WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE
A summer of unrest, Egypt 2013
An article by Val Cameron
I always dreamt of heading south in winter to join the bluebirds in the sun and my
wish was finally granted by an Egyptian genie. South Sinai’s Red Sea resort of
Dahab, a navel-gazing Shangri-La was affordable and only 250 miles from Cairo.
The company I work for deemed it unsafe to deploy teachers to Alexandria. I
found myself in July without a job. Travel advice on the Foreign and Commonwealth
website marked most of Egypt in orange, ‘for essential travel only’. North Sinai was
off-limits. If you stayed, you should avoid large crowds, demonstrations and keep a
low profile near or in your house.
After President Morsi was deposed by the people, with 33 million on the streets,
the army stepped in to restore order. First they cleared two huge sit-ins of Morsi
supporters with hideous violence and bloodshed. It was both applauded and
condemned. Western media, who were under attack themselves, spoke of innocent
protestors being massacred with live ammunition. Egypt’s press said that residents
were being intimidated, tortured and even killed by those same ‘innocents’. They
had occupied El Rabaat and Giza for six weeks in temperatures averaging the high
40s. Little was reported about the logisti 72