CAIRO — As Egypt’s revolt entered its third week the government of President Hosni Mubarak sought to seize the initiative from protesters still crowding Tahrir Square on Monday, offering a pay raise for government employees, announcing a date for opening the stock market and projecting an air of normalcy in a city reeling just days ago.
The confident tone, echoed by state-controlled news media that have begun acknowledging the protests after days of the crudest propaganda, suggested that both sides believed the uprising’s vitality might depend on their ability to sway a population still deeply divided over events that represent the most fundamental realignment of politics here 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.
On the 15th day of the protests, there were indications on Tuesday that the authorities were trying to limit foreign journalists’ access to Tahrir Square. Soldiers at the only accessible entrance to the square said foreigner reporters would have to present an Egyptian press credential to enter. The vast majority of journalists who have flown in to cover the uprising do not have such a credential, which normally is restricted to resident correspondents and which can be obtained only after a lengthy bureaucratic process.
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 about delivering it. In a sign of the tension, American officials described as “unacceptable” statements by Vice President Omar Suleiman that the country was not ready for democracy, but showed no sign that they had shifted away from supporting Mr. Suleiman, a man widely viewed here as an heir to Mr. Mubarak.
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 Mr. 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 force utterly collapsed on Jan. 28. The cabinet on Monday held its first formal meeting since Mr. 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 six million government employees would receive a 15 percent raise, which the new finance minister, Samir Radwan, said would take effect in April. The raise mirrored moves in Kuwait and Jordan to raise salaries or provide grants to stanch anger over rising prices across the Middle East, shaken with the repercussions of Egypt’s uprising and the earlier revolt in Tunisia. In Iraq, Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki said Friday he would cut in half his salary, believed to be $350,000, amid anger there over dreary government services.
As in the past the government here has swerved between crackdown and modest moves of conciliation. In harrowing raids it arrested 30 human rights activists, but released them by Sunday morning. Wael Ghonim, a Google marketing executive and an organizer of the revolt, was freed Monday after disappearing nearly two weeks ago.
In past years the government has managed to at least make its version of events the dominant narrative, but in the outpouring of dissent here that is no longer the case. Fighting still flared in the Sinai Peninsula, where Bedouins, long treated as second-class citizens, have fought Egyptian security forces for weeks.
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.
“There are no tourists now, so what are we going to do?” asked Mohammed Adel, a 38-year-old driver, parked near the square. “I’m hoping to make a little money here.”
The very joviality has seemed to worry some organizers, who have sought to recapture the initiative from a government determined to wait them out. Protest leaders have called for a general strike on Tuesday as part of a “Week of Steadfastness.” They have also considered trying to organize more large-scale demonstrations in other Egyptian cities and acts of civil disobedience like surrounding the state television headquarters, reviled by many protesters for its blatantly misleading portrayal of them.
“The means for escalation are still there,” said Zyad el-Alawi, a 30-year-old coordinator of the protests. “The means for driving our movement are still there.”
Some protesters have contended that 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 have to keep offering 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 current uncertainty.
The worry has made even more poignant a song by a late Egyptian icon, Abdel Halim Hafez, that has become an anthem of the protests. “Oh time, take a picture of us,” go the lyrics, blaring from speakers set up in Tahrir Square. “We will grow even closer to each other, and whoever drifts away from the square will never appear in the picture.”
“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.”
One activist catalogued in a small notebook the rumors that he had heard about the square when he went beyond the concertina wire: that the protesters had tables piled with free hashish and marijuana; that Islamists had separated the men and women; and that demonstrators were paid by foreigners (50 euros and a meal, goes the story). His favorite was that protesters were distributing poisoned flowers that could kill if touched.
State television has also suggested that protesters had received free fast food.
“Where is my Kentucky Fried Chicken?” has become a rallying cry in the square.
But to the chagrin of protesters, the rumors have managed to become part of the conversation in Cairo. Though Al Jazeera may be the flagship station of the tumult in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere, Egyptian television remains a powerful instrument of the state, and while it has begun recognizing the protests, it still frames them as seeds of chaos.
“They’re still out there!” said Said Ahmed, a driver stuck in snarled downtown traffic. “All this time, and I haven’t made a penny, not enough for a bite to eat.”
He pulled out 3 Egyptian pounds, nearly 50 cents.
“That’s all I’ve got left in my pocket,” he declared.
A surge in resentment of foreigners still courses through Cairo, fanned by the Egyptian news media and officials who accused them of being behind the rebellion. While there is an overwhelming consensus on the corruption and ineptitude of the government, along with loathing for the brutality of the Interior Ministry’s forces and the ubiquitous police, Mr. Mubarak touched a nerve among some in insisting that he would die in Egypt.
Often heard is the idea that the protesters’ demands have been met.
“At this point, the guys in Tahrir Square are talking to themselves and that’s it,” said Mohammed Ahmed, a 32-year-old shop owner. “It’s over. If they stay for 100 years or for one million years, they won’t bring any more Interactive value to either themselves or to us.” Not everyone agreed, and even those angry at the scene in Tahrir Square often expressed sympathy with the earlier protests. The uprising itself still generates pride.
“If someone asked me when I was born, I would say Jan. 25,” Shafei Mahmoud, another storekeeper, said of the first protest. “Their demands are our demand. If I had money, I would give it to them. They deserve everything good that comes to them.”
Reporting was contributed by David D. Kirkpatrick, Kareem Fahim, Mona el-Naggar, Roger Cohen, Thanassis Cambanis and Liam Stack.
