Ahmed Harara, blinded by security forces, is Time 's Person of the Year, writes Rasha Sadek On 28 January, the Friday of Anger, Ahmed Harara, a 31-year-old dentist, was in Tahrir Square protesting. Like many of his peers he opposed the excessive violence of the security forces, and the decadent regime they were defending, only to receive a bullet in his right eye. On 19 November he lost his left eye, close to the site of his first injury and fighting for the same cause. Despite his injuries, Harara's revolutionary zeal remains intact. Ahmed Mohamed Ali, his real name, was renamed Harara -- fever in Arabic -- by fellow protesters because of his infectious fervor for change. The moment Harara lost his second eye, say witnesses, he lifted up his hands upwards and shouted "For your sake, Egypt". For many Harara is now an icon of the revolution, a symbol of defiance in the face of oppression and the state's brutal use of force to suppress dissent. Days after being blinded there were moves to make Harara Tahrir Square's spokesman, a role he politely declined in a videotaped message on 1 December. "The Square cannot be personalised. There are so many of us in the Square and we are all one. We are used to convening together to collectively decide our next step. Therein lies our strength. My capabilities are limited to standing in the street to protest. I can do no more than that." "Instead of focussing on useless details," he concluded, "let's not forget our cause. We want the [ruling military] council to go and a civil presidential council to be formed." On 14 December Time Magazine published its shortlist for "Person of the Year" with an interview with Harara under the title "Why I protest: Ahmed Harara of Egypt". "There is nothing in the world that stands in front of the people," he told Time. That's why after receiving 74 injuries in his face and lungs due to shotgun pellets on 28 January, Harara went back to the Square after the toppling of Hosni Mubarak, realising that things had "stay[ed] the same". On 19 November, "they hit us with shotgun pellets and rubber bullets, and they were assisted by thugs carrying knives, while we were throwing stones back at them until they gave up and left. And that day I got hit by a few rubber pellets on the front line. I knew and expected that the police would stay the same because it hasn't been cleansed. The elements are still the same." Egyptian writer and activist Wael Nawara, 50, also won a spot on the Time list. Before joining the nationwide demonstrations this year, Nawara had focussed on increasing Egypt's exposure to the global economy. He told the magazine, "by the year 2000, I started feeling that it was useless to work on improving the economy if you didn't have significant legislative political reform, because economic development opens the door to corruption and it becomes impossible to work within the margins of the law because the law is not legitimate." Nawara went on to co-found the Ghad Party with Ayman Nour. Mannoubia Bouazizi, the mother of Mohamed Bouazizi, the Tunisian who set himself alight on 17 December 2010 triggering the Arab Spring, also appeared on the shortlist. "People lived with corruption, oppression, humiliation... Mohamed's first concern was his dignity. Dignity before bread," said the mother. Javier Sicilia, the 55-year-old Mexican writer, was commended on the list for his efforts to "push for a stop to the mafia bloodshed and for new anticrime strategies and reforms". Sicilia set up the Movement for Peace with Justice and Dignity following the murder of his 24-year-old son by drug traffickers. The group quickly attracted the support of hundreds of thousands of Mexicans determined to end their country's narco- nightmare. Chelsea Elliott, 25, was included after joining the Occupy Wall Street movement and being pepper-sprayed in Manhattan by the New York City Police Department. As for Harara, he doesn't seem to regret the loss of his eyesight. "I prefer to be blind than to live in humiliation," he said. A life in darkness is tragic, but from this darkness Egypt's revolutionaries draw the light.
