Driving through post-revolution Cairo at night is eerie. The
normally busy streets are deserted, most of the city’s squares and roads are blocked by military checkpoints, and dark clad figures slip in and out of the shadows. Breaking the curfew may
result in a six month sentence, or worse. Come dawn, however, the city springs to life, looking like it has done for millennia — busy, noisy, lively.
This tale of two cities — one cowered, quiet and run by the military, and another that is lively, chaotic and civilian — is perhaps a tale not only of Cairo, but of Egypt in the midst of an ongoing transition. For though Hosni Mubarak has gone, the military underpinnings of his 30-odd year regime are more powerful than ever before.
With the police having melted away, the military has added their role to the ones it had before.
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