For those that didn't read my last entry, I was describing how on the 28th of January everything turned upside down. No more police forces, thugs being let out of prisons, attacking homes and randomly shooting people on the street, no internet and cell phones working. I could hear gun shots all night long. That night I slept on the couch near the door.

This entry is about the 29th of January and a few days after.

That night on the television, people were calling live shows pleading for help because their neighborhoods were being terrorized by criminals and no one was coming to help them. Police stations are down, police officers are 'scared' to show up on the street, and the army isn't sending anyone.

Soon people were calling all young men to go down and secure their streets. I could hear the loud speaker of a mosque near by calling all men to grab whatever they have at home and defend the neighborhood. Basically, they were trying to encourage any young man to do whatever they can to fight those criminals. You'd see religious scholars talking about Jihad and Martyrdom and so on.

It wasn't a big deal for me to just stand downstairs in front of the building with a cane in my hand, the bigger problem was convincing my grandmother that I'm going down. My younger brother and I were staying there at the time, because my mother was abroad. But after cracking a few jokes and convincing her I'm just gonna stand inside the building and check what was going on she didn't object. At least she didn't object as much. My brother told me if I go then he'll have to go with me. I told him to come along.

Long story short, I saw hundreds of young men on the street. It was was very ironic. Because on the street with no cops whatsoever, this was the first time I really felt safe. Don't tell anyone but I felt a bit emotional to see such goodness come out of all those people.

I am really convinced that there's nothing 'bad' that can happen to you. I mean yes, bad things can happen to you, but even then you have a choice. You can do the right thing, or you can do the wrong thing. When we were in chaos, some people chose to start looting and stealing. Others chose to go down and defend their homes, families and streets.

My biggest fear at that time, to be honest with you, was that Egypt was turning into another Iraq. As if Mubarak wanted people to choose between security and safety on one hand, and getting rid of him on the other hand. It was as if he was trying to teach us a lesson. You attack my police force? Let's see how long you can live without them. And then he let his dogs out on us.

It seems like a perfect plan if it wasn't for one thing, that they forgot to put into their equation. The good Egyptian people. Here was our response.

Like I said before, there were many of us on the main road near our building. Everyone had something in their hands. I saw all kinds of knives, daggers, machetes and things I can't even begin to describe, I'm guessing they are tools used by butchers to slaughter and skin animals. I saw someone carrying something that looked like a sword Aladdin would use. We had little kids with boxes walking around. I looked inside the box and it was filled with soda bottles that were filled with gas. Molotov cocktails. They offered me one but I told them I was good. I did ask them if they had Pepsi. They laughed.

We had several checkpoints on the street. The street itself was blocked and we created gates. Every car was to get checked and searched, and everyone inside had to show us ID's before being allowed to drive through.

On our own street, my brother and I and some of our neighbors started making our own road blocks. We broke some rocks from the sidewalk and blocked our street. In a few days we even used trunks of palm trees my brother found. We had groups in front of each building, and then larger groups on the beginning of every street to check anyone who wanted to enter.

The news that we were getting was that there are cars driving around carrying thugs that were shooting people. So our main goal was to prevent or slow down any car that would try to drive in our street. On the main road every now and then we'd get the news that such a car was driving in our direction. We got these updates from other checkpoints near our neighborhood.

When we would exactly do when we got those updates is what I'll talk about in my next entry!