Midan Tahrir is the stage of an absurd theatre performance. It has been closed with fences and it might look like a normal pedestrian area. It’s 8 o clock in the evening and Mubarak has given a speech a couple of hours ago saying that he is the victim of an unjust campaign and that he will submit proofs to the authorities that he is far from any allegation of corruption. In the square small groups of people gather around a young woman who repeats the ex-president speech to provoke their indignation. Others just walk around to take pictures of themselves in the square. There is a burnt autobus parked just in the middle of the square,( rest of Friday’s night battle), where all the rubbish collected in the square has been stored. This is the most popular location for a facebook profile picture. There are people selling fresca, caramel apples and nuts. The floor is covered by stones. Tourists buy souvenirs.Children wave small Egyptian flags.
The people walking around in Tahrir are not the ones you expect to see. They have flaming red eyes, they are not well dressed and seem not to belong to any intellectual rank. But are those people who are still standing in Tahrir and protecting the battlefield, and not insisting on the damned word Istiqrar, stability, which is the main theme of every single conversation. They are the one who really hope for the istiqrar and they do not need any intellectual frame to realise that the stability is still very far to be achieved.
Alshaab yurid al-esteqrar. The people want to return to the normal, the stability. The absurd lies in the fact that apparently life is normal again. Shops open, people going to work, army surveilling the streets. I have a job, I have friends, a nice flat. Egyptain people still make jokes. I have a…smile. But when I walk around Tahrir, I feel the same disorientation.
The man wallking in front of me choosed to stop in front of the graffiti “Midan al Shuhadah” (Martirs square) to take his profile picture. I am still wondering around the wood, baladi coffee shops and my mother’s kitchen and I don’t know which landscape belong me the most.
