I ventured out to find food. I noticed that the market next to us was open. Yesterday it had been boarded up with the threat of looters. When I entered the market was full of people and activity. Seems everyone was preparing for the worst although it was a very familiar scene, one we see every year during Ramadan. This time we didn’t know where the bottom was. During Ramadan we fast from sunrise to sunset. In this case we are not fasting but unsure of what the future holds and what the availability of food might be. Having said that there was no panic, most people were not even buying a lot of food. There were just a lot of people. The shelves had been emptied and the workers were doing a good job of filling them up again. Everyone was very jolly and helpful, which has been the general tone through this whole ordeal.

As I have said many times if you have to be in a crisis Egypt is not a bad place to be in one. There are way too many people, but at least the people have not lost their humanity. There is a great sense of community.

Many items were finished such as rice and flour. No eggs or bread to be found but it was not difficult to buy things such as tuna and long life milk. Luckily this market is fairly small and family owned so people make things work. As I was leaving I noticed one of the people from the market unloading his car. He had gone and picked up cartons of canned goods from the producer. I imagine the trucks can not get through so he went to the company and picked up the goods. People are very resourceful and find ways to get things done. Either way the shelves were being filled.

I came home and started cooking. I have spent the last three days ironing, washing clothes, cleaning the kitchen, writing and cooking. It keeps me grounded and there is not much else to do. Has the universe conspired to keep me home so that I will have no choice but to finish my housework? I doubt it but there is not much else to do. The curfew is at 4:00pm. I spend my evenings downloading CDs to my iPod, writing, listening to music and sitting, bonding with our dog. He is really enjoying this.

He has remained amazingly calm even with all the shooting. Today he was a bit disturbed when the military jets began flying, very low, overhead. I don’t blame him I found it disturbing as well. I guess it was meant to be disturbing.

I felt it was time to check in with everyone now that our cell phones have been turned back on. I began calling just to see if everyone is OK and how they are doing. Most people reported feeling quite calm and even joyful at the way people had come together. I thought about many of my friends, women living alone. This would not be a time to be alone. Most of them seemed fine and those that hadn’t had moved in with friends.

One friend that works for the press service told me an amusing story of how the Iraqis were evacuating their people out of Egypt. Imagine being evacuated from Cairo to Baghdad? Would that really be better? They were insisting they would do what ever it took to get their people out. Great.

Large multinational companies began evacuating their personal. I guess they have to. It must be their protocol. Most people do not want to leave at this point and a lot of people feel it is a turning point and want to see it through. Time will tell what is really in store for all of us. I still feel an overwhelming sense of peace which is very comforting.

I was always a fearful person and prone to panic attacks. Now I am having a deja vue kind of feeling but without the panic or fear. It is very interesting. I remember when the Gulf War started. We all knew when it would start. It was before we had cable or satellite dishes in Cairo. Every night Egyptian TV would broadcast CNN so that we could see what was happening. I watched the very first night. We all saw it begin, the maps, the details. There was a great deal of fear. We didn’t know if Iraq’s missiles could reach us but Saddam had threatened to shoot missiles at Israel and for what ever reason they threatened us that if he did they would shoot missiles at Egypt. As if we had some sort of control over Saddam! I went to bed that night not knowing if we would be waking up, or waking up to what. My children were very small. My son was not even 2 years old and my daughter barely 5. I laid down between them and went to sleep. I decided if this was the end then this is where I wanted to be, between the two of them. We did wake up the next morning and life went on.

I remember that night but I really don’t remember the rest of the war. Perhaps we become numb over time. There have been other events that also left me in that dark place of fear and the unknown, the earthquake in 1992, the others. I seem to remember the fear more than the event.

As long as I have been here I always feared a revolution. But perhaps things only happen when you are ready for them. And now what I know is that it is possible to overcome your fears, not just to forge ahead through them. I never let my fear stop me from doing anything; I just endured the pain and suffered through refusing to let them win. Where I am standing now is very different than where I was standing before, in these other events. And the thing I feared, a revolution, now that it is here, in the moment, I feel very different than I ever imagined I would.

They say ‘there is noting to fear but fear it’s self’. This is very true because fear is an illusion; it is mutable and has no limits. Reality has limits; it is more concrete and so when it is happening you can react. In fear you can only wait being sustained in something that will never end because it hasn’t yet begun.

This also has a lot to do with presence. If you are truly in the moment there is little fear. Fear is about the future. In the moment generally things don’t look so bad. Keep reminding your self everything is OK right now and all that I know to be true is the present moment, the rest is an illusion, a maybe, a possibility of infinite possibilities, a what if. I think this is an exercise for all of us to stay present. And because of the way our brains have been programmed we seem to need a lot of practice in presence.