On the seventh day of protests in Egypt, Democracy Now!‘s Sharif Kouddous circumvented the Mubarak regime’s internet blackout to report on the ongoing unrest in the streets. Kouddous, who is from Cairo, talks about returning home to “a different country than the one I had known my entire life."

Kouddous declares: “Egypt has been reborn. This is not the Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt anymore. And no matter what happens next, it will never be again.”

Kouddous discusses the curfew, the military jets buzzing protesters, lack of access to outside news, the looting and violence and the “unbelievable feeling of community now, of people coming together.”

—Kevin Gosztola