From January 2011 till January 2012.
My side of the story.

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24 Jan 2011 I got another event invite from “We are all Khaled Sayed” facebook page saying we should do another protest.

I thought 25 Jan will be like any other protest i participated in – Hell even the protest organizers thought so- we used to be hundreds or a thousand at maximum then the police would come and beat the crap out of us and arrest a few then the protest would just vanish.

No one knew that day will be the start of the change, the start of the event that will literally change the future of Egypt.

25 Jan 2011 The morning was like every morning, then the noon came we started the march here in Alexandria from various places and marched between “Al qaa’ed ibrahim” and “EL mansheyya” and the more we walked the more people would come and join the protests.

We weren’t very organized, honestly this was my first time to participate in something that huge, it was the first protest for most of people, so we didn’t know where we were going or what to do just marching and chanting slogans we make up, slogans weren’t even against the government or something, just basic stuff like the famous chant asking for “Living, Freedom, Dignity, Humanity” and stuff like that.

There was multiple marches going different ways not just one mass of people so i was in one of those and saw the police forces for the first time that day i thought “here comes the trouble” due to my previous confrontations i knew how that formation meant, but surprisingly a high rank officer said to the troops (who were blocking the street entrance) “Let them pass” that surprised me but i figured he didn’t expect that huge crowd and since they are hugely outnumbered he thought just lets avoid fighting.
We peacefully passed them and when we were about to reach the end of that street to go another street, out of no-where appeared another line of troops like we saw at the beginning of the street! “IT’S A TRAP” someone screamed and it was true, both of the police units started batting us with their sticks..
When that guy said “it’s a trap” everyone was so scared, but being me i got a huge adrenaline rush and was kinda happy, not as happy as when i was a disguised spy and back-stabbed the whole other team @TF2 but i didn’t feel so terrible.
So we somehow managed to push the troops blocking the end of the street and continued marching we continued doing that and met a friend inside the protests and kept marching back and forth, and suddenly the friend’s father saw us from far away and ran towards us and grabbed us and won’t let us go
Parents……… most of my friends didn’t tell their parents they are going to protest otherwise they won’t let them go….
So the friend’s father kidnapped us and dropped me @ my house and i didn’t see that friend for a week and his telephone was off…
BTW 25th of Jan was the first day they try blocking twitter, they blocked “twitter.com” but third party apps were still working..

26 Jan 2011 Called few friends to go together in groups instead of going alone since we heard on facebook that a lot of protesters were caught while they were heading home because they were walking alone.
We agreed to meet at a friends house then move from there joining any protest marching towards “El mansheyya” so we did that, and while we were in “El mannsheyya” i -for the first time- saw the gas they were talking about in #tahrir, they were firing the gas cans into the people’s faces, and there was a high rank officer randomly shooting his pistol towards us, one of the bullets nearly hit my chest, i was going to say “YAHOOO YOU MISSED ME PUNK” but i heard screaming behind me i remembered there was people behind me and it must’ve hit someone i froze for a few seconds then i looked back and there was a kid 13-14 years old and there was blood all over his face…
That was a life-changing moment for me, and suddenly the scared mass of people -that was running away from police forces- turned into angry mass of people and running towards the police forces and beat the crap out of this unit and used their metal barricades to destroy the cars they got.
Then we continued doing the protests and police firing more gas..
A lesson i learned that day: A protest can only be as peaceful as the opponent.

27 Jan 2011 I went out with the same bunch of friends, i thought there would be more people but protests were like 50% in size of the previous day..
In that day i was so close to giving up, i said people got afraid the day before 27th and they will not come again…
The day was similar to 26th except police brutality was so much greater and the numbers were relatively lower in Alexandria.
In cairo the police fired tear gas and used water cannons to the protesters it didn’t work like it didn’t work before, so they used live ammo sometimes and the government shut down the electricity for a large portion of cairo where the protests were going.
And in the morning a brave guy (aka Egyptian Tank Man)  stood in front of a police car that was spraying water on protesters. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWr6MypZ-JU

In Sinai things were  ”slightly” different
In Sinai people used a lot of force against police forces and there was an officer standing on top of a police station randomly shooting people with an AK47, so simply they fired back…. with RPG and mortar.
And they kidnapped some officers and told the police to stop firing..
You see the Sinai Bedouins are “slightly” different from us (the city boyz).

The cellphone services were OFF in Sinai, and there was a strong rumor saying they might cut off the Internet and all other communications in all Egypt in the next day.

28 Jan 2011 The rumor turned out to be right -although officials denied it the previous day- there was no Internet – no phones – nothing.
But the day has already been planned it would be the “Friday of anger” or “Friday of rage” as media likes to call it.
We did what we used to do in the last few days, marching and chanting but this time with more anti-government chants.
In this day hundreds were shot dead and thousands injured because of the police firing live ammo like crazy at protesters.
The police used deadly force all the day and night but people fought back with whatever they could.
In that day alone, most of the police stations’ roofs had troops firing AK47′s at protesters, so as a result a lot of people died and a lot of people fought back and burned the police stations and cars.

All the police units ran away from fights.
I was at “Sidi-gaber” and the army shot at me i could feel the bullets go near me like neo in matrix (except i can’t really dodge bullets like him)..
A friend got shot that day, it was his shoulder it looked scary but he wasn’t afraid to die or something he was more afraid how is he gonna explain all that blood on his shirt to his father..

29 Jan 2011 Police forces were no longer on the streets, they figured they can’t kill us all and get away with it without us fighting back, so they tried another weapon, they opened all the prisons’ doors and gave some of them guns and told them to rob and kill as many people as they could.
And using the media they practically own, spreading fear by staging calls from people telling horror stories like a women calling and she is sobbing and saying “Thugs have invaded the blocks are killing, raping, and stealing”.
And news saying every minute that a new prisoners escaped and saying they are occupying places and killing people.
Some of the prisoners helped the police with killing spree,  But the reality is most of those who escaped (or forced to escape or be shot by the police) went to see their families.
But on the other hand the real thugs and robbers who were free already did a large scale robbery and terror because there was no police around.
So we had to figure out something for security, so we made local security cells 3-5 people from every building gather with other people to form 10-20 civilian checkpoint.
The idea spread along all the country “legan sha’beya” that was the name i will write a post about that later got some stories to tell (which don’t fit here actually).

30 Jan 2011 Most of us spend the day inventing weapons to face the thugs (that we didn’t meet the day before but kept here news) by night we were ready and more organized.
31 Jan 2011 Most of us spent the day protesting and the night on guard, since there was a curfew in effect for the night.
1 Feb 2011 Mubarak made his first public speech, saying i am sorry blah blah i love Egypt and you love it too please go back to your homes and i won’t be up for elections again (his election period would end in September 2011) but he said those things back in 2005..
2 Feb 2011 No one believed the shit Mubarak said the day before so the regime tried another strategy, they paid for thugs to invade Tahrir square.
That fight was called “The battle of the camel” because thugs used camels and horses to run over protesters and hit them with the weapons they had in hand (iron pipes, wooden stuff, knives etc) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9I-3pA6IME&feature=related
Note: Some army troops made their job easy by letting them to go in http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6Ra7AW0Ljk

But they didn’t learn “battles” in the past, Violence only creates more violence.
This event fueled the revolution till 11 Feb 2011.
11 Feb 2011 The vice president announced on national TV that mubarak has  resigned and the power goes to the SCAF (Supreme Council of the Armed Forces).

We celebrated (I know i did) thinking we got rid of the regime and our battle was over since the head of the country surrendered and we will leave happily ever after..
We moved on continue doing what we did before those 18 days.
The  SCAF promised us to be in power for only 6 months they will give power after the parliament and presidential elections, they denied the “rumor” that said they will be in power till 2012 and they said that’s not true we WILL NOT.
After two months (in march 2011) they played a dirty trick, they made up a referendum on what to do with the old constitution, “Yes” means we will do the elections first and the temporary constitution will have only 8 amendments, “No” means the constitution first then the elections.
I voted “No” But “Yes” won, and they made up a 60+ amendments constitutions with stuff giving them more power…… actually all the power.
A lot of people questioned the results but at that time the SCAF was “the great army that protected the revolution not like the Libyan or the Syrian armies”.
That’s the bad news, the good news is that thing is temporary and the parliament will have to make a new one, and if we wrote the constitution back then the army would have messed with it to guarantee their stay.

9 October 2011 In that day the SCAF members have showed us their real dirty face,  in my opinion this crime was so bad that if a true trial was held at least a dozen of them will be hung to death.
If this was the only reason to overthrow the SCAF it’s more than enough.
It really hurts me to talk about it, i’ve seen and been in many brutal fights/battles but this is by far the worst.
The short version of the story is: A church in upper Egypt was sabotaged so some Egyptian protested in front the TV building Maspero (I don’t like saying  Christians/Copts even if they call themselves that, they are Egyptians in the first place no need for discrimination, and there was some muslims there too in the protest) so while they are standing and chanting in their peaceful protest the army started shooting them and running over them with armored vehicles and while they were doing that in TV (inside the damn maspero building) they were saying -infront of millions of people- that “Christians are attacking the army” My heart physically hurts me when i remember how peaceful and helpless they were.
AK47′s and Armored vehicles against bare hand peaceful protesters, can you imagine how fucking horrible that is?!
You can google ” Maspero Massacre” and see the results, although i don’t recommend that, don’t watch the video or images of the victims trust me you don’t want to see it (take my word for it).
Here is a video of the vehicles in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=deAIsG82a2c
Here is a video of an officer shooting them: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbUInFMZLNg&feature=related
The autopsy report came that 5 of the victims died due to gunshot wounds, 10 died because “a heavy vehicle ran over them” and some of the kills due to melee cuts.
The knife cuts are not done directly by the army, it’s because of maspero the TV building which kept urging people to go and defend the army because “The cops” were “attacking” them..
So some people came with knives and sticks to beat the protesters thinking they started the fights…
After that the SCAF (which did the crime) said they will prosecute whoever did this and will server justice, they said the guilt people are Alaa abd-elfattah, Mina Danial, and Mohammed said.
The first one wasn’t in the scene, the second one died in that massacre, the third one was on duty serving in the army..
They knew the charges won’t stick since they are innocent people (and they know who did it, THEM)….

19 Nov 2011-24 Nov 2011.
The people who got injured in protests and the families of the martyrs where sitting in #tahrir for 20 days, in the morning of 19th of November the police forces came to clear the square by force, they were approximately 100 people in the sit-in and the police forces were like 5000.
They dragged them and beat them and cleared the square but when people heard about it they came back and pushed the police troops off the square and the 100 people got back to the square.
After that the police regrouped and stationed in two streets and were firing tear gas like crazy into the square, people were suffocating the “ultras” (football fanatics) came with other people and cleared “talaat harb” street from the police forces and pushed them to “mohammed mahmoud” street where the other forces were stationed.
And then the police forces kept gasing the square so protesters entered “mohammed mahmoud” street to push them back more, so the police started shooting rubber bullets and shotguns (and seldom live ammo) at protesters.
Whenever the protesters go back the police fires gas inside the square, so people kept pushing back.
It lasted for 5 days of fighting, and the national TV said the heroic police officers are trying to protect the ministry (which is 2km away) in the last few days of those the army came and fired weird gas (AFAIK it’s still unknown) that burned some people and did other horrible things to others.. it was a small chemical warfare test, they might do that on a larger scale, who knows..
So it ended by the army putting blocks of rock between the two sides.
41 died in 5 days and thousands hurt.
In other cities there were clashes and protests too.
In Alex we protested in front of the police main HeadQuarter so they gased us first, then they killed a guy with a shot in the head (in 19th nov) that made things more violent, so it was a mutual fight like the one in #tahrir except protesters used not only rocks but Molotov cocktails as well…
It stopped (we stopped it) after things in #tahrir got quite.

As a result of that: The SCAF changed the prime minister and promised to transfer power in 6 months (Is that deja vu or Did i hear that before? ).
So Cairo protesters didn’t like that (neither we did, we only want immediate transfer of power and justice after that) so they formed a sit-in in front of the PM/Cabinet building as an objection of decision.

16 Dec 2011 Two of the people at the Cabinet sit-in were kidnapped and beaten by army special-forces officers then they threw the almost-beaten-to-death protester at where they were sitting in… that made the protesters go crazy and the army officers were ready, they started throwing rocks on protesters and fired water cannons on them.
Three were killed that day by gunshot (the SCAF puppets lied -as usual- afterwards and said the gunshots were fired from close range , a fail attempt to frame protesters for it).
17-23 Dec 2011 Army kept shooting people with submachine guns from a distance and throwing rocks and water, protesters used rocks and sometime Molotov against them,  they raided the streets using other troop forces and dragged and beaten hundreds of people, The army and police caught random 164 people (most of them were not even protesting) and threatened the male with death and threatened to rape the female ones, they also sent an undercover trooper to set a National library on fire to frame protesters with that – so they did that while filming it and showed it on national TV to turn the usual people against protesters, and hide the real crime they did against protesters..
In the protesters side: 20 people died and thousands got injured. In the army side: No death and minor injuries to some.
Things in other cities were not hot, since the police/army didn’t gas or use violence against protests..
It’s been a year already, the army generals said they will protect the revolution but they didn’t, all they did is fighting the revolution and trying to silence it, no wonder because the SCAF head was Mubarak’s  minister of defense for 20 years, and he is still his defense minister.
knowing Mubarak hand-picked the SCAF members and he gave them “Loyalty rewards”  (read: bribe) monthly they are still loyal to him and they hate the revolution because mubarak went down and SO THEY WILL, they were as guilty as him, they are partners in the arm dealing and other major industries in Egypt.
If they sacrifice mubarak he will tell on them, what a gang of filthy men – but we will overthrow them like we did to Mubarak.
And it’s January again, we will do like we did last year but this time against them not Mubarak.
#Jan25Again