Down by the Nile

Gone are the roaring days of rage on the Nile's banks. Now it’s the time of fear and frustration for the Brotherhood supporters. Today their call for a “martyrs’ Friday” brought only few thousands demonstrators in the streets of Cairo, mainly in the popular suburbs of Giza and Helwan. There were clashes in the Delta and a stronger turnout in Asyut, but nothing compared to the millions who propelled the Brotherhood to power just a few months ago. The military crackdown appears to have broken the islamists’ resolve, at least for now and in the capital. The entire leadership has been arrested, together with no less than 3,000 activists. The army has won the battle and is playing the risky game of forcing the Brotherhood underground, where it has survived for decades and will surely find the way to re-organize. But now its spiritual leader, Mohammed Badie, is behind bars while Hosni Mubarak has spent his first night out of jail in a military hospital in the city. In a matter of days the Egyptian spring has turned into a cold and ominous winter. General Abdul Fattah al-Sisi has gained the upper hand in its efforts to break the movement supporting the ousted president Mohamed Morsi: soldiers and security forces surround the mosques and the main squares and avenues; tanks and armored personnel carriers guard bridges, tunnels and other key points around the city; and the army announces that 78 jihadists (48 of them “foreign”) have been killed in the Sinai peninsula, the lawless “Baluchistan of the Middle East”. I am off tomorrow on an afternoon flight and I am leaving a divided city: downtown Cairo firmly held by the army, the working class suburbs boiling and seeking revenge. It’s not over yet.