The Battle for Qasr El-Nil Bridge

The violent clashes of January 28 remain hazy in my mind, like a black-and-white movie that is poorly edited and out of focus. One image, however, is clear as day. From my vantage point just north of Qasr El-Nil Bridge toward Tahrir Square, I can see several hundred people battling it out with riot police. Some link arms, forming an impenetrable wall, while others scream and shout with their arms raised over their heads doing their best to protect their faces from the police’s strategic baton strikes. Suddenly, the crowd begins to move forward, somehow gaining enough momentum to push back the veritable wall of riot police desperately shooting tear gas into the crowds. The tide turns. Pushing toward Tahrir with increasing speed, the protesters break through hastily erected metal barricades, throwing them into the Nile along with tear gas canisters and begin to push against a blockade made up of fresh recruits and a green police van. Suddenly, a tall, lanky man in his early 20s with curly black hair appears on top of the van and balances precariously atop it. I didn’t see him get on top of the van, but he certainly stands out above the crowd. As the vehicle reverses on the Kasr El-Nil Bridge, hundreds of protesters push forward, forcing riot police armed with tear gas, batons and shields to retreat step-by-excruciating-step. The man, spurring the protesters on with shouts and cheers, uses his weight to prevent officers inside the van from opening the top hatch, but eventually he slips, falling backward. The hatch springs open and the policeman makes his move, spraying the protester in the face with what appears to be mace or pepper spray from less than a meter away. The man, shuddering and blinded by the red spray filling his mouth and burning his eyes, does his best to hold on to the van. I am not close enough to see his face at this point, but I can imagine his expression, a grotesque mask of pain, marked by an endless stream of tears and gagging, retching nausea. He writhes in agony atop the van, his spastic motions bringing him near the edge of the vehicle’s roof, just inches away from what could be a fatal plunge into the Nile. It is at this point that I lose sight of him. I often wonder about his fate. Did he get arrested? Or did he somehow manage to achieve the impossible, slipping from the policeman’s grasp and back into the faceless crowd? I hope for the latter, but a part of me knows it unlikely. I think about him often, trying to figure out if I would switch places with him; bear the brunt of rubber bullets and water cannons. Whether I would have the courage to push to the front lines, using my body as a makeshift battering ram and risk a beating or worse for something I believed in. I grew up in a country espousing freedoms I took for granted. Canada gave me the freedom to choose my own leaders, speak my mind and learn about the world without fear of reprisal, imprisonment or death. Now thousands of kilometers away from home, I finally understand just how precious those freedoms are. I see how much the people of Egypt are willing to sacrifice, so they too can live in the absence of fear, free to express themselves for the first time in over 50 years. While I am still unsure whether I could take up the mantle to promote those same freedoms, I hope the families of the more than 300 who died during the protests take comfort that President Hosni Mubarak is gone, never to return. You won, Egypt. Mabrouk, ya Masr!