Gen Z & the Revolution| Not all battles were public

I was born on the same day people took to the streets, but it was 1996. On January 25, 2011, I was blowing out fifteen candles while the country blazed with questions far bigger than I could comprehend. I didn’t know then that this date would mark a turning point in my personal life, just as it would become a defining moment in the history of an entire nation.

It was a cold January, and my father, always absorbed in politics, kept the television fixed on Al Jazeera’s relentless broadcast from Tahrir Square. I knew the square only as a televised image—not yet as a symbol, not yet as a place where history was being inscribed. I never imagined it would become the center of a story larger than all of us.

I grew up in a household where public affairs mattered. My father followed the news the same way others would follow the weather. In our home in Sohag, political discussions were part of everyday life: Who is in power? Why are public services deteriorating? Why does the future feel so uncertain?

Just days before the revolution, I remember sitting in IT class. The teacher wasn’t explaining any software or equations. Instead, he spoke about bribes, about a country where success depended on connections, about a future that seemed locked to all but the powerful. His tone was weary, almost surrendered.

I think of that moment often. How could a 14-year-old hear all that and then, just a week later, be surprised by a revolution bursting forth with talk of justice and hope?

My father wanted to be in the streets, to participate in what was unfolding. But his health didn’t permit it. So he remained in his chair, watching, worried. It felt as though his entire generation yearned to move forward, yet found themselves held back by fear and circumstance.

I existed in that same in-between space. I was too young for politics, too old for innocence. I didn’t fully comprehend what was taking place. But I observed. I listened. I absorbed the scene through the television, and  conversations of the adults around me. I didn’t yet grasp what “revolution” meant or what “change” really required.

In the years that followed, I met many people who had been older than I was at the time. Time and again, I heard the same sentiment: “The revolution changed something in me.” One removed her hijab. Another saw the world differently. A third grew bolder in their choices. I listened to them with a mix of wonder and a quiet envy. I was, again, too old to be oblivious, too young to live as they had.

January’s contradictions

One of the first names that stayed with me was Sally Zahran’s. She was from Sohag, like me. She died after falling from her balcony while attempting to join the protests, defying her mother’s concerns. It was such a seemingly ordinary moment: a mother trying to protect, a daughter yearning to see the world, and a balcony marking the threshold between safety and risk. 

I think now that Sally wasn’t only a casualty of a national reckoning, but also of a deeper, inherited family fear we all carry and reproduce under the guise of love and protection. 

Looking back, I see now that I hadn’t lived a “revolution” the way others did. I wasn’t ready to see myself as part of something bigger. But I did live something else—a slow, internal revolution, not from the street but from life itself.

My real uprising wasn’t 2011; it began later, clashing with the conservative traditions of my Upper Egyptian community. My revolution started when I realized society polices women’s bodies—imposing a long list of expectations on how I should dress, speak, move, and remain silent.

I realized my revolution was existential. Who gets to bar me from the house, or decide my future in education and love? Who gets to control my body through fear and "virtue"—violating it through forced marriage, genital mutilation, or even "honor" killings?

What good is a revolution that does not confront the crimes committed against women just because they are women? What do I gain if the revolution empowers all the men in my family—only for them to keep suppressing me and controlling my fate?

At some point, I began to notice a pattern. I read widely, traveled, moved to Cairo, and saw a world far bigger than my small governorate. There, I began to grasp the contradiction: a public discourse of liberation, and intense private repression. 

I saw it in the way the revolutionaries spoke later. We, as women, meant nothing to them. This is Egypt—the Egypt of men, where there’s no room for women unless they are broken or shamed.

We are second-class citizens, a minority not entitled to live as fully as the male martyrs who gave their lives for this country, even as we fight wars of our own: the daily wars inside our families.

I gradually understood that the change I lived wasn’t political as much as it was existential. That’s why, every anniversary of the revolution, my position renews itself: it was a good attempt, but before any political change, we need a revolution of thought—one that can prepare us to build an inclusive country.

I don’t see the future as a direct extension or a total rupture of the revolution. I see a slower, deeper path—measured not by crowded squares, but by women deciding their futures with dignity. It is a future where patriarchal authority shrinks and voices no longer apologize for existing.

I don’t know if my generation will usher in sweeping political change. But I believe we are, in quiet ways, reshaping language, relationships, and meaning. That kind of change may not fill a square, but it leaves a mark. 

I was born on the day of the revolution, and in some ways, I grew up before it did.

That, too, is a form of hope.