Sunday, January 30, 2011

Well, not that fast ...



With the 7-hour time difference and all of my sleepless nights, I have no idea how long my sister has been waiting to get out of Cairo but she's still at the airport and somewhere in that crowd of people you see above. The really fun part of this whole revolution business is that she was interviewed by The New York Times today and appears both in print and audio on their Web site.

Here's an excerpt:

CAIRO -- Andrea Bosch had been waiting for hours at Cairo International Airport for a flight to whisk her and her young daughters away from the maelstrom that Egypt's capital had become.

The planes were ready, but few crews could be assembled to fly them.

"They said it was a combination of people who couldn't or wouldn't come in today," Ms. Bosch, 45, an administrator of an education project of the United States Agency for International Development, said Sunday. "I don't know what it means, but that's what they said. I can imagine people are home trying to take care of their families."

and then further down:

Ms. Bosch was booked on Egypt Air with her daughters Maya, 12, and Asia, 8, and a Yorkshire terrier, Chauncey, to join her husband in Turin, Italy. Although some "random planes" were flying, she said, some passengers had been waiting for 48 hours without a flight.

and here's the best part:

"People are just wandering back and forth, and they're running out of food," she said. "People are serving pizza, but the lines are really long."

"We're kind of grumpy," she said, adding that most passengers were relieved to be off streets where the crackle of automatic gunfire was heard throughout the night.

For the complete article and audio, go here. And just for the record, Andi is 47, not 45, and it's Chonsy rather than Chauncey. I don't want it to sound like we live on Park Avenue or something. If we had that kind of money, we would have hired a private jet to whisk them away like movie stars.

2 comments:

Hariklia said...

Terrible to be stranded, especially with kids. I hope they get out soon, and safely.

Leslie in Adams Morgan said...

thanks, Hariklia!