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Cairo
1952 revolution, the small mosque near the Mugamma3 was enlarged and dedicated to Sheikh Omar Makram, the popular leader against Napoleon’s French Expedition in 1798, the British ‘Fraser’ Expedition of 1807 and, later, against Muhammad Ali himself when he felt the ruler was taxing the people unfairly. Omar Makram died in exile but his statue was part of our revolution; a meeting place, an inspiration, a bearer of flags and microphones and balloons. In 1962, the first modern international hotel in Egypt, the Nile Hilton, opened in Tahrir, next to the Arab League. Eight years later, on the evening of 27 September 1970, and having just closed the two days of negotiations and arm-twisting that ended Black September and killed him, President Gamal Abd el-Nasser – whose picture was raised by many during the revolution – stood on the balcony of the thirteenth-floor suite he had occupied for a few nights and gazed at the Nile. He turned, smiling, to Abd el-Meguid Farid, the Secretary to the Presidency: ‘How come I’ve never seen this amazing sight before? Look at it. I’m buried alive out in Heliopolis.’ Then he went home. And it was from a window in the Arab Socialist Union next door that, two days later, his wife and daughters watched his funeral surge across Qasr el-Nil Bridge towards Tahrir. This is the building that became Hosni Mubarak’s National Democratic Party headquarters – the only building in Tahrir to be torched by the revolutionaries. The Hilton – now bearing the Ritz-Carlton sign – has been undergoing renovation for years. In front of it is a waste ground surrounded by sheets of corrugated iron
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