The earth didn't shake Thursday in South Norwalk despite the emotional roller coaster taking place in one store. "This is the happiest moment in my life," said Hesham Elmished at 3 p.m. Less than an hour later, after Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak had finally addressed his nation, Elmished was heartbroken. "What can you do?" he asked. "We'll see more bloodshed tomorrow."
News reports had led Elmished to expect Mubarak to resign. He didn't.
"I have lived for this moment," Elmished said excitedly, as he waited for the announcement. He was minding his store, And Company, Inc., standing behind the counter, where he could keep his eyes on his computer screen. It was showing a live feed from Cairo. Elmished needed to pull out an earphone to have a conversation with a visitor. He was listening to Al Jazeera in Arabic so he could hear the words of Mubarak for himself, unfiltered by a translator.
Elmished was raised in Egypt and came to Norwalk in 1979. In 1996 he went back to Egypt with his family, returning to Norwalk for summers and Christmas. In 2008 they came back to Norwalk "for good."
"You come to America and you taste the freedom," he said. "You will know how beautiful it is. That's why you want Egypt to have it." He expected liberation for the Egyptian people to happen any minute. "I think there is no way back. It is a one-way street from now on."
Elmished compared Mubarak to Saddam Hussein and Joseph Stalin. "All of it is dictatorship. They are all horrible, they are not human. They are murderers." The anticipation of Mubarak's exit was hard to describe. "It's a beautiful moment," he said. "...This is like a birth, my son was born."
The phone rang occasionally. Elmished's friends were calling, but the conversations weren't long. "You have to go watch it, he's about to resign," Elmished said before hanging up. "History is about to be made," he said to another friend.
Elmished's son, Zach, came in briefly. Zach is now a student of the University of Bridgeport, but went to the International Modern English School in Cairo during his 12 formative years in Egypt. He was happy about the expected resignation, too. "I am glad my friends will be able to get a job when they graduate without having to know someone," he said before heading back out.
"You can only have stability through freedom," Elmished said. "You cannot have stability through dictatorship."
He planned to celebrate Mubarak's resignation by donating money to Egyptian Association for Change. But when Mubarak finally spoke it was a bitter disappointment, as there were only "empty promises."
"He lies all the time," he said. "I hear these promises -- I've heard this 25 times, 100 times. This is sad. More people dying in the street, it's not going to generate any security."
Then he took a positive approach. "Tomorrow is better," he said. "Always better."
Did you realize that events so far away could hit so close to home?
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