First person account of Time journalist caught up in Yesterday's violence in Cairo

[cali]

There was a crackle of gunfire. Birdshot hit the buildings overhead and the crowd of demonstrators on Cairo’s 15 May Bridge took off running from the shots. I felt a dull object hit my back. It was a brake disk from a car. Thrown by whom—it was unclear. Demonstrators shouted that police were shooting from the rooftops. I kept running.

The thousands of demonstrators that filled the bridge were supporters of deposed President Mohamed Morsi, heeding a call for a Friday of Rage, a day of nationwide demonstrations deploring a crackdown by the interim military-backed government that at least 638 people dead on Wednesday. The initial shock of Wednesday’s killing has now worn off, and given way to bitterness and anger.

Many of the protesters knew they could be marching to their deaths. “I saw two people who were shot already, and I’m not afraid,” said Haitham Eisa, 32, a quality manager at an educational company based in Germany. He’s lived in Germany for 11 years, he said, but he flew back for the January 2011 uprising that toppled dictator Hosni Mubarak. He flew back again this week to protest Wednesday’s massacre.

“I’m going because I have to protect my opinion. My opinion is democracy,” he said, jogging alongside me. “We are still fighting for democracy. Democracy should survive. Nothing else. Not military weapons.” Running past, an engineering student name Muhammad Ibrahim Younis, 21, overheard Eisa’s words and shouted, “We’re not going back even if it means death!”

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/08/16/turmoil-in-egypt-time-journalist-gets-caught-in-cairos-latest-day-of-rage/#ixzz2cEzM3usx

[cali]

1. this is a really compelling read

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Now, with the death toll soaring from a series of bloody crackdowns by the security forces, positions on all sides of the fight have hardened. After Friday’s violence, the Muslim Brotherhood announced a call for more demonstrations, every single day. Meanwhile, state television aired footage of what they said were men firing AK-47s from the demonstration on the 15 May Bridge. Cairo residents organized squads of citizen vigilantes, known as “popular committees” to patrol the borders of each neighborhoods. In pro-military neighborhoods, the patrols were determined to keep pro-Morsi demonstrators out.

And I ran straight into them when I attempted to leave the bridge in order to avoid the chaos in Ramses Square. Photojournalist Cliff Cheney and I descended an off-ramp from the bridge toward the working class neighborhood of Bulaq, looking for a way out of the fight. A group of men, a few wielding sticks, stopped us. No one was allowed through, they said.

Haitham Eisa, the manager living in Germany, reappeared and explained to the men that we were journalists who simply wanted to leave the scene. At first, this strategy appeared to work. We moved through the first layer of men.

But others in the group were apparently not convinced that Cliff and I did not represent a threat. A man grabbed me by the arm, then a whole group seized me. Within seconds I was lifted off the ground while a whole crowd of men ripped my camera from my hands and my medical kit from the strap on my thigh. One man slapped me across the face, knocking my glasses to the pavement.

Read more: http://world.time.com/2013/08/16/turmoil-in-egypt-time-journalist-gets-caught-in-cairos-latest-day-of-rage/#ixzz2cF3e3n00