I’m always surprised when I see a picture of Cairo and it isn’t sepia-toned. Not from some nostalgic glow, but from the dirt. The city, in my memory, is an even dull beige. That’s because it’s freshly coated every spring with a layer of dust from the khamsin wind, and never fully scrubbed clean.

Sand and dirt and trash has been piling up in Cairo for millennia–it’s not exactly a clean city. But the last time I visited, in 2007, it felt like Cairenes cared even less than usual–like the city had nearly crushed its own inhabitants. So, in the midst of the protests of the last two weeks, I was most touched by the images of the protesters collecting trash, organizing recycling and scrubbing the streets. Could the layers of grime in the city really just have been symptomatic of a generation-long bout of depression? The gloom has finally lifted. Boy-boy (Bye-bye), Mubarak–first phase of house-cleaning complete.


(Peter’s favorite kushari restaurant. See, no dust in this photo. Odd.)

My memory of Cairo is also complicated by my sometimes difficult experiences there. In 1998, when I left after a year of grad-level Arabic and amoebic dystentary, I was stricken with nostalgia before I even got to the airport. When I finally returned, in 2007, to work on the Lonely Planet Egypt guide, I was able to make peace with the place.

That visit was also when I got the first inkling that a revolutionary mindset might be brewing–young people were posting mobile-phone videos of police torture on YouTube, and I chanced on a flash-mob protest for Ayman Nour (then in prison) one afternoon downtown. Both would’ve been unimaginable in 1998–the country was too preoccupied with the terrorist attacks the previous year, which ruined the tourism economy for several years.

Another thing that has moved me about the protests is their baseline good humor, especially after the nerve-wracking first week. It’s perhaps a stereotype of the Egyptians that they’re good with the jokes, but it was a relief to see the punchlines start to fly in Tahrir (“Mubarak, leave–my arm is getting tired!”; a wedding in front of the tanks; a joke video about the “KFC conspiracy”). That was when I first felt hope that all would turn out well: It would take a true ghoul to turn the tanks on a crowd this joyful.

Fortunately, that seems to have been true. Alf mabruk (A thousand congratulations), Egypt. Cairo is again al-Qahira, the city victorious.

Craving more background on Egypt? Here’s more from the vaults:

—On Head Scarves and Anti-Americanism
—Cairo, City of Contrasts (Uh, that’s a tongue-in-cheek title)
—Cairo: The Wrap-Up (could be called “Cairo, City of Commerce”)
—Gastronomica essay, “Queen of de-Nile”
–A couple of popular songs in Cairo, circa summer 2007
–How I Learned to Cook, Part 2: I heart/hate Cairo
—Flickr set from Cairo, 2007