Been waiting a while to post this.
I was in Cairo on a solo trip when the Egyptian Revolution broke out in February of 2011. I was stranded in my hotel for some days. It was by far one of the scariest times of my life.
Feel free to ask me any questions about my time there. I figured it was long enough for me not to talk about it.
That must have been terrifying. How did you get out? Did any locals help or authorities?
I managed to finally get a flight out after about a week. It was an EgyptAir flight from Cairo to London, and then from London to Chicago. The flight was hell, especially because of the fact that I got very little sleep during the madness in Cairo.
I was up for about 4 nights straight. Riots, looting everywhere below. I didn’t leave my hotel room for one second over those four days.
The hotel lobby was the only place I kinda hung around. One guy, a Brit, tried to make a pass at me while I was leaning on the lobby check in counter talking with one of the clerks. He slapped my ass and then proceeded to say, “Egypt is burning, and I’m burning for you.”
I cursed the ever living daylights out of him. Every curse word you could think of in the book, I used. I felt kinda bad afterwards, but why on earth would he be thinking of such things at a time like that? Come on…
The clerk actually applauded me. She was Egyptian, and complimented me. “You American women are so brave!” she said.
I left my hotel after 4 days. It was still crazy, but there were more police out in force. I didn’t hear of the sexual assaults that were going on rampantly. So, it totally shocked me when I walked down the street from my hotel, and was approached by two men. I made the ignorant mistake of wearing a tank top that showed way too much cleavage with skinny jeans (stupid 24 year old me). They started speaking Arabic to each other, not knowing that I was fluent.
I heard them saying, “that’s a cute little Westerner.”
Then they began to walk towards me with the most lustful eyes I’ve ever seen. I knew then, it was now or never.
I quickly slipped off the leather sandals I was wearing, and ran barefoot all the way back to my hotel, screaming in Arabic, “predator men! predator men!”
Thankfully, by the time I got to the steps of the hotel, they gave up their pursuit and left.
Just talking about it all makes me exhausted and emotional all over again.
For the majority of the rest of my stay, I just lay down on my hotel room bed, praying that I wouldn’t die. I was raised Lutheran, but have been lapsed since college. That was one of the first times I seriously prayed in years. I was scared as shit. I didn’t know if they would raid the hotel and take hostages (there was a rumor spreading throughout the hotel about that possibility).
I had already planned to fight to the death if anyone kicked down the door.
Wow! Glad you are safe. Thank you for sharing this.
Was there plenty food and water?
I just came back from a business trip to Sydney, sorry for the late response.
There were hot meals for the first few days. Eventually, we all had to end up living on vending machine snacks and crackers, bottled juice, etc, from the hotel sundry.
My stomach felt like shit, to put it lightly. Had to wear sweatpants the rest of my time there. Eating nothing but chips, crackers, cookies, and diet soda will make your stomach feet like Mount Vesuvius. 