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Frustrated Cairo graduate Shady Alaa El Din wanted to leave Egypt because of the lack of freedom and opportunity, but protests in Tahrir Square have made him feel he can help bring change Interactive: Read more about young people in the Arab world The day Shady Alaa El Din graduated with a degree in commerce and business administration from a private Cairo university, he resolved to get out of the country as quickly as possible. “I was never proud to be an Egyptian before, because we were such a negative people,” explains the 26-year-old. “We get nothing from our education system – university was four years of wasted time. We learnt by repetition; there was no room for creativity, no room for independent thought. You just had to repeat what the professor said exactly and you got good grades. If you deviated slightly, you would fail.” Compared with many of his generation in Egypt, Shady has a lot going for him – and he knows it. Every year 700,000 new graduates chase 200,000 jobs, but thanks to the decent wasta (an Arabic word meaning “influence” or “connections”) from his retired father’s former career in the military, Shady is one of the lucky ones. “I was given a relatively easy time during my own year-long army conscription, and then our family connections landed me a job in the business centre of an upmarket hotel,” he says. “But it’s not what I want to be doing. I love creating stuff: art, design – I make my own cartoons – and I’d also like to start my own business. But there are very few creative jobs available and there’s no stability to that kind of work – here I have a reliable income.” Shady says most of his friends – a middle-class, urban and educated set who spend their evenings driving up and down Gameat el-Dowal street in the affluent suburb of Mohandiseen and hang out at western-style coffee houses – have jobs they hate, usually in customer-service and call-centre positions at multinational companies such as Vodafone and Etisalat. “It’s a nothing job; the sort of thing a six-year-old can do if you train them. My guess is that around 70% of people my age in Egypt are in that position, doing jobs they don’t want and which don’t require you to think.” Shady knows that he is fortunate to have a comfortable lifestyle and a regular income, but that doesn’t stop him getting frustrated – he still lives with his parents, is yet to marry, and recently he’s grown increasingly angry with the corruption he sees around him, especially when dealing with the state. “The police are normally everywhere in Egypt, and they’re robbers,” he says baldly. He recounts being stopped by officers on the Imbaba bridge who tried to shake him and his companion down for cash. The experience was one of the things that made him take to the streets to join the protests. “I was never involved in politics before, not because I didn’t think things were in need of change, but just because there was nobody who convinced me that they could make a difference. None of the so-called opposition leaders really cared about the country; they were all just showing off and acting like the president but in a smaller way; lots of mini-dictatorships headed by guys who are out for themselves. The regime allows these people to exist deliberately, it prevents any genuine opposition from emerging,” says Shady. Then came Tunisia and Shady’s world exploded. “It showed us that something different was possible. I didn’t like what I saw before, but I didn’t think there was any way out of it. Tunisia completely changed my view.” Shady read on Facebook about a planned demonstration in Cairo on 25 January and, despite never being to a protest like it before, he persuaded his friends to go with him. “I wasn’t expecting a lot of people to attend. I had a bit of hope this would be different, but my head said no, it will be small like always. And the police thought the same, and they were wrong. When they were beaten back on Tuesday it encouraged us to come out stronger, and on Friday they were waiting for us.” On that day Shady was one of thousands caught up in fierce street clashes with Mubarak’s hated central security forces, an encounter that encouraged him to continue protesting. “It was murder, simple murder. They tried to kill us, using bullets and gas, and in many cases they succeeded,” says Shady. “They shot one gas canister a second. I couldn’t see, I couldn’t move, I couldn’t breathe – my legs didn’t work, I couldn’t inhale or exhale. Even when I reached fresh air, my lungs were suffocating. I felt like I was dying. I’d lost my friends, and there was no way of contacting them because the mobile networks were switched off. And it made me all the more determined to go back and carry on the fight.” His mother and father – though supportive of the campaign to topple Mubarak – were worried about the danger their son was putting himself in. But Shady ignored their pleas to stay at home. “Our parents gave up on the idea that they could ever change things; they didn’t have the motive or the will to fight back. I’ve lived my whole life under Mubarak: why did our parents allow things to reach this point? Why didn’t they stand up for themselves before? I don’t know. “A few days later when I was in my home and we saw the F16 jets flying low towards Tahrir, I thought that the government might be about to massacre people. So I immediately headed towards the square, because this movement against Mubarak is about all people and I wanted to stand with my fellow Egyptians, even if that means dying with them.” Shady is back at work now, though he still travels to Tahrir Square whenever possible. And he won’t be getting on an international flight anytime soon. “What we’ve done in Tahrir, what you can see there – it’s perfect,” he says. “Before, I wanted to leave Egypt, and I asked myself, ‘Where can I go? Where can I live like a human?’ Now I realise this place is Egypt, this place is in Tahrir Square. I think that feeling is spreading to the rest of the country, and I want to be a part of it.” Egypt Protest Middle East Jack Shenker guardian.co.uk