The regime fell. You know the rest.
My father and mother put on their surgeons’ white coats and walked to the Square, joining the protests with their colleagues. They were waved off by their daughter and son and met with applause by the crowd when they got to Tahrir.
We, as a family, joined them at Tahrir Square to celebrate, to clean the streets of trash, to wash the walls, to say thank you. And then we sat back to look at what had been achieved.
It was only later I realised what that day had been named. Not the Day of Rage, the Day of Anger, or Departure. Not a day to mourn those passed.
They had called it the Day of Egypt’s Love. I couldn’t think of a better name.
These are my eighteen days of spring in winter, this is my lament. Told because you asked me once, to tell my stories.
I started by telling you this is an Egyptian cliché. I told you it is a story of forbidden love, of two energies from different worlds being pulled together, one denying the love between them to the bitter-sweet end.
I told you I am not a poster girl of the revolution, nor its victim. It’s true, I’m not.
I haven’t lied. That is exactly the story I have told. I have told you a story of a young woman falling in love: of how she went from indifference to passion.
Of how she pushed past the barrier of her own fears and those of others.
Of how she embraced the ambiguity, the risk that her love may never be returned.
Of how she found a corner in her own heart to forever carry the true meaning of love.
And it’s true.
She did.
I did … fall in love.
I fell in love with the revolution.