Revolution in the Arab World - Observation of a lost soul Blog

foreign policy • revolution in the arab world • 18 days
That was, of course, complete nonsense—but it still seemed like it was
working.
On Friday, Feb. 4—optimistically billed as the “Day of Departure”—I
met dozens of young Egyptians who often boiled their demands down to
one simple word: “freedom.” Tarek al-Alfy, a 30-year-old tech entrepreneur
from Giza, told me that he had come to the protests for the first time that
day to express his outrage at the government’s unprecedented shutdown of
the Internet. “I felt like I was living in North Korea, so I decided to go to
Tahrir,” he said. “I want a fair constitution.”
Near the museum, where a half-dozen burned-out police vehicles were
scattered at the scene of Feb. 2’s battles, I met Mohamed Abdel el-Ainein, a
49-year-old mechanic Army veteran who was resting in the driver’s seat of a
truck, his head bandaged from a nasty direct hit. He was too tired to speak.
A doctor at the makeshift clinic nearby, Ahmed Abdel Rahim, told me he
had watched five people die overnight and said he had treated “dozens” of
trauma victims since 6 a.m. that day. As I spoke with him, a young man with
the word “paradise” written on a piece of paper taped to his shirt walked by,
headed to the front lines.
Magdy Soliman, a 38-year-old computer programmer, volunteered to be
my guide for the day and help me get the lay of the land. At a dingy downtown
cafe, smoking harsh, honey-flavored shisha and drinking tea from
grubby glass cups, his two friends—both with master’s degrees in agricultural
engineering—told me of how they had to pay bribes for “everything”
involving the government. “I have to pay some guy 600 Egyptian pounds to
get a driver’s license,” said Ahmed Khalil, 35. “Why It’s my right. We want
to smell freedom.”
Soliman asked me whether I thought the protesters were going to win. I
told him I wasn’t sure but that I hoped so.
“A lot of people will get arrested,” he worried. Ahmed was blunter: “They
will kill us for sure.”
Mubarak did not, of course, depart that Friday.
Over the weekend, momentum seemed to shift further against the protesters.
A self-appointed group of prominent “wise men” stepped forward
to negotiate a solution to the standoff. Mubarak’s new vice president, former
spy chief Omar Suleiman, made a public show of magnanimity by sitting
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