From national clean-ups to field days for street vendors and tour operators, Egypt's revolution has given rise to its fair share of stories, finds Salonaz Sami It's a place you can find green tea, koskosi, a kind of Moroccan fast food, newspapers, T-shirts, bumper stickers, popcorn stands, face-paint artists and even asaliya and sobia, famous kinds of Egyptian food and drinks. It's a place you might find a group of people gathered around in a circle singing Mohamed Mounir's song Hadouta Masriya, an Egyptian tale, next to another group doing their laundry in the open air. It's a place filled with such contradictions and strange goings-on that you might think that it's not real, something like Neverland in Peter Pan, although Neverland probably did not dispose of its rubbish so neatly. This is Tahrir Square in Cairo, the epicentre of the revolution in which Egyptians of all ages and from all walks of life came together to demand one thing: freedom. "When I look at my son now, whose name is Egypt, I realise more than ever that his name represents more than the will to be free. It stands for the fight for change," wrote African-American singer Alicia Keys on her website recently. "My new weapon of choice is the broom": Armed with brooms, rubbish bags and disinfectant, millions headed to Tahrir Square the morning after former president Hosni Mubarak stepped down. This time, however, they had another battle to fight. The revolutionaries had decided they were going to clean up the square, a place they had once called home. To them, cleaning up wasn't just about removing trash. Rather, it was about removing all kinds of boundaries. "We were building our new country," explained Alia Bahgat, an architect. "People now had a sense of ownership of the country, and they wanted to see it beautiful." According to Bahgat, it is this patriotism and sense of belonging that Egyptians have missed for too long, though apparently the feeling had gone underground rather than had gone away. Today, one month after the Tahrir clean-up, millions are still working on cleaning up the rest of the country. "Sorry for the disturbance. We are rebuilding Egypt," read some signs in Tahrir Square. And it's true. "Each one of us is socially responsible, and now is the time to give back to our society. I am proud that we finally spoke up and are now fighting for freedom," says Salma Korraa, creator of the group "Clean it and Green It" on Facebook. This is a huge job, but "we are doing it one piece of trash at a time," says another member of the group. Korraa's initiative is one of many dedicated to the issue on the social networking sites, all of them determined to rebuild Egypt. Contrary to what some at first believed, this hasn't only been about repainting pavements and picking up rubbish either. Instead, it has been about the chance to start afresh. "We have divided ourselves into groups, each group being responsible for an underprivileged district in Cairo," says 23-year- old Ahmed Hussein. Besides cleaning up these districts, Hussein and his co- volunteers, members of one of the clean-up Egypt groups on Facebook, buy all their working and food supplies from the district they are in. "For these people, whose livelihoods depend on day-to-day income, things are much harder nowadays," Hussein says. So, instead of buying supplies all at once from a large retail outlet, Hussein and his co-volunteers decided to do business with smaller shops owned locally in areas they have decided to clean. Today, certain places in Cairo, especially around Tahrir Square, couldn't be any cleaner. "I am not exaggerating when I say that the asphalt in the square is squeaky clean and smells of disinfectant too. It's literally a challenge to find any more dust to sweep up now," read one recent tweet. However, while for Hussein and Bahgat, it is important to be able to give something back to their country, to others it is more important to take something from it while they can. Profit out of passion : " asaliya bi nus genih," asaliya at half a pound, chants one street vendor. While scenes of food and drink being handed out for free were not unusual during the days of the revolution, today scenes of street vendors selling asaliya, a kind of lollypop made from molasses, have become common in Tahrir Square. Dozens of street vendors have taken the chance of finding millions of potential customers all gathered together in one place, and they have decided to get their part of it. "I have never seen so many people in one place, except for the Mulid Al-Sayeda Nafisa, the celebration of the birthday of the Prophet Mohamed's daughter," says Am Barakat, a street vendor. Am Barakat and others have been opportunists in the best sense of the word: they saw a chance to provide for their families, and they took it. Others, however, have been less obviously needy. Driving on the 6 October flyover, for example, one might see an obviously well-off, 20-something man selling T-shirts, caps, bandanas and badges bearing photographs of some of those who lost their lives in the uprising with a 25 January logo printed on them. This seems to be a case of personal gain. "We have no excuse now that the regime is gone," said Maher Tawfik, another young man selling the same kinds of items, but this time to support the revolutionaries in Libya. "Now we should be keener than ever not to make mistakes, and such behaviour is without a doubt a kind of mistake," he added. Meanwhile, taking opportunities hasn't stopped there. Some have gone as far as to build a kiosk illegally from the ground up in the middle of Makram Ebeid Street bearing the name "Revolt Kiosk". "Using the noble name of the revolution for such purposes is completely unjustifiable and unacceptable," said Tawfik. "We have been the instigators of a great change in the regime, and now we should be determined to make similar changes in ourselves, not allowing such actions to slip by," he added. "We could report these things to the authorities, or we can do the simpler thing, which is to boycott these people and not to do business with them." Taking action doesn't have to be through protesting, Tawfik said. Rather, it could be through acting in whatever way we can to make ourselves and our communities better. "If we take this spirit to our work and our families, the smallest actions will certainly make a difference," he said. Enjoy your stay in Tahrir Square: "These days, the most sought-after photo is not one of Tutankhamen's mask, but of Tahrir Square," wrote The New York Times. Many urban squares worldwide, especially in Europe, are considered tourist destinations due to the roles they have played in history, and Cairo's Tahrir Square is now no exception. Over the past month, millions around the world have been glued to their seats, their eyes fixed on their television screens watching with amazement what was happening in Tahrir Square. "It has become a symbol of the revolution," explained Mohamed Raafat, a tour guide. "Now when you visit the square, you can't help but feel freedom and pride fill the air." With an impromptu memorial containing photographs and information about those martyred in the revolution already in place in the square, Tahrir is becoming a major tourist attraction. "Egyptians now come to visit the square that witnessed the toppling of a tyrant, and soon it won't be just Egyptians that are visiting," Raafat commented. "We are witnessing the emergence of a truly different Egypt, one that won't be changed back easily. Now is the time for the world to come in order to witness history in the making." According to the State Statistics Agency, around 210,000 tourists left the country during the last week of January. However, experts believe that it will not be long before they start to return in ever-greater numbers. "We have received hundreds of visitors over the past week, and things are beginning to look up," said Raafat. Some tour operators are now back in business in Egypt with the square included as a top destination in their programmes. No wonder British Prime Minister David Cameron and EU Foreign Policy Chief Catherine Ashton, both of whom visited Egypt recently, found time to visit the square despite their packed agendas.
