For years, I have considered my feelings about the 25th of January childish, a feeling of frugality brought about by the sense that I should let people who were actually there take the spotlight. I spent the Januaries of my teenage years seeking all the media I could consume about the revolution, rewatching documentary films and reading the personal accounts I could find, moved by something I couldn’t explain. My media consumption inspired jealousy, pride and an odd sense of understanding, like I was somehow part of the revolution when in actuality I was far from it. For a long time, perhaps even up to this moment, I talked about the revolution with the arrogance of someone who was there, criticising people who spoke ill of it & vowing to never date anyone who wasn’t in Egypt in 2011 (a promise I made to myself when I was 13 & which has proven beneficial). I don’t know where this identification came from. I wasn’t in the square; I was seven years old, cross-legged on the floor of my home in Alexandria, watching the news with my mum.
I remember my dad leaving that day, and thinking he was just going to work like any other day. Later that night, as my mum and I anxiously watched the television, I learned that that day was different. My dad was in the protests, where we couldn’t reach him, hence the sudden interest in our television screen. I distinctly remember how I mirrored my mum’s nervousness, understanding nothing about the situation, and just waiting for my dad’s face to flash among a number of protestors’ faces on Al Jazeera. It did. My dad came home that night.
I don’t remember if he went to any more protests, or if my mum’s worry got to him. The following days, I didn’t go to school or leave the house at all. The furthest I went was downstairs, to the entrance of our building, to bring popcorn and oranges to my dad and the dads of my neighbours as they guarded our building. Because we were all trapped inside, I became very good friends with my neighbours two floors down, and we took turns playing with each other’s toys. My dad introduced us to ‘Al Midan’ by Cairokee & Aida El Ayoubi, and we held little concerts in our living room, where my little brother, only four at the time, got up on our coffee table and sang the chorus in broken syllables. There were videos of this on the hard drive on our now-broken home PC.
My memories of this time exist in fragmented vignettes. Rather than a cohesive image, I have scattered memories that have, I guess, birthed an unshakeable patriotism (that often shows itself in the form of a seemingly stupid optimism) in my heart. The memory of my mother crying at videos of police brutality, of having to hide in a KFC because the area I was in was suddenly assaulted with tear gas, of learning that purple bras are dangerous are ones I have come to guard ferociously. No matter what, I can’t allow myself to forget.
On the 11th of February, the streets of Alexandria were overtaken with a joy I had never seen before. Cars were hardly moving, but no one even thought to complain about traffic. That day also happened to be my dad’s 34th birthday. Cramped in a car with my family and my dad’s friend’s, I asked him, concerned, when we would celebrate his birthday.
“مش مهم يا ليلى, النهارده عيد ميلاد مصر.”
Translation: “That doesn’t matter, today is Egypt’s birthday.”
As cheesy and perhaps even laughable as it sounds, this statement meant a lot to a seven-year-old. It means a lot today. This joy, this trust in a better future that had been unimaginable only 18 days prior, was real. And while I did not understand anything about it or about the context of revolution in Egypt at the time, I was there. I felt it. I know it’s possible.
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Many years later, I listened to ‘Youhka Ana [2]’ by Eskenderella based on the recommendation of a friend. The lyrics ‘يحكى أن جيل ورا جيل ...مصر أتولدت فى التحرير’ [‘Egypt was born in Tahrir] never fail to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand. I don’t know if that’s really true, given the history of forgotten uprisings in Egypt’s past, but I know that, at least to my generation, Tahrir birthed an understanding of Egypt we had never before touched.
“بس سكوتنا ماكانش سكوت ومفيش امة تعيش وتموت”