Egypt Is Actually Safer Than You Think

By Bassem Sabry

"Don't laugh at me, but before I came here I was worried that I was gonna get hit by a stray bullet coming out nowhere or something. But it's not at all like that. I mean, it's actually more or less normal."

We are sitting in a downtown cafe, surrounded by Egyptians, Arabs, Europeans and Americans. It's a tourist-and-expat-oriented cafe, not as packed as it normally used to be, but there are enough clientele, and everyone is inconspicuously laid back. My friend, who's been visiting Egypt for a few days, says the words above to me hours before she's due to leave Cairo back to her country. She's commenting on how Egypt, which she had visited many times before up to just a year ago, was not exactly the apocalyptic place she had expected to be. I’m not surprised by either sentiment. I’ve been hearing much of the same for quite some time now. Even today a friend was visiting from abroad and he too shared the same exact before-and-after sentiments. He also said that his colleagues had warned him not to come to Cairo because it was apparently some sort of guerrilla warfare hotspot.

And as I speak to people abroad who follow Egypt, whether on social media or elsewhere, I am increasingly bombarded with queries and commentary about how "unsafe" Egypt appears to have become. The image that is painted to me of Cairo, and elsewhere, is one of a town drowning in anarchy and lawlessness, one where you can't lead any modicum of a normal life as a citizen or as a tourist.

Well, not really.

I do understand where the perception comes from. The more visible social media chatter and the articles coming out of the country often seem like clippings from a conflict zone, and there are quite a few videos being shared around of violent incidents. Even one of my most recent articles was one debating the possibility of wide political violence erupting. And certainly there is no denying that Tahrir and the area surrounding it do witness significant security concerns, and some profoundly terrible events have indeed been taking place there. Also, some of the less urban parts of Egypt have their share of security challenges, and the situation in some of the non-tourist parts of Sinai is becoming profoundly worrisome. Moreover, the debate on harassment has become a more pressing subject. And the anger and confrontational tone visible in the posts of many of the more widely read twitterati and bloggers is just undeniable.

But the fact is that, aside from all the troubling and perturbing stuff one reads as well as the rising economic and political troubles the country is in, life actually continues to go on for most Egyptians.

Kids still go to school. People go to work. Families get together on the weekends. There are shows in the opera house and events in independent cultural venues. Concerts are playing, with local and foreign bands. Cafes are crowded 24/7 with people watching sports, talk shows or the same old music channels. Shops are open amid the economic pressures, selling all they have sold for years. Good movies pack cinema theatres. Conferences, local and international ones, are still being regularly held. Parties keep going, public and private. Many businesses are somehow thriving despite, or at times because of, the conditions. Tourists are out and about in Khan El-Khalili, the Pyramids, the city of Alexandria, and elsewhere. Boats take to the Nile. Beach resorts in the Red Sea as well as the historic cities of Luxor and Aswan are still alive with tourists, though quite less crowded than they were in 2010.

Of course, I’m by no means arguing that Egypt is a calm Switzerland, but I’m arguing instead that it is not the dystopia that some have lately come to assume it to be. So where does the horrifying perception come from?

Well, the first culprit would be social media. Most people writing about Egypt, whether activists, bloggers or journalists tend to naturally focus on the challenges facing the country, whether protests, clashes involving the Ministry of Interior, reports of violence, political problems and the like. There are times when Twitter timelines, even my own, are filled with nothing but tweets with reports or claims of violence against protesters, reports or claims of police abuse, and exchanges of strong language between the Islamists and the opposition. But then, especially in the case of Cairo, much of the confirmed clashes are usually geographically-centered in particularly defined and contained (and easily-avoidable) hotspots, usually a couple of blocks that are repeatedly the site of clashes and upheaval, and people - for better or for worse - have learned to pretty much live around them. Also, many of those writing at times (including myself) are emotionally taken by the events and end up magnifying a thing or two in the heat of the moment, unintentionally or otherwise.

The second issue is that many Egyptians themselves “feel” more unsafe. They have witnessed difficult experiences and moments unlike anything they had experienced before. The images of protests and teargas, the tragic reports and sights of violence, the still-echoing night of January 28th of 2011 when the police disappeared from the streets and anarchy reigned, the unforgettable Maspero violence and the Portsaid stadium tragedy, and the general political instability all have contributed to a heightened sense of general anxiety.

But feelings of rising anxiety and the increase in the number of nationally shocking episodes do not necessarily mean that the overall day-to-day crime rate has to have had an equally corresponding increase. In fact, a 2011 Gallup poll, the year in which the police was least present in Egyptian streets, noted that while more people were indeed feeling more unsafe than the preceding year, less people actually reported personally being victims of crime. And what is peculiarly interesting is that while more people now speak about someone they know - or a friend of a friend - experiencing incidents such as car theft, getting pick-pocketed or something else, many (but surely not all) of these stories are either many times unverified hearsay or - when they are true - are often spoken of in a sense of utter surprise as if this was the first time Egypt or their city had experienced something similar. And with the explosion of social media, these claims and reports are shared more immediately, exponentially and widely than ever before, with the rumours and claims inevitably getting more coverage, sharing and inflation than any retractions or clarifications.

In fact, social media and mobile mass messaging applications such Whatsapp have also allowed people for the first time ever to document and debate daily happenings in great frequency, detail and immediacy, find out more about what appears to happening around them and in governorates outside of Cairo (which largely were unknown dark spots before), bringing many previously unknown and pre-existing phenomena to light to more people. But the fact is: many of such kinds of occurrences have more or less taken place in Egypt for as long as anyone could remember, much as they happen in virtually all countries in varying form and frequency and locations, and life always went on in Egypt because people knew - as everyone anywhere does - how to normally and safely conduct their daily lives.

Again, I am not claiming that Egypt is trouble-free, nor that things aren’t different at all or more tense and need more general awareness since the revolution, nor am I discounting what some people have personally experienced and how it might have impacted them and their lives. But I am asserting that despite all the avalanche reports and claims,Egypt actually is still a place where you can normally go to work, go out, sit in a cafe or drive around until dawn, go out, see the sights, and lead a life. Cairo is still incessantly awake and bustling with normal life, 24 hours a day. Life goes on, despite the tweets.