The Arab Revolution: A Nile Insurgency and Uncertain Egyptian Future

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The Pharaoh was silent. He was sitting, as he often does now in his old age, in his vacation home in Sharm al-Sheikh on the southern tip of the Sinai Peninsula, gazing out at Tiran Island in the eternally glistening Red Sea. This is where the Egyptian president receives world leaders, where he has sat stiffly next to Israeli prime ministers, and where he has introduced alternating US presidents to alternating Arab rulers. Hosni Mubarak, 82, feels at home in the majestic calm of Sharm el-Sheikh, but not in noisy, dirty, crowded Cairo. Sharm el-Sheikh is where the Egyptian ruler holds court and where, for now at least, he was remaining silent.

He was allowing others to speak instead: His prime minister, who promised that the government would tolerate freedom of expression, as long as it was exercised "with legitimate means," and the head of the governing party, who denied that the party elites were leaving the country. Mubarak was not even denying the rumors about his son Gamal, who he had been preparing to succeed him for years, and who is now said to have left the country, or about his wife Suzanne, the daughter of an Egyptian and a British woman, who had reportedly flown to London.

Mubarak was not commenting on any of this. In fact, from his perspective, nothing could be more dangerous than to dignify the rumors with so much as a word, or to descend into the depths of his police state. That was what former Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali had done two weeks earlier, and he was forced to flee the country. This explains why not a word had emerged from Sharm el-Sheikh all week.

A Rival Event to the 1977 Bread Riots

And then it was Friday. As if all the frustration that had accumulated during the 30 years of the Mubarak regime were suddenly erupting from the Egyptians, Friday would become a day of reckoning, a day of violence and retaliatory violence so excessive as to rival the 1977 bread riots. At the time, Mubarak's predecessor, Anwar al-Sadat, had ordered his soldiers to shoot at angry protestors, killing 80 Egyptians.

Thirty-four years ago, dockworkers and students in Alexandria were the first to take their anger to the streets. This time, the news of the first casualty came from Suez, where the police had reportedly shot and killed a protestor. But this did not deter the rest of the protestors, nor did the curfew that the government had imposed. Until early evening, that is, when Mubarak brought in the military to regain control of the city on the Suez Canal, a key petroleum processing center.

Clouds of smoke billowed across Alexandria, the port city on the Mediterranean. A protest movement had already emerged in Alexandria in the summer after a plainclothes policeman had beaten to death the 28-year-old blogger Khalid Said.

But no other place in the entire country was as hotly contested as Tahrir (Freedom) Square in the capital Cairo. A symbol of national power, the square is home to the headquarters of the Arab League, the Egyptian Museum, the American University and the headquarters of the Mubarak regime's National Democratic Party.

The first protestors began arriving before noon prayers, and the crowds in the capital swelled to tens of thousands.

Despite a heavy police presence, the protestors on Tahrir Square courageously broke through the crowd control barriers, allowing others to surge through in their wake. Doggedly defying the teargas employed by the police, they dragged metal panels and plastic barricades along the streets as protection. By early evening, they had pushed the security forces back far enough that they could no longer control the situation. The protestors, beating drums, chanted: "The people want to topple the regime." For the first time, the protesters had managed to drown out the shots coming from the security forces.

Police Universally Despised in Egypt

The police had abandoned Tahrir Square, at least temporarily. Nevertheless, they continued to fire teargas canisters and, apparently, rubber bullets into the crowd, even though the protestors included women and children. The police are so universally despised in Egypt that many protesters called for the military to step in, chanting: "Come and see what the police are doing to us! We want the army!" A bizarre scene unfolded in front of the state broadcasting building, where cheering protesters greeted military tanks.

Police vehicles were burning on the bridges across the Nile, where the driver of one police van attempted to push protestors in the river. Smoke from a massive and threatening fire hung in the air over the city after protesters had set fire to the headquarters of Mubarak's ruling National Democratic Party. The capital was descending into chaos.

And still the Pharaoh said nothing.

Early on Saturday morning, at 12:15 a.m., Mubarak finally broke his silence. It was an eerie speech. A few hours earlier, a handful of the country's top business leaders had left the country in their private jets. But Mubarak remained grimly determined, saying that although he respected the legitimate concerns of the people, he would not tolerate chaos in the streets. He, who had devoted his life "to the point of exhaustion" to his country, would "defend freedom and stability." He promised more democracy, more stability and more jobs, saying that he was willing to engage in a "national dialogue."

Then he fired his cabinet.

But even if the Egyptian president refused to believe it, after that Friday, Jan. 28, 2011, the world was no longer the same.

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• Next

• Part 1: A Nile Insurgency and Uncertain Egyptian Future
• Part 2: A Difficult Conundrum for Europe and the United States
• Part 3: Forty Percent of Population Live on Less than Two Dollars a Day
• Part 4: Three Scenarios for Egypt's Future