Queens’ Little Egypt was the loudest place in the city the moment Hosni Mubarak resigned.

Car horns honked and friends shouted congratulatory greetings along Astoria’s Steinway Street.

Inside the Egyptian Coffee Shop, men danced, sang and waved the red, white and black Egyptian flag for nearly an hour after the news broke at 11 a.m.

“We are free. We can breathe,” said Sallah Reffat, a 60-year-old pastry chef, after he kissed the flag.

Alladin Elhattab, 50, a limousine owner and driver, was both ecstatic over the news and proud of his native land.

“Egypt showed the whole world a lesson in democracy,” he said. “Since day one, we had no police but we didn’t steal. We didn’t kill. Nothing was damaged.”

Outside the café, people on the street sang the national anthem: “Oh, my country, for you is my love and my heart.”

Lamees Fadl, 29, was pushing a stroller with her husband, Yasser, 33, and young daughters Loreen and Saleen. “I feel proud to be Egyptian,” the former college instructor said. “We taste freedom finally.

“This was a very strong political system, and we did not know this could happen,” she said of the Mubarak regime. “We are fortunate to have great youth in our country.”

Rawia Mosslem, 55, wore an Egyptian flag as a shawl, and said she was going to a mosque to give thanks for Mubarak’s departure “and pray that there will be a better time for the people.”

She expected that the post-Mubarak era would be an improvement.

“For 30 years, we tried to get rid of him. I am optimistic. At least we can feel like a human being” now, Mosslem said. “Before, we were treated like animals.”

Labib Salama, the café’s 58-year-old owner, recalled problems he’d had with police in his native land, including being held for eight hours in a security cell at Cairo airport six years ago — because he made a derogatory remark about EgyptAir.

Another time, he was hauled off a plane in Cairo and threatened by security officers until he produced his discharge papers from the Egyptian army, he said.

“Congratulations to all the people in my country. They will have freedom, and now the police will give you respect,” Salama said.

The mood was quite a change from Thursday, when Egyptian-Americans packed the coffee shop to watch Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya TV in expectation of what they thought was Mubarak’s resignation speech. Then they heard him vow to stay on.

“Mubarak tried to play the last card he had, but it wasn’t good enough,” Elhattab said.

Salama said of Thursday night, “I was really upset. I don’t think I could have been down that much.

“But today I bought balloons, champagne and decorations. Tonight we will dance and celebrate,” he said, holding up a bag of red, white and black confetti.

Elhattab said the first thing he noticed when he heard of the resignation yesterday was the coincidence of numbers: “2011, 2/11 and 11 a.m.”

Reffat was in a travel agency on Steinway Street when cars started honking, and he “understood what happened.”

He said that soon after the first Cairo protests erupted, he had been making plans to return to Egypt, where his three sisters and other relatives still live.

Now he wonders about the political future.

“I hope we will have a future like America. The president stays two terms,” he said. “Not 30 years.”