ABSTRACT
On 25 January 2011, Police Day – a national holiday in Egypt – Egyptians spontaneously took to the streets and began to ll the public squares of cities from Suez to Alexandria to Cairo to Mahalla. Protesters occupied the areas and maintained a massive presence for 18 days, until Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt for 30 years, stepped down on 11 February.1 Millions of protesters participated. During the next few days they had to face the brutal response of Mubarak’s police. The protestors represented every group in Egypt – secular and Islamist, Muslim and Coptic, men and women, young and old, poor and rich. A leading and visible group of protesters were the football fans, the Ultras.2 The ‘18 Days’ of the revolution provided a context for political and social transformations amongst groups and individuals. There was a proliferation of grafti, public music performances, free media spaces, civil liberties campaigns, factory workers’ strikes, massive sit-ins and marches, political coalitions. These sustained the drive calling for the demands of the revolution – bread, freedom and social justice – and was part of how the Egyptians showed their persistent resistance to the Mubarak regime and later against the consecutive, counter-revolutionary powers of the military and the Islamists at different moments between 2011 and 2014 and in different locations in Egypt. Additionally, Egyptians lived other very transformational experiences due to the massive traumas inicted on them as a result of the violence unleashed after the ‘18 Days’ in forms of killings, injuries, torture, sexual assault and so on that breached all groups of people, including the Ultras.
