The confidence, echoed by a state-controlled media that have begun acknowledging the protests after days of the crudest propaganda, suggested both sides believed the uprising's vitality may depend on their ability to sway a population still deeply divided over events that represent the most fundamental realignment of politics in the country in nearly three decades.
"Now it feels like Hosni Mubarak is playing a game of who has the longest breath," said Amur el-Etrebi, who joined tens of thousands in Tahrir Square on Monday.
Momentum has seemed to shift by the day in a climactic struggle over what kind of change Egypt will undergo and whether Egyptian officials are sincere in delivering it.
After demonstrating an ability to bring hundreds of thousands to downtown Cairo, protest organizers have sought to broaden their movement this week, acknowledging that simple numbers are not enough to force their demand for Mubarak's departure. The government - by trying to divide the opposition, offering limited concessions and remaining patient - appears to believe it can weather the biggest challenge to its rule.
Underlining the government's perspective that it has already offered what the protesters demanded, Naguib Sawiris, a wealthy businessman who has sought to act as a mediator, said: "Tahrir is underestimating their victory. They should declare victory."
Cairo's chronic traffic jams returned Monday as the city began to adapt to both the sprawling protests in Tahrir Square, a landmark of downtown Cairo, and the tanks, armored personnel carriers and soldiers who continued to block some streets. Banks again opened their doors as people lined up outside, and some shops took newspapers down from windows, occasionally near burnt-out vehicles still littering some streets.
The government has sought to cultivate that image of the ordinary, mobilizing its newspapers and television to insist that it was re-exerting control over the capital after its police utterly collapsed Jan. 28. The Cabinet on Monday held its first formal meeting since Mubarak reorganized it after the protests. Officials announced that the stock market, whose index fell nearly 20 percent in two days of protests, would reopen Sunday and that 6 million government employees would receive a 15 percent raise, which the new finance minister, Samir Radwan, said would take effect in April.
In scenes Monday that were most remarkable for having become so familiar, tens of thousands returned to Tahrir Square, where a small army of vendors sold cigarettes, coffee and even sweet potatoes wrapped in lists of the demonstrators' demands. Festive drummers arrived to celebrate a wedding just a little way from the scene of tumultuous street battles last week, and a dozen horse-drawn carts, bereft of their usual trade, waited for fares at the end of the Kasr el-Nil Bridge, which leads to the square.
Some protesters have contended their very presence in Tahrir Square, where crowds have surged past 100,000 several times, is enough. As long as they remain, the argument goes, the government will keep having to offer them concessions. Others, though, have worried that the tide may be turning against them in the rest of Cairo, punctuated as it is by complaints over a reeling economy and unease over the uncertainty.
"For a while, the tide of fear had turned, but it's started to come back," said Mona Rabie, a 28-year-old human rights worker. "The government has too much muscle. I think the people are going to turn against the protesters. They've already started."
This article appeared on page A - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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