Egyptian families have faced additional worries over recent days, as Nesmahar Sayed explains The mother was taking care of her children alone. Their father, like many Egyptian men, had a job in another country. It was hard for her, and with the turmoil in the streets, being a single mother was just getting harder and harder. She knew that demonstrations had broken out in Tahrir Square on Tuesday, 25 January. The next day, Wednesday, she prepared her children to go to school. She was starting to get worried, but she drew strength from them and from their uncanny ability to feel secure. Then the phone rang. Someone from the school was on the phone, telling her that her seven-year-old daughter was being sent home. The school would be closed until further notice. Fear started to grip her. This could not be good. The children were going to ask questions, and she would have to come up with answers. Her daughter came home at 9.30am, just three hours after she'd left home. She was full of questions. "What happened? Why are we back? Are they going to attack the school?" The girl had heard from the older girls that the country was in turmoil. Her mother tried to placate her. "When the demonstrations in Tahrir Square end and the roads are safe again, you can go back to school." She told her daughter that she would have to stay with her grandparents while she went to work. There was nothing to fear, she assured her. On Thursday, the mother prepared her son to go to school. She told him that school was his work and that he had to keep going to school as long as it was safe to do so. The child went to school and came back with a rag doll. He told his mother that she should take pictures of him with the doll, something that his entire class was doing. The mother promised to take a picture of him with the doll when they went shopping on Friday. She knew that demonstrations were planned near their house around the Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque on Friday. So she took the children to a nearby supermarket and took photos of the boy and his rag doll inside. As they were leaving the supermarket, they saw the demonstrations moving down Al-Batal Ahmed Abdel-Aziz Street towards Tahrir. It was the second time the children had seen the demonstrations. Three days earlier, on Tuesday, 25 January, demonstrations had taken place in many streets in Cairo, some passing through Al-Batal Ahmed Abdel-Aziz Street, a major thoroughfare in Mohandessin. The children had seen similar gatherings before, usually of football fans celebrating a win by the national team. The five-year-old boy asked his mother if these demonstrations were also about a football game. "No darling," she said. "This is a demonstration." "What's a demonstration?" he asked. She explained that a demonstration was what people did when they wanted to press their demands. Her daughter wanted to know at this point what the demands of the demonstrators were. Her mother said it was mostly about high prices and few jobs. On Friday, the demands shifted. Suddenly, the family heard the demonstrators chanting "the people want to bring down the regime." "What's a people?" the boy asked. "Everyone who lives in Egypt is part of the people," his mother said. The chanting continued as the family made it home and began watching the protests from the safety of their balcony. Relatives came over and the son began discussing the situation with his cousin. The two agreed that the meaning of "bring down" was to "stumble and fall down", which begged another question. Why did the protesters wish the president to stumble and fall? His mother changed the subject, asking the children to finish their meal. The family had gathered in front of the television, and the children began listening to reports of looting and marauding going on around town. From their balcony, thick columns of smoke could be seen billowing in the wind. "What is a thug, mummy?" the children demanded. "Thugs are people who never went to school and make a living stealing and doing bad things," she said. "Why don't the police arrest them?" Again, the mother changed the subject, putting the children to bed and reading them one of their favourite stories. On Saturday morning, she went to work as usual and the children spent the day with their grandparents. By Saturday night, popular committees were out in the streets, protecting their neighbourhood. The boy found it all quite interesting. The girl was starting to panic, checking that the doors were locked and making sure her brother was alright. When she learned of the escape of thugs from police stations, she said that maybe the family should leave Egypt and go abroad. "No, we don't leave our country and we don't give in to criminals," her mother said. But by then she herself was worried, not so much about the turmoil, but rather about her children's reaction to what was going on. She wondered if this experience would be traumatising for them and if there was anything she could do to restore their sense of security. Then the worst thing possible happened. On Wednesday, clashes took place near the Egyptian Museum, with thugs rampaging and throwing firebombs at the museum. The daughter started panicking. She called her mother on the phone, checking to see if she was safe coming home. Her mother said she would buy some sweets on her way back, to give the impression that everything was ok and that the family could still live normally and have fun. "Do you think my school has been burned down?" her daughter asked. "No, why do you ask that?" The daughter said that her school was near the Egyptian Museum. Actually, it wasn't, but her school bus passed by the museum on the way to school. In her mind, the two were connected. If the museum was in danger, then so was the school. On Thursday morning, the mother found her daughter drawing the Egyptian flag on a piece of paper. Near the flag, the girl had written "Egypt must not go up in flames."
