The situation eased today, with more people finding ways to get around the city, Abdel Moneim Riyadh and Sixth of October Bridge opened for traffic, and the army controlling a tighter perimeter at Tahrir Southern and Western entrances.[...]
The mood in Tahrir is, as ever, uplifting and ebullient. It's a veritable tent city in the grassy parts, and the atmosphere is reminiscent of a moulid — the celebrations of saints that are part of the more Dionysian side of the way Islam is practiced in Egypt.
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Most people have just been sleeping on whatever free bit of grass or asphalt they could find, huddled together for warmth.
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The food and medicine shortages have for the most part stopped. What people are eating won't win any nutritionists' recommendations — it's mostly ready-made foods like chips — but at least it's there. A few days people went hungry, but persevered. One amusing fact is that the Tahrir people have come up with their own nickname for all types of food: al-Kentucky. The questions asked at the gates are, "did you remember to bring in al-Kentucky? Where's your al-Kentucky?" This reminds me, as a friend once observed, that Kentucky Fried Chicken has a special place in the contemporary Egyptian imagination. I don't know whether it's because KFC was the first of the fast food chains, but al-Kentucky has now graduated from signifier of middle class arrivisme to the staple food of the Cairo Commune of 2011.
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