Carolina Alumni Review - September/October 2011

get to work. Gentry’s 2-year-old granddaughter, alia, has added the arabic word for “tanks” to her growing vocabulary.

Gentry’s family invited neighbors to park vehicles on their property — a car parked on the street was vulnerable to smashed windows and theft. For 10 days, the men of the neighborhood — young and old — stood watch at night to protect houses and cars. They set up and manned barricades — Gentry provided wood from a once-a-year trimming of the trees in her garden — to keep out criminals and kept fires going through the night. when they caught a thief, they turned him over to the army.

“every place in Cairo had its own neighbor-
hood watch,” Gentry said. “You’d see a man
outside his building wearing a rolex watch,
and he was standing guard over his building.
People took turns doing it, downtown or wher-
ever. women were robbed on the streets, and it
was not safe to drive at night. it’s still not safe to
drive at night.”
Gentry, who is the leader of the Cairo
Carolina Club, said the crisis overlapped a visit
by young unC alumni and the official travel
group, legends of the nile, by a few days. a
reception for the visitors occurred just as the
protests were launched.

huge amounts of hard currency into the economy, has dried up. while the countryside is still producing food, shortages of gas, labor and transport make getting the food to market in the city almost impossible. many supermarkets and small grocery stores were looted and damaged during the crisis and have yet to reopen; some have gone out of business. She expects shortages of flour and rice this fall.

COURTESY OF EARLENE GENTRY ’ 71

“if you think [moammar] Gadhafi is violent, wait until you see egyptian women fighting for bread to feed their families,” she said with a laugh.

and government reform has taken on a religious tone as individuals whom Gentry terms “extreme extremists” maneuver to run the country. She already has heard from women friends who don’t wear a veil about increasing difficulties and hostility from the fundamentalist muslim Brotherhood and Salafists.

There are efforts afoot among the ruling councils to put women’s rights laws back 50 years. even mixed marriages, such as Gentry’s, are in jeopardy, she says.

“a western democracy is not going to happen, not with all these religious overtones,” she said. “The religious guys want to control everything. They want to put women back in the houses.”

Earlene Gentry ’ 71 has lived in Cairo with her husband, Atef Khalifa ’ 71, for more than 30 years.

egypt, but her fears for the coming few months are centered on the economic situation. one ripple effect from having thousands of people on the streets is that tourism, which infused

— Don Evans ’ 80

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