There's no Internet, no Twitter, no Facebook. But you can still call Cairo, at least as of Monday night. Not seeing any of their updates, I wanted to know how friends -- foreign ex-pats and locals were doing. Their eyewitness reports are astounding, telling of happy people in the streets, including foreigners, the violence of the police, and the sense that President Hosni Mubarak is creating a false fear among Westerners that Islamists will take over if he leaves the country.
My friend Aleya Peña, originally from California, moved to Cairo as a professional bellydancer and to improve her Arabic. You might have heard that foreigners are fleeing Cairo, but that's not completely true. She told me, "I know a lot of foreigners are staying, because this is our country now. Unless I really feel in danger, I am not going to leave, because this is where I live."
It's locals who are making her feel that way. "Men are on the street, checking everything out. Children are on the street, controlling traffic." Even if it feels chaotic, Aleya explained, "you have a feeling you are completely safe, you don't feel you are in danger. You feel the population is in control of the situation."
It's not the same when the police are around though. "When there was police it was mayhem. Mubarak uses a lot of scare tactics."
Her roommates had also been exploring, including Lara Sanchez who moved to Cairo from Madrid. "The army is allowing people to get into Tahrir Square," the main area of the protests, she said. "They are checking ID's, but letting people through, but we are foreigners and women, so they did not ask us for our ID's." She saw crowds, "taking pictures of things, children" and people "handing out signs, in English and Arabic, mostly in Arabic, saying 'Freedom' and 'Mubarak Must Go'."
This calm was not seen earlier, Lara said, because, "when the police are on the street, it is more violent. The government is doing this to create chaos and to give the feeling you can't live without Mubarak. But that of course is not true."
What saddened her most were that families of victims of the violence are getting caught up in the tragedy. Lara said, "they are taking people who are going to the hospital to jail" when they try to ask about family members who were beaten by the police. She adds, "it's amazing how brave they are."
I tried to reach some Egyptian friends of mine who had been tortured by the Mubarak administration, to get a sense of how they felt about the movement. I would assume they would be happy to see the President ousted. One was a publisher, writer and blogger. Another was a persecuted gay man. But I could not reach them. I will keep trying.
I did reach Mostafa Fathi, a friend and fellow journalist, working for Horytna, an online radio station. There's irony in the name. It's Arabic for "Our Freedom" but right now he can't broadcast anything about the Egyptian freedom movement, since the internet has been cut. Mostafa was in Tahrir Square, when I called, and he told me, "I have packages of video, photos of the protests. I can not send to anyone. When I have the internet I can post everything, but for now, I can record."
I could hear all the people in the background as he told me, "now in Tahrir Square, I think we are going to be a million people, from everywhere, from all over Egypt."
There was even a touch of glamor to the gathering. "A lot of Egyptian film stars are here." He began to rattle off names of movie stars, singers, writers, including Ala Al Aswani, of the Yacoubian Building, who were supposed to be speaking that night to the crowds. The stardust elite of Cairo were joining in the fight.
But it was seeing the ordinary people who also made him know the movement was special. Within the Square, he said there were "a lot of children and kids, a lot of women, a lot of girls without hijab (veils). Singers, actresses. You can't imagine the situation here in Egypt."
He wanted to point this out because he knows that many in the West fear that after the joy of the revolution dies out, the Islamists will move in, seizing the moment.
"We don't like the Muslim brotherhood," he said referring to the large religion based opposition movement. Mostafa said that within the chants of the crowd, "one man said 'Islam is the solution' and we all told him to shut up. We need democracy in Egypt. Our regime talks a lot about the Muslim Brotherhood. Mubarak says if I get out, the Muslim Brotherhood will take over, but this is not true. We want El Baradei or someone like him."
Young, educated, westernized Egyptians like Mostafa are a huge part of the makeup of the crowd. But what they and Mostafa want is change and for Mubarak to leave. "We can change if we can succeed to get him out. We can get him out, if we don't move from the revolution."If that happens he says, "Democracy will be available here in Egypt after 30 years."
Only time will tell as the Egyptian revolution continues.