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Community Corner

Percy Dougherty, Home From the Revolution

Lehigh County commissioner and his wife made it back safely from Egypt.

Since he was a boy, Percy Dougherty has dreamed of seeing the Egyptian pyramids. He was within 10 miles of them last week when a revolution got in the way. 

The Lehigh County commissioner and retired Kutztown University professor landed in Cairo on Jan. 28 to start a 12-day tour with his wife Ann and other couples when the city exploded in riots and looting. 

“We left here on Jan. 27, got there on the 28th, and that’s when all hell broke loose,” Dougherty said in an interview Tuesday before a Lehigh County Congress of Governments meeting in Allentown. The looting preceded peaceful protests by hundreds of thousands of Egyptians calling for President Hosni Mubarak to step down. Violence followed after pro-Mubarak and other factions got involved, according to news reports.

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Dougherty said he and his wife went to bed on the 28th at their Cairo hotel near the presidential palace and awoke in the middle of the night to sounds of a mob gathering in the street. Then the Egyptian army and police arrived and disbanded the group, he said. 

The next day the tour agency, Gate One Travel of Philadelphia, whisked them about 300 miles away to the city of Hurghada on the Red Sea to get them out of the turmoil. Their Hurghada hotel became a refuge for tourists trying to escape the civil unrest.

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“There were people sleeping on sofas in the lobby and on the floor,” Dougherty said. 

He and his wife and fellow travelers tried to make the best of it by making excursions in a glass-bottom boat to a coral reef, visiting a Bedouin camp and taking camel rides. 

The Egyptian government had cut off Internet and cell phone service, but the travelers were able to keep tabs on what was happening in Cairo by turning on Fox News and CNN. 

There were some minor protests in Hurghada, a city of about 200,000 people, but its economy is heavily dependent on tourism and the army was in control, Dougherty said.

The tour company decided to cancel the tour on Saturday, Jan. 29, but it took the Doughertys until Thursday, Feb. 3, to get home. 

They got bumped from one flight and later caught another that landed in Luxor, Egypt, just long enough to pick up others fleeing the country, he said. About 450 miles from Cairo, Luxor is home to vast antiquities as the site of the ancient city of Thebes, the temple of  Karnak and the nearby Valley of the Kings and Valley of the Queens. 

“We weren’t even allowed off the plane,” said Dougherty, who taught geography and geology at Kutztown University.

Asked if he was scared, Dougherty said the first night in Cairo was the most nerve-wracking. But, he said, “I figured the army would clamp down if it started to get out of control.”

Still, the experience hasn’t soured him on Middle East travel. “I want to go back,” he said. “I want to see everything I missed.”

At Tuesday’s Council of Governments meeting, Lehigh County Executive Don Cunningham introduced Dougherty saying:  “Fresh from the revolution in Egypt, Percy Dougherty.” And then to much laughter he added, “There’s a rumor that you actually started it.”

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