Cairo Rain

Rain in Cairo comes as a surprise. At first, I hear the sounds of small dry leaves tumbling along the pavement. At least that is what I perceive. Then I feel a light tap on my shoulder. Again, I think of the trees. Surely a parched kernel of a seed has fallen, dropping upon my shoulder. But then there is the sound of more leaves scuttling as I feel another tap upon my shoulder. And then another and another. I look up to see the purplish hues of an evening sky veiled by gauzy, grey strands of stretched cotton. Impossibly and immediately, buckets of rain begin to fall. Adults around me run pell-mell, seeking the dry shelter of a nearby overhang. At the same time, children emerge from the buildings around me, shrieking with delight. Rain has come Cairo.

Shirt soaked, I walk to a covered terrace. I stand next to an old, smiling man, and together we watch the children jump up and down amidst the downpour. In the next minute, the rain simply stop just as abruptly as it began. Adults, now animated and chatty, emerge from their shelters, picking up where they left off. The children are now leaping from puddle to puddle. The old man standing next to me nods and slowly walks away. I linger for a moment watching the kids splashing one another while the adults go about their business. Although I am jarred by the sudden rain, I am certain that the adults will take their children home and the trees and the pavement will dry as if the rains never came at all.

Deposed Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi has not been seen since he was removed from power on July 3rd of this year. In the days following his removal from office, different segments of the Egyptian populace have publicly celebrated and protested. Hundreds have died in the violent aftermath. There is still a curfew in place, enforced by thousands of Egyptian security forces and regular army personnel. Daily protests continue in Cairo and Alexandria. Egyptians are polarized, although Morsi supporters are in the minority. They are a sizable minority, however.

After months of imprisonment, Morsi emerges today to formally face charges of incitement to riot and murder. All of Egypt has halted to watch the spectacle. Everyone is expecting the worst.

We are, too.

Mercifully, we have a school holiday today. The Muslim New Year is tomorrow, but our school is officially celebrating it today Good thing, too. In the past week 20,000 security forces have been deployed in the area in an attempt to discourage mass political protests. Most roads in and out of the area are closed to through traffic, so many of our students would not have been able to make it to school had we conducted classes. Today we are home, and were glued to our Twitter feeds and Al Jazeera apps.

As we log on to a very sluggish Internet, we discover that the military government has, at the 11th hour, changed the venue of Morsi's hearing to a heavily fortified police training facility many kilometers away. We learn that the judges in the trial have barred any live broadcast from occurring and are only allowing a handful of the state-run media reporters into the courtroom for the hearing. Not to be deterred, we listen to BBC and Al Jazeera live broadcasts from outside of the facility. We also monitor some rogue reporters tweeting from the hearing.

After an hour or so, a handcuffed Morsi appears surrounded by hundreds of heavily armed, military guards. He is hurried into a large fenced-in area within the courtroom, and there he is greeted by other ranking members of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) that have been stated to stand trial with him. According to our Twitter reporters, Morsi is dressed in a business suit while his MB co-defendants are dressed in prison-whites. When he enters into the makeshift defendants' cage, pandemonium breaks out in the courtroom. His fellow MB compatriots and cell-mates embrace him as hundreds of courtroom spectators shout all at once. Some of the shouts call for immediate execution while others are in support of the defendants. The judge calls for order and then adjourns the hearing to order to let the military guards establish quiet in the courtroom. We hear that order is restored, lost and then regained. We hear that Morsi is defiant and that he waives his right to counsel. We hear that he repeatedly tells the judges that he is their president and that they have no right to try him. We hear that he refuses the lead judge's order to change clothes into the white, prison fatigues that all defendants are by law to wear during a hearing. After just an hour, we hear that the judge adjourns the hearing, postponing the trial until January. Morsi is then apparently helicoptered to a maximum security prison in Alexandria while his MB associates are imprisoned here in Cairo. Later on we see some of the video transcripts that the state-run media outlets were allowed to post, seeing for ourselves that our rogue Twitter reporters were accurate in the reports posted.

Fearing a wave of pro-Morsi militancy, we brace ourselves for the worst, staying indoors for the day. But we hear nothing; no distant chanting, no drumming marchers. Nothing. The day passes quietly, and so does the night. In the wee hours of the morning, I wake up, half expecting a phone call announcing the cancellation of school. None comes.

As usual, Dana and I walk to school the next morning, traipsing down the tree-lined streets of Ma'adi. The streets look exactly like they did two days ago when we last walked home, and we are not sure what to make of this.