Evacuation Stories

On June 29th Washington D.C. called an optional evacuation for the State Department employees and their families in Cairo.  At that point there was a general feeling that the evacuation was more of a political maneuver than a serious security concern.  The Benghazi situation was still fresh on everyone's mind.  Nevertheless, most people decided they should get out while they had the opportunity, just in case.  Since my husband and I were only three weeks from leaving Cairo permanently we decided we should just wait it out.  Trying to move back to the U.S. while being evacuated would be very complicated!

As you no doubt know, things got rather messy in Cairo in the following days.  After having kept all of us indoors for 10 days (except for essential employees who needed to get to work), the State Department decided to go ahead and evacuate the rest of us.  The decision was made on July 3rd and we were told we would fly out on either the 4th or 5th, as soon as they could get us on a flight.

My husband's boss worked hard to get all of the spouses of his employees on the same flight.  This delayed our evacuation a few hours so I got just about 36 hours to pack and try to organize our things for being moved in a few weeks.  While at the time I thought I was being efficient and clear-minded, when I got to the States I was quite amused by some of the things that ended up in my suitcase.    I had to do some clothes shopping almost right away.   My husband was required to stay behind, so he had the unfortunate job of finishing up everything I couldn't get to— as well as continuing to work under very difficult circumstances.

On the day of our departure we were picked up in the embassy's armored vehicles and driven to the airport.  In our group there were three spouses, a family with a four year old and a dog, and a college student who had been visiting his mother for the summer.  While the roads seemed generally calm, we did have to stop at one military checkpoint near the airport.  My Arabic wasn't up to the conversation our driver had with the soldiers (other than him telling the soldier we were all Americans), but one of the other Americans suggested that they may have been looking for Muslim Brotherhood members fleeing the country rather than trying to cause us any trouble.  Whatever was said, we were soon allowed to go through and proceed to the airport.  Once we were safely there, the flight home was uneventful.

Not everyone's evacuation went as smoothly as ours did.  One of our friends was visiting family in England at the time and was expecting to be back in Cairo after a couple of weeks.  Her husband was on a temporary assignment in yet another country.  Neither of them are allowed to go back to Cairo to get things they didn't have with them, they have to go directly to Washington D.C. as soon as their trips are finished.  Another of our friends left their dog and two cats in their apartment and made arrangements for a pet sitter to stop by twice a day.  An evacuation must last at least 30 days by law and initially no one thought it would go any longer.  Now it's looking like it will last several months and the poor animals are stuck in Cairo.

One rather ironic twist in the evacuation involves an American woman who married an Egyptian security guard at her building.  When the evacuation came, she was considered an essential employee so she had to stay.  The evacuation order applied to all other Americans and their families, however.  So now the Egyptian husband is in Washington, D.C. and the American wife is stuck in Egypt!  

Apparently there were several employees and family members attached to the embassy who flatly refused to be evacuated.  As a mandatory evacuation is a direct order, these people are in serious trouble.  Their diplomatic status is in danger of being revoked and they would be in Egypt illegally.  The employees' jobs are in serious jeopardy.  It seems unlikely that the Egyptian government would pursue these (potentially) illegal residents as they have much more serious problems to deal with, but they would be well within their rights to do so.

Most of the Cairo embassy community is now in D.C. waiting out the evacuation.  Parents have been told to go ahead and enroll their children in school and everyone else is being encouraged to settle in for several months.  In spite of it being Ramadan, things don't appear to be calming down quickly in Egypt. Most people are optimistic, however, that the vast majority of Egyptians who are politically moderate will eventually prevail.  As our assignment will officially be over this coming week, my husband and I now have the pleasure of re-acquainting ourselves with all of the family, friends, and food that we sorely missed in the past year!