In the future, when someone asks me where I was when I heard the news that Mubarak had finally stepped down, I will have to be honest and say this: I was putting away our shopping. That’s the way life goes – after 18 days when our world consisted of either going to Tahrir or watching it on TV, all seven of us were somehow away from the TV at just that moment when Suleiman finally conceded defeat. In 30 seconds, as someone pointed out, 30 years of this country’s history was irrevocably changed forever.

We hugged, we danced around our living room and then we grabbed our coats and headed straight out to the place where it all began: Tahrir.  We had made this journey so often over the last 18 days, always with different emotions. I remembered the first Friday of this revolt – the day of rage – when our internet and phone services were cut and police and security men manned each street corner.  Somehow we’d made our way to Kasr-El-Nil Bridge where we watched the battle of the bridge unfold, amazed at the courage of the men and women on the frontlines as they pushed their way through the tear gas and bullets, in silent shock later as  we watched the city burn.

I remembered wandering around Tahrir the next morning as buildings still burned and tanks took over the streets and wondering where we went from here. Cairo was at war, but no one was entirely sure who, or where, the enemy was. The police had disappeared and looters raided the streets at night. But the city re-grouped and re-discovered itself and volunteers came out in their thousands to protect the streets.  Soon after, there was that wonderful second Tuesday in Tahrir, the first million man march, when the sun shone down and it seemed like nothing could still the voices of hundreds and thousands of people who wanted – for the first time in their lives – to be heard.

Then there were the terrible days after – an aberration in this overwhelmingly peaceful revolt – when hired thugs roamed the streets and Tahrir became a bloody battleground. Civil war loomed and Cairo, for the first time, became a dangerous city to venture out in.  Yet somehow, the men and women in Tahrir remained and thousands flocked there again the following Friday, unsure what the future held but knowing that, in Tahrir at least, there was still hope.

When I went on Monday last week, I doubted, for the first time. Tahrir had become a carnival, a revolution theme park, as I dubbed it. Hawkers sold everything from roasted sweet potatoes to popcorn, there was a trendy music band in one corner and all urgency seemed to have been lost. The celebrations seemed to me premature – Mubarak remained in power and the old guard, seemed, if anything, to be tightening its grip.  Tahrir was intoxicating, as always – in there, it seemed impossible that the revolution could fail. Outside, on the surface at least, the country was returning to normal.

But when I went again last Tuesday and I could barely move because of the number of people there, I realised that Tahrir had simply gained a new kind of power. Ordinary Egyptians – people who had never dreamt of change – were flocking there in droves to experience it for themselves. We bumped into a friend’s colleague from out in Haram, a working class area near the pyramids, who said he had been too scared to come to it before. He had only seen a few images on State TV, but he’d been told how wonderful it was by his friends. He was overwhelmed now – by the crowds, the sense of freedom, the music, the impromptu chants and the ability to say out loud what people had only said before in the privacy of their own homes – we want the end of this regime.    

It was this sort of momentum that in the end Mubarak was unable to control. The spirit of Tahrir and what it came to symbolise was simply too powerful to tame. It was a microcosm of the very best of Egypt, distilled into the symbolic heartland of this city. In Tahrir, class, creed, gender and age meant nothing – Muslims and Copts protected each other as they prayed, women moved freely without harassment, there was new respect for the young and the urban elite stood shoulder to shoulder with the city’s poor. I met my old professors from the American University in Cairo there and I met the man who parks cars on my street. The spirit of co-operation, of freedom and most of all, of pride was overwhelming. For the first time, Egyptians were doing it for themselves – from cleaning the streets to producing their own Tahrir newspaper.

In the end, this was a very Egyptian revolution, characterised by the warmth, good humour and tolerance that you find daily on these streets. It often struck me that, even in the darkest days of the revolt, there was little appetite for bloodshed or violence – amongst the plethora of signs I would see in Tahrir, I never saw one that called for Mubarak’s blood. For a Western-educated outsider like me, the lack of organisation and leadership often confounded me – how could a revolution possibly succeed when there was no formal opposition, no official spokesman or spin doctor to voice its demands? But here again was its strength – because the opposition was everywhere, from every stratum of Egyptian society, it was impossible to divide and impossible to fight.  It was absolutely a revolution of the people, by the people and for the people.

Today, Tahrir has been cleared and Downtown is returning to normal though the after effects are still reverberating around the world. But for eighteen days, it was the centre of the world and the effects of that will remain for some time. There may be cynicism in some quarters, especially internationally, about the future plans of the military leadership but here in Egypt, overwhelmingly, there is hope. Egyptians – driven by the men and women of Tahrir – have shown the world that anything, and everything, is now possible. The fruits of their labour will not be given up easily, despite the struggles ahead.  

When people told me before that Egypt, after January 25, would never be the same again, I was cynical.  Now I believe. To the men and women of Tahrir – I salute you.