Revolt! Feb. 11 Alf Mabrouk Ya Masr!

By now you all know Mubarak stepped down and passed power to the military, rather than to his newly appointed VP and/or the shady Parliament. The people of Egypt welcome this transition to military rule and really do trust completely that the military will oversee a swift transition to credible democracy. Only in Egypt would "martial law" be an improvement to civil liberties and human freedom.

Okay, not only in Egypt...Yemen, are you listening?!?!

After yesterday's disappointing speech (one of the worst ever in history by my bet) in which the President refused to step down and made no further concessions, I'd gone to my friend's to practice some good old fashioned depressed escapism and watch Twilight. Forewarned by her dad that "the office of the presidency" was going to make a speech, we reluctantly left Edward and Bella (it was the first Twilight so not much Jacob, unfortunately) to tune into Al Arabia, an independent Egyptian news channel (i.e. not State TV). We were on alert that something was up because they were advising of an announcement from the Presidency, not the President.

VP Suleiman succinctly delivered the immortal words:
"Hosni Mubarak has waived the office of presidency and asked the army to run the affairs of the country."

Everyone freaked the f*&% out. Dancing, clapping, shouting, waving flags (where'd those come from?!). The streets exploded (really, actual gunfire, they were even shooting emergency flares, like the ones that come in liferafts, into the air) and cars began the traditional Egyptian celebratory honking in the pattern of beeep beeep beepbeepbeep, beeep beeep beepbeepbeep usually reserved for weddings and soccer victories.

I ran home and grabbed my camera and video camera (so yes, I will be spending all day tomorrow trying to remember how to upload video) and met up with Amani and Karim and their parents and headed across 6th of October Bridge to the Corniche, then past the Ministry of the Interior (where snipers had cut down protesters only two weeks ago) and the State Television building, past the back of the Egyptian museum and into Tahrir Square.

A note (Attention President Obama!) on the pronunciation of Tahrir, which by now everyone knows means liberation. The h is not silent. It is the sound you make when you blow on your hands to warm them up. So the Tah is not like how we'd say good by if we were being snooty (ta-tah!), it is similar but followed by a quick exhalation of breath: Tahh! Then role those r's when you say the rir part of Tahrir.

The five of us had to hold hands in a train when we got to the square and many other families and groups of friends were doing the same. Chants would break out, many of which were variations on the chants that have become familiar in the past weeks. Instead of "leave, leave," it became "he left, he left" and "He must leave, we will not leave," became "He left, we will not leave." There was another that sounded really snappy in Arabic but is a little more cumbersome in English. Amani translated it as "we have extracted him," which makes Mubarak sound like a leech, and BBC used the word "dislodged," which makes him sound like a barnacle. Both fairly appropriate metaphors. "The people, the army, one hand" popped up whenever we got near one of the tanks and groups of soldiers around the outside of the square (the soldiers were posing for photos with the protesters and letting them dance on top of the tanks with their flags) and of course "Allahu Akbar," God is great, is perfect for any occasion. My favorite (because it is also the name of a dive bar Downtown), shouted mostly by secular looking student-aged women was the simple "houreyya," or "freedom!"

Flags were literally everywhere but my favorite was worn by a boy of perhaps two on his mother's shoulders (sitting on her hijaab). Although in his sitting position, he was about two feet tall, the flag was easily four or five feet long and tied around his neck like a cape and trailing all the way down his mother's back to the backs of her knees. He looked like the world's tiniest Superman.

We passed three sets of human chains, two made circles within the crowd that protected men on their knees praying (one even used a flag as a prayer rug!), and one, which included civilians and military men, encircled the Egyptian museum, protecting it from further looting and vandalism. You often see grown men hold hands in Egypt, but rarely does it look noble, and even fierce, as it did tonight, when dozens, maybe hundreds, linked hands to protect the vulnerable men in prayer and the vulnerable relics of Egypt's history in the museum.

We made a half-circuit around the square and then tried to squeeze out by Hardee's. This proved to be a bottleneck point and as the crowd squeezed together, the kind of sexual harassment that, according to reports by my friends who have been protesting every day, has been completely absent from the protests so far, reared its ugly head. It is a weird kind of groping, similar to a snake flicking its tongue. A finger will dart into the wasteband of your jeans, touch the skin on your hip or back right where your shirt usually covers but sometimes rides up, then dart away. Or a more daring finger or two will slip into your armpit from behind, barely graze the side of your boob and then disappear. But because there were several snakes in the crowd, it is like when a little kid is trying to get your attention by poke poke poke poking. If I weren't in Egypt and didn't know what it was, I'm not sure I would even know it was sexual in nature and might just think it was accidental; a result of the crush of the crowd.

When we finally popped into a side street and found each other near Pizza Hut, we had to traipse through a few more side streets to get to Qasr el Aini street, the long, wide boulevard that connects our office to Tahrir. These smaller side streets answered my long-pondered question of where all those protesters have been going to the bathroom. My sneakers are sitting on my balcony waiting a good soaking in bleach tomorrow.


We passed by Parliament (where people were writing "this is where Parliament USED to be!" in chalk on a big sign on the front gates while laughing soldiers looked on, and by several other ministry buildings. The sidewalks out front were covered in tents (Coleman is getting some great advertising exposure they're probably not even aware of) and blankets with plastic (like the kind you use to cover your lasagna when you put it in the fridge) stretched over the trees and bushes to protect the blankets from the rain.



I got through my only checkpoint when a boy barely high school aged with flag as a bandana checked my passport (which he could not read, since it was in English) and serious young woman in a purple hijab and studious glasses searched my purse and I was waved through. The men got frisked but not the women. These were volunteers, not military or police, checking to make sure weapons didn't get into populated areas. After we were confirmed weaponless, we were allowed onto Qasr el Aini street and made our way back to our office for some coffee, tea, the leftover pasta I'd forgotten to take home yesterday, a much-needed bathroom break, and President Obama's speech.

It was a beautiful speech. The kind we haven't heard him give since the Primaries. He sounded like how a leader is supposed to sound. For me it was a relief, since I have been waiting for weeks for him to give that speech. I suspect it may have been a relief for him too, since although the US has had to hedge its bets publically, I like to think that somewhere, while Gibbs was giving his ambiguous press conferences, Obama was pacing the Oval Office, chomping at the bit to praise what has happened here. My favorite line was the "For in Egypt, it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, that bent the arc of history to moral justice once more." It was everything I remembered Obama used to be, that I don't think we've seen from him in a long time and it was everything the people of Egypt (and we people IN Egypt) have been waiting for him to say.

I think it will go a long way toward repairing any damage done by not weighing in on the right side earlier. Insha'allah. For another, smarter person's analysis, see Nick Kristof's review of the speech: http://kristof.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/02/11/obama-leaves-wishy-washy-behind/

Our bodies warmed by tea and our hearts warmed by the speech, we returned to the streets fortified (and empty-bladdered!) and headed for home. We were barely back on the corniche outside Garden City, the neighborhood that houses our office, as well as the British and American embassies, when we ran into friends of ours, one of whom was a lawyer in our office up until December. Of all the millions of people out on the streets and we found each other! We exchanged quick hugs and kisses and congratulations and, as one of them is of Iranian descent, we noted that this is the 32nd anniversary to the day of Iran's 1979 Revolution (the bad one) and exchanged hopes that Egypt's revolution would lead us in a different direction (forward).

We crossed Qasr el Nil bridge, one of my favorite places in Cairo and the best part of my commute to and from work each day. It connects Tahrir Square to the Cairo Opera House and is framed on each end by a pair of regal looking lion statues that seem to stand at attention, protecting the bridge. Men and boys had climbed to the heads of the lions, at least forty feet in the air and were waving flags while families, some with teeny babies, posed near the claws of the lions for what are sure to be awesome Christmas (Ramadan?) cards.



After ambling the length of Zamalek, we ended the evening at the Marriott, in their garden restaurant, surely the only restaurant still open three hours after curfew (I assume because the outer wall of the Marriott property extends all the way around the grounds it keeps out the rifraff, like the police, who would otherwise close the restaurant at curfew time. We ate a late dinner (though Egyptians are usually just getting dressed to go out at 11pm on a Friday night) and toasted the future and pondered whether our firm could get the job of tracing and freezing Mubarak's assets around the world.

Never having attended New Year's Eve in Times Square, this was the biggest party I have ever seen, and no one deserves it more as the people who are partying now have suffered for decades (ahem...Yemen...still paying attention?). The youth are intent on starting the future, as in tomorrow, on the right foot and Facebook and Twitter are abuzz (Google search Tahrir clean and click on the Realtime button on the left margin) with the news that there will be a giant community cleanup of Tahrir starting bright and early at 10am. I doubt many will go home in the intervening hours but those that do are encouraged to bring gloves and garbage bags. The dresscode, according to the Facebook event (https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=151128844945432) is jeans and a shirt, "any color from the Egyptian flag."

I am proud and humbled to know these people and honored to have shared even a small part of this experience with them. Alf mabrouk ya Masr, a thousand congratulations to Egypt on the success of tonight, the past eighteen days, and the future.