You Never Know

Seventeen days after protests began in Egypt's Tahrir
Square, after more than 300 fatalities, and with
hundreds of protesters thought to have been secretly
detained by the military, President Hosni Mubarak gave a
seventeen-minute speech in which he talked in great
detail about the changes he planned to make to Egypt's
constitution, causing thousands of protesters to wave
their shoes in the air and shout "Get out!" and "We're
not happy!" He stepped down the following evening. "I
have friends on anti-depressants who, over the last 20
days, forgot to take their pills and have now thrown
them away," said Egyptian novelist Ahdaf Soueif. "Such
is the effect of the Egyptian Revolution." Mubarak,
whose assets in Switzerland were frozen by the Swiss
government, escaped to his villa in Sharm el-Sheikh;
Egypt's military announced that it would dissolve
parliament and suspend the constitution; bank,
transport, and tourism workers staged their own
"mini-revolutions" to call for higher pay; and several
protesters carried placards reading "Sorry for the
disturbance." Yemeni police armed with sticks and
daggers clashed with protesters calling for the
resignation of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, Algerian
police beat back 2,000 demonstrators in central Algiers,
and Iranian activists planned to go ahead with a rally
in Tehran despite warnings from the regime, which
arrested dozens of activists and journalists as a
preemptive move. Palestinian prime minister Salam Fayyad
resigned, announcing the dissolution of Palestine's
24-member cabinet, and the Taliban warned that the
U.S.-backed Afghan government would be next in line to
be toppled by its people, urging Egyptians to "foil the
plots of the foreign enemies." Asked whether she
expected to become Queen of England, Camilla Parker
Bowles answered, "You never know."

Source: Harpers