Run for Gaza

I couldn’t wait to get to Egypt. As I wiped off the counter one final time before putting on my Timberlands and heading to the airport, I could feel myself shifting from a cranky pre-travel logistics mode - which ordinarily involves a cleaning frenzy that was intensified this time around by a school notification of a lice outbreak in the third grade (I get really anal about lice) - to a more composed forward-looking travel thrill. Kids were all strapped in and ready to go as I hopped in the car. We were off to O’Hare. Egypt here we come!

With everything that’s been going on since October I often found myself spiraling and wanting to just be home. Part of me thought it would be easier being around people who shared my premises so there’s less energy expelled on trying to justify or condemn or find common grounds before just venting. That said, I knew things back home weren’t great either.

Spontaneous protests kept erupting on Egyptian streets in the first couple of weeks after October 7th, which is in itself a feat given the 2013 anti-protest law that set massive restrictions on people’s ability to protest and has effectively snuffed almost all major protest efforts over the past 10 years.

The 2023 pro-Palestine protests reached their climax on Friday October 20^th after Sisi’s greenlighting of pro-Palestine protests a couple of days earlier with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

This protest “greenlighting” is a Sisi trademark first used in 2013 in before he even became president. Back then, he invited people to head to the streets to authorize him to fight “terrorism and violence” i.e. to authorize him to fight the pro-Morsi protests that dominated the streets after Morsi was ousted on July 3. The 2013 Sisi-approved protests ultimately resulted in the infamous Rab’a massacre in August and the effective ban on protests was then sealed with the aforementioned protest law in November.  

Unlike the 2013 greenlighting, however, the 2023 pro-Palestine protests did not have the effect that Sisi may have intended. Whether he was intending to absorb public sentiment or to more opportunistically siphon off Egyptians’ sympathy to Palestinians for his own political gains in the December “elections” is almost irrelevant. These protests unwittingly invited both supporters and dissenters of the Sisi government to the streets. Not surprisingly, outrage at Israel’s assault on Gaza very readily turned into criticism of Sisi’s inaction which bubbled into criticism of Sisi period. The protests - which were not allowed to take place in Tahrir Square, the heart of the 2011 Egyptian revolution - eventually spilled over into Tahrir with protestors ramming through Police cordons. Dozens were arrested and that was effectively the end of major protests in Egypt, pro-Palestine or otherwise.

That is all to say, I knew things weren’t rosy back home, but I was still looking forward to it. This was augmented when Salma told me about Trifactory’s Run for Gaza event that was held Friday February 16^th, the very next day we arrived. I thought “great, someone figured out a workaround to the protest ban”. I told my dad about it, and he got us all tickets: him and my mom, my brothers, my sister-in-law, my husband, me, and all 3 kids - even my two-year old!  We arrived in Cairo around 11 pm Thursday and were greeted with wonderfully smothering hugs, a loud and uncharacteristically uneventful car ride home (my dad almost always takes the wrong exit out of the airport and gets us lost for a little while), boisterous laughter and chit chatting over an incompatible but delicious assortment of food – shorbet lisan asfour, feteer and honey, kofta, molokheyya. Amina hardly eats on the plane because she doesn’t like airplane food and gets motion sickness, so she was particularly enthusiastic about the food.  All the while Ahmed, Mariam, and Salah kept asking if we were actually going to the Run for Gaza thing next morning. It was supposed to start at 9 am and registration was at 8 and the place – Wadi Degla protectorate – was about 45-minutes away which meant waking up at 7 on a Friday (weekend) and we were still awake till past 2 am. I said yes and set an alarm for 6:30 but wasn’t too optimistic at our odds of waking up in time.

But we did. Everyone shuffled bleary-eyed and all ten of us crammed into my dad’s black Mercedes and Mariam’s yellow Suzuki.

Wadi Degla is a protected desert valley at the edge of Maadi, the neighbourhood of Cairo where I grew up. As we got to the main asphalt road near Wadi Degla, we saw several big trucks with “Run for Gaza” plastered across them. We also saw a few police cars set up at the top of the smaller winding gravel road that split off from the main road and led to the reserve’s entrance. I was more surprised at the trucks than the police cars. I thought fees would just be donated in cash to UNRWA or some other aid organization. I didn’t realize that they were organizing aid convoys themselves.

We parked on the main road and walked past the trucks and police cars down the gravel road. As we walked by, I saw that the trucks had in smaller print Gaza dawman wa lays yawman (غزة دوما وليس يوما) – Gaza forever and not just for a day. I liked both the sound and meaning of that. It made me think of chants and I realized that almost all the Palestine ones I had in my head were in English because we’ve been protesting in Viroqua. So I asked Ahmed “what chants are popular now” and he says, “no chants”.  We walked to the registration booth set up right outside (ya Cole) the reserve and after getting our numbers and such we continue through the gate into the reserve.

I couldn’t really hear it from the outside, but once we walked in, there was no escaping it. There was festive loud music blasting from one corner with numerous costumed characters waving their fake arms in the air and shaking their fake tails to the music. Right behind it was a VIP seating area with unoccupied beanbag chairs spread across it. In another corner there was a massive kids’ play area with a blowup castle and such. And more costumed characters.

My brothers immediately started cursing at the whole set up. I saw it all but didn’t immediately register what was happening as the obscenity it was. We all weaved through to the start line where Cole and I were starting with the 5K run. The rest were starting the 1K family run an hour later. In the meantime, they were just going to chill and cheer. Rawy was understandably clingy, but Cole and I managed to sneak towards the start line.

There were a lot of runners. Around 10,000 participants, if you believe the State Information Service numbers (which I don’t). Maybe a 1000. But it’s also possible that some registered to donate the money and never actually showed up. We also left early so there’s that, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Some runners wore keffiyehs. Others had the Palestinian flag wrapped around them or had it featured on them in some other way. Many - including our gang minus Salah - without any distinctive Palestine markers. Most with more somber face expressions.

Right before we started, a young woman’s solemn voice sounded from a distant mic. Over the sound of the jubilant music, she asked that we all stand for a moment of silence for all those killed in Gaza. It took whoever was manning the music a bit took long to turn off the music. Later we would learn that it was after Ahmed, Mariam, Salah, and my dad went over and asked the DJ to turn it off. The moment of silence barely lasted for the moment. The young voice on the mic then proceeded, attempting to reclaim the tone of the event. She gave the cursory acknowledgements to the sponsors of the event – which to my surprise included the Ministry of Social Solidarity – and then mourned all the Palestinians being subjected to Israel’s violations in Gaza. She recited Mahmoud Darwish. Not too long into her statement the music blasted again. It was hard to hear.

We ran. It was uneventful. A few cops here and there running along. The best part was that you couldn’t hear the music or see the costumed people. It was just desert. I wish someone had chanted. It occurred to me as I was writing this, why didn’t I lead something? I’m not actually the protest type but there’s something very therapeutic and powerful to naming an injustice out loud. Yelling it. Screaming it. I think maybe if my brothers were with me, we could’ve done something together.

Cole ran ahead on the way back. As I trotted to the finish line, I looked for my family and was met with grimacing faces. The first thing Ahmed and Salah said was let’s leave. “Wait what. No. We woke up early. We came all this way. You waited this long. Let’s just do it”. Salah was glaring. “Dina, you don’t understand. This atmosphere is disgusting”. I understood that much. I just felt bad that I dragged everyone early and they ended up not even doing anything other than wait for me and Cole. I was going to fight it more when Salah said something about people crying. At first, I thought he meant one of the kids and I couldn’t see Sina in this moment and started asking if something happened with the kids. People were being evasive and no one was answering. Beano was right there so I asked her and she pointed at Mariam.  I stopped fighting and deferred to the others’ decision.  

As we trudged out to the main road, Salah and Ahmed filled me in. They told me how they had to ask the people to stop the music for the moment of silence. How, afterwards, they asked if they could at least change the music so it was Palestinian or at least more appropriate somehow. How the people agreed that this festive set up was unbecoming for the spirit of the event. And how they said it was not their call. It was to honor whatever Ministers were there. Mariam said she felt like it was confusing and schizophrenic being there. “Are we happy about what’s happening in Gaza? Is that what’s happening?” she muttered as we got back in her yellow car. Ahmed shook his head and gesticulated in frustration, “this epitomizes Egypt’s whole position regarding Palestine these days.” We slammed the door shut.

On the way there, we listened to Ya tal’een eljabal يا طالعين الجبل (To Those Heading to the Mountains) which Palestinian women sang to their imprisoned loved ones. We listened to Hisham El Gakh reciting Ensahebo انسحبوا (Retreat) which talked about the Egyptian soldiers who refused to retreat in 1967 as the Israeli army encroached. And other songs that stoked that internal eternal fire forever stuck between an all-compassing blaze and a barely glowing ember.  On the way back, we didn’t listen to anything. I thought of the look on Beano’s face when we were talking about hating the set-up. I couldn’t quite read it. I know she’s very emotionally intelligent. And I know she’s noticing these interactions. I don’t know though how she’s processing them in her almost 9-year-old brain. A quiet amorphous knot unceremoniously cropped up in my heart.  I wanted to be proud of Egypt’s official position on Palestine. I wanted her to be proud.  I wanted things to be way better than they were in the US. But they weren’t.

We ended the morning with breakfast by the Nile at nadi el yakht نادي اليخت. The sun shone down on us and slowly kneaded that knot away. Gaza dawman wa lays yamwan. Something will change. Something must change, mustn’t it?