During the famous power outage which hit the south of France, Portugal and Spain on the 28th of April, I was reminded again of how little I panic, in Lisbon, compared to my neighbors, friends and workmates.
I am not a calm person. I tend to stress out and all. But somehow, my threshold for danger can be slightly higher than that of the average European citizen and lower than that of the average Egyptian. For example, a street isn’t dodgy just because its people look scruffy or poor. A street is dodgy if you are prone to getting attacked there.
I like those odds, so far! I feel hardcore in most European capitals. Though does that mean I am gradually becoming too soft for Egypt?
The panic
The power outage led to incredible queues in the supermarket – some people stood in line for two hours, preparing for the nearing apocalypse. It also resulted in visits to emergency rooms (as one doctor told me) by patients in a complete state of panic over what might come next. I saw high school students protesting from my window and people running around, trying to see if their phones could catch a signal here or there.
The best part was when my friend told me that her boyfriend is convinced that this is World War III.
The power cuts were almost normal
As a 1990s baby, I was used to power outages in Egypt – an hour every month or two wasn’t uncommon. Back during the Revolution of 2011, or what was called the “Arab Spring”, the Egyptian regime, to control the avalanche of protests, shut down the Internet for several days. This also entailed shutting down mobile services making it impossible to communicate either via calls or texts. Unsurprisingly, people took that as a challenge and started marching randomly towards main squares, hoping to meet other protestors.
And it worked!
In 2012, we had daily power outages. Nothing worked – from the fridge to the Internet. In the past few years, daily outages – which took up to three hours in some areas – happened frequently. My friend’s mother used to stock up on “outage snacks” rather than torches.
She realized that the worst part of the power cut was boredom.
It isn’t only an Egyptian thing. We actually have it way better than in Lebanon. A Lebanese colleague told me that his family goes through 15 hours of power outage per day and that they live on generators which are very expensive to maintain. My Ukranian friend asked me when the power went off in Lisbon: “Why is everyone panicking? I lived for a year without electricity during the war.”
The relief of disconnection
Early in the evening, I walked towards the nearest square, wondering what I might discover. I knew it wouldn’t be a revolution – not this time, at least – but I was curious if panic still prevailed. And for the first time, I saw many of my neighbors in the same place, at the same time, enjoying their “not-very-cold” beers and reading books. Many of those who were alone seemed eager to strike up a conversation with strangers or make a joke about the situation. I ran into a friend I hadn’t seen in a year, sitting in a corner with his book and beer. It turns out he moved to my neighbourhood at the end of last year. The blackout made us find out that we were now neighbours.
I walked back home thinking how incredible it was that people stopped panicking a few hours into the blackout and started enjoying life without the Internet. How visibly less stressed everyone seemed! I wondered if my parents knew how blessed they were not to be as constantly connected as we are.
Power came back about 9 p.m. I was glad to take a hot shower before bed. Still, I couldn’t stop thinking about whether I would return to the same normalized stress that comes with always being reachable.
As I was falling asleep, I received a message from my friend who became my now-neighbour friend. It was a photo of dozens of lit candles. He said: “I know power is back, but I want to keep the candles for a bit longer.”
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Read more about Lisbon here in Dispatches’ archives.
Sarah Nagaty has a PhD in cultural studies, She’s lived in Portugal for six years.
As a student of cultural studies, Sarah is drawn to what connects people from different backgrounds to new cultures and places, how they relate to their new surroundings and what kind of activities they could engage with in their new hometowns.
