Tahrir’s tryst

On the 17th day,everything changed. On Thursday evening,more than two weeks after protesters occupied Tahrir Square in the centre of Cairo and turned it into “the only free place in Egypt”,they gathered to listen to their octogenarian president,Hosni Mubarak,read out what they expected would be his resignation speech. For the entire day,one piece of news after another had first provided hope,which then hardened into a certainty: Mubarak would go. And so,when Mubarak’s speech dashed those hopes one by one,the anger and desperation in the square were correspondingly intense. After so many days,as the numbers of anti-Mubarak protesters swelled,had nothing actually changed?

But everything already had. Mubarak claimed first that he would not leave for months,and in the interim was only delegating some of his power to his ex-spymaster vice president,Omar Suleiman — a plan the military at first defended. Yet it was impossible to ignore the sense that the 30-year Mubarak era,which so defined the politics of the Arab world,was over. Nor,in the end,could Mubarak ignore that feeling; he left Cairo,and had Suleiman read out his resignation on state TV on Friday evening. The president who had spoken to his people,befuddled and out-of-touch,was no longer a strongman of the sort who has bestraddled North Africa and the Middle East for decades. Even the military’s statement of support had carried a sting in the tail: an endorsement of the protesters’ demands that Egypt’s 30-year emergency rule,in operation ever since Mubarak’s predecessor Anwar Sadat was assassinated,be lifted.

As Suleiman woodenly announced the end of Mubarak’s reign,those outside the riven country,blessed with the opportunity to try and take a longer view,found it easy to recognise the magnitude of what has changed. The sight of a strongman,shrunken and disconnected,trying and failing to hang on to power as his allies turned against him,was in its way as potent a visual marker of change as the cheering crowds that greeted news of his departure. What those in Tahrir Square believed from the beginning was a revolution turned out,to the cynics’ surprise,to be something almost that. In front of a transfixed world,a voice long-suppressed has found utterance.