EGYPTIAN REVOLT: ORDINARY PEOPLE DEMANDING ORDINARY FREEDOM

EGYPTIAN REVOLT: ORDINARY PEOPLE DEMANDING ORDINARY FREEDOM

Don't be misled by the grand scale and vast legacy of Egypt's legendary leaders -- from Ramses to Cleopatra to Mehmet Ali. The same nameless Egyptians calling for freedom today have always been the heart of this ancient society.


Walk through the Museum of Egyptian antiquities – the one in Cairo’s Tahrir
Square that was briefly attacked during the recent Egyptian unrest – and you can
be overwhelmed. Room after room is filled with ceiling-high shelves jammed with
amulets, jars, effigies, statues, and hundreds of thousands more pharaonic-era
pieces.


Egypt is a time tunnel of human habitation. In the space of a few miles you can
be transported from a swank, 21st-century hotel to a dusty Mameluke-era mosque
to a 5,000-year-old temple to the sun god. Humans have lived on the narrow
ribbon of green that the Nile bisects since before hieroglyphics were around to
tell their story.


It is tempting to think of Egypt as the land of Akhenaten, Cleopatra,
Tutankhamen, Mehemet Ali, and Napoleon. More remarkable than the treasures and
legends they left behind, however, is the continuity of Egyptian society, the
patience and organization that nameless generations of Egyptians needed to
apportion the Nile’s water and live side by side on its banks.


Nowhere is that millenniums-old social compact more evident than at Tahrir
Square, the vast open space at the center of downtown Cairo that most days teems
with business people, students, peasants in simple galabias, women in smart
dresses, others camouflaged in black abayas, buses overflowing with passengers,
trams, vans, sparkling Mercedes, banged-up clunkers, donkey carts, and bicycles
laden with two or more riders – an amiable chaos softened by an ever-present
aerosol of desert sand.


A thousand small disputes and as many spontaneous smiles erupt every minute in
Tahrir Square. Horns honk in consternation. Friends walk hand in hand. The
overwhelming feeling is of a great mass of humanity living and letting live.


The Egyptian novelist Naguib Mahfouz, who made his way to the square every
morning for breakfast, once was asked why he didn’t have heroes in his writing.
Because he believed in the dignity of ordinary Egyptians, he said. All they
wanted, he believed, was freedom – “Freedom from colonization, freedom from the
absolute rule of a king, and basic human freedom in the context of society and
the family.”


Tahrir means freedom. To the Nobel laureate, freedom wasn’t individuals
rocketing off on solo journeys of self-discovery. Freedom came with society and
family, continuity and context. For a closer look at the epochal struggle for
freedom in Egypt and beyond.