Robert Fisk: A tyrant’s exit. A nation’s joy

From The Independent:

Everyone suddenly burst out singing. And laughing, and crying, and shouting and praying, kneeling on the road and kissing the filthy tarmac right in front of me, and dancing and praising God for ridding them of Hosni Mubarak – a generous moment, for it was their courage rather than divine intervention which rid Egypt of its dictator – and weeping tears which splashed down their clothes. It was as if every man and woman had just got married, as if joy could smother the decades of dictatorship and pain and repression and humiliation and blood.

Forever, it will be known as the Egyptian Revolution of 25 January – the day the rising began – and it will be forever the story of a risen people. The old man had gone at last, handing power not to the Vice-President but – ominously, though the millions of non-violent revolutionaries were in no mood to appreciate this last night – to Egypt's army council, to a field marshal and a lot of brigadier generals, guarantors, for now, of all that the pro-democracy protesters had fought and, in some cases, died for. Yet even the soldiers were happy. At the very moment when the news of Mubarak's demise licked like fire through the demonstrators outside the army-protected state television station on the Nile, the face of one young officer burst into joy. All day, the demonstrators had been telling the soldiers that they were brothers. Well, we shall see.

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