When the Rev. Benjamin Robinson noticed that the ever-present police officers had disappeared from the street corner outside his apartment in a Cairo, Egypt, suburb one night last month, he got nervous. He'd followed news of the growing protests six miles north in the city, but the absence of a police presence in the suburbs concerned the Presbyterian minister.
"This is bad," Robinson thought. "Something's about to happen."
A week earlier, inspired by the ouster of Tunisia's president, thousands of Egyptians took to the streets to demand the exit of their own leader, President Hosni Mubarak. Since then, violence has escalated across the country as Mubarak's government has attempted to quash the protests.
On Friday, hundreds of thousands flooded into Cairo's Tahrir Square in a mostly peaceful demonstration, with pro-Mubarak forces noticeably absent, according to reports.
Robinson, a 30-year-old associate pastor at the Church of St. John the Baptist in Maadi, and his wife, Emily, had remained in Egypt since the protests began, distributing food and information in equal measures to those desperate for each.
In a telephone interview Thursday, Robinson described St. John's as "a hodge podge" of ex-patriots, but also of denominations. The congregation of about 150 is made up of U.S. State Department employees, professors and graduate students from the American University in Cairo and the families of oil-company executives.
The theological makeup of St. John's — which follows an Anglican/Episcopal tradition — is also varied, and includes Lutherans, Presbyterians, Methodists, Baptists "and everything else," Robinson said.
Last week, when it looked like there were going to be food shortages, Robinson collected perishables from church members who were able to evacuate, and distributed them to people — including increasingly desperate refugees — who were unable to flee.
"There are communities of refugees that are barely hanging on," he said. "The banks have closed. There are no ATMs working. They have no access to their money to pay rent, and they have no way to eat."
Debra Smith, wife of Bishop George Wayne Smith of the Episcopal Diocese of Missouri, is heavily involved in the diocese's relationship with Africa's Anglican churches. She has studied in Egypt numerous times over the last five years and observed the efforts her church puts into refugee care there.
"There are just enormous numbers of African refugees in Cairo," Smith said. "Egypt has no programs for them, so a lot falls to the church. "(All Saints Cathedral in Cairo) has a huge outreach effort to refugees. They have a good sense of where refugees live, and they have ministries that feed them, help to house them and help them find work."
Robinson was also an information font for his frightened and disconnected church members, traveling from house to house, disseminating intelligence from ambassadors, State Department officials and journalists whom he'd already visited. "That was my role until today," Robinson said Thursday.
In the face of government collapse and collective chaos, it was the mosques and the churches that took on an organizing role, Robinson said. Members of mosques set up barricades on the outskirts of Maadi and checked the personal papers of visitors requesting entry, to 'see if they belonged," said the pastor. Muslims protected church buildings in the community, he said. Local police guarded western Christians.
But by Thursday, even Maadi had become too dangerous for Westerners, and the couple began searching for a way out. The plan was to hunker down in Rome for a couple of weeks, and pray the situation in Egypt improves, so they could return to their community sooner rather than later.
Robinson first moved to Egypt soon after he graduated from Whitworth University in Spokane, Wash., in 2003. Robinson moved to Egypt in 2004 and was soon joined by his wife. While working at the church, Robinson got a Master's of Theology degree in Middle Eastern Christianity at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo.
After more than two years in Egypt, the Robinsons moved to New Jersey so Emily could work as a nurse and Ben could pursue a Master's of Divinity degree at Princeton Theological Seminary.
In January 2009, the Robinsons were called back to St. John's where Ben, now ordained in the Presbyterian Church (USA), became associate minister of youth, young adults and education.
When trouble came to Cairo last month, it came quickly, Robinson said. It was frightening, but it was also thrilling.
On Jan 25., in a massive protest the Muslim Brotherhood called a "Day of Wrath," "the people lost their fear," Robinson said. Two days later, Mubarak's forces responded with violence. Protesters were killed, and the government imposed a curfew.
Still, the next day, St. John's held services despite the violence downtown. That night, however, riots began creeping closer to Maadi, a wealthy suburb south of Cairo. That's when the police disappeared. The Robinsons huddled with nine other Westerners in an apartment they thought would be safe. They could hear gunfire on the streets nearby.
But on Sunday morning, the group emerged from the apartment to see the roadblocks erected by their neighbors overnight. They had kept the peace themselves, and there was "a sense of pride that people had protected their own community," he said. "That was organized by the mosques, and they did a marvelous job of it."
Nevertheless, people were scared. A revolution was unfolding. It was spreading from Egypt's urban centers, and becoming increasingly violent. The exodus of foreigners began. That's when Robinson began collecting food from those leaving the country and distributing it to refugees.
On Wednesday, after consulting with local police who said holding services at St. John's would be too dangerous, and that they could no longer protect the church building, Robinson decided it was time to leave.
