecliffe groaned and swore. He was halfway through drafting his piece to camera, which he was due to deliver live at 8.08pm Cairo time for the Six O’Clock News in London. He’d been drafted in an hour ago, because Gerald Monaghan had to fly to Jordan where thousands had gathered for demonstrations in Amman. Now he had no lights, no air-conditioning and since this morning still no Internet or mobile phone signal. The laptop’s own power supply would last maybe thirty minutes. London still didn’t have his cue, which he had written earlier, and would now be getting agitated.

  Wyrecliffe felt his way to the bedside table and, scattering alarm clock, sunglasses and medications, felt for his headtorch. He pulled it over his thick grey hair, turned it on and strode to the door. Outside in the corridor a faint caramel light was seeping from the emergency lights on the ceiling. Further down the hall someone was shining a torch at a box on the wall. Wyrecliffe recognised Dan Zurski, an AP photographer usually based in Jerusalem.

  ‘Cairo: closed for business,’ Zurski said. ‘I was halfway through uploading five gigabytes of pix I got today to the satellite and then my edit machine crashed when the power went.

  ‘Bloody Mubarak.’ Wyrecliffe squinted at his watch. ‘I’m live from the square in thirty minutes. My feed’s top news slot, and I’m not even sure that the sat truck can get through since they blocked the side road we normally use. I can’t get hold of Nimr.’

  ‘Do you have a satphone I can use?’ Zurski asked. ‘I lent mine to a freelancer from Belgrade this afternoon, and the asshole managed to get himself arrested with it on him. I need to find out what got through to the desk.’

  ‘Sure, if you can wait. I’ll be done in forty minutes.’

  ‘I’ll have a cold beer waiting for you, Chris. Find me in the bar.’

  ‘Okay.’ Wyrecliffe retraced his steps, and went back to his room. 7.51pm. There was no time to lose. Relieved to find the hotel phone still working, he rang London. The duty editor sounded strained and clipped, but took down by hand the hundred-and-fifty word cue that Wyrecliffe had written on his laptop, but was unable to send. That cue would be read out by the news reader, Sophie Raworth tonight, to introduce his report. This would be input into the BBC autocue system and appear on a screen beneath the rostrum camera. Then there would be three minutes of the footage shot from the roof earlier in the day, with Wyrecliffe’s voiceover already overlaid in place of the natural sound. Finally, the studio would come back to him for the two minute live action ‘rant to camera’ against a background of demonstrators at exactly 8.08pm, Cairo time.

  Camerawoman Shami Shalwaz knocked on Wyrecliffe’s door. ‘Nimr’s here. He’s just run all the way upstairs because your phone was engaged. Are you ready?’

  ‘Yep, just finishing up.’ It was 7.56pm. ‘Wyrecliffe looked up to see the breathless producer standing in the doorway. ‘Relieved to see you, Nimr. We’re beginning to cut it fine.’

  ‘I know,’ Nimr gasped. ‘But it’s crazy out there. The truck’s a block further away than I wanted, but if you stand at the western edge of the square we’ll still get a good signal. I have to run back now to get set up.’

  Wyrecliffe was relieved. The sat truck’s system was entirely self-contained: radio, video feed and uplink all running off huge batteries.

  Shalwaz already had the camera on her shoulder, and pointed out to the corridor. ‘Would you do the honours?’ Wyrecliffe, nodded, and hefted the heavy telescopic tripod on his shoulder with practised ease. They took the stairs, passing the lift stuck on the third floor. Street noise rattled around the stairs, even before they reached the lobby. The main hotel door was barricaded with furniture, and security staff were standing by. Dozens of protesters outside, some injured, were pleading to come in, banging on the windows.

  It was 7.59pm, and in one minute the BBC Six O’Clock News would start to roll. He needed to get outside so he could get a satphone signal to talk to the gallery in London, where editors would be slotting in video feeds and getting a line to local producers. Shami was already fitting his radio mic and the battery pack on his waistband underneath his jacket at the back. But the protesters showed no sign of moving away from the door. ‘Is there another way out?’ Wyrecliffe whispered to the doorman .

  ‘Yes, follow me.’ The doorman led them rapidly downstairs, through the kitchens, past a storeroom and to an emergency exit with a crush bar which led into the hotel’s small underground car p
ark. Wyrecliffe generously tipped the man and gave a curt thank you as they emerged into the chill evening air. 8.01pm.

  He already had London on rapid-dial before they emerged into the clear sky. It was another hundred and fifty metres to the chosen location, and Wyrecliffe started a rapid conversation with the duty editor, as he strode across the square. London was already running the cue, and they then had the three minutes of the recorded package before he was live on the bulletin. He fought the temptation to run. It would save him half a minute, assuming he didn’t stumble. But there would be a cost. Nothing comes across worse on TV than a breathless, red-faced reporter.

  The breeze carried faint sounds of shouting and the tang of tear gas. Hundreds of demonstrators, many waving flags, with bandanas across their faces in the colours of the Egyptian flag, streamed across into the square. Some were running, others hurried along holding children in their arms or tugging them by the hand. Wyrecliffe and Shalwaz made their way against the flow of demonstrators to the western edge of the square. It was 8.05pm. Suddenly Nimr came through over Shalwaz’s headphones, and she gave Wyrecliffe the thumbs up. Three minutes to go.

  Shalwaz briefly abandoned her camera to stretch up and comb Wyrecliffe’s hair, to straighten his jacket and straighten his shirt collar. Then it was back to the tripod, where she mimed the cues she was receiving over the headphones. Five fingers, four, three, two, and then she pointed at Wyrecliffe. Live.

  The scene tonight in Tahrir Square is one of barely suppressed violence. Demonstrators feeling the power they now possess are pushing for the removal of President Mubarak and the quashing of the hereditary rule that he is trying to usher through for his son, Gamal. Mubarak himself, shocked by the nerve and indeed bravery of these peaceful protesters, must be wondering how the fear and intimidation of his thirty-year rule has so quickly evaporated. Make no mistake, this is a trial of strength. One the one hand, the tough Egyptian police and the feared plain-clothes mukhabarat secret service men. On the other, ordinary Egyptians, students, yes, but businessmen, housewives and the unemployed are all finding common cause. By the end of tonight we may know whether they will succeed. Chris Wyrecliffe, BBC News, Tahrir Square.