It's finally cold in Cairo. I know because the number of mosquitoes that share my bedroom with me each night have dwindled to the single digits. But I also noticed it tonight while walking around the neighborhood in search of dinner. I had originally planned to order delivery, but that fell through when the restaurant informed me that they would not downtown due to security concerns.
Cairo is beautiful tonight, cool and crisp. A couple guys who always hang out in front of a kiosk at the end of my block are sitting around a blazing garbage can fire. I walked past them earlier tonight on the way to my favorite shawarma stand, Kazaz. Like many take-out places in Cairo, you place your order with the cashier and then take the receipt to one of several counters to retrieve your food. The shawarma stand out on the sidewalk is regularly surrounded by guys, trying to push their receipts into the hand of the heavily bearded young shawarma maker. During the summer, it was always a tradeoff whether I wanted to stand close to the blazing heat of the stand to make sure I got my order in quickly or stand outside the burner's direct sight but be passed over by more determined patrons. Tonight, however, I was happy to stand in close and absorb some warmth from the burners.
The abnormality of life in downtown Cairo has taken on a hint of regularity. Anywhere between a few dozen and a few hundred protesters continue to hold Tahrir Square captive, preventing most traffic from passing through. A wall still cuts across one of the streets leading to Tahrir, preventing a resumption of the grizzly street battles that raged for five days between police and protesters late last month. Residents and vendors downtown are more than fed up, but the situation doesn't seem likely to end anytime soon. Today marked the end of run-offs for the first of three rounds of elections for one of two houses of parliament. It'll be another three months till the entire parliament is elected, and another three months for a president, if things ever get that far. Most people thought the protesters were going to end their sit-in honorably last weekend, but they remain there as does the wall.
Runoff elections showed a weak turnout and revealed high levels of fraud, to the point where an entire district on the north coast of Egypt had its results cancelled and elections rescheduled for January. The Muslim Brotherhood's party is the clear winner, with about 35-40% of the vote, but the big surprise is that the Salafi Nour party (extreme Islamists who talk about forbidding alcohol and bathing suits) won about 25%, trailer by the liberal, secular Egyptan Bloc with about 20%. Once all the elections are held, a coalition will need to be formed, and the big question is whether the Brotherhood will partner with the Islamist extremists or the moderate infidels. Regardless, the Salafis' strong showing (most pre-elections predictions were in the single digit range) give them the opportunity to push their agenda more since they can claim to be Egyptian mainstream. This will be a fascinating dynamic to observe.
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