The end of Tahrir summer

Tahrir Square - liberated territory

I have just returned from a late afternoon stroll around Tahrir Square. I woke up late and checked Twitter to find that an argument/fight of some sort had just broken out on Talat Harb Street--it seemed local vendors were threatening to shut down the street to put pressure on the protesters in Tahrir to open the square up to traffic. Twitter and some local online news sources were also reporting that most of the secular parties that have occupied Tahrir for the better part of July had decided to open the square to traffic for the month of Ramadan which begins tomorrow.

Since July 8, when a Friday afternoon protest turned into a 3+ week long sit-in, Tahrir has been something of a nation-building festival. Streets to the square were cut off by any means possible--stones, sticks, barbed wire, fences, young men. Stages went up around the square, at one time I believe there were at least six, where people gave speeches, recited poetry and played music. Songs that became popular during Egypt's last revolution in 1952 or later on in the 60s and 70s (e.g., Abdel Helim Hafez's "The Greatest Country" and Sheikh Imam's "The River Laughs, Why"), and new music that made specific references to Egypt's current situation (e,g. Taxi Band's "Tora Prison"). Hard core activists set up tents in the "grassy" knoll located in the middle of the square. They brought generators or took power from the street lamps to charge their laptops, smartphones and televisions. They labeled their tents with the names of parties or movements or just specific demands that they had. Eventually, an organizing committee developed to organize sanitation, utilities and political activities. Vendors arrived selling juice, roasted corn and Egypt flags and memorabilia. And a steady flow of people flowed through the square day and night, talking about the military council, the constitution, the elections, and the future of Egypt.

A well-known Egyptian activist and blogger named Sandmonkey wrote an interesting post about the sit-in recently.

Of course, not everyone was happy with the sit-in. There were minor clashes with the military, which quickly decided not to try to push the protesters out of the square. There were also regularly fights with the local vendors, whose normal business operations were disrupted. The Muslim Brotherhood participated at first but quickly disappeared, I'm not sure because they disagreed with the idea or weren't accepted by the secular groups. And many Egyptians, including most taxi drivers I talked to, were frustrated by the traffic caused by the sit-in and the disruption to "normal life." Nonetheless, it was a great opportunity for thinking people to share their ideas and pressure the ruling military council to make meaningful changes now. Among the victories that the sit-in secured: the trying of Mubarak, sons, and 7 cronies on August 3; the forced retirement of nearly 700 police officers accused of attacking protesters between Jan25 and Feb11; the reshuffling of the cabinet to the exclusion of most former regime members and inclusion of more revolutionaries; and movement towards consolidation of protesters' demands, namely:

• speedy trial of top former regime members;
• cleansing of the judiciary and the police mechanism;
• justice/retribution for the martyrs of the revolution;
• minimum wage law;
• civil trials for all civilians (instead of military trials);

Naturally, when I heard all of this was coming to an end today, I went down to assess the situation and listen to people's conversations. I immediately stumbled upon a group of men arguing about whether to leave, who was more revolutionary, what the sit-in had achieve or would hope to achieve. I floated through a couple more similar conversations, until I spotted a veiled woman vehemently defending the need to stay in the square in order to keep pressure on the military council and ensure that elections in the fall are run honestly and cleanly. A man echoed a common refrain here, that the sit-in is a threat to national security. The woman almost laughed, looked back at the tents in the circle and said something like, "You're telling me these little tents are the biggest security threat this country is facing?"

Government street cleaners swept the square and water trucks sprayed down the pavement. Some protesters moved their tents to the grass outside the Mugamma government building, and a diehard activist led a group of several dozen protesters in a circle around the square calling for a continued sit-in. I think many people expected the protesters to stay in Tahrir through Ramadan, so it comes as a bit of a surprise that most of them are leaving. Perhaps they fear a popular backlash from interrupting the sacred month of Ramadan, or maybe they want to dissociate themselves with the tens of thousands of Salafis who took over the square on Friday in a show of strength. I have no doubt there will remain a small force of protesters there, possibly for years. And their numbers will swell on Fridays and possibly every night during Ramadan after the iftar meal. But I wonder whether the nation-building festival will return to Tahrir after Eid el Fitr or if a popular tide of apathy will immobilize the Egyptian people when they need to be talking and organizing the most, in the run up to what could be the first real elections in the nation's history.