Egypt: Welcoming A New Country

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:

كنت قد اخترت لمدونتي اسم دنيا غير الدنيا علي اعتبار انها دنيا احلام .. لم ولن يتحقق فيها فيها شيء مما نرجو…. دنيا اسبح فيها بخيالي لابعد ما يكون دون الوصول لادني حلم …. لكن بعد الخامس والعشرين من يناير اكتشفت ان انني كنت مخطئة لابعد حد ….فقد علمني شباب مصر بل علم العالم باسره انه لا مستحيل يمكنك ان تحلم وتصل بحلمك لابعد ما يكون يكفيك الارادة وحدها كي تحقق ما تتمناه … انني فخورة باني مصرية وبأني انتمي لهدا الجيل الرائع من شباب مصر …. لقد اصبحت مصر فعلا دنيا غير الدنيا بكل المقاييس
I chose for my blog the name “A World Out Of This World”, referring to it being a world of dreams…Nothing we were hoping for had been or would be achieved in it… A world in which I could swim around in my imagination, however far it might be, without reaching the nearest dream… But after 25 January I discovered that I had been greatly mistaken… Egyptian youth taught me – indeed the whole world taught me – that it is not impossible; you can dream and achieve your dream, however large it is. All you need is the will to achieve what you are hoping for… I am proud that I am Egyptian and that I belong to this wonderful generation of Egyptian youth… Egypt has truly become a world out of this world, by every measure.

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