Stirring up peaceful trouble in Tahrir Square yesterday.
This was my last big dance event for the new video and a fitting way to wrap up.
It was clear many of the participants were nervous about things going smoothly, and it did get a bit heated once we started shouting and clapping.
Rumors spread quickly in Tahrir. First some of the onlookers decided I must be celebrating the release of the American aid workers who'd been held by the government. That soon evolved into a story that I was an Israeli spy gathering intelligence about the protestors. And within minutes someone decided I must be a Freemason — which is, apparently, a really dangerous thing to get accused of in Egypt.
This is Alex.
Someone told Alex I'd be there filming, and since he lives a block away, he stopped by on his way home from work. When people started getting angry at us for dancing, Alex stepped in to calm things down. And when it got out of hand, he told me it was time to leave. I asked where we should go. He said, "Anywhere, just pick a direction and start walking."
I owe Alex, big.
We hung out the next day. I learned Alex is a doctor, and when the protests happened last year, he helped treat injured protestors in an ad hoc clinic set up behind a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
I asked Alex for the strangest thing he ever saw while driving in Egypt. He sent me these four photos, three of which he took himself with one hand on the steering wheel.
