CAIRO: Downtown Cairo on Tuesday afternoon presented two very different faces. In Tahrir Square, large crowds gathered in an atmosphere that combined anger at the ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces with good humour and the commercial spirit of the city's innumerable mobile vendors. Meanwhile, only a few hundred metres away, Falaki Square was the rear line of the demonstrators engaged in a street battle with the security forces guarding the Interior Ministry headquarters. Tahrir Square was the centre of the ‘million-man' demonstration called for by a range of Egyptian political parties and revolutionary groups. Throughout the afternoon it filled up with protesters representing a broad cross-section of Cairo society, middle-class and working-class alike, until by 5.00pm the roadways in the square were packed and movement through the crowds was difficult. Most of those present were young but there were many middle-aged and older protesters as well, and large numbers of women were present in the crowd. The atmosphere was boisterous and good-humoured, with various chants and slogans being called out by protesters and taken up by the crowd. ‘The people want the fall of the Field-Marshal' was by far the most popular, and at one point an effigy clad in military green was hoisted by the neck from a gantry near the middle of the square, to loud cheers. As shouts of ‘Gazma!' (shoe) rang out from the crowd, the youth sitting astride the gantry pulled off his shoe and began beating the figure's head with it. Large banners hung around the square called for the end of military rule. One declared that ‘The Marshal and the police want to burn Egypt', while another two stories high draped from a building proclaimed, ‘The people have decided that power is to be handed over now.' Although various political groups had called on their members to join the demonstration, it was determinedly non-partisan. Two large posters near entrances to Tahrir set out the ‘regulations of the square', forbidding party banners, the use of megaphones and the erection of individual podiums. The level of organization was impressive, with an enormous tent on the central roundabout serving as the main field clinic, while several other clinics operated on the outskirts of the square and on Tahrir Street nearer the front line on Muhammad Mahmoud Street. Volunteers manned a human cordon to allow ambulances to pass through the crowds and, as silence fell at dusk, they formed rings around those praying. On Qasr Al-Nil Bridge, a woman stood handing out surgical masks to protect those joining the demonstration from the effects of tear gas. A succession of cars pulled up at the end of the bridge, offloading blankets and supplies for the field clinics. While the main field clinic operated on the roundabout, around its perimeter and all over the square street vendors operating from handcarts served food and hot drinks to hungry and thirsty protestors. Only a couple of hundred metres from Tahrir, in Falaki Square the atmosphere was grimmer and the air was acrid with the traces of tear gas. The security forces cordon around the Interior Ministry headquarters was a block south from Falaki on Muhammad Mahmoud Street, and on the unlit side-streets leading south from the square, crowds of protesters clashed with police in the dark. The occasional orange flare of a Molotov cocktail lit up the front line, usually with a large Egyptian flag waving in the van, and every so often a loud bang would announce the arrival of another tear gas canister. The crowd here was younger, mostly male but with some young women present as well, and all were wearing a variety of masks or scarves to protect against the tear gas. As heavier volleys of gas arrived the crowds would flee back onto Falaki, only to regroup and return. Here there seemed to be a considerable presence of football ultras, and a few of those fitted out with surgical masks appeared as young as thirteen or fourteen. Bonfires of rubbish were burning at the intersections on the front line, lit in the hope that the smoke would mitigate the effect of the gas. In the midst of the shouting and running, a middle-aged man sat on the steps of the Chamber of Commerce building, calmly breaking paving stones into conveniently-sized chunks for whoever felt the need for ammunition. Twice shouts that live bullets were being fired sent hundreds fleeing back towards Tahrir. A fleet of motorcycles shuttled to and fro, arriving in Falaki to load the slumped figures of protesters overcome by the effects of gas aboard for the short trip back to one of the field clinics. Some of those in the square preferred to act as spectators, prudently taking up position on the north side of the fence around the central parking lot to ensure the possibility of rapid retreat. Muhammad Mahmoud Street itself was filled with protesters from the junction with Tahrir, and there too crowds would from time to time press forward to join the battle, while the arrival of tear gas canisters would cause a panicked rush backwards despite the attempts of volunteer stewards posted near Tahrir to calm the crowd's movements. By 11:00 PM many of the afternoon's protesters had left Tahrir, and as the tear gas wafted into the square from Tahrir Street and along Bustan Street into Talaat Harb Street, the atmosphere of Midan Falaki began to dominate in Tahrir as well. Those remaining were predominantly young men, wearing masks and with expressions of grim determination. At midnight, the motorcycles were still ferrying incapacitated protesters back to the field clinics, and thousands were still in Tahrir, prepared to see out the night's events. BM
