Egypt

An Emory Law student was sitting in his hostel room during his internship in the summer before his 3L year.  A group of men stepped into his room through the open door and placed handcuffs on him.  "Is this about the police report I filed last week?" he asked.  The men assured him that it was and that the handcuffs, blindfold, and large van with shades were standard procedure.  The student knew deep down that this was not true - the people he worked with at his internship had told him all too similar stories.  Having no clue that the next four months would culminate in his being traded for 25 men after extreme efforts by the president, ex-president, and countless others, he allowed the men to take him to jail.

That student is Ilan Grapel, and I got to meet him last night.

I frequently try to avoid places with names like "The Yale Club" but when Emory was hosting an event titled, "Hear from a law student imprisoned in Egypt," I knew I'd go.  The Yale Club actually had quite a lovely library.  Perhaps I'll become a member and take up squash and start "doing lunch."

After sitting down in the 5th row with no one sitting in front of me in the first four (it's like we were still in law school - cool kids all sit in the back), Ilan sat down at the table right in front of me.  I'm not sure what I was expecting, but he was just a cool normal kid.

I've never been face to face with someone who has been through this sort of imprisonment.  I don't think I've ever heard of it outside of movies (besides John McCain, of course).  I'm not sure why I expected someone who fought in the IDF and was wounded in Lebanon to cry like a baby and show extreme signs of PTSD.  I'm not sure why I expected tears and emotion.  I realize I thought it would be what I would have seen in the movies - something a bit too extreme.  But, even with that understanding, I was surprised at just how nonchalant Ilan was.

He began telling his story by setting the stage in his room in a hostel in Egypt.  "It was much worse than my jail cell," he began.  Nervous chuckles swept through the audience.  "No.  Really.  The hostel was horrible and disgusting."

He laughed as he described his first interrogation by the Egyptians who accused him of espionage.  He did not understand why he, a joint Israeli-American, who fought for the IDF, a wounded soldier, fluent in English, Hebrew, and Arabic, working for an NGO in Egypt, was thought to be a spy.  His best defense was that he openly carried his Israeli passport and that all information about him was freely available on facebook and the internet.  Would a spy do that?  Wouldn't a spy do that?  Either way it didn't seem to help him.

Neither did his public defender who apparently never said a word.  His hired private attorney did no better and sat through each interrogation taking sips of coffee and only speaking up at the very end saying, "you should let Ilan go."  The interrogator frequently laughed and let Ilan answer that question.  "I would miss your face too much," the interrogator would say.  Ilan took this as a compliment.

Ilan was kept in solitary confinement, sometimes going 2 weeks without being allowed to talk to a single person.  There was a guard present at all times but he was not allowed to speak to Ilan.  At first, Ilan was given nothing and then they decided to allow him 2 books every two weeks.

The first two books Ilan got didn't really help.  One was a book on homosexuality and the other a book put out by Israel that detailed what happened to previous Israelis who were captured and tortured.  I'm sure that was uplifting.  His mom finally began sending books and he received about 20% of them.  He also appealed to the law school to send him casebooks since the 2 book a week limit did not differentiate between a 20 page book or a 2000 page case law book.  Those books never made it through.

Obviously, solitary confinement for 4 months with a limited number of books was terrible.  Although he wasn't physically abused, Ilan mentioned that some activists are trying to include solitary confinement in International conventions on torture.  For some reason, he didn't mention adding reading for law school to the convention.  Go figure.

The Egyptians were very clear in their reasoning behind no physical harm - they wanted him to look good when they put him in front of the world.  They also fed him "very well."  In fact, they forced him to eat well threatening that if he did something stupid like a hunger strike that embarrassed them, he would regret it.  So Ilan sat, and waited, and ate, and read, and thought about what a nice solitary jail cell he had.  No one told him of the riots and killings between Egyptians and Israelis.  No one told him that Obama and Jimmy Carter were calling on his behalf.  No one told him that they were preparing a trade - One Ilan Grapel for 25 Egyptians.  He was under the impression that Israel didn't want those 25 prisoners anyway.  If you didn't want them, WHY are you holding them?!


All the stories about the still present Egyptian secret police brought back feelings of one of the scariest stories of my life.

I visited Egypt after a 2 week trip to Israel - arriving on El Al Israeli airlines.  After two days in Cairo, a friend and I decided to take the overnight train to Luxor to see some tombs.  Purchasing tickets took about 10 minutes but it took them about an hour to give us our passports back.  I didn't mind waiting in the train station because I was fascinated when, at 5pm, the station essentially stopped, laid down prayer mats, and began praying towards Mecca.

Waiting on the train platform late that evening, we were approached by a young woman.  She did not look like the other Egyptian woman we saw who almost always wore a head scarf.  She was wearing a tight-fitting sparkly top, had her hair curled, was wearing full makeup and high-heeled boots.  "Are you Americans?" She asked.  "Yeah."  We answered.  "I am a student studying English.  I like America, do you like Egypt?"

A student wanting to practice her English!  Yes, we understood.  The happened everywhere overseas.  We continued to answer her questions for a minute before she took out her cell phone.  "I like you, can I take a picture?" She asked.  I love being in pictures!  I darted over to my friend and smiled for the camera.  I noticed he looked away.

"Thank you!" She said and continued, "now one like this."  She then pointed her cell phone in front of each of our faces and took a head-on individual shot.  We continued to ask her questions but her English deteriorated almost immediately.  She seemed to lose interest in us and quickly moved on.

That was weird.  That was really weird.  OMG what was that?  I began to freak out as the train finally arrived.  Why did she do that?  Was she really interested in foreigners?  Looking around, the entire platform was filled with foreigners.  Thinking about it, much of Cairo had been filled with foreigners - we weren't the first Americans she'd seen and wouldn't be the last.  She certainly didn't want our picture because of how attractive we were...  Getting on the train, relief set in that if it was something weird, it was in Cairo and I was going to be in Luxor.  I slept well on the 12 hour train ride.  My friend, I later found out, did not sleep as well.

I awoke just after 5am - about an hour before we were scheduled to arrive.  It was still dark out and the train was moving slowly and stopping periodically.  During one stop, all of the lights turned off.  My immediate reaction was to open our cabin door to see what was happening in the hall.  My hand was immediately smacked as my friend slammed the door shut and double locked it.  Now we were sitting in the dark.  "But, shouldn't we see what..."  "SHHHHHH!"  So I shhhh'd.

The lights came on and we eventually pulled into Luxor on time.  Bleary-eyed, after fighting off some aggressive hostel owners, we finally arrived at a place along with another pair of traveling students.  There were only two rooms left.  Of course, we weren't even spending the night (or we would have found a hotel).  We were using the hostel as luggage storage for the day.  When the owner told us he had one room with an in-room bathroom for $8.50/night or one room with the public bathroom for $8.00/night, my friend and I sighed and sadly decided we would let the traveling pair who were actually going to be sleeping there have the nicer room with the private bath.  To our surprise, they REALLY wanted to save the 50 cents and were thrilled that we allowed them to have the cheaper room.

The room was awful.  I won't describe it because a picture is worth...

 


I just laid down to take a quick nap when my friend began to tell me his fears.  He had been up throughout the night as the train stopped in many deserted Egyptian cities between Cairo and Luxor.  He furiously checked his blackberry and found out that then President George W. Bush was arriving in Egypt that same day and there had been some protests.  In addition, American soldiers had been captured on the Syrian border with Israel.  It was not a good day for Americans in the middle east.  They had taken our passports for an hour while we bought our train tickets.  They knew we were American.  They had our picture taken by "tits mcgee" (as we affectionately called her).  They probably had pictures of all Americans on that train and during one of the stops in mid-country-Egypt, rebels were going to board the train and grab all the Americans based on the pictures and kill us on the night of Bush's arrival.  (Hence the shut door when the power went out).  It was an obvious plan.  Why didn't they grab us on this trip down?  Maybe they were waiting for the trip back.

Maybe we let our imagination run a little bit wild, but I was too scared to even stay in the hostel room.  It certainly looked like a good place to die.  I put on my head-scarf and sunglasses and went straight to the Egypt Air store to buy a plane ticket back to Cairo. No way was I getting back on the train just to get murdered.  Once we had tickets (for an hour long flight on an 80% empty 747), I was able to relax and enjoy the rest of Luxor.

I never found out any more information about what happened.  I told the story to others who had just listened to Ilan speak.  No one seemed surprised.