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Yuka Tachibana / NBC News
Hala Mohamed, left, and Reem, her 13-year-old Egyptian-American daughter, in Cairo's Tahrir Square on Friday.
By Yuka Tachibana, NBC News Producer
CAIRO – It’s Day 18 at Tahrir Square and hundreds of thousands of protesters have gathered here again. Among them is Reem Mohamed, a 13-year-old Egyptian-American from northern Virginia who arrived here this week to join the protests against the government of Hosni Mubarak.
Reem said she and her mother had been watching events unfold in northern Virginia and they felt compelled to come participate in the demonstrations. “We really wanted to leave on Tuesday, but we could only get here yesterday,” said Reem. “Once we arrived in Cairo, we dropped our bags off and immediately rushed to Tahrir Square. We haven’t even visited our family yet.”
Her mom, Hala, said she came because she believes Egyptians deserve the same freedoms of speech as people in the U.S. “I was inspired by the U.S. presidential elections,” said Hala. “I say to my fellow protesters here: ‘Yes we can!’”
Hala said she felt compelled to fly to Egypt and wasn’t worried about bringing her young daughter into a potentially violent and volatile situation in the square. But since she is a working mother and her daughter has school, she admitted they can’t stay forever.
Ben Curtis / AP
Anti-government protesters, and Egyptian soldiers on top of their vehicles, take time for traditional Muslim Friday prayers during continuing demonstration in Tahrir Square in downtown Cairo, Egypt Friday. Click photo for a slideshow of photos.
The square on Friday was quite a jovial atmosphere – similar to how it has been all week. There were families with children, people taking group photos, even taking pictures with smiling soldiers.
Last night, after President Hosni Mubarak’s speech in which he announced that he was not stepping down, there was a lot of anger among the people gathered in the square. They were dumbstruck and irate. But nerves seem to have calmed overnight. There are soldiers and army tanks in the square, but no one is trying to provoke them. The soldiers are just standing by and the public seems to be happily tolerating them.
“We will keep protesting, until the dictator is out,” Reem said. Her voice echoed by hundreds of protesters shouting, “Leave, leave, leave!”
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Murak will only be in rulership until September. The Egyptians seems like five-year olds. We have to wait for elections in a timely orderly fashion - why shouldn't they? Egypt is the strongest nation in the Middle East so someone responsible must be in charge. I am not Egyptian - but I feel embarrassed for them at how silly they seem.
Uh---You missed that call--he's gone. The people were oppressed long enough.
not only is he now gone, but they have been a one-party system since mubarek took over 30 years ago. so don't tell the egyptians that they need to be patient one more day. that ass hole sits on billions in assets and funds while his countrymen starve on the equivalent of $2-4 a day. they deserve freedom now--not when you feel it's convenient for them.
I think they are being naive. If this goes the direction of anti Semite and anti American as it could I dont see anything positive from these protests. Now OTOH, should the protests lead to a truly "democratic" election and a Western minded government tweaked for the area then it would be great.. but Im thinking there is a ton of hatred in that area for Westerners and especially the country of Israel. But it would be really cool to see them form a real democratic government and throw out radical islam, that would be awesome.
I believe that this is an honorable act by Reem and her mother. It illustrates how passionate Egyptians are all over the world about their cause for freedom. Northern Virginia is a much safer place than Cairo at the moment, and Hala did not even hesitate to bring her daughter to their homeland. They felt as if it was their duty to join the protesters. I also find it interesting that Hala mentions the 2008 presidential election and Obama's moto: "Yes we can!" It shows that Egyptian-Americans are still pro Obama in his efforts to remove Mubarak from power. It is Americans like Hala that will continue the strong relationship between the allies.
As to the protesters, I believe that it’s important that the soldiers and the protesters are cooperating. It seems as if the peace will continue, and that Mubarak will soon be forced to leave Egypt before September.
I disagree that this is an honorable act! This is a foolish act! It is true it illustrates how passsionate Egyptians (and all people from arab cultures) are about EVERYTHING. They are passionate beyond sanity. You need only watch them burn cities (or what is left of them) and chop off people's heads, and do wild things with almost no provocation. Why would you allow your 13 year old to go into that environment? She is Egyptian-American ... she IS NOT Egyptian, and those are two very different things! I see nothing positive coming from this. You say, "well she was part of history" ... I say that history has not been completed yet, and it can go very south very quickly before it gets better.
This is very much like the 76 year old American "mom" who was retired in CAiro, and pissed off because they didn't send in the Marines to rescue her when the crap hit the fan outside her apartment. Her son needs his a$$ kicked for even allowing his mother to be in that environment. It is like retiring in east L.A. and complaining about gunshot noises keeping you awake all night! Why would you do that? Egypt is NOT America, and that isn't saying a lot in many cases!
The laws of physics (Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle) state that the process of observing an even changes that event. Supposedly it explains why people "riot" more violently if there are TV cameras present.
But maybe, it is very possible that that the TV cameras and the communication via Google and Tweets have the effect that everyone knows that violence will result in "another Tienanmen Square" with the legitimacy of the government and the growth of the economy becoming reduced because of that violence. Tienanmen Square may have demonstrated the power of the Communist Party and the army in China but it pushed back and hurt the Chinese economy because of that repression.
A revolution that needs violence to get rid of the 2% of the society that has 98% of the wealth might not only have catastrophic effects in Egypt, but the rulers of Syria and Jordan and Saudi Arabia likely realize that they are next.
There is just as much of a chance that the transition to (semi-)democratic rule in Egypt will (hopefully) be peaceful as there is that it will be violent.
The next few days and weeks are going to be very interesting.
And I can understand Reem and her daughter wanting to be both close spectators and participants.