Tahrir Square during Egypt's Revolution. Mohamed Mostafa/Demotix. All rights reserved.
“Lift your heads up high. You are Egyptians!”
This was the demonstrators’ cry in Tahrir (Liberation) Square in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring. The response from other parts of the square came in repeated bursts of “Allah-hu-Akbar!” (God is great.) Tahrir Square, in the center of downtown Cairo, had become a microcosm of Egyptian society, a common ground where Egyptians from all walks of life came together to embrace a new future without octogenarian dictator Hosni Mubarak. This common ground, however, did not last.
