OPINION
Two bewildered officials threw arched eyebrows across an airless room high above the river Nile, six months after the irrepressible Arab Spring vanquished Egypt s dastardly dictator Hosni Mubarak.
But Egyptian visa anxieties didn t land me in the viscera of the Australian embassy. Well before I d touched down in Cairo, the Australian government s Smart Traveller website s Egypt advisory was downgraded to reconsider your need to travel from its most severe: do not travel .
After reconsidering, I determine that witnessing what recently hatched democracy looks and sounds like transcends the perils posed by a transitioning republic. It was worth it, I thought, sitting in Tahrir Square, where it had all gone down. Heavy-handed government goons were now too petrified to approach the jubilant picnicking families around me, hard-won autonomy still frolicking across their faces like a force field.