In Egypt the government does not allow for free demonstrations and expressions of thought, the fear of the police and its arbitrary rules makes the law an option.
To leave no stone unturned, we tried to do the tourists, as consigliatoci by the authorities. We bought tickets for the direct bus to Al Arish, a seaside resort in northern Sinai. Everything's fine until the arrival in Ismailia, 100 km from Cairo. At the check point all the foreigners, despite the ticket and passport in order and the hotel reservation in Al-Arish, are sent down: four of us, an Italian who said he wanted to go straight to Rafah, four ladies and a gentleman American. Brought down and then back, after a long negotiation, an elderly couple Palestinians.
police than violence, at least with the international use more sophisticated techniques: in fact, among the passengers, at least a dozen police were ready at the right time to pray down because "the bus will not start if you do not get off and I have children who are waiting for me "he said a" lady "among the passengers," Al Arish is dangerous, "insisted another. "It's for your safety" and so on until it started to pull down the luggage, saying that they would take another bus at all. Maybe a bluff, but it remains difficult to hold the point when one has the impression of creating problems for ordinary people.
The fact is that we go down. Meanwhile, the police forced the driver of a minibus to take you back to stay back. We try to walk with backpacks on their shoulders but we are stopped, stopped a taxi but it is threatened and sent away. We decide to go up, because without us in the minibus does not start and there is also an elderly lady from five days on hunger strike. Damage to the driver of a minibus ridiculous sum that will cover the cost of one tenth of the gasoline that will serve to bring us back to Cairo.
But the police in Egypt is not easy say no, if you are Egyptian. And from the minibus driver who has to go to Al Arish, you find yourself doing the jailer, escorted by a police car behind and in front of sirens to Cairo. The return trip takes twice as much as you normally would take three more checkpoints and stops for no reason.
umpteenth stop forced take a cab back to the hostel, but the impression of being in a police state remains.
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