Correction: The original version of this article contained an error. Egypt is 10 hours ahead of Los Angeles.
For one UCLA student, the recent political protests in Egypt have hit very close to home.
With a sister studying abroad at the American University of Cairo, Anjum Bokhari has watched the situation unfold with special interest.
“It’s all we’ve been watching. We keep the news on all the time,” said Bokhari, a fourth-year biology student.
Her sister, Aniqua Bokhari, who is a student at UC San Diego, has been in Egypt since last September.
Aniqua Bokhari was planning to remain in Egypt for the entire school year and return home in May when the term ended. But the protests against the government have interrupted those plans.
She was on vacation visiting the North African country of Morocco when the protests broke out last week. When she returned to Egypt, she contacted her family back home but did not seem to think the situation was serious enough to worry about evacuation, her sister said.
But that same night, the Egyptian government began to crack down on communication channels. The government shut down the Internet, blocking Facebook, one of the main sources of communication that kept the sisters in touch despite the thousands of miles between them.
The government also shut down the mobile phone service Vodafone, preventing Aniqua Bokhari from having any form of communication with her family back in the United States.
“Day after day, my dad tried calling her, but the call kept getting rerouted, and we couldn’t get in touch with her. At this point, we weren’t really aware of the situation,” Anjum Bohkari said.
She added that even the counselor from the American University in Cairo, who was at a conference in Sacramento, was unsure about the gravity of the situation in Egypt.
For Aniqua Bokhari’s mother, Nasreen, not having contact with her daughter was difficult, particularly because they had previously spoken every day despite the 10-hour time difference.
“We became very worried. We couldn’t sleep at night, and my husband was up all night making phone calls to find out what was happening,” Nasreen Bohkari said.
Yet Aniqua Bokhari found a way to phone home. She was able to briefly speak to her family by calling from a landline telephone in Egypt. She hinted to her family that the protests did not seem to be a problem, giving her family a brief sigh of relief in knowing that she was safe before the call was cut.
But Monday, after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak released his first public statement about the escalating protests, events took a turn for the worse, Anjum Bokhari said. The demonstrations became more violent, with some of the protestors starting to loot, clashing with riot police.
Aniqua Bokhari informed her sister that violence had escalated and that she was doing her best to stay out of the streets to avoid being caught up in the turmoil. She also told her that some of her classmates from the American University of Cairo who were located closer to the center of the protests had moved in with her for safety.
Soon after, Anjum Bokhari lost contact with her sister for a few days.
While her parents scrambled to make calls to the United States Embassy and to the counselors and advisers from the study abroad program for news about their daughter, Aniqua Bokhari’s university in Cairo released a statement announcing that students were being evacuated.
This was one of a number of plans to evacuate students to destinations such as Greece, London and Spain.
The American University in Cairo aimed to transport students to Cairo International Airport and fly them out to London as quickly as possible.
However, that day, the government shut down many methods of transportation, including the bus systems that were supposed to transport the American students to the airport.
As a result, the students were stranded in a Marriott Hotel without any food or cash and with a growing concern about the rising tension between the protesters and the government.
Anjum Bokhari said that for the first time since the beginning of her protests, her sister began to worry.
“When the protests first broke out, she wasn’t really worried. She was more upset about having to leave her program early,” Anjum Bokhari said.
“But I think the students are mostly scared because protests like that don’t happen over here. They’re just not used to it.”
After the university’s attempts to fly the students to Greece and London failed, Anjum Bokhari was finally informed early Tuesday that her sister was boarding a plane to Spain, relieving some of her family’s worries.
According to University of California officials, UC students and faculty who were in Egypt have been evacuated and are expected to return to California later this week.
Nasreen Bokhari said she will not stop worrying until she has her daughter back home, although she is thankful to the UC officials who kept in contact with her throughout the situation.
“My parents have been in constant contact with the embassies, the advisors and the counselors, and we’re really happy with the way things have been handled,” Anjum Bokhari said. “I think my parents are just going to be relieved when she comes back home.”