Notes On Deposing the President of Egypt

Then we drove onto the bridge. People and cars were tangled and the orange glow of Cairo at night shone around us. Ahead, on the other side of the Nile was Tahrir Square. From the distance, we could see the crowd, moving like the tides in an ocean. But we weren’t unnerved. It was two years after the revolution, Morsi had gripped the country and life was settling. We sat in the cab and the driver took long draws on his cigarette.

We moved slowly and when we reached the end, near the street that goes into Tahrir I looked down the road that ran to the right of the bridge down the Nile. People had gathered and waited, shouting and chanting. Down the road, a car burned and smoked.

I sat in the cab watching. I felt a trembling in my gut and the squeezing feeling of being surrounded without an exit. The police began to march toward the people, their boots heavy on the asphalt. Canisters began to fly falling into the crowd spinning on the ground as gas rushed out. Tear gas moves as if alive. It follows you. It seeks you out. Speeds up to catch those who run. Slows down to choke those who are slow. I closed the cab windows and pulled the bottom of my shirt up over my nose and mouth. But I had breathed gas and my lungs were burning. I felt the choking, strangling feeling of lungs without breath.

People fled the gas. They ran into the side streets and up the bridge to Gezira Island. I looked to the back seat and with a shared nod, Jackson and I left the car and ran down the bridge. The street was loud. There was shouting and the sounding of car horns and the thumping of feet. We ran between cars and mule-drawn buggies and carts hauling hibiscus tea and mango juice.

When we reached Gezira Island my breathing came in gasps. Jackson and I stood beneath the two brass lions ten meters overhead. Many had gathered and the heat of bodies and smell of sweat was musty and humid in the air.
I looked up and a man waived an Egyptian flag and people shouted and cheered and across the bridge, people were swarming into the square, into the space where they were safe. Tahrir trembled under the lights of Cairo and beneath its people.

It was then that I knew that I had been wrong. The revolution had not ended and Morsi did not run the country. The people were in control.