Egyptian schools reopen ... cautiously

Fatema Salah said her students had never sung the Egyptian national anthem quite the way they did Sunday, the first day back to school for most Cairo pupils. Before, they shuffled through the morning ritual, heads down and sleepy. This time, standing in the school's shady courtyard for the first time since the revolution, they "Today, everybody sang loud," said Salah, principal of the Dar El Tarbiah School, a secondary school in central Cairo.

"It was real. Many of them were in [Tahrir] Square themselves. They are very proud." But with the pride, nervousness remained. Nearly half of Salah's students were absent, and across the city thousands of families ignored the reopening of school, which had been anticipated as a step toward post-revolution normality. Read more about the situation in Egypt in The Washington Post online.