If the ongoing Egyptian people's revolution that toppled Hosni Mubarak in just 18 days -- after 30 years of dictatorship -- quickly engulfed the whole country, its beating heart was always Cairo's Tahrir Square (in Arabic, "Liberation Square"), for many years a gay cruising mecca.

And gay people were among the millions of Egyptian citizens who made the revolution possible and joined the crowds who occupied the square to demand democracy and freedom from oppression.

This revolution was motored by young people through the Internet, and one of them was a well-educated, 22-year-old gay blogger and medical student who uses the pseudonym Ice Queer ("It's a pun on `Ice Queen,' as I'm a calm, cool person," he explained). He was present in Tahrir Square during much of the protest, including last Friday, February 11, when Mubarak finally fell.