Many of you have asked after my Dad and Barb and have wanted his opinion on what's going on in Egypt. They are safe and ecstatic. He has been appearing on the local news and written several letters/slash blog entries.

You can find his first two letters here:http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/colleague-in-cairo-dear-all-we-are-safe-...

Oh, it looks like they posted this one as well.

Dear Family and Friends,

As a product of the 20th century I don’t twitter, blog and rarely Facebook, yet all these means of communication played a critical role in the revolution Barb and I were able to witness and then have the remarkable luck of joining Egyptians in the celebration of what must be one of the most widely based, popular, non-violent revolutions in history. I realize that many, if not all of you, have followed the developments and I will only add some of our personal experiences and observations.

Throughout the week leading to the end of the Mubarak regime yesterday, Friday 11 Feb., we heard of attacks on foreigners and Egyptians, most of which we couldn’t confirm but had the effect of making us nervous. Some were true. One of our Egyptian friends circulated an email how the compound where he and his extended family lived had been attacked one evening but the combined efforts of his family and neighbors drove them off. Thursday afternoon, 10 Feb., I went to my local doctor to treat a painful corn on my foot and he showed me the wounds on his leg and indicated where the others were on his body from his having to fight off looters earlier in the week. He then added that he had a gun but won’t use it against other Egyptians. That one incident encapsulated the hidden power of this revolution and why in the end it toppled the Mubarak regime. The government did everything in its power to provoke the Egyptians hoping that the mass movement would create the chaos the official TV channel claimed was taking place every day. It didn’t happen.

Friday night when all of us including the U.S. President expected Mubarak to step down, he didn’t. To add insult to injury his designated Vice President Omar Suleiman came on TV and gave as patronizing a performance as Mubarak had done earlier. After waiting 4 ½ from the time of the announcement that the Egyptian President would speak on TV to his final performance hopes among all of us ran very high including some Egyptians who called to tell me that they were about to celebrate. I did warn them that one shouldn’t act until the Fat Lady sings, as we say in American slang and she [Mubarak] didn’t. From his first words anyone listening knew he was totally out of touch with his people. What happened next made me very nervous as thousands of Egyptians marched on the Radio-Television building which is five minutes from Tahrir Square and thousands of others surrounded the Presidential palace which is about 30 minutes from downtown Cairo. My concern was that the marchers would cross the army lines and try to take the building creating the confrontation the Mubarak administration was seeking. And once again the Egyptians stopped.

I have seen Egyptians yell and scream at one another and use their hands so actively that Italians would be jealous, but I never see them hit one another except when provoked by security forces or riot police. Traffic jams in Cairo can be a nightmare and horn blowing is a popular form of aggression but American road rage where guns and violence follow are, fortunately, not part of this culture and that was something the Mubarak government didn’t count on. The Egyptians walked up to the military and stopped but how long that would last before one side blinked I couldn’t predict and I feared those guarding the Presidential residence would crack first. Fortunately I was wrong. The military who had made numerous statements that it would not fire on Egyptians must have informed Mubarak the game was over and, suddenly, at 6 p.m. Omar Suleiman spoke for less than a minute and it was over.

The joyous response of almost every Egyptian was amazing. Barb and I walked two blocks to the circle where a number of roads come together and suddenly Egyptians of every age poured into the streets singing, banging drums, waving flags, beating horns to a set rhythm and celebrating an incredible victory. There was such a sense of pride among them that all we could do is keep congratulating them and watching their outpouring of joy. I say not all because, sadly, we also know a middle class Egyptian family who believed every word poured forth on state television and has not been willing to discuss with us the announcements by the TV personnel that is was all lies and that the appropriate ministry had written their scripts and told them where to direct their cameras. This same family, sadly, did not take part in the joyous outpouring which went on for hours.

Ironically I think Barb and I were more impressed by what we saw today in Tahrir Square and in our neighborhood. Egyptians of every age and from what we could see all classes were involved in a massive cleanup of Tahrir. Egyptians were building a new society and they were starting in the most visual way possible, by turning their city into a cleaner, neater city than we had ever seen. Informal groups were everywhere sweeping and piling up bags of dirt, rocks, garbage and anything that didn’t look like it belonged there. Other groups were pushing burnt out cars and carrying metal fences both of which had been used as the outer defense wall of Tahrir to collection points where large garbage trucks and tow trucks were removing them. Small groups of others were on the bridge next to Tahrir scrubbing away at graffiti calling for the removal of Mubarak and the freedom for Egyptians. There were little children dressed in their “Sunday” best as well as fully veiled women working alongside large numbers of students sweeping and filing garbage bag after garbage bag. Even the military was carefully rolling up their barbed wire so it could be taken away by military vehicles.

If there was a central organization it was not to be seen. The word had spread that Tahrir was to be clean and thousands of Egyptians kept responding all day. At the same time there were parts of Tahrir where rock music and patriotic music blared at decimal levels that hurt my ears. In other corners those still in their make-shift plastic tent shelters lounged or slept on the thousands of blankets that must have appeared from somewhere because we saw hundreds and hundreds of them being carried away as tents came down. Suddenly in another area a speaker began the call to prayer and checking my watch it was time and the crowd stepped back to allow those who wished to pray to do so. Flags were sold [were bought one], tea and cookies were passed around while others responded to the opportunity to sell beverages and snacks. By the time we got home after two exhausting hours in Tahrir I suddenly noticed a group of a dozen or more students cleaning the main road near our apartment.

As all of you know the end of Mubarak’s presidency is not the final act of a very complicated story. The army will have to deliver on its promises to remove the 30 year old emergency law which allowed the former government to arrest and imprison anyone on any charge, to create a new cabinet, to set the requirements for one to run for office including Parliament and the Presidency, and to start to deal with an economy in deep trouble, but the Egyptians with whom I have spoken are all willing to give their military time because it was their military that ultimately sided with them and brought the Mubarak regime to end.

Barb and I consider ourselves very fortunate to have been in Cairo and to have witnessed this massive, popular, overwhelmingly non-violent revolution and see a pride by Egyptians in themselves and their future that we had never seen before. There were times we were nervous but thanks to our Egyptian friends and some intelligent decisions on our part we were never in danger. As some of you know I was called by a number of Seattle radio and even TV stations and was willing to share my views and our experiences. My five minutes of fame are over and so are these letters.