(Courtesy of API)

Nadine Ibrahim, a senior at Northwestern University, buzzes in and climbs up the gray-carpeted stairs of her family’s apartment building in Rogers Park. The 5-foot-11, wide-smiling slender Chicago native knocks and waits for an answer from her Egyptian-born parents. Rowina Ibrahim, her mother, calls for her daughter to hold on while she tidies up the living room. Her father Sonny Ibrahim can’t wait any longer. He opens the door with Curious, the family’s black cat, curiously weaving in and out of his legs. “He resigned, Baba,” Nadine says to her father while the two hug in joy. Sonny flails his arms upward and shakes his head in relief, repeating the same four words twice. “It’s like a dream,” he says.

Sonny belongs to a crowd of 4,325 Egyptians living in the Chicago-metro area—which includes parts of northwest Indiana and south Wisconsin—according to the American Community Survey conducted annually by the U.S. Census Chicago Bureau. Earlier that day in Cairo, President Hosni Mubarak stepped down from his reign after 17 days of persistent protests by millions of Egyptians.

Sonny left Egypt for Chicago in 1978, three years before Mubarak’s first day in office. For the past 26 years, the 65-year-old has owned a convenience shop. He refuses to hire anyone unless they live less than a block away from the store, pointing out that his employees have no excuse to be late, even during the icy Chicago winters. A couple workers even live directly above the store in a red-bricked apartment complex.

Settled on the northeast corner of Lunt and Sheridan, the store’s blue veranda with white, bold-faced capital letters spelling “Sonny’s Food Store” is visible from the Ibrahims’ living room window. Sonny’s sells kitty litter, corn muffin mix, freeze pops and everything in between. Tucked in the back left corner next to an ATM and a worn-in copy machine, are solid-colored belly dancer veils dressed with dangling coins, metallic plates, painted prints of ancient Egypt and an array of ready-to-smoke hookahs—small treasures that Sonny brings over himself from across the Atlantic. “It’s like I got two homes. When I leave for Egypt I feel happy. When I leave from Egypt I feel great. I know it’s freezing here. But Starbucks,” he says, finishing with a chuckle. He doesn’t even like coffee. Rowina makes and drinks it at home, but Sonny keeps away. “I just drink coffee because I am in a coffee shop,” he says.

When in Chicago, he often spends five hours a day at the same Starbucks two blocks from his house, to work on paperwork for his store and real estate projects he manages in Egypt and order a black coffee with sugar just out of principle. Each year, Sonny splits his time between Chicago and Cairo—traveling back and forth about every three months. These days, Sonny, bald-headed with white patches of hair on either side hugged by his glasses, considers himself semi-retired. In Egypt, he says he hangs at his country club from morning to evening—seven restaurants, a pool, massage center and tennis courts included—to do the same paperwork. But compared to the majority of citizens who lived under Mubarak’s reign, Sonny resided in an isolated oasis.

After President Anwar Sadat was assassinated in 1981, Mubarak assumed power—rising from the vice presidency to presidency position. Widely known for suppressing political oppositions and fixing national elections, the 82-year-old autocrat held elections every six years and remained in power for three decades before his resignation.

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs took note on the vast impact the revolution had not only on Egyptians, but citizens across Chicago and the U.S. The organization promptly put together a panel of three experts on February 7 to discuss the revolution’s effect on the Middle East and future U.S. foreign policy. Beginning at 7:30 a.m., the event drew a full crowd of 102 active listeners. “We wanted to put together a panel so that our members could come and directly speak with experts who are working on [the revolution],” says Niamh King, Executive Director of Public and Leadership Programs at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

Cherif Bassiouni, president of the Egyptian American Society of Illinois and Professor of Law Emeritus at DePaul University, chaired the three-person panel at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs. During his speech he said that about 200 families control 90 percent of Egypt’s wealth.  In his report titled Egypt Assessment—issued to those in attendance on February 7—he states that a little under half of the country’s 84 million citizens live in poverty. He also mentions that the United Nations ranks Egypt’s educational system as the sixth worst in the world.

In the introduction of the same document, he refers to Egyptians as historically “nonviolent and patient” people. Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the revolution in Cairo, remained peaceful until February 1 when pro-Mubarak supporters clashed with democratic protesters. The same pro-Mubarak supporters attacked foreign media members, like CNN’s Anderson Cooper. Bassiouni, blaming the chaos on Mubarak, writes, “If it were not for the violent provocations by the pro-Regime hired thugs, it would have been one of the most significant, peaceful manifestations of a people’s desire for change that has ever occurred in modern history.” Rowina credits the mostly-peaceful revolution to President Barack Obama’s request to Mubarak not to use force. “It worked because otherwise those young people [in Tahrir Square] would have been slaughtered on the streets and nobody would’ve cared,” she says.

The long for political change isn’t a new sentiment in Egypt Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University’s Crown Junior Chair in Middle East Studies, says Egyptians hated Mubarak and his regime for a long time, but remained scared of persecution and thought public outcries would never provoke a revolution. Then fellow North Africans began protesting in December 2010. Tunisian citizens ousted dictator and President Zine El Abidine Ben Ali on January 14, inspiring Egyptians to steal the world’s spotlight 11 days later, says Pearlman. “Once those barriers of fear and powerlessness were broken, the floodgates were opened and people went out to the streets.”

When the revolution ignited on January 25 in Cairo, Sonny was right outside Egypt’s capital. His two-and-a-half-month planned vacation quickly became a full-time job. Rather than spending his 12-hour days poolside, the 65-year-old spent every night until 6 a.m. on guard as part of the community-built “neighborhood watch” to protect his village from looters. In one occasion, he held $50,000 worth of electronics in his apartment, confiscated from looters by his apartment building’s security guard. Armed with machetes, knives and even guns, the looters could return and reclaim the items at any moment. With no means of tracking down the individual owners of the merchandise and fearing his safety, Sonny donated it all to charities and the local mosque.

Nights were long and draining. Days were short, capped by a countrywide 3 p.m. curfew. The club closed at 1 p.m. “Most of the day I had to sit home by myself watching TV,” he says. Gas was sparse, making driving near to impossible. Sonny arranged travel plans to Tahrir Square to join in on the protests, but a miscommunication with his friends left him without a ride early in the morning. Eleven days after arriving in Cairo, his vacation had ended and it was time to head back to his colder, second home.  “Do you wish you were there during the resignation, Baba?” Nadine asks. Before Sonny even has a chance to comprehend the question, Rowina answers it for him. “I don’t,” she says.

While her father decided to return to Chicago and reunite with his family, Nadine is itching leave. She already bought a plane ticket. “With how much pride I have, I should be over there,” she says. “I was supposed to go on a spring break trip with some of my best friends to Egypt.” Her friends decided to bail on what was supposed to be a tour of Egypt—with Nadine as their personal guide—because of the political uncertainty. “It’s frustrating because I absolutely want to go to Egypt right now. But I don’t want to go alone.”

Even though the majority of Americans haven’t visited the Middle Eastern country, they proved to care about its revolution. “Anyone who feels disillusioned about government or feels that change is really difficult to make, found great inspiration in these events,” says Pearlman. According to a survey conducted by Gallup from February 2-5, 82 percent of adults were sympathetic to the democratic protesters, with 42 percent labeling themselves as “very sympathetic.”  Sixty-nine percent of Americans also followed news about the political uprising “very or somewhat closely.”

The first week of the revolution, Rowina followed the media coverage of Egypt religiously. Fearing for her husband’s safety, she refused to let her television set rest. CNN echoed throughout the first floor apartment 24 hours a day. Juggling a full class load and an internship at the Field Museum, Nadine put her life on hold to follow the revolution too. “Al-Jazeera was my home base. Their live stream [online] from Cairo before it got cut off—I was watching six hours a day, maybe longer. It was absurd. I was glued to it,” she says. The Northwestern Communication Sciences and Disorders major limited herself to reading four articles per day.

Nadine is the older of two daughters in the Ibrahim family. Her 17-year-old sister Lina attends Northside College Preparatory High School. Rowina became pregnant with Nadine one month after living in the U.S. While Nadine is fluent in Arabic, Lina understands her parents’ native language, but can’t read or write. Big sister says she identifies more with Egyptian culture than her little sister.  “I’ve always been really proud of Egypt and proud of my identity. After the revolution, more so,” she says. “It’s hard to connect on a really personal level when I’m only experiencing it through the eyes of an American.” So she tried her best to make that connection.

Nadine joined hundreds of Chicago citizens stationed outside Egypt’s consulate on Michigan Avenue for the first of three demonstrations led by numerous organizations like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, also known as CAIR. Yaser Tabarra, one of CAIR’s board members, helped organize the protests. “It was our responsibility to mobilize people to make the statement to our elected public officials that we are playing the role as our global city,” he says. Tabarra, a 35-year-old man born in Damascus, Syria, exemplifies the diverse group of protesters who came out to support Egypt’s citizens demanding democracy.

On each of the three occasions, the crowd filled with Egyptians, non-Egyptians, Arabs and non-Arabs, all supporting a single cause: democracy.

“We have a vibrant community of human rights activists,” says Amina Sharif, the communications director for CAIR-Chicago. “There are a lot of people here who don’t necessarily have a vested interest in Egypt, but they just care about the democratic rights of the people in Egypt.” Protesters led chants in English and many different Arabic dialects, Nadine says. “Those two hours were filled with more pride than usual. It was empowering to be there.”

Pearlman says the revolution inspired her, at one point giving her goose bumps. “This isn’t an Arab issue. It’s not a Muslim issue,” she says. “It is a victory for people’s power.”

It’s a satirical personal relief for Sonny. “If you ask me to pay money or years of my life, I swear to God, I’d give it away,” he says. “About three years ago, I told a friend I could give two, three years of my life and about $10,000 just to see him leave.” With Mubarak gone, Sonny won’t lose a dime.

He did give seven years of his life, involuntarily, to the Egyptian military, serving a stint in the October War between Israel and allies Egypt and Syria in 1973. As a transportation officer, he rested under the sand, eating scorpions and snakes to survive. He credits the success of his convenience store to those seven brutal years. And it’s his neighborhood-friendly business that made him realize everyone’s compassion and excitement for the revolution. “I could see someone from across the street say how’s Egypt,” he says. “Everybody’s asking about Egypt.”

Within hours of Mubarak’s resignation, Rowina received dozens of e-mails and texts from American friends wanting to share the joyous moment with her.

Nadine has noticed the same attention from friends throughout the 17-day revolution. “In the last two weeks I’ve had so many conversations with people that I would’ve never expected to talk to about these kinds of things,” Nadine says. “Everybody can relate to the fight for democracy.”

The Egyptian military replaced Mubarak and now rules the country as a transitional form of government. Mubarak’s whereabouts aren’t known, but Egypt’s state media reported that he left for Saudi Arabia to receive chemotherapy for his cancerous colon and pancreas. According to The New York Times, on February 14 the military announced that democratic elections would take place in July. But the fight for democracy will continue until the military hands over power to a civilian-run government. Rowina won’t be satisfied until Mubarak sees his last day. “I don’t know what’s going to happen to him,” Rowina says. “I hope they are going to hang him.”

A small square white paper with black hand-written lettering, dangling from the top of the Ibrahims’ 52-inch plasma television, reads “No TV.” Sonny flips the sign over when he has paperwork to finish. The friendly deterrent became much harder to use while the revolution unraveled day by day. With Mubarak out of office and democracy surfacing, Sonny will find it easier to flip that sign over the screen, concentrate and look out the window to keep an eye on his store.

Nadine will live in the Middle East after graduation, working with and researching about women in Arab villages suffering from political and economic insecurity. Having already applied to work for the UN Relief and Works Agency and the Israel/Palestine Center for Research and Information, Nadine wants to end up in the West Bank. But her parents don’t want her to work in the Middle East for the same reason Rowina pleaded Sonny to come home during the revolution—safety.

Sonny’s ready to go back, leaving for Egypt in three weeks. “I want to see what’s going on,” he says. “That’s my dream—a civilian government. No military.”

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