The amber street­lights standing sentry over the Nile Cornice running in front of the com­mu­ni­ca­tions building in the Maspero complex in downtown Cairo do something odd to peoples’ col­oration at night, flat­ten­ing and softening bright colors, turning the assem­blages of people into a chiaroscuro — here and there a green laser lacing through the smoke and smog to mark out one of the snipers perched in the windows of the hulking rotunda.

The building is studded with huge com­mu­ni­ca­tions antennae on top. It is from there that the gov­ern­ment puts out its pro­pa­ganda, and for that reason it has been targeted by pro­test­ers, who started a sit-in there on January 26. I spent the evenings of the twenty-sixth and the twenty-seventh there.

Tahrir is vast, central, telegenic, and sym­bol­i­cally important. But it has also taken on too festive an air, activists tell me. There have been mild clashes between rev­o­lu­tion­ar­ies and activists, insistent that the fight for freedom in Egypt has scarcely begun, and those who are eager to settle into the par­lia­ment and insti­tu­tion­al­ize their electoral gains: the Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Broth­er­hood and Al Nour, the Salafi Party.