At the rally last Tuesday to demand the release of our friend Tarek Shalaby, who was imprisoned along with hundreds of other civilians in the military base of "Haykestep" الهايكستب, for having peacefully protested on May 15th, we had a funny discussion:
What does "Haykestep" mean?
Aside from being one of the main army recruitment and training grounds in Cairo, I did a bit of research and this is what I found:
Turns out Haykestep is actually a former US Army Air base. And its original name was "Camp Huckstep". We somehow added a few letters along the way.It was named after Major Russell B. Huckstep (Vail, Iowa, 1905; Carthage, Tunisia, 1943) - see photo.
As of late 1942, camp Huckstep was also home to the 38th General Hospital, the largest US military hospital of their "Delta Command", with 1000 beds (which were subsequently reduced to 750 in 1944).
They also built a water purification plant.
The army mailing code (APO) for camp Huckstep was 616 (see the stamp on the envelope below)
In 1956, camp Huckstep was attacked by the British Force. The article I found refers to it as a "large material depot" (for the Egyptian army, obviously).
The name of camp Huckstep also pops up on Google in connection to the 1948 Palestine war - apparently it was one of three camps where a number of Jews were detained for 'Zionist activities'.
Now it's Egyptians being detained by the Egyptian army. For protesting in front of the Israeli embassy (should we say, for "expressing anti-Zionist sentiment"?).
Ah, the irony....
Tarek has been released, but hundreds of other young civilian Egyptians remain imprisoned, awaiting military sentences.
Join us in Tahrir square next Friday May 27th to protest military trials for civilians!
4 comments:
OT, Mohamed, but a serious question--any truth to this link http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/ME10Ak01.html
or is it just being alarmist? You're there, and you're an economist, so I trust your answer.
Hi Sarah!
Oh wow, this is a terrible piece!
"Egypt is running out of food, and, more gradually, running out of money with which to buy it."? This is a bad joke.
That's the kind of shit the government would plant to frighten people into silence. The numbers are borderline true - some are plain unmeasurable! - but more importantly the extrapolations (of the "Egypt will be bankrupt by september" kind) are assuming that things will remain as bad as the day after the revolution (and that we'll be, say, using up reserves in complete absence of foreign currency entries.)
One month supply of rice? Ha!
More importantly the occasional shortages of fuel are fully political, and everyone knows that. That's another story.
The stock market index that went from 7000 to 5000 - that was expected. It's slowly rising back (I think it's already back to pre-crisis levels).
Bottom line: yes, the economy is in a rough patch. I'd give it a good year to go back to December 2010 levels. But we won't be going bankrupt quite yet. :)
:-)) Glad to hear it! I want so badly for Egypt to succeed in this transition! Nice to see your pics! Keep the faith!
Thank you Sarah! We're also hoping for a smooth transition.
Thanks for the kind wishes! :)
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