EXCLUSIVE: On the streets of Cairo

Alastair Beach is on the ground in Cairo. Here is his report for Coffee House:

As the imam rounded off his midday Friday sermon, the ring of more than three hundred riot police encircled the worshippers.

It was no ordinary congregation. A stellar assortment of Egyptian directors, actors and political bigwigs were assembled in an enormous crowd on the pavement outside the Mustafa Mahmoud mosque in Mohandiseen, Western Cairo.

Over the loudspeaker, the imam drew polite applause from the listeners when he praised protestors who had turned out for the initial demonstration in Egypt’s uprising a week last Tuesday. But then he put his foot in it. “Democracy should involve free speech but without the trouble,” he intoned solemnly in Arabic. “Every protest in life has to be done with patience.”  Ahmed Younis, a seventeen year-old student standing nearby, was not impressed. “We’ve been patient for the past thirty years.