10 years ago? Really?

One of the things I have always wanted to do, but never did, was to write my own personal account of the Egyptian revolution! The reason I want to write about it is because it is worth documenting. The reason I didn't write about it is that I honestly don't know what to say.

An experience consisting of give or take 2 years that could be broken down to stages of months, those could be further broken down to days that consist of hours, minutes. But still some of those minutes consisted of a million moments happening simultaneously. Books are sometimes written about moments like those. Moments of courage and desperation. Moments of victory and loss. Moments when time stops.

The 25th of January is approaching and like every year, I remember every single moment. I find it strange how I often forget things, but it is because I never wanna let go of those important, beautiful, heartbreaking, horrific and glorious moments I lived there, in Tahrir square.

A lifetime ago, I was there. Fully prepared to die. Joining the masses that are becoming one and sharing some very strange experience to an upper middle class revolutionary! Sleeping on the sidewalk, talking with the street children about their feelings, drinking bad coffee and smelling tear gas! Oh, the gas! Why do they call it tear gas? It doesn't just make you cry, it rips your lungs out of your chest, it makes your whole body hurt and it really is an experience to remember.

1o years ago around the same days, I stood in a dark street with my two girlfriends. I saw the red laser dots on our chests and I knew that our time has come. I was completely at peace. We held each other's hands and I closed my eyes and BAM, the gas cannister hit my leg. Somebody out there decided not to shoot us but rather drive us away with the gas. The gas that makes you wish they had fired bullets!

Somewhere out there, there is an executioner that I often think about. He spared me and my friends that night. Did he spare everyone he ever pointed his sniper rifle at? How many of us did he kill? Does he also think of us? Does he take pride in sparing us? Should I feel grateful to him because I'm alive? I have no answers but I do think about him.

I have a totally new life now that I might even dare to say successful. I travelled, I studied, I worked, I got married and I have a happy life. But that life I have now has nothing to do with the life I had 10 years ago. I carry my dead with me all the time. I look at their pictures and remember their names. I carry my trauma as a badge of participation, a badge of honor.

Yes, 10 years ago, I was there. That I am sure of. What I am not sure of though, is did I ever really get out?