CAIRO – Where Egyptian demonstrators locked arms five years ago in the iconic protests of Tahrir Square, there was today only indifferent Cairo traffic circling the plaza as security police in black uniforms handed out sweets to passersby.
Where a pungent mix of tear gas and hope once filled the air, there was instead an unsettling calm that descended like fog over the fifth anniversary of the start of the uprising that toppled President Hosni Mubarak and reverberated across the region through a series of mass demonstrations that came to be known as the Arab Spring.
