An excerpt of an original piece of mine that provides a short historical analysis, something that I feel has been largely absent in the international media coverage, of Tahrir square and what meaning it had, or didn't have, for Egyptians before the revolution and how it has been transformed over the least several months.
I paused and took a deep breath before plunging into the steady stream of cars and diesel buses in Tahrir Square, the now famous epicenter of the Egyptian protests that toppled the Mubarak regime. I walked swiftly, not slowing my pace and keeping my eye on the traffic, until I reached the large swath of grass in the center of the traffic circle. Before the crowds of Egyptian protesters and international media colonized the square, smaller dramas were being played out every day in this tense arena of people and cars.
In the late afternoon families would brave the roaring traffic, as I did, and picnic in this rather hazardous gathering space. Surrounded by the constant noise and heady fumes, children would chase each other in circles while their parents watched and chatted. In the evenings the young and bored, mostly men, passively took over the grassy circle with their friends or else lingered alone with only the glow of their mobiles, before heading to the bridges and breezy corniche along the Nile.
The fact that Cairenes would go to such lengths, nearly risking life and limb, for a space to breathe was a testament to the degree to which Cairo had become an oppressive and unlivable city, one that had utterly neglected the needs of its own people. The difficulty of doing something so seemingly mundane was a further painful allegory for how far Egypt as a whole had fallen under decades of poor governance. As the government built up its crushing bureaucracy and bent over backwards to cater to millions of foreign tourists eager to experience the Pyramids, ordinary citizens had been left to survive on their own or suffer at the hands of the security forces.
Conceived by the ruler Khedive Ismael, the Ottoman era viceroy of Egypt in the 19th century, Tahrir Square (originally named Ismaelia Square after the Khedive) was the centerpiece of his plan for a modern Cairo that would emulate all things European: a “Paris on the Nile”, replete with ornate occidental facades, monumental squares, and elegant boulevards. It was a potent symbol of Egypt’s eagerness to embrace, or at least catch up to, a world that had long since shifted in favor of Western Europe. With the death of British Imperialism and the subsequent birth of the Egyptian republic in 1952, the square was renamed Tahrir, meaning liberation. Yet no meaningful statue or monument that would suggest a nod to history, liberation, or even forward-thinking modernism has ever graced its center. Tahrir Square was functional for Cairo’s ever increasing vehicle traffic, but little else. Liberation was a word that had power when attached to something of value, but in the context of its namesake square in Cairo, it signified little more than a vague sense of Egyptian nationalism.
In deeper ways Tahrir Square was symbolic for all the wrong reasons .It represented a present day Egypt that was stagnant; neither reflective of its glorious past, nor prepared or capable of thriving in the 21st century. Young Egyptians in particular were, in desperation, trapped in the figurative center of Tahrir watching the modern world pass them by.
Surrounding the square were far more potent symbols that were as irrelevant to the word liberation as they were to the transient groups that utilized the space before the revolution. There was the government office building known as the Mogamma, the ruling National Democratic Party (NDP) headquarters, the high-end hotels, and the downtown campus of the American University - blatant symbols of bureaucracy, corruption, excess, and exclusivity, respectively. The aloof headquarters of the Arab League, whose principles are based on the shaky ideals of regional integration and Arab nationalism, was nearby. A large construction site, where foundations were being laid for yet another luxury hotel with views of the Nile, separated Tahrir Square from the venerable florid-colored Egyptian Museum. That they could all be seen clearly if one stood in the center of one of the city’s few green spaces was even more disturbing.
Fast forward a few months, and this vantage point was now obscured daily by hundreds of thousands of citizens waving their nation’s flag and demanding the resignation of President Mubarak. Ordinary Egyptians of all classes and from all corners of the country were now huddled under tents in the grass or taking up every available inch of the square. Egyptians themselves seemed in awe at this rare display of unity in the face of a regime, as well as an international community, that was unwilling or reluctant to change the status quo. Tahrir Square had been transformed, not by the desecration of physical symbols of oppression, but by people laying claim to its physical space. The Square became a unifying symbol of their fight for, perhaps not democracy in the rather vague Western sense, but dignity, opportunity, and a better life for the next generation.
In an odd twist of fate, as the immediate square has been reclaimed and redefined as a center for a nascent civil society and ongoing weekly protests, its surroundings have lost much of their power and importance. The NDP building is literally a charred skeleton of its former self, Although its buildings still remain, much of the American University (long an exclusive factory for Egypt’s future elite) has in recent years relocated to a sprawling new campus east of the city in what was previously barren desert. Fear has driven tourists out of Egypt, leaving most of the nearby high-end hotels vacant. Once lucrative tourist shops and travel agencies that line the periphery of the square now sit empty.
The square itself flows once again with unnerving car traffic day and night, and the renewed sense of civic duty has failed to keep up with accumulating amounts of trash, leaving some to speculate that little has changed or will change for the better. Many people are struggling with the desire to fulfill the goals of the revolution and honor those who died fighting for it, and the need to move on with their lives and simply survive much as they always have. The city continues to transform and grow at a dizzying pace, drawing in thousands by the day, straining the infrastructure, and prompting those who can afford to do so to flee to cleaner and greener nouveau-riche suburbs.
Yet activists and others still flood into the square with renewed fervor every Friday, holding on to Tahrir as a vanguard of democracy and a venue for expressing long-suppressed desires. But the darkest cloud that gathers over Tahrir Square is the prospect that democracy won’t come soon enough for most Egyptians. The recent flare-ups of sectarian violence and the spike in overall crime in the capital have exposed a fractious society that has yet to address long-simmering class and religious tensions.
What was never underestimated was the Egyptian capacity to endure hardship. But what remains to be seen is if the people of the Nile can fight for democracy as long and hard as they have had to fight to simply endure. For now, it is the people who have become the symbol, the icon, and the monument that never existed in Tahrir Square. They have filled its long empty void and have given it, and themselves, a sense of power, however fragile.
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