Ahmed Eprahem is pretty much a typical middle-class Egyptian teen. He attends high school, works a side job, lives with his family in the same home he grew up in, hangs out in coffee shops and along the Nile, and isn’t shy about showing his romantic side. At 17, he’s also a champion kung fu competitor, which he quit after badly injuring an opponent.
In the spring, he went to Tahrir Square to take part in the Revolution. He lost a friend who he said was shot in the head by a sniper, and he watched as the military protected the people from the police, winning over much of the people’s trust. Since then, the military has been ruling the country – deploying units in response to protests; converting military bases into detention facilities; jailing thousands of civilians after trying them in military tribunals; determining who will make up the new interim government, and what power elected officials may hold.
Eprahem is well aware of the politics of military rule. He said he’s upset by other developments since January, including harassment by thugs, a lack of security and order. But it isn’t any of that which has impacted his decision not to join the military. Eprahem is a student at a military high school, which is like an ROTC program in the states – training without stated pressure to pursue a military career. Like many Egyptians worried about the battered economy, he’s more concerned about the quality of life if he stayed beyond the one to two years of mandatory service. He wouldn’t make enough money to comfortably support a family, he explained. He plans to attend engineering school.
In the near future Eprahem hopes to visit his girlfriend, who returned to Iraq during the first months of the revolution, and to see a more stable future for his country. After he and his friends returned to Tahrir recently to witness another round of clashes where more than 40 were killed, his friend posted a message on his Facebook: “SEND this ❤ to anyone you don’t want to lose in 2012.”
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- When Ahmed was young, he liked how the military looked and seemed – “their clothes, their behavior and the discipline.” But he’s since realized that if he were to join he would “have no life” and wouldn’t make much money. He plans to study engineering instead.
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- The man behind Ahmed is his drill instructor, a retired military captain and a former student of the military high school. He said most of the students benefit from the discipline taught, but opt for civilian lives after serving the mandatory duty of one to two years.
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- “It’s nice to have power,” Ahmed explained, “but if you have kids or a family you can’t feed them with power, you need money.” And in the military, he wouldn’t make as much money as he could working as a civilian, he said.
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- At the school they learn to shoot pellet guns. Ahmed later showed me shotgun pellet casings he found in Tahrir during the latest weeks of violence, when more than 40 were killed. Ahmed lost a friend during the spring revolution when he was shot by a sniper.
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- His classmates joke as Ahmed loads his gun. Later a friend would jokingly fire near him as he walked away. The school is casual when it comes to attendance; the older boys come and go as they please. Soon after Ahmed demonstrated shooting, the boys left to hang out.
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- Ahmed was raised in the apartment he lives in with his family in Giza, off Haram street, a major road known for housing cabarets – where women belly dance for money. It’s the third largest city in Egypt and where the Sphinx and Pyramid of Giza are located.
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- Breakfast after school: carts throughout Egyptian neighborhoods serve fresh bread called “baladi,” eaten by using it to scoop up sides including eggs, cucumbers and tomatoes, eggplant, and slow-simmered brown fava beans or “ful” with olive oil.
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- Ahmed and some “Egy Cripz” friends meet at a coffee shop. They discussed a fight between them and a rival group. They debated whether to beat up a boy with Ahmed, who tried to convince them not to. The two wearing blue teased him about wearing red.
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- Ahmed’s notebook. When Egyptians write or speak in English, sometimes p’s and b’s are interchanged because of the way its pronounced. So men call each other “brince” instead of “prince.” Ahmed and his friends learned about Crips from Snoop Dogg videos.
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- I first met Ahmed at a conscious hip-hop show in Cairo organized by local artists. He explained that he and his friends’ interest in the Crips, and imitating their look and codes, is more about its association with West Coast hip hop than gang culture.
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- Ahmed shows a baby photo of his mother (left) and him. “We look the same,” he laughed. His mother put out an American flag (in the background) in honor of my visit to their home. She is a teacher and his father works at the customs department at the airport.
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- Doodles of his girlfriend’s name, Mariem, sit on his desk next to a perfumed bear she gave him. (The “guns” are lighters). She used to live a few blocks away, but her family moved back to their village in Iraq during the first months of the Revolution. Ahmed would speak to her on Skype until one day their connection cut off and she virtually “disappeared.” He hasn’t heard from her since.
