Egypt’s Sahara was noticeably absent from the great story of Egypt’s recent history: the overthrow of Mubarak by popular dissent in 2011.  Egypt’s Arab Spring was fundamentally urban, both a product of crippling levels of urban unemployment, particularly youth unemployment, and the space the city opened up, with the help of social media, for protesters to coordinate and mobilise in major cities as they did in the days leading up to Mubarak’s fall.  If the Egypt of colonial lenses was a T E Lawrence vision of uncharted deserts, the dominant image of contemporary Egypt is the crowded urban arena – the demands and desires of Tahrir Square.