CAIRO — Pharaoh is gone.
In just 18 days, a ragtag youth army overthrew one of the Arab world's most entrenched and brutal dictatorships, overcoming their own fears, the regime's considerable tools of oppression, and the doubts of outside powers that still aren't sure whether their interests will be served by a messy transition to democracy.
I arrived in Cairo last Thursday, Feb. 3, to cover what was then an unknown quantity. Was it a revolution? A revolt? Another failed uprising? This much was known: It was a gripping story, an unprecedented outpouring of popular anger whose aim was to drive President Hosni Mubarak from power and replace him with an electoral democracy.
On Wednesday, Feb. 2, the night before my flight, I had stayed awake glued to my Twitter feed and Al Jazeera, watching in disbelief as men armed with whips, knives, chains, and Molotov cocktails besieged Tahrir Square in a thuggish bid to flush the protesters out of downtown Cairo and crush their uprising. Up to the last minute, I still wasn't sure whether it would be safe to go; the U.S. State Department issued a sharply worded statement urging all Americans to leave the country "immediately" as the violence -- clearly orchestrated by elements of the regime itself -- began taking on an ugly, anti-foreigner tone.
The previous week, the protesters had twice outwitted and outfought Mubarak's black-clad riot police, finally seizing Tahrir Square and sending the regime's security forces melting into the night, while the Army mobilized to secure key government buildings.
They were still hanging on when I reached downtown Cairo late Thursday afternoon, after cruising along nearly deserted streets, past tanks, armored personnel carriers, and tense soldiers holding bayoneted assault rifles. I had landed in a war zone. The windows on the ground floor of my hotel, located right near the main entrance to the square, were barricaded, the lobby's lights dimmed, perhaps in the hope that Mubarak's goons would ignore us if they couldn't see us. Security guards nervously searched my bags and hastily ushered me inside.
Ironically, the safest place in Cairo was Tahrir Square itself. Although a rock battle was still raging on the northern end of the square near the landmark Egyptian Museum, it had settled into a stalemate. The "pro-Mubarak protesters" -- as some gullible Western news outlets still referred to them -- knew by then that they were badly outnumbered, and in any case their tactics had backfired badly; governments around the world expressed shock and demanded that Mubarak allow the demonstrators to express their grievances in peace.
Meanwhile, attacks on journalists continued, made all the more dangerous by a vicious campaign whipped up by Egyptian state television against foreigners. The following morning, I called a friend with long experience in Cairo. Military police had just raided the offices of the Hisham Mubarak Law Center, a legal-aid clinic that had become the locus of efforts to document instances of abuse and illegal detainment. He told me his organization might be next; he was leaving town and lying low for a while. Management at the big hotels around the square had been told in no uncertain terms to control their journalists or have them controlled for them, other friends warned me.
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