Cairo’s Tahrir Square is an uninspiring sandbox, lacking any color or foliage. It is surrounded by unloved concrete and internationally-notorious traffic. It is a feeble place to launch a revolution.
But in 2011, Tahrir Square became an Earthly portal linking mortals and the Olympus gods. We jammed drinking straws through the sand and sucked up the liquid freedom that sustains only those blessed to live forever with nothing to lose.
I was a journalism student visiting Cairo in early 2012 just as Egyptians engaged in their first free presidential election campaign.
And what I found there late at night in the streets leading toward Tahrir Square – what you didn’t see after the cable news crews departed for the day – were sidewalk cafes crammed with the country’s new Founders. Thousands of young Cairenes, women and men, sat next to each other in plastic red chairs debating their country’s future.
As an American schooled in formal Arabic, I struggled to translate the sentences zipping through the darkness and cherry-flavored hookah smoke. But my flashcard vocabulary proved unnecessary. When the girl’s red chair toppled backward as she sprang forward, as she sliced the air with her hands in a final, argumentative exclamation, I translated her: Dignity. Self-confidence. Freedom.
The shame that had frozen these Cairenes in their parents’ homes for decades melted into the sand of Tahrir Square.
But trouble seeped up twelve months after the revolution. The Muslim Brotherhood, which initially promised not to run a candidate in the presidential election, unexpectedly changed policy. Every Friday, the Brotherhood’s supporters held huge rallies in Tahrir Square to promote their candidate.
The reformers held desperate counter rallies on Fridays too, and soon a weekly routine set in. The Brotherhood and each reformer party would erect a stage for its candidate. Each candidate got a time slot to give a speech. As the day wore on, the huge crowd’s attention would shift from one stage to another. It was like a battle of the bands.
I watched this from the panoramic view on the second floor of Belady’s café. People would stop by my table take pictures out the window. Mostly rich Cairenes snacked and drank coffee at the tables around me.
One Friday, a young woman came up to me and asked in good English if I would interview her candidate, a leader of a minority party.
She was desperate for media attention, and like a good PR operative, moved on when she realized I was just a student and could not help her cause.
The Friday rallies were peaceful, but dangers rippled beneath the surface. Women were getting attacked. Thieves preyed on the vulnerable.
One Friday afternoon when I was leaving Belady, a surge of people blocked my way out of Tahrir Square. I got caught in the middle of a flash mob. I could not go backward or slide out of the mayhem. I was being pushed from behind and alarm bells went off in my head. Then I realized my wallet had been stolen out of my pocket. I screamed “help!” “Thief!” But the crime was final. I managed to create a scene and barged out of Tahrir Square another way.
But I left Tahrir Square for the last time running back to my room where I could call the credit card company and repair my fractured life.
The young reformers got robbed too. Years later, we know how their revolution played out. Egypt’s democratically elected president was ousted in a military coup. A general runs Egypt now just like Hosni Mubarak did for decades.
If Tahrir Square’s liquid freedom evaporated, then what independence did I gain from that place?
Travel, by definition, is temporary. You go on a trip somewhere and then you return to your daily routine. There is the physical journey of travel and there is the indelible impression it leaves in you years later.
Tahrir Square itself is an uninspiring sandbox. But its indelible impression – branded by the euphoria of cafés and the panic of the stolen wallet – has made me a more independent person each day going forward.
I experienced a revolution and its tragic failure. Now, looking back a couple years later, I realize Tahrir Square infused humility, persistence and maturity in me.
We all face adversity in our daily lives. I believe travel gives us experience to deal with adversity more successfully.
Thanks to Tahrir Square, I have valuable travel experience that will set me free – not tomorrow, not next month, but years from now, when I least expect it.
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