CAIRO - He organized his first demonstration while still a student in 1998, then got arrested and tortured by Egyptian police two years later at age 23. Now he has seen the fall of the president he spent his adult life struggling against.

For 33-year-old activist Hossam el-Hamalawy, though, Egypt's three-week youth revolution is by no means over -- there remains a repressive state to be dismantled and workers who need to get their rights.

"The job is unfinished, we got rid of (Hosni) Mubarak but we didn't get rid of his dictatorship, we didn't get rid of the state security police," he told The Associated Press while sipping strong Arabic coffee in a traditional downtown cafe that weeks before had been the scene of street battles.

The activism career of el-Hamalawy typifies the long, and highly improbable, trajectory of the mass revolt that ousted Mubarak, Egypt's long-entrenched leader. Once a dreamer organizing more or less on his own, el-Hamalawy's dreams suddenly hardened into reality. The next step, he says, is the Egyptian people must press their advantage.