Ralph O’Neill, who left the UK to teach in Cairo a few months ago, writes about resistance and repression in and around Tahrir Square. His account covers Monday 21 and Tuesday 22 November.

I have wandered over, or been driven around, Tahrir Square many times. It is a central thoroughfare and roundabout, next to the American University of Cairo’s Downtown Campus (now designated the Tahrir Campus). My favourite lunch stop before class is the Tahrir Kosherey Restaurant. I have been once or twice before for peaceful marches and demonstrations. Tahrir is very different then, with no traffic: a stark contrast to the continually moving, horn-blaring, cacophony of normal days.

I thought I knew Tahrir. I revisited Tahrir last Monday and realised just how wrong I was. The latest round of protests had begun in earnest the day before.

The embers of the revolution have re-ignited. Faith in the Army as some sort of ‘Guardian of the Revolution’ has slowly dissipated. There is a growing realisation that removing Mubarak may prove the easy part; removing the Army from the levers of power will be far more problematic. This crystallised in the face of the Army’s response to the protests: a level of overt brutality scarcely witnessed in January. Even the tear gas was different.

Monday 21 November

On Monday the crowds were large, but not massively so. I went with a friend. We spent the morning buying medical supplies from local pharmacies, and delivered six plastic shopping bags to the fixed field hospital in the Mosque on the square. Even then, in early afternoon, there were dozens of people lying, recovering, on the floor of the mosque.

The doctors inside were brusque and efficient – we didn’t deliver the supplies in return for thanks, and they had no time to give it – but never overwhelmed. I assume that changes at night. I do not have the courage for Tahrir much after dark. There are other medical personnel outside. For me they are heroes.

We had a little budget left, and asked what else we could bring. To my surprise, the unhesitating answer was small cartons of juice. As many as we could afford or carry. Our budget, and our arms, stretched to 250 cartons. The walk back across Tahrir was tiring, but the ever courteous protestors cleared a path for us.

After this delivery, my friend left. We have a standing disagreement: he believes foreigners have no direct role to play in these protests. This is an Egyptian problem, for Egyptians to solve; outside influences can only be dangerous or patronising. I disagree. For me protest is international, and Tahrir – whilst primarily an Egyptian phenomenon – is part of a universal protest.

Alone, I wandered down to Mohamed Mahmoud, a street I know very well – the AUC gate I use to get to class is here; and, opposite it, the small photocopy shop I use in what I used to call “emergencies”. How that word has changed.

Mohamed Mahmoud is a flash point, a contested street leading to Tahrir. Protesters and military move up and down, block by block. There is a permanent air of tear gas: always wearing a mask, a vinegar soaked handkerchief inside. My eyes smart, my skin tingles then stings.

The crowd is good natured: it is perhaps 2pm. In the front line of the protesters a man waves a modified Egyptian flag – I don’t know what the Arabic writing across it says – on a tall pole. He will maintain his position, stand his ground amidst wave after wave of gas, as the long afternoon progresses.

It is with tears caused by more than gas that I chart his steady retreat as afternoon gives way to evening, and the gas canisters rain down incessantly. Around 2pm all is calm. The atmosphere is determined, even defiant, yet almost carnivalesque too. I decide to go for lunch.

However, as I wander back along Mohamed Mahmoud, I hear that deep, hollow, firing sound that will become so horribly familiar. There is commotion behind me, people streaming past. I stop and turn, and get my first taste of tear gas. It is curiously pretty, as it swirls and spirals out of the can, drifting upwards and wafting outwards.

It is not pretty when it hits you. This gas landed far from me, 150 metres down the street, dispersing as it reached me. My eyes burned, I could feel it through my mask, handkerchief, and vinegar, scouring at my throat. I stumbled, having great difficulty seeing through tears and what felt like grit. Then something sprayed directly into my face: cool and wet. Words, urgent, in Arabic. As my non-understanding became apparent I was motioned to keep my eyes open; more spray. Stinging, intense, like I had rubbed vinegar in my eyes. Then it was gone, and I could see.

The people carrying these sprays – mainly young women on the Monday – were my true heroes of the day. They did not advance all the way to the front; but nor did they retreat. They remained a reassuring presence on the way forward; a source of relief and comfort for those stumbling back. They remained, resolute, as the crowds flowed forward and fled backward around them.

I observed the determination with which these people, eyes cleansed, masks re-adjusted, vinegar soaked tissues in hand, turned round, and flowed forwards once more, resolute, chanting. Yalla, yalla – one of my very few Arabic words: “let’s go”.

And back into the gas, chanting their defiance, holding their ground: this is our street! In the distance, 100m or more away, the standard bearer stood his ground, comrades around him. The flag waved proudly. Those who had been retreating, and were now advancing, were joined by dozens, then hundreds of others from the edge of Tahrir. The gas canisters stopped falling. This was, for now, the protesters’ street: Mohamed Mahmoud.

I lingered a while, then went to find some food. The presence of street vendors is a peculiar feature of the Tahrir protests: kosherey, grilled corn, baked sweet potatoes.

A friend, a student of mine, texted to say she was on her way down: should we meet up? I said yes, instantly. She knows the area, I do not. I asked my student about nearby pharmacies. She knew of three.

We stopped by a makeshift field hospital, to find out what was needed. Then we set out to buy Ventolin inhalers, vital and easy to find; saline solution, again vital, but out of stock, everywhere . We bought what we could, plus boxes of tissues, bottles of vinegar, and a dozen cartons of juice. After delivering what we had to two field hospitals, she wanted to head to the front line – to take the juice to where it was most needed. We tried and failed.

We walked down Mohamed Mahmoud together, where the standard bearer stood his ground and the flag waved metronomically: this is our street, this is our Egypt. People flowed by us, many stopping to grab a couple of tissues, and hold them out to be doused in vinegar. It is not an urban myth – breathing through the vinegar counteracts at least some of the effects of teargas.

We walked on, wearing masks, my handkerchief and her scarf freshly doused in vinegar. Such a tiny thing, but so gratefully received. Then canisters falling, gas spiralling – vigorous then lazy, towards us and upwards. People spilling backwards, the grabbing for tissues more desperate, vinegar needed now. We tried to stand our ground and let the crowd flow around us. Those steadfast women were still moving calmly, spraying elixir into burning eyes.

Eventually the thickening gas and near stampede of people forced us back. We lost one another. I lingered at the very edge of Mohamed Mahmoud, unwilling to have been forced all the way back into Tahrir. And I watched, in sadness bordering on despair, the slow retreat of the standard bearer, forced back, block by block by block, in clouds of swirling white gas.

But anyway, I had given away the juice during the retreat. Teargas is an asphyxiating substance – and there were strong rumours, later confirmed, that this time (unlike in response to the January revolution) that the military had gone with a specifically asphyxiating variant. It is an indescribably painful sight to watch a man, worse a child, go from running, to staggering, to collapsing headlong amidst the retreat. But, if this sight is wretched, the response is uplifting to the same degree.

People move, instinctively, flowing around their fallen comrade like a stream around a rock. Somehow, even in the near panic of retreat, this is understood by those behind. They slow, until a small group can stop, forming a protective barrier for the seconds needed for someone, or a yet smaller group, to scoop up the fallen and resume running; veering to the right, and to the field hospital behind the burger joint.

Finally, I retreated to the relative calm of Tahrir. As night fell, I met my friend and student again. We chatted briefly, and then I said goodbye. In the dark, the violence and viciousness of the ‘forces of order’ swells and spills over. I went home.

At home, we watched events unfold on Al Jazeera. My friend had posted a request for donations to buy medical and other supplies as her Facebook status. Too tired for originality, though revived by a bath and dinner supplied by my amazing girlfriend, I simply cut and pasted it into my own status update box. I received one reply, almost immediately – from a Greek friend, a veteran of Athens, who understood and pledged support. I smiled and went to bed.

Tuesday 22 November

In the morning, that support had swollen: £250 pledged. By the time I was ready to go back to the pharmacies, £430. In the first pharmacy – where we filled two boxes and a bin bag with supplies – a middle class, middle aged, Egyptian lady asked if we were buying supplies for Tahrir. Support for the protesters is far from universal in Cairo but, given the quantities in front of us, we could hardly deny it. She handed me money: “buy something else from your list, from me.”

Our spirits were high as we took our supplies to the drop-off point. Then we gathered up more of the money pledged, and went hunting for field surgery supplies: scalpels, scissors, surgical thread, gauze, nebulisers etc. One more trip to the drop-off and then a taxi for Tahrir.

We arrived at around 3pm. The crowd was far, far bigger on Tuesday. But the atmosphere, although defiant still, was light and untroubled. Buoyed by my experiences the day before, I took another friend on a hunt for vinegar and tissues. This took a while, but we succeeded. Back to Tahrir, back to Mohamed Mahmoud. The military had conceded the street, and we wandered down – far from the front line, but far further than the front line had been the day before.

The stench of teargas is omnipresent, and with it that ubiquitous itch in eyes and throat. We loitered by a crossroad, chatting to each other and to Egyptians. Our tissues had been exhausted in the walk down and I was asked, politely but insistently, by field medical personnel not to give out vinegar: today it’s a different gas, so vinegar is bad.

In the streets around Tahrir the mopeds and motorbikes function as makeshift ambulances, the blaring horns a necessary warning, a plea (always granted) for the crowds to make way. It is not an unusual sight in Egypt to see three (or even a family of four or five) people on a motorbike or a Vespa. This is a poor society, and mopeds are cheaper and easier to service than cars.

But this now familiar sight takes on an eerie aspect when the middle rider is unconscious; flopping, and held in place only by the strength, agility and desperation of the rider behind him. It is an incredible sight: three people on a Vespa, the driver frantically beeping the horn, trying to weave through the crowd; middle passenger unconscious; rear passenger trying to retain his own balance and hold the middle one in place; the crowd doing everything they can to create a passageway.

Our crossroads was between the frontline and the field hospitals on Tahrir. There were two concrete blocks, in the middle of the road, at the entrance to one of the crossroad’s streets. We stood by them, with a small group of Egyptians who spoke excellent English. They were kind, witty and helpful. They helped me up on a block to see a little better and take some photos.

There was also a man sitting on one of the blocks, receiving treatment for a head wound from a field medic. He sat, so quietly and stoically, as the field medic applied Betadine (an iodine based disinfectant that stings like hell) and bandaged a patch just beside his left eye. It took me a minute to notice the sprayer in his left hand.

People came staggering from the street on our left – gas had fallen somewhere. Ignoring, but somehow never interrupting, his ongoing treatment, this guy just kept calmly spraying the counter-acting liquid into people’s eyes.

Then I heard him trying to speak, and he had almost no voice. He was tired, injured and voiceless. He offered me his gas mask! As a foreigner, as a friend, I should be protected. I refused, and gave him a carton of juice instead. Then someone staggered past him. He stopped the guy, and gave him the carton (my second last). His shrug said it all: “he needed it more”.

Things remained quiet, with some people wandering back toward Tahrir. Then there was some movement backwards – noticeable, but a distinct minority. We ignored it. Then more. We turned and joined the movement. The familiar hollow gunshot sound was followed by the gas canisters raining down. Some behind us, others in front: close like I had never seen before.

Thick intense white smoke was everywhere and I was already stumbling. I lost my friend. Strangers had their hands against my back, supporting me and urging me to run. The gas was choking and blinding – so close I literally kicked a canister still spewing out gas. (I found out, today, that the military were using CS gas.) I saw a side street, mercifully gas free, and staggered into it. Further down it was cut-off, completely, by coils and coils of barbed wire.

There were about 40 of us in there. I was the only non-Egyptian and nobody else spoke English. We had barbed wire on one side, tear gas on the other, and police or military must have been somewhere. There was a fence on one side, maybe 9 feet high, topped in spikes, beyond it a building. People started scaling the fence so I followed suit.

By the time I got over the fence, someone had scaled the building wall and forced open a window, but it was maybe 10 feet off the ground. We climbed and pushed and pulled, and somehow got everyone up and through that window. Someone grabbed my wrist and hauled me up.

We walked though the building and down into a deserted and mercifully gas-free, but sealed off, courtyard. It was a school and there were two little kids in the group, about 9 years old. As we walked across the courtyard, I turned round and saw one of those little boys’ legs buckle under him, watched him collapse, and lie prone.

People rolled him on his back, massaged his chest, brought him round, and got him back on his feet. By sheer and utter good fortune, I had one carton of juice left, which I gave him.

Suddenly we were all told to be silent. We moved as a group, as quietly as we could, and a janitor sneaked us out of a side gate.
We all broke into a run. As we slowed down, I realised where I was: behind the Mosque at Tahrir. I wandered away from the square, found a street with traffic flowing and hailed a taxi driver who was not too keen to take me to Zamalek. Maybe, in retrospect, he was reluctant to take someone filthy, shaking, and stinking of teargas.

Crossing the bridge, back to the island, was a moment of unbridled elation. I went straight to my girlfriend’s place: she was mad, relieved, and happy all at once. I felt terrible for what I had put her through. I had another bourbon, showered, and we ate.

I went back onto Facebook – another £400 had been pledged, plus a mysterious message from friends in Finland: “we’ll give you 150 Euro, but we’ve spoken to friends, and will get back to you”. By the morning, the Finns had pledged 2500 Euro; but nightfall it was 4000!

I spent Wednesday pharmacy shopping and disbursing cash to friends for gas masks, blankets, food, field surgery equipment, and oxygen tanks. I will keep fundraising and buying supplies. But, from now on, I’ll take them to a drop-off point here in Zamalek. I know this will help, and I know it is the best and the most I can do.

I can only hope that this revolution succeeds, and a chant of the January Revolution proves true: “The People united can never be defeated!”