A revolution is a strange thing to live through -- We like it to follow the arch of a fairy tale but it doesn't -- It moves fast and challenges us -- it probably brings the best (one million people self organizing in Tahrir) and worst (gang rape also near Tahrir) in us -- it brings conspiracy theory to the front (because we can't believe we are ever agents of history) -- it challenges all classifications and political stratification models we have (Liberals who are pro military, Marxists who are pro Muslim Brotherhood) -- it - more than anything else - challenges the notion of a regime/system -- turns out we are all part of the same system we are revolting against and we are as flawed as it is -- there is at the end a certain collective trauma we all go through - my "we" is an outsider one - I didn't risk my life in the Egyptian revolution - yet somehow my worst moment of personal defeat that came a year ago - was culminated when seeing Cairo itself defeated -- Cairo - a city that I never truly lived in - I just walked its downtown streets infinite amount of times and this same downtown store lights were/are to fuel my poetry journey until now...