Surrounded by a mass of protesters in Cairo’s Tahrir Square, first-year graduate student Cory Ellis gripped his camera as water cannons doused thousands of Egyptians on the first day of political protests last Tuesday.
Ellis was looking to document the revolution unfolding in Egypt, but his role as a bystander was transformed when police threw tear gas canisters into the crowd.
“I was basically suffocating after I came out of it. Tear gas isn’t an instant pain, it creeps up on you. You can run away from tear gas, but it’s still on you,” said Ellis, who is in the Middle East studies graduate program.
Ellis said a group of Egyptians carried him to an alleyway, giving him smelling salts to keep him conscious.
“The Egyptian people saved my ass. They really helped me,” Ellis said. “They told me to go back to my country and tell the world.”
Unrest has engulfed the country since Jan. 25, threatening President Hosni Mubarak’s 30-year hold on the nation and making Egypt the epicenter of Middle East uprisings that have swept the region from Tunisia to Yemen this month.
Read the full story at the GW Hatchet.
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