This week, Laura El-Tantawy will be documenting her hometown of Cairo via The New Yorker’s Instagram feed. While this is expected to be another turbulent week in Egypt—read Peter Hessler’s Comment in our new issue for the latest—Tantawi will focus on the periphery, bringing us snapshots of daily life in Cairo, as well as photos of a ten-member fishing family who live on small boats on the Nile. Above, Amr, a fisherman, performs prayer on his boat. Follow @newyorkermag for updates. 

In Cairo, a young man named Mustafa Ibrahim tells Peter Hessler that “Islam is like a tennis ball. When you hit it hard, it bounces back higher. An incident like this will just strengthen the religion.”

Peter Hessler on Cairo: Between the Protesters and the Embassy: http://nyr.kr/PfTijG

Photograph by Peter Hessler.

John Cassidy breaks down the order of events in Cairo, Libya, and the U.S. over the past 24 hours, and considers how they might affect the Romney and Obama’s campaigns: http://nyr.kr/OHoY02

There will be plenty of time to discuss the rights and wrongs. But before getting into all that, I thought it might be worth setting down how the past twenty-four hours unfolded. With events taking place in three countries, on two continents, there has been a lot of confusion about who said what when. Here’s a quick timeline I put together from the Web. As far as I can see, Romney doesn’t come out of it looking any better….

Polarizing Attacks, at Home and Abroad - Jon Lee Anderson on the attacks in Benghazi and Cairo: http://nyr.kr/QRslkt

These new attacks on diplomatic outposts highlight the continuing uncertainties of the region’s evolving relationship with the United States, a result of the volatile forces unleashed in the so-called Arab Spring that began early last year. In the continuing tug of war by competing groups, not all of them friendly to the U.S., over political power, there may well be more unwelcome surprises to come…

Photograph by STR/AFP/Getty Images.

Samia Salim, thirty-one, is an assistant at a company that manages oil fields. She refuses to wear a veil—she is not “psychologically prepared” to do so—even though most of her friends think she should.

Describe the past sixteen days.

Initially, Salim had “mixed feelings” about the protesters. But their “courage and persistence,” achieving “what couldn’t be actualized over decades,” left her shocked and inspired”: “I truly felt honored and really wanted to go to Tahrir.” But Salim’s parents, with whom she lives, worried for her safety, and she stayed at home.

How’s work?

“Like most people, we took a week.” They waited until “the situation cleared up or, at least, until it was safe enough to be in the street.” Salim is back at work now.

Who should be the next president of Egypt?

“I don’t know, but I would vote for Amr Moussa.”

Where do you get your news?

Salim favors the satellite channels, particularly Al-Arabiya. As for the state-run television, “I followed the Egyptian TV channels a bit, but they lacked credibility. It was so obvious they were fabricating opinions and people to attack the revolution.”

Are you going Friday?

“I hope so, but I doubt my parents will accept it.”

How do you feel about Wael Ghonim?

“I fully respect him for what he did, for taking action. I would be so, so, so proud if Wael were a brother to me.”

Would you ever leave Egypt?

Did I mean, Would she ever flee Egypt? “No, I won’t.”

Hear the stories of more Egyptians on the ground.

Our writers have been following the uprising in Egypt; follow with us at the News Desk blog. We have Steve Coll on talking to the opposition; Wendell Steavenson with views from the ground; Jon Lee Anderson on the do’s and don’ts for dictators; John Seabrook on crowd dynamics at the protests; and more.

In April 2010, Joshua Hammer wrote about President Hosni Mubarak and the election process in Egypt. We have now made the piece available in full online.