A tyrant's exit. A nation's joy

They sang. They laughed. They cried. Mubarak was no more

A GOOD COMMENT
By Robert Fisk

"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.....

Talk of a historic day somehow took the edge off what last night's victory really means for Egyptians. Through sheer willpower, through courage in the face of Mubarak's hateful state security police, through the realisation - yes - that sometimes you have to struggle to overthrow a dictator with more than words and facebooks, through the very act of fighting with fists and stones against cops with stun guns and tear gas and live bullets, they achieved the impossible: the end - they must plead with their God that it is permanent -- of almost 60 years of autocracy and repression, 30 of them Mubarak's. Arabs, maligned, cursed, racially abused in the West, treated as backward and uneducated by many of the Israelis who wanted to maintain Mubarak's often savage rule, had stood up, abandoned their fear, and tossed away the man whom the West loved as a 'moderate' leader who would do their bidding at the price of $1.5 billion a year. It's not only east Europeans who can stand up to brutality......

Perhaps the shadow of the army is too dark an image to invoke in the aftermath of so monumental a revolution in Egypt. Siegfried Sassoon's joy on the day of the 1918 Armistice, the end of the First World War - when everyone also suddenly burst out singing - was genuine and deserved. Yet that peace led to further immense suffering. And the Egyptians who have fought for their future in the streets of their nation over the past three weeks will have to preserve their revolution from internal as well as external enemies if they are to achieve a real democracy. The army has decided to protect the people. But who will curb the power of the army? "