CAIRO - After former President Hosni Mubarak delivered his speech on the night of Thursday February 10, satellite TV channels telecast the reaction of revolutionaries in Al Tahrir Square, who announced that they would demonstrate outside the Presidential Palace in the Oruba district of Heliopolis the following day. Many protesters said that they would walk all the way to Oruba Palace from Al Tahrir Square, to the alarm of the people of Heliopolis, especially those living in el-Merghani Street, where the palace is located. On January 28, the armed forces had barricaded the street with barbed wire. The fortifications outside the main entrance to the Heliopolis Club in el-Merghani Street were particularly sturdy. They also closed the Qurba entrance to the palace and the Oruba Tunnel. The residents of Heliopolis didn't sleep after the former President‘s speech on the night of Thursday 10 February. Afraid of the protesters, they were staying at home, with their doors bolted and shutters tightly closed. At 1am on Friday, about 200 demonstrators gathered outside the Heliopolis Club. That was the nearest they could get to the palace and they announced that they would stay there until President Mubarak decided to stand down. Officers told the protesters that their demonstration was different from that in Al Tahrir Square, warning the revolutionaries of the consequences and urging them to go home. They even provided a number of buses to take them, but only very few demonstrators accepted this offer. On the following day, Friday February 11, the people realised that demonstrators were peaceful. Their numbers had swollen to 700 and they were carrying banners and shouting: “Mubarak should go”. As the day wore on, the number of demonstrators continued to increase. Some of the protesters checked the identity of the arriving demonstrators, while there were a number of doctors available in case of a medical emergency. Following Friday prayers, an Army officer and the imam of the Omar Bin Abdel-Aziz Mosque, adjacent to the Heliopolis Club, briefly clashed. The protesters apologised to the Army officer and everyone was happy again. In the meantime, despite the peaceful nature of the demonstration, local residents were preventing strangers from entering the buildings where they live. By the time Mubarak announced that he'd thrown in the towel, the number of protesters had increased to 10,000 and it was all over.
