Tahrir (Liberation) Square used to be semi-hostile territory, in that it was impossible to cross due to the massive flow of vehicles across it. It was particularly difficult to take out a camera there without being hampered by a policeman saying photography was forbidden. On 25 January 2011 —which was supposed to be Police Day but became a “day of anger”, and finally the beginning of an uprising —demonstrators from all over Cairo took over the Square. They kept control of it for 18 days, despite the riot police’s attempts to clear it, and despite the attacks of thugs galvanised by the regime striving in vain to dislodge the protesters and terminate their movement by spreading chaos across the whole of Egypt.

Initially, though the crowds of demonstrators came from all social backgrounds, the middle class (a minority in Egypt) was more heavily represented among them than it is in the Egyptian population. The working classes gradually joined the core at Tahrir Square. There, protesters built up an epicentre both cut off from the rest of the world strategically, and influencing it through the media. On the Square, distinctions between individuals were blurred, as the movement drew both the poor and the bourgeoisie, the unemployed, students, families with children, women wearing the full face veil, Christians, Muslims, atheists, foreigners, journalists, and after the temporary disappearance of police forces from the city, probably a few policemen as well.

This melting pot naturally led to a shift in social mores in the Square during the phase of stalemate with the regime, but that may have sowed a seed of change for the future of Egyptian society. What many Egyptians previously could not deal with in their country —accepting difference, individual freedom of expression and communication with others, freedom of movement by day and by night —surfaced there. What many Egyptians hitherto did not respect in their country —the cleanliness of public space, the personal space of one’s neighbours, women’s physical integrity —crystallised at that specific place and time.

Many taboos were broken: the fear of policemen, of speaking to the media, indifference to grand undertakings, indiscriminate respect for familial and social hierarchies, fear of the opposite sex, the residual deference to foreigners inherited from the colonial period. A healthy dose of creativity also emerged though slogans translated into several languages, as well as through posters, clothing, jokes and graffiti.

“Tahrir” is a symbol of the people recapturing their country; it represents the possibility, in this early 21st century, of conceiving a laboratory for ideas and change, of putting an end to 30 years of oppression in a peaceful and constructive way. For a time, “Tahrir” symbolised the end of the people’s disenchantment with their country: demonstrators took care of the Square by organising all necessary services (food supplies, medical care, cleaning) for themselves. Images of so many people wielding brooms for 18 days will be remembered, as will images of all those who flocked to the Square to clean it and the surrounding area, after Mubarak had fallen.

Is the Revolution enough to put an end to disillusionment? As real and as powerful as it was, the reality of Egypt was outside of the “Tahrir Island”. Many would probably have liked to join it, but for people with families to feed or ailing relatives to support, for those who are illiterate (the estimated illiteracy rate is 40 per cent) and cannot read the opposition press, those reached only by the propaganda broadcast on state-controlled television channels, it is difficult to experience a social and political idyll.

After Hosni Mubarak’s departure, a new crowd came upon Tahrir Square. Many of them had never set foot there during the previous phase of growing momentum, either out of lack of interest, scepticism or fear: a form of local political tourism emerged. In fact, the Revolution belonged to all Egyptians without exception, but there was a glaring contrast between the micro-society of Tahrir Island and the new crowd that legitimately appropriated the Square for several days. Mounds of refuse piled up in the streets and fights broke out, to which the army put a stop by shooting rounds into the air.

Nostalgia drives me to write of the demonstrators’ pacifism in the Square —not merely in the way they protested, but also in their daily life, all together on an island, sharing space and listening to each other speak. These 18 days of euphoria could have made one think Egypt was changing radically. Indeed, it was changing, but the social revolution that arose, along with the demonstrations, was functioning on quite a different temporal and spatial scale. For instance, it was distinctly unpleasant to see a famous CBS journalist sexually assaulted in the Square on the night of Mubarak’s fall. Unfortunately, this kind of phenomenon is well known in Egypt. Its occurrence is no more shocking now than it was previously, or will be in the future. It is shocking, period. Misogyny is one sign of behaviour tending towards schism and division within the population; behaviour that constitutes a challenge Egyptian society must rise to. Tahrir Island showed people a new example, even as Egypt was still living with its former problems.

Some describe the outcome of the Tahrir laboratory as shades of the events of May 1968. How does the impact of this kind of momentum in a limited space become effective upon the whole of society, through what mediation, and over how long a period?

And speaking of “bad habits,” who may judge what should change and what may legitimately continue, because it is part and parcel of a particular culture? It is out of the question to profess that Egyptians are not good enough as they are, and that because they have been loudly claiming their right to change since 25 January 2011 they must now prove that they are “civilised”. They alone will pass judgment on this, after a few generations, on the basis of the pending, new political model.

What revolutions of social mores all have in common is the spirit of the enlightenment. No one may dispute that access to education, critical thinking, and freedom of expression are conditional to the possibility of social progress. And the content of change belongs to the people. Regarding Egypt, it is unfortunate to see the West slapping its own democratic model and its own revolutionary models on top of other cultures yet again, while disparaging their particularities. The emergence of new pride in being Egyptian —similar to what one may have experienced in the Nasserist era, in the late 1950s —heralds a new situation that may lead to the end of disenchantment and the beginning of a revolution of social mores.

Marie Girod is a freelance journalist with L’Humanité.