January 29, 2011
Liberation Square was liberated Saturday.
Shadowed by the landmarks of a government that turned promises of secular nationalism into a withering authoritarianism, thousands of young people did what the state of President Hosni Mubarak never allowed in 29 years. They seized control of their lives.
Through the day, past the smoldering headquarters of Mr. Mubarak’s party and beside the travel agents who catered to tourists his government seemed to favor, youths took it upon themselves to organize traffic, snarled by the withdrawal of the despised police from the streets.
Young boys cleaned incinerated refuse from a night of looting that left more than a few ashamed. Others dragged makeshift barricades before the Egyptian museum, the receptacle of a glorious culture whose more modern incarnation has stagnated for decades. A few sweaty young men, fired by the euphoria of what they called a revolutionary moment, even dispensed water to the thirsty.
“This is the people’s water,” Mustafa Mohammed shouted, as he filled protesters’ water bottles.
Even in Liberation, or Tahrir, Square, there was a current of anxiety over what the protests would lead to, and what the arson and looting of a night before portended. There were reports of lawlessness and a pronounced unease in Cairo’s wealthier neighborhoods and across the country. For now, though, fleeting as it may be, an ossified order breathed new life.
The streets of the Egyptian capital have seethed before — over the United States’ war in Iraq and Israel’s occupation of Palestinian lands. But Saturday, America was mentioned more as a symbol of Mr. Mubarak’s subservience. In interviews across Cairo, the rebellion of youth stood as an uprising of the dispossessed, if dispossessed is the word that captures all the petty humiliations, bribes and abbreviated lives once captured in an anthemic song by the Cairene band, Downtown. “I want to marry,” it went, “but I’ve got no money.”
The more sober suggested that the once-omnipotent security forces would manage to crush the uprising. Indeed, the government seemed more intent Saturday on enforcing a curfew. But the forces that have driven a week of unrest suggest a broader reality: a people who once complained of their own quiescence would no longer stay quiet.
“This is our country,” said Maram Naji, a 33-year-old wearing a pink veil who returned after working as a psychologist for three years in the Persian Gulf. “We want to stay in our country. We want to share in its wealth, we want to be part of its land. They can only laugh at us so long, make fun of us for so long.”
The sentiments drew on another moment, where the anger of poor Egyptians clashed with the perquisites of the privileged. Liberation Square took its name after a revolution in 1952 carried out six months to the day after mobs burned Cairo, setting fire to the symbols of colonial rule and status. The Cinema Opera went up in flames as it played “When Worlds Collide.”
“The biggest mistake Mubarak did was to take this country for granted. How can you take 80 million people for granted?” asked Yahya Ismail, an architect born in 1981, the year Mr. Mubarak rose to power. “I hope he leaves, and I hope it doesn’t turn to chaos.”
Added a bystander, Sayed Hafez: “Nothing is better than dialogue. If the president goes and the cabinet goes, then our country will fall apart.” His view prompted anger from protesters, gathered near the Nile Ritz Carlton, a short way from a billboard for a new Novotel. “Stooge!” they shouted at him.
The older protesters in the crowd drew a comparison to the tumultuous events this month — the protests in 1977 when the government of President Anwar el-Sadat increased the price of bread. In those demonstrations, which threatened his rule, one slogan went, “Sadat dresses in the latest fashion, we live seven to a room.”
The chants Saturday evoked those sentiments. One protester played on the words of Egypt’s national anthem, “My Country.” “His country, his country, his country,” he shouted. “The country of Hosni and his children.” On this day, Mr. Mubarak was the pharaoh, the tyrant, the ruler of a country that people deemed, in remarkable scenes, no longer his.
In that, there seemed to be a simple national consensus, felt by car mechanics in Upper Egypt and the cafe society in Cairo: the government has failed them.
“I’m glad people have started to realized what’s going on,” said Eid Khaled, who works in a car parts shop in Badrasheen, outside of Cairo, earning a salary so meager he was embarrassed to discuss it, except to say he could not marry anytime soon. “I could take a loan, but I can’t pay it back.” His complaint was not just with Mr. Mubarak, but all political parties and the retinue of politicians they employ, predisposed to excessive hair dye and expensive but ill-fitting suits.
Some protesters said they woke up smiling — in the words of Mr. Ismail, “for the first time.” Others talked of a pride in a country haunted by nostalgia.
Through his reign, Mr. Mubarak eschewed the dramatic for the mundane, ever the methodical officer who became a hero after the 1973 war with Israel when he planned Egypt’s air defenses. In the end, though, the country began to reflect his taciturn personality. Egypt is a far cry today from the country that unquestionably led the Arab world in the 1950s and 1960s, when it radiated culture and power.
“For 30 years, Egypt lost its place,” said Ashraf Hamid, 40. “We’ve been ruled by mercenaries and rulers who stole from our treasuries. It’s over now, the people have woken up, and they’re going to rise again.”
He watched Mr. Mohammed dispense the water. “Egypt is going to be the example again.”
Down the road, children pushed a rickety green trash bin, cleaning up trash. Others threw what they collected in the bed of an incinerated police pickup truck. No one seemed to be sure where the moment would lead. But everyone understood that it was, in fact, a moment.
“If God is with us, we’ll take a clump of dirt in our hand and turn it into gold,” Osama Abdel-Ghani said as he directed occasional traffic in Liberation Square. “We’re going to take care of our country. Who else is going to protect it but us?”
A driver careered past a makeshift barricade. “Take it easy,” he shouted at him
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