I am not sure if I slept well or not. I could hear distant sounds overnight but could not figure out where or when. I woke up and today was Friday, the Day of Departure. History was in the making.

My mother seized the opportunity to try to get to a supermarket early Friday morning. I was very angry to wake up to find that she had gone out alone, especially with no means of communication. Thank God it was not long until she returned. Soon after, just before Friday prayer, my cousin who had come from the other end of Cairo arrived at our doorstep with his suit and fancy shirt, tie and shoes for the wedding that evening. He anticipated it would be safer to commute from Maadi to Kattameya, especially on that evening. His brother and mother were also driving in, but from Tanta, the capital of the Gharbeya Governorate. They were not answering their landline, which we presumably meant they had left home. Unfortunately, we had no choice but to wait until they arrived, which they did without any problems.

Our afternoon advanced fairly quietly and well into our newly developed routine for the past three days our eyes remained focused on television, television and more television. We consistently called my aunt to ask about the wedding. All the foreign guests were not allowed to leave their hotels because of strict security measures. What a mess! The bride’s dress was with Paolo the designer and no one knew how he and the dress were going to get through to the bride for the wedding that evening. These guests had flown more than 16 hours to attend the wedding. They had planned cruises on the Nile, trips to the Red Sea and so many other tourist venues. It was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime!

The events were escalating and the tension was mounting. People were breaking and entering shops and companies, looting them. Everything from banks, ATMs and airline offices was being raided? What happened to the peaceful protest? Where did the Facebook community and other social networks go? They were being replaced and outnumbered by a number of street bullies who seized the opportunity to disrupt the peaceful protest and transform it into the “uprising of the thieves” as it was now being labeled. 

Chaos struck the Corniche from Tahrir Square to Fairmont Hotel. People were stealing furniture, food and appliances, anything they could get their hands on. And then, the president dropped his bomb: a curfew was declared from 6 p.m. to 7 a.m. the next morning.

Until this moment we were still convinced that the wedding would be on. The wedding was cancelled and there was nothing we could do about it. My mother could not stop crying. She felt so sorry for her sister who was the groom’s mother, his father and the couple who were to marry. We called them. They were very quiet. What could they say?

My cousin and her daughter who was supposed to be the flower girl during the wedding procession had left their home and made their way to the wedding venue before the curfew was declared. We had no clue where they had disappeared to for close to five hours until they finally showed up at the home of the groom’s mother. They had been detoured into areas of Cairo they did not know existed and had been verbally harassed by people on the streets. It was only thanks to a taxi driver who kindly accepted to lead them in the right direction. What a relief!

The weight of the situation had taken its toll on us. We all sat at home very quietly. Occasionally, the landline would ring: one of my sisters was checking up on us to make sure we were ok. We sat quietly watching the live feeds on television.

My two cousins, well into their 20s felt frustrated. They were becoming restless. As the rock band Foreigner put it in their song Juke Box Hero, we “heard the roar of the crowd and like a distant scream, he heard one guitar.”  We instead heard gunshots.

We opened our window to try to see what was happening around us: we could hear gunshots; we could see people running, but nothing organized or clear. My cousins decided to hit the streets on foot to see for themselves. I joined them because I thought if they had a woman with them, they would be less susceptible to be picked up and thrown in jail by police because the curfew was on, and we were about to break the law.