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"Over the span of two weeks in mid-January 2011, reports of numerous selfimmolations were surfacing in Cairo. On January 17, Abdou Abdel Monaam, a small restaurateur, set himself on fire in protest against a law preventing restaurant owners from buying subsidized bread, forcing him to buy bread at five times the subsidized price. On the same day, Mohamed Farouk Hassan, a lawyer, railed against rising prices before setting himself on fire. These immolations, clearly in emulation of the events that sparked the uprisings in Tunisia, sought to ignite the fires of popular protest against the Mubarak regime in Egypt"--