It will never reach Maadi...

We never took the events in Egypt lightly but were confident that the protests would be confined to downtown Cairo, not the relatively quiet suburb of Maadi.

Having left it a little too close to curfew to walk back from a friend's house we heard this fine piece of machinery rumbling down the street. That wasn't nearly the worst sound, that was the gun fire from the machine gun.

It felt like the revolution had suddenly landed on the front door step.