In gutted travel agency, Egypt opposition maps future

In an abandoned travel agency on Cairo’s besieged Tahrir Square, an ad hoc political committee has sprung up to try to represent the diehard opposition which is camped out on the street outside.

Beyond Safir Travel’s empty doorframe, its shattered glass now swept away, the men who would form the vanguard of the Egyptian revolution hold court under glossy tourism posters and a huge laminated world map.

The packed room is almost as raucous as the square beyond. As protesters chant “Mubarak go!” their hoarse voices are repeated on Al-Jazeera’s blaring coverage of the same demonstration on the television inside.

Amid the din, members of the 10-strong political committee and dozens of wide-eyed hangers-on field buzzing cellphones and launch into overlapping declarations as they map out their hopes for Egypt’s future.

Several thousand protesters have vowed not to yield Cairo’s biggest square until strongman Hosni Mubarak steps down. They are joined daily by thousands more who brave pro-government mobs to bring food and join the chants.

The job of taking their anger and turning it into political change has now fallen on an alliance of inexperienced activists – leftists, liberals and Islamists – feeling their way forward amid noise and chaos.

“As a committee we will not enter into negotiations with government until Mubarak steps down,” declared independent left-winger Abul Ezz al-Hariri, before partially contradicting himself.

“We are ready to negotiate the manner of Mubarak’s departure,” he conceded, adding that two members of the committee had met last Friday with Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq to present him with their demands. They are awaiting a response.

United only by the desire to overthrow Mubarak and move quickly to hold first a legislative and then a presidential poll this year, Egypt’s new opposition movement comes from wildly diverse ideological stock.

Hariri’s speech was peppered with Marxist revolutionary rhetoric, while behind him a turbaned Islamist cleric from the Muslim Brotherhood watched television and outside a liberal academic competed for attention.

The crowd occupying the square under drizzling rain is even more diverse. At the far end of the space, under the pink walls of the imposing Egyptian Museum of Antiquities, a crowd of young men chant abuse at the regime.

Some carry iron bars and bear scars and bandages left by the week’s street battles with pro-Mubarak mobs. Many have the grey patches of rough skin caused by regularly bowing their head to the ground in prayer.

But in the square itself there are families, with toddlers bearing flags as if on a patriotic day out. A handful of women wear the full-face niqab veil, but many more wear bright headscarves or no veil at all.

Elderly men in dusty suits rub shoulders with adolescents in the latest street styles, and banners and graffiti are scrawled in Arabic, English and French – walls daubed with copies of the Facebook and Twitter logos.

Many mill around from one end of the square to the other, hemmed in by tanks and an impressive cordon of well-equipped troops, responding to rumours of impending attacks or important visitors.

Others stay still amid the hubbub, like 26-year-old Walid Dabbous, sitting alone in the middle of what was once one of the cities busiest roads, reading the independent daily Al-Masri Al-Youm.