SITKA, ALASKA
“The question we kept asking ourselves is, Do we feel safe? The answer was always yes. But then the question was, Do you want to be here until you’re not safe? And so that line of when is it too soon to go, opposed to too late to go. If we were going to make an error, we wanted to make an error on the side of leaving too early.”

Dan Langbauer was in his third year of teaching Math at Cairo American College, and his wife Sandra taught First Grade at this K-12 international school in Maadi, an ordinarily quiet suburb of Cairo. Their son Seth was in the eleventh grade. Despite a scare one night early in the protests, when armed pro-Mubarak agitators roamed through Maadi, Langbauer says he felt safe with his Egyptian neighbors, who were actively guarding the area.

Still, when the school chartered a plane, and gave international faculty the opportunity to leave, the Langbauers took it. It was on the ride to the airport that Dan got a broader perspective on the crisis.

 “I was surprised at the number of tanks. You’d heard that there were tanks around, and we’d seen some in our neighborhood. But there were a number of tanks out in places where I would normally ride for exercise. There were tanks all over. A fairly large grocery store called Carrefour had been looted – and we had heard that – but when you actually see it, it means a lot more than just hearing about it.”

Maadi is an international neighborhood, home to bankers, business people, and diplomats. Most of the Egyptians Langbauer knew there worked in service industry jobs or managed the apartment buildings. The strong anti-government sentiment that brought down President Mubarak was not prevalent in Maadi, but Langbauer knew there was discord.

“You definitely got the sense when you were talking to folks that they weren’t happy with Mubarak. But the level that we’ve seen, no I wasn’t expecting that at all. I can remember a taxi driver when we were first there. You would be in the taxi and the driver would quickly put this piece of cloth, like a seatbelt, over his chest when we were driving by some police. He told me there was this huge fine if you’re caught driving without a seatbelt. I come to find out that what had happened was that the Minister of Transportation decided everybody should have seatbelts in their taxis. Some relative of his – brother, cousin, I don’t remember – bought all the seatbelts in the country before this was passed. So these poor taxi drivers had to go and buy from this gentleman who had a monopoly and they were extremely expensive. It was that type of thing that you would hear from people. The corruption – I think they were very fatalistic about it, like they had no control.”

The Langbauers were given two-hours to make their decision to leave Cairo, and then a night to vacate the apartment that had been their home for over two years. They had prepared backpacks for exactly this scenario. And although they had sold their house in Sitka and bought another in Colorado when they began this new chapter in their lives, it was no surprise when, nearly seventy-two hours after leaving Cairo, they stepped off a plane at the Sitka airport.

“It wasn’t even a second thought. We knew that Seth would be able to get in to the school. I know the people there, I know the job they do there. So we felt very comfortable with that. We knew we had friends who without thinking twice would make sure we had a place to stay, and that probably has been one of the most humbling things when we got here. To see the people who would come to your help. Alaskans don’t ask what they can do to help you, they just do. Which is really different from other places we’ve been. People were always asking in Egypt when we first got there, Oh, what can we do to help, what is it that you need? And it struck me in Alaska you don’t have that – you just have the loaf of bread at your door, the car keys in your hand, and you never had to ask. I think that’s how we ended up here.”

Langbauer has been continuing to teach his math students literally all over the world via the internet. He says he’s concerned about the power vacuum created by Mubarak’s departure, and he’s worried that the unity displayed in Tahrir Square during the protests might splinter as factions struggle to create a new government. Still, he and his family would like to return to Cairo, possibly as early as the end of the month. It depends on his school.

“Either we’ll get a call from our employer that they need us, or they won’t, and we’ll be looking for jobs.”
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