Jan28 Part II

The police on the bridge next to Doqqi Square had fallen back. Protesters had climbed on top of their abandoned police trucks waving their hands for everyone to continue. One man with long grey and black hair on top of a truck held an Egyptian flag above and behind his head. He must have for the first time understood what it meant to be free, stomping on top of a riot police truck, clasping the flag of his motherland victoriously.

I marched ahead on Tahrir Street, or Liberation Street, beside the Opera House complex. The buildings of the Opera, like the name of the street I was walking on, had a symbolic meaning. I was once told they stand at the site of the old Shepherd Hotel, which was burned down by Egyptian revolutionaries against their colonial British occupiers.

I felt desperately alone after losing my companion for the day, Nermine. I felt ashamed that I had left her in a cloud of tear gas. I hoped to find her ahead, imagining that she pressed on without me. To get over my loneliness I started interviewing people. I saw a man urging another protester not to attack the police who were standing on the sidewalk watching. I asked him what he said to the other man. He said that they are brothers. He told the man the protesters are respectable people. They do not hit anyone or break anything.”

As I walked away another man got in front of the camera and showed me an empty tear gas canister and said the police were hitting them with that. I asked him where the tear gas came from. I told him it says Jamestown, Pennsylvania; it’s from America. I thought to myself that it this is my home state and I realized later that my middle name is James. Another man put a canister in front of the camera and read what it said, “Made in U.S.A.”

I continued walking and found two men holding a sign that said, “Esqot Mubarak” or “Topple Mubarak.” I asked why they came to the protest. They said 30 years with Mubarak was enough. They wanted neither him nor his son Gamal in power anymore, nor his National Party. I asked that them if Egypt changed, if rest of the world could change. They said, “Masr om el donya,” a famous expression that means, “Egypt is the mother of the world.” They said that all of the protests of the world would come from Egypt. Up ahead, a famous actor, Khaled El Sawy, was walking with a crowd beside him. They shouted, “We want gas! We want gas!” to mean that they were ready to face the tear gas. When they gave El Sawy a minute to speak, he said that Hosny Mubarak and the National Party must leave.