Egypt: Welcoming A New Country · Global Voices
Ayesha Saldanha

This post is part of our special coverage of Egypt Protests 2011.
Egyptians are dreaming of a better future, and for some the dream is already coming true. In this post we hear from Egyptian bloggers who feel they are seeing a new country being born, the country they have been waiting for.
Mona Seif (@monasosh) has been giving regular updates from Tahrir Square, including on the night of 2 February. She reacts to the descriptions of her being “brave”:
I have to clarify this: I was not brave, I was protected.
The battle extended over the night. It started with rocks & glass, moved onto Molotov cocktails, then there was gun fire. The army was there motionless, and at one point they even all went down and hid in their trucks.
I could never find the words to describe the bravery I witnessed that night. […] That night made me fully realize, the Egypt I really want is that of Tahrir square. The people there are what Egypt is all about, and I am with them in whatever fate awaits us.
Revolution. Photo courtesy of Iman Mosaad under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic license.
Merry describes visiting Tahrir Square with a friend, and the encounter they had with some protestors:
One of them asked me and my friend  as his face beamed with a smile “why did you come?”… my friend said “because this is our country…”, I looked him in the eye and resisted hugging him as I answered “because YOU are my country”… and they are, Oh God, they are the country I have been looking for my entire life and I finally found it…
The sentiment is echoed by Nadia El-Awady on Twitter:
Egyptians at home: stop watching state tv and come to tahrir. See the #Egypt we've all been longing for #jan25
The blogger who calls herself Fugitive in a World of Dreams writes: