By Lillian Rizzo and Saskia de Rothschild
In the back room of a dark Chinese Internet Café in Sunset Park, Omar Abouelnas and two of his friends watch handheld footage captured by their friends from Cairo.
“I wish I was there right now, I want to go back,” says Mostafa Amin. Amin, who is 18, has difficulty scrolling down the Arabic news websites; he has a cast on his right wrist.
“He got so nervous about back home he punched the wall,” jokes his friend Mohand Eltoukhy.
Abouelnas, 17, suddenly finds himself in the middle of the conversation taking place across Bay Ridge through social media. Two years ago, he set up a Facebook page to celebrate Egypt’s national soccer team. Now, that page, meant for teenagers to connect, has taken a new unexpected purpose. It has become a landing place for Egyptians in Bay Ridge to voice their opinions, connect with one another and find a way to be a part of the conflict raging back home.
The Facebook walls of Abouelnas and his teenage friends have become flooded with propaganda images: President Hosni Mubarak’s head mounted on the body of a monkey; Arabic slogans telling Mubarak to leave; and live videos from home that have replaced the usual status updates.
Now, as they browse through the videos, the three friends talk about plans for attending today’s rally outside the Egyptian Mission. All they have to bring, they say, are Egyptian flags and their pride.
Abouelnas is not sure he’ll be able to make it because of timing ; he would have to drive home and change out of his uniform. Unlike most of his friends in the Egyptian community, he does not attend Fort Hamilton High School in Bay Ridge. When he arrived from Cairo two years ago, barely speaking English, his parents decided to send him to Xaverian, an all-boys Catholic high school, where he has a handful of Muslim friends. Most of his classmates are Italian Americans from Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst.
They leave the coffee shop and get into Abouelnas’ BMW 3 Series. They cruise through Bay Ridge, where they know all the places where Arabs hang out. The lights from televisions shine through the windows, carrying the images of the battle for Cairo’s Tahrir Square.
“Every Egyptian on earth is talking about the same thing right now,” Abouelnas says. The conversations are not always harmonious.
“My dad wants him to stay,” Abouelnas says of Mubarak. “My mom wants him to go.”
The television is always on and the subject of conversation rarely changes.
Abouelnas’ father owns the Fertile Crescent, an Islamic grocery store on Atlantic Avenue and his mother works at Bellevue Hospital. “They are Americanized, but in their own way,” says Abouelnas of his parents who moved here 11 years ago without their children who stayed in Cairo with relatives. Days before the protests actually started, Abouelnas’ relatives back in Cairo had already relocated to Mansoura, a city about 85 miles away. “What we are most scared of is losing our properties, I’d like to be there helping but I like to be here safe,” Abouelnas says. A senior, worried about getting accepted into St. John’s, he admits he is less focused on the protests than his Fort Hamilton friends. “I am actually one of the people who wants Mubarak to stay for the next few months,” he says. As he speaks those words, his friend Eltoukhy shakes his head. “He should leave now,” he says.
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