CAIRO – On the evening of Saturday, Dec. 17, while thousands of protesters confronted military police in downtown Cairo, I stood watching a valuable piece of Egypt's cultural heritage go up in smoke. As Molotov cocktails and bullets flew around the cabinet building, where the clashes were concentrated, the nearby Egyptian Scientific Institute, a decrepit and neglected old building full of rare books and valuable manuscripts, had caught fire. I cried in disbelief. What had brought me -- and Egypt -- to this point?
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I had not come back home to witness such sights. In early December, I took a break from my graduate studies in Australia to return to Cairo and vote for the first time in my life. I proudly cast ballots on Thursday, Dec. 15, for the candidates I thought would best represent me in post-revolutionary Egypt's first parliament. Then, the next day, I woke up to news of renewed clashes between soldiers and protesters staging a sit-in in front of the Egyptian cabinet to pressure the new government formed by Prime Minister Kamal Ganzouri to fulfill their growing list of demands. The army, in a surprise early morning attack, had swooped in on the protesters, attacking them brutally with rocks, batons, and live bullets to force them to leave the street. Qasr al-Aini Street and the cabinet building had become a war zone of broken glass, strewn rocks, blood, and smoke.
I joined the protest at noon, right after I heard that there were clashes, not only to show solidarity with my fellow Egyptians against the brutality of the security forces but also to document the events via my Twitter account, where I posted photos and live-streamed videos that offered clear proof of the army's attack on civilians.
There was a rhythm to the clashes. Protesters would press forward in the street in front of the cabinet building, only to be pushed back by the army and plainclothes policemen. At around noon, we noticed large rocks and furniture falling on our heads -- only to realize, to our horror, that policemen and soldiers were hurling the objects at us from the cabinet's roof, making each projectile as deadly as a bullet. Later that evening, the army fired live ammunition at the protesters, possibly as a reaction to the protesters' use of Molotov cocktails. The plain-clothed police and army then started throwing Molotovs themselves. Many people were fatally hurt, including a Emad Effat, a senior cleric from al-Azhar University who died from a gunshot wound to the heart. Over the next few days, more than 15 martyrs would lose their lives.
It was on the next day, Dec. 17, as violence once again erupted near the cabinet, that the Egyptian Scientific Institute building -- set up in 1798 at the request of Napoleon Bonaparte -- was set ablaze. Bonaparte had established the institution only two months after landing at Alexandria, modelling it after the Institute de France in Paris and tasking it with the "research, study, and publication of physical, industrial and historical facts about Egypt," according to the Scholarly Societies Project. Since then, the institute has housed many cultural treasures that document the country's rich history. Its library boasted a collection of 192,000 books, journals, and manuscripts, some dating back before the early 19th century. Amongst its prized collection was a copy of the famous "Description de l'Égypte," the handwritten and bound volumes created during Bonaparte's time in Egypt.
On Saturday, the building burned for hours before firemen finally arrived. As the fighting continued around us, we ran into the institute to save whatever books we could find. We were able to protect some books and journals, some dating from the early 1800s.
Dodging falling chunks of roof, we left the smouldering building with our arms piled high with books, only to get pelted with rocks and glass by policemen and hired thugs standing on the roof of the building next door. While firemen ultimately managed to contain the fire, the water that they used destroyed many of the remaining books -- turning invaluable scientific relics into nothing but charred fossils.
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