August 14, 2013.

Egypt Troops in Deadly Crackdown on Protesters

Winston debated with himself whether to award Comrade Ogilvy the order of Conspicuous Merit; and in the end he decided against it because of the unnecessary cross-referencing that it would entail.

CAIRO----Egyptian troops staged a crackdown on protesters that turned deadly Wednesday morning in efforts to clear two antigovernment sit-ins in Cairo, a development that observers worry could plunge the already divided country further into uncontrollable violence.

Once again the glanced at his rival in the opposite cubicle. Something seemed to tell him with certainty that Tillotson was busy on the same job as himself. There was no way of knowing whose version would finally be adopted, but he felt a profound conviction that it would be his own. Comrade Ogilvy, unimagined an hour ago, was now a fact. It struck him as curious that you could create dead men but not living ones. Comrade Ogilvy, who had never existed in the present, now existed in the past, and when once the act of forgery was forgotten, he would exist just as authentically, and upon the same evidence, as Charlemagne or Julius Caesar.

Reports of the death toll varied. Mohammed Soltan, head of the ambulance authority at the Ministry of Health, said 10 civilians were killed and 98 were injured. The Freedom and Justice Party, the political arm of ousted President Mohammed Morsi's Muslim Brotherhood, said the field hospitals the Brotherhood has set up in the two squares have recorded more than 300 deaths.

V

In the low-ceilinged canteen, deep under ground, the lunch queue jerked slowly forward. The room was already very full and deafeningly noisy. From the grille at the counter the steam of stew came pouring forth, with a sour metallic smell which did not quite overcome the fumes of Victory Gin. On the far side of the room there was a small bar, a mere hole in the wall, where gin could be bought at ten cents the large nip.

The Egyptian Interior ministry said one police officer died and nine were injured in the clashes.