A Farewell to Cairo

Last June I left Egypt after eight years as CNN’s Cairo bureau chief and correspondent. I wrote this back then, but never finished it as I was buried under an avalanche of packing cases. But now I’m back in Cairo, if only for a few days, I’ve decided I really have to get this out. Covering Egypt was the experience of a lifetime. I’ll admit: a lot of that time was spent on the road, in Iraq, Israel/Palestine and elsewhere in the Middle East, in Africa, in the Balkans, in Afghanistan and Pakistan. But my home was Egypt. And over the eight years, I saw dramatic changes here. The first few years were relatively quiet, but things really started to take off in early 2005 when agitation for political reform in Egypt took off. The people of Egypt had rediscovered their ability to raise their voice, and, I suspect, they