CAIRO — Egyptians marched toward their hallowed ground of triumph and despair. Banners flapped, anger swelled, afnd Tahrir Square, which for months had been relatively quiet, erupted Saturday in unifying protest. CAIRO — Egyptians marched toward their hallowed ground of
CAIRO — Egyptians marched toward their hallowed ground of triumph and despair. Banners flapped, anger swelled, afnd Tahrir Square, which for months had been relatively quiet, erupted Saturday in unifying protest.
The life sentence handed to deposed President Hosni Mubarak for his complicity in the killing of more than 800 protesters during last year’s uprising awakened a sense of urgency to rescue a revolution that has felt adrift. While most Egyptians were happy about Mubarak’s fate, they were outraged that six of his top police officials were acquitted of murder charges.
The protesters saw the dismissals as another sign that the nations ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF, whose generals are close to Mubarak, was maneuvering to protect the remnants of his toppled state. Tahrir Square filled with chants, posters of victims killed during the uprising and members of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose presidential candidate, Mohamed Morsi, sought to capitalize on the anger.
“All of us, my brothers, must realize in this period that the continuation of the revolution and the revolutionaries staying put in their positions in the square are the only guarantees to achieve our goals,” Morsi said at a news conference before joining the crowd in Tahrir.
Morsi is running against Ahmed Shafik, a Mubarak loyalist, in a June 16-17 runoff election that will decide whether Egypt returns to the law-and-order secularism of the old guard or turns toward an emerging political Islam that already controls the parliament. Neither man embodies the spirit of the uprising that had gripped Tahrir Square and led to Mubarak’s ouster.
In fact, little these days has inspired the Egyptian soul.
That dilemma — a bitter disappointment for secular activists who largely have been swept from the country’s political scenario — was palpable in the square after the verdict. But the rulings from Mubarak’s trial also suggested that many fear the military will remain a hidden force after transferring power to a civilian government by July.
“This was a previously written scenario by SCAF. Everything we have seen over the last year and half is part of this scenario, including today’s verdict,” said Mohamed Yasser, a public employee. “It is a very contradictory verdict. How come the big heads get indicted while the lower officials, who fulfilled the orders on the ground, get acquitted?”
That was what people were talking about in the square. But they also discussed — sometimes with bemused smiles — enduring more than a year of uncertainty, as if the revolution, instead of delivering its promises and lofty ideals, had shoved them into a strange, inescapable dimension.
Yet being together again as the moon rose and the crowd thickened, there was a sense of rekindling old fires.
Some called for a retrial of Mubarak and his sons, Alaa and Gamal, acquitted in the same court case of financial corruption charges. Other protesters demanded SCAF step down immediately. Similar chants rose from demonstrations in Alexandria and other cities.
“This is the last chance for all Egyptians to come together once again and save their revolution. What we do now will determine how SCAF deals with the whole nation for years to come,” said Samir Ghanoum, a grocer. “If we get together, all our demands will be met.”
Political parties plotted and youth groups — for a while anyway — were invigorated. The army and the police stayed away; it was not their party.
It was unlikely that the many camps and differing ideologies that bloomed from last year’s uprising would find the galvanizing momentum to change the course of things. But it was good again to imagine.
“This verdict can be a blessing in disguise because it is the last straw that will bring everybody back to the square,” said Tarek Seddick, a law student. “It will bring us back together as one hand. The revolution took a wrong U-turn once politicians and activists started looking at their own personal interests and opinions.
“But what I see today is that we’re all together regardless of anyone’s ideology, and this sort of unity is the only efficient pressure on SCAF.”
By late Saturday night, a few more tents had risen in the square.
