Mubarak is still here, but there's been a revolution in our minds, say protesters
The Day of Departure has passed, but anti-government protesters say they will stay until they get their freedoms back
Hosni Mubarak's presidential portrait still hangs in the grey concrete government office block that overshadows Tahrir Square. Demonstrators still pack the streets below, even though the largest protest of the past fortnight on Friday declared the Day of Departure on which Mubarak would finally be driven from power failed to see him toppled.
But even as the thousands who fill Tahrir Square each day take on board that it might yet be a long haul to finally ridding themselves of a hated system, they are steeled by an ever more certain sense of victory after a week in which they have warded off the regime's bloody efforts to break their demands for freedom, and heard their ruler finally talk about quitting. With that has come ever greater determination among the protesters to see the showdown through to the end.
Tahrir Square was an unusual mixing of Egyptian society. Poorer workers and the middle class. Middle- aged parents and young idealists. Islamists and those who view Muslim politics with fear and suspicion. But there are many more men than women. Some men are quick to say that they don't believe protests are a place for women and that at home there are six people wives, mothers, children who support the anti-Mubarak cause for every one of the demonstrators in the square.
Amira Ismael, however, is in the square with her three-year-old son, Taha. They have been camped there for five days. Ismael's husband, Ahmed Awad, makes periodic trips out for food, but other than that the family does not intend to move until Mubarak has departed.
"I am doing this for my son," said Ismael, an accountant. "Mubarak has to go because with Mubarak my son has no future, no life. We can't afford to send him to the good school and Mubarak makes the government schools bad because he wants to keep the people stupid. The government is Mubarak's government, not o! ur gover nment. I will stay here until Mubarak leaves. I will stay here days, months, years."
Awad is a computer technician who hasn't been to work in days. A job is a precious thing in Egypt and he worries that he might lose it. But if he does he regards it as a price worth paying.
Ahmad Mahmoud is standing in front of the shuttered entrance to the metro system holding a yellow sign with a single word spelled out in capital letters: Freedom. "I've been here every day for nine days," he said. "I will come every day until he leaves because now I know we have won."
Mahmoud, a 35-year-old teacher, talks of a revolution, but what he means is not so much people on the streets toppling a hated figure as how they see their relationship with this government and all future governments. "People have changed. They were scared. They are no longer scared. We are not afraid of his system any longer and when we stopped being afraid we knew we would win," he said. "We will not again allow ourselves to be scared of a government. We will not be afraid to say when we think the president is wrong or the government is bad. This is the revolution in our country, the revolution in our minds. Mubarak can stay for days or weeks but he cannot change that. We cannot go back."
Ahmed Mora, a biochemistry university lecturer, came to the protests late but said he, too, would see them through. "It's time. I know there are people who are afraid. There are people who are afraid of chaos. There are people who are afraid of the Muslim Brotherhood. Many of those people are not pro-Mubarak, they are pro-stability," he said. "But we cannot be afraid to free ourselves. I'm 30 years old and I've never voted in an election because they were always corrupt and fake. We are going to stay until he goes."
Not long after dawn, the thousands who keep vigil in the square through the night a few with tents but most sleeping in the open on blankets and rugs set about cleaning up. Some brush the street with branches snapped from th! e trees, others pick up the rubbish. The rocks collected for defence are piled. A man scatters water to try to keep the dust down. Newspapers are distributed and men settle on the pavements to read and sip tea.
On the edge of the square, the queues to enter and join the day's protest start to form. Soldiers check identity cards and search for weapons. Some demonstrators carry food for those who have remained in the square overnight.
Once past the soldiers there is a second line of security run by the anti-Mubarak campaign where identity cards are shown again and male protesters are politely patted down. It's an orderliness Egyptians have surprised themselves with designed not only to minimise confrontations with the army and keep the protest peaceful, but also to suggest that it is the regime that is the source of chaos.
It hasn't been easy. A few days into the protests, a wave of looting was unleashed. The pro-democracy movement suspected that the regime might be creating disorder in the hope that ordinary Egyptians would welcome a crackdown that could be used to clear the anti-Mubarak movement from the streets. But Cairo's residents took matters in to their own hands, policing their neighbourhoods, and the protest movement grew stronger.
Every now and then, there is a crack in the order. Periodically, someone among the protesters is determined to be a security police agent or agent provocateur. Two men spotted on a balcony overlooking the square are pounced on, their hands bound with white cord before they are frogmarched, looking petrified, through a hostile crowd to soldiers who take them off to a makeshift pen.
A little later, another man, in a blue shirt, is not so lucky. The kicks and blows come from every direction as one group of protesters attempts to protect him from more agitated demonstrators as they march the suspected government agent across the square to hand him over to the army.
There are shouts of "hang him" from some men, young and older, venting years of ! anger at the vast, anonymous machinery of state repression on one of its agents suddenly alone and powerless. More reasonable protesters plead against any violence. Only with a determined effort by his protectors and help from a couple of soldiers is the man finally prised away from his attackers.
Across the square, other protesters are spraying graffiti to add to the slogans and posters demanding that Mubarak go. Walls and store fronts are covered. So are the tanks blocking the roads on the edge. One sign reads "Game over". Another says "Free speech". A couple of effigies hang from lampposts. Ismael points and says that's what she would like to see done to Mubarak.
Sprayed close to where the tanks and soldiers are lined up in front of the Egyptian museum is another demand: "USA don't involve. USA admin we will get with our will". There is no particular anti-American mood among the protesters. Most of the signs and the anger are directed directly at Mubarak. But there is suspicion.
The demonstrators are watching Barack Obama closely after 30 years of successive American governments backing Mubarak as a force for stability, widely seen in Egypt as a strategy to maintain peace with Israel at the expense of freedom for Egyptians.
So many in the square take a skeptical view of Washington's plan for Mubarak's deputy and intelligence chief, Omar Suleiman, to oversee the political transition. There is suspicion of Suleiman because of his past, but there is even greater concern that he will serve American interests which, among other things, are believed to be partly about containing the influence of the Muslim Brotherhood.
"When Obama said Mubarak must go, we were very happy," said Ismael. "If Obama gets rid of Mubarak, you will see that many people in Egypt will love America. If Obama leaves it to the Egyptian people, we will love him. But if Obama tries to force us to have a government we don't want, it will be different. We will win and then we will judge Obama by what he does and take ! decision s according to how he behaves."
Ismael added: "Egypt is not against America. I don't want the Americans to tell my country what to do. All Egyptian people must decide. America has an agenda. It is not our agenda and this is our revolution."
Comments