One week after Mubarak's resignation

Hi,

Since last Tuesday I'm back in Cairo after being gone for about 17 days. A lot has happened ever since, and I'm not talking about Mubarak leaving and all.
No, with the resignation of Mubarak and therefore the collective feeling of the Egyptians at least here in Cairo that a new era has started, the buzz in Cairo has gone. In case you follow me on Twitter (ThreeAxis) you know what I am talking about.

Like I said, I came back last Tuesday and while driving back to my apartment in Cairo (a 30 minute drive) I realized the following: There was no honking, or almost no honking. The traffic wasn't total chaos, people stayed in their lanes and gave way to each other. There was no swerving left and right to get around garbage on the streets. It almost felt as Ramadan (see my earlier post on Ramadan where I explained about the changes in traffic during Ramadan). Granted, Tuesday was a public holiday, the birth of the Prophet is celebrated on February 15th. And as things are, public holidays mean civilized traffic.

So what else had changed in these 17 odd days? Well, for one, most people are relieved. They're happy, but it feels more that they're relieved. Not so much that Mubarak is gone, or that a new era has started, but they seem to be relieved that the chaos of the stand-off between pro- and anti-Mubarakians is over. Curfew has been set to 00:00 - 06:00. The looting and related violence has more or less ended. There is structure again, and some sort of sense of security has returned. Military is to credit for this.
Now, do I sense the same? I guess so. The military is not that intimidating and definitely not that ubiquitous as one would think, but they are well respected and wherever you see them, they're there with tanks and big guns. And I have to say, whereas the policemen in the street quite often make you think that they've just left high school and barely had training, the military seems to be well prepared and well trained. Then again, Egypt has one of the largest armies in the world. The 5th largest army I've been told. So I guess that this is not to surprising.

Since Tuesday I'm back in town and currently my feeling about Cairo is that it is not the same as before. The jury is still out whether I like the new Cairo better than the old Cairo. Or more importantly whether I like the new chaos better than the old chaos. The old chaos was chaos in everyday life. Chaos as part of a culture, a tradition, something that the Caironians seemed to be proud of ("What do you think of traffic? You think you can drive in Cairo?"). The new chaos is chaos in terms of reinventing Egypt. A new country is born and it doesn't know yet how this should work. Chaos caused by a lack of future perspective.

For now, nobody knows what Egypt will be. Not in 5 years, not in 5 months, not in 5 weeks or days. But I have to give the Egyptians credit. Credit for still being those nice persons they were one month ago. Credit for being proud of Egypt and being Egyptian because to them it means that people like me (foreigners) enjoy their stay in their beloved country. Credit for the fact that there is hardly any FUD (Fear for the Unknown Danger) and instead focus on opportunities.

I don't want to make my posts too long, so I stick with this for now. But there're more ideas, thoughts, feelings and experiences related to Egypt, Cairo and the recent events that I want to put on the web (who puts anything on paper these days?). So expect more to come... soon(er than you're recently used to from me).

Iwan