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Surrounded by shelf upon shelf of Perspex perfume bottles, all crafted into an array of voluptuous designs and gilded by gold and silver paintwork, fragrance-seller Mohammad explained what he thought of the activists who battled the security services for much of the past six weeks.
“These people are thugs,” he said, from the back room of his store in Khan al-Khalili, the area of old Cairo usually crammed with tourists hunting for take-home trinkets. “We had the revolution, but now there is no work and the economy isn’t moving.”
Given how much Mohammad depends on tourists for his livelihood, his views are unsurprising. Many travellers are still steering clear of post-revolutionary Egypt, scared-off by the steady stream of TV news footage showing parts of the country as a virtual war zone.
Yet he is not alone. Take a taxi ride or chat with some shop owners in central Cairo, and they will tell you similar stories. “I supported January 25, but now the country needs to get back on its feet”, or so seems to be the prevailing sentiment of many Egyptians.
At least 17 people have died in the latest wave of trouble which erupted this month when a sit-in outside Cairo’s cabinet offices was dispersed by the security forces.
It came after scores more were killed in the widespread rioting which blighted the country in the days leading up to the first round of parliamentary elections last month.
The first wave of unrest was also triggered by an attack on protesters leading a sit-in – this time in Tahrir Square – and was fuelled by the military’s cack-handed and violent attempts to wrest back control over central Cairo.
Yet it came on the back of a series of grave mistakes from Egypt’s ruling generals. There was a decision in September to renew the country’s hated emergency laws; the massacre of Christian demonstrators during a march the following month; the continued processing of thousands of civilians through the military court system.
All of it added to a general perception that the ruling Military Council was attempting to entrench its power – a perception that was confirmed in the eyes of many activists when, shortly before the riots broke out in November, Egypt’s deputy prime minister published a constitutional proposal which would have shrouded the military from parliamentary oversight.
Despite all this, reading the public pulse remains a confounding exercise. On November 25, following days of the deadliest rioting in recent Egyptian history, tens of thousands of civilians marched on Tahrir Square to demand an early end to military rule in Egypt.
A month later, after several people were killed during the renewed fighting and photos of military police violently assaulting veiled women were widely published in the Egyptian media, there seemed little public appetite for the activists.
The numbers in Downtown Cairo never exceeded a few thousand people, and though a rally against the military on Friday drew several thousand demonstrators, it seems clear that support for continued anti-government agitation has waned.
There are several reasons for this. Perhaps most significantly, the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s most influential political organisation, has not endorsed any of the protests. It has been the biggest winner during the first two rounds of elections and appears keen not to do anything which could jeopardise its position.
Secondly there are the elections themselves, which started just a few days after a truce was called during the first wave of violence. Many Egyptians, participating in the first ostensibly free and fair elections in decades, are no doubt keen to grant the military the benefit of the doubt and give the parliamentary poll a chance.
It is also difficult to overestimate the aura which still surrounds the Egyptian army, an institution which has been elevated to near-mythical status since the great Arab demagogue Gamal Abdel Nasser seized power in the 1950s.
Many Egyptians, particularly over the past few weeks, have seen the images of soldiers brutalising their own people in a manner more becoming of the security forces who served under deposed President Hosni Mubarak.
Yet for the moment, even these disturbing outbursts of violence do not seem to have been enough to trigger a mass movement against the generals reaching beyond the concerns of the usual suspects. The government’s vassals in the state media, loyally depicting the recent Downtown protests as the work of thugs and vandals, have done sterling work in this respect.
With the third round of elections to the lower house of parliament yet to be completed – not to mention the presidential poll scheduled to take place by the end of June – Egypt’s transitional period remains in a state of flux. But given the worrying signals being sent out by the ruling generals, it seems hard to believe that serious unrest will not emerge in the weeks and months ahead.
