Two years later, people like Hafsa Halawa are realizing how difficult that transition can be.

While making coffee for a visitor with her gleaming new espresso machine, the 26-year-old admits she’s not your typical young Egyptian. She grew up in England, and now lives back with her family in a wealthy, gated community outside of Cairo. She wasn’t in Egypt for the revolution; she was attending grad school in the UK.

“My revolution,” she joked, “was on the phone with my parents here, freaking out about them and going to the Egyptian embassy in Britain.”

Armed with a newly-minted law degree, Halawa moved to Cairo a few months after the revolution, excited to help the fledgling democracy. She joined an American non-governmental organization (NGO) called the National Democratic Institute, or NDI, helping Egyptian political parties prepare for the country’s first free parliamentary elections in November 2011.

Hafsa Halawa at her home in a Cairo suburb. (Photo: Noel King)

“Everyone actually needed help with the same problems. Even the old guard, when it was disbanded, regrouping in a post-revolution Egypt — it’s been proven that it’s a whole host of egos and lack of finance and lack of basic understanding. I always joke that this country’s elites and it’s poor are politically illiterate,” she said.

Because NDI was working with parties across the political spectrum, Halawa didn’t think her work was particularly controversial. But just after the election, she found herself in the middle of a diplomatic firestorm. Egyptian security forces raided the offices of more than a dozen NGO’s, including NDI. They seized equipment and accused employees of spying. At first, Halawa says, she didn’t realize how serious the charges were until she was surrounded by security officers while at work.

“They started berating me and heckling me and screaming at me that I had damaged this country, that I was helping the Jewish, Israeli spies, that I was a Zionist. They had my ID card, so they saw that I was Egyptian. So, they to me: ‘are you not afraid for your country? Haven’t you done enough to your country? Enough. Enough. Enough.’ They kept screaming ‘enough.’”

The raid on the NGOs quickly became an international incident. Nineteen American citizens were charged. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton addressed the NGO crisis during a Senate hearing in February last year.

“We are engaged in very intensive discussions with the Egyptian government about finding a solution,” Clinton said. “We’ve had a lot of very tough conversations and I think we’re moving toward a resolution.”

After the diplomatic push, Egyptian authorities agreed to let the Americans leave the country.

But the Egyptians, including Halawa, are still on trial. The charges are simple: Because the NGOs were not properly registered to work in Egypt, the employees were essentially receiving illegal funds – in the form of their salaries.

Halawa and her co-defendants are confined to a cage each time they appear in court.

“It sort of has bars and it’s all mesh, mesh, mesh, mesh,” she said. “So not only can you not hear, because there are no microphones in court, you can’t really see a lot either. You have to kind of have your face right up against the mesh cage to see.”

To maintain her sense of humor, Halawa tweets during trial with the hashtag “grumpy defendant.” Egyptian political analyst Said Sadek said that Halawa’s case is one illustration of the challenges facing post-revolution Egypt. The country is now a democracy, but authoritarian values have been ingrained after decades of dictatorship.

“The regime does not allow such people to be challenging them, or exposing the corruption and human rights violations. So they are always being besieged by laws, by police system that even monitors Facebook, Skype, Twitter,” Sadek said.

Even so, Sadek – who teaches at the elite American University in Cairo – added that he’s surprised by how many of his students are willing to follow in Halawa’s footsteps.

“I get many of the graduates who were not interested in politics contacting me these days and asking, ‘What do I do? How can I join an NGO? How can I join a political party? What do I do exactly?’”

The NGO trial has been postponed until March. In the meantime, Halawa is trying to move on with her life, but finding it difficult.

“I’m angry,” Halawa said, “because I’ve spent the last 13, 14 months now, unable to work. NGOs refuse to hire me because I am on trial and it would cause problems for them with state security, even the registered organizations. I’ve had five straight rejections because of the trial. From all kinds: private sector, law firms, NGO’s and the answer is, ‘after trial ends.’”

Halawa said she doesn’t think the revolution has failed. She still has faith that Egyptians — particularly young people — will help shepherd their country toward democracy. She just hopes the trial will finally end, so she can get back to helping them.

“We are very proud that the Free Egyptians Party had the first tent erected in Tahrir Square a few days ago.”

But Abadir quickly adds that it isn’t about who was here first.

“We are also very much aware that although we started it here in the square as one party, we are meeting with the different parties on a regular basis, twice and three times a day and coordinating our efforts.”

And that’s what Egyptian opposition forces are trying to do: coordinate. After the revolution, liberal and secular groups were plagued by internal squabbling — and the better-organized Islamists and the Muslim Brotherhood easily rose to power.

Now, the opposition is seizing on Morsi’s decree as a rallying cry. Several parties have united, calling themselves the National Salvation Front.

The group includes political heavyweights like the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohammed ElBaradei and Amr Moussa, former leader of the Arab League. Hisham Kassem is a secular, liberal democracy activist.

“The last time I went to Tahrir Square, as a participant, was the day after Mubarak was ousted: February 12th, 2011. But today, I am going out to join the protesters against Morsi.”

During Hosni Mubarak’s rule, Kassem sometimes found himself advocating on behalf of Muslim Brotherhood members who were imprisoned on trumped up charges. So, when Morsi won the presidency, Kassem was prepared to give him the benefit of the doubt. Morsi’s decree last week changed all that.

“At this point, I have reached the position where I think the Brotherhood are not political adversaries or rivals. The Brotherhood are a menace to the political process. They do not understand democracy and the minute they felt that they were unable to operate democratically, this stupid move to try and simply push everybody out and take full power.”

Rallies in Tahrir Square by groups across the political spectrum are common now in Egypt but some analysts say the secular opposition needs to do more than simply call for protests if they want to gain political influence. Yasser El-Shimy is Egypt analyst at the International Crisis Group.

“I think it’s wishful thinking for the non-Islamist opposition to think that going to Tahrir would simply help re-establish their image as a viable alternative to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

El-Shimy says the opposition has some important lessons to learn about organizing — not just in urban centers like Cairo, but in Egypt’s rural towns and villages.

“Unfortunately, the opposition has not learned the lesson that they need to campaign widely, they need to establish a bit of a geographical reach throughout the country, they need to basically reach out to people, they need to establish social bases. They need to basically become a grassroots movement.”

That means the secular opposition might want to take a page from the playbook of another former opposition movement – now in power – that appears to have done it best: Mohammed Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood.

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On a recent Friday, around 10,000 Egyptians, most of them men, and many calling themselves Salafis — or ultra-conservative Muslims — rallied in Tahrir Square.

Sheikh Hossam el Din is an ultra-conservative Muslim who refers to himself as a Salafi. He and many other Salafis say there’s no question that Sharia law, or islamic law, is critical for Egypt,.

“God said that if the people fear and believe they will have blessings in heaven and on earth. There will be justice and charity, said el Din.

But that view isn’t going over well with millions of Egyptians, like Makram-Ebeid, who was a member of the first panel writing the constitution. Makram-Ebeid quit along with other Christians and Muslims, who complained that the assembly didn’t represent Egypt’s diversity. A court agreed and dissolved it.

But Makram-Ebeid says the new one is no better for liberal, secular, and Christian Egyptians. “They are absolutely terrorized. They are very concerned about what could happen because they could be treated as second-class citizens. They could be deprived of their real rights as a full-fledged citizen,” she said.

Now, members of the second panel are resigning. The role of religion in the new Egypt is a flashpoint issue — but it’s not the only one. Many people are having a problem with the draft constitution. Women worry it doesn’t give them the same rights as men, and rights advocates condemn its failure to ban torture and human trafficking. An Egyptian newspaper reports that some are upset with the use of “flowery language.”

In the seaside city of Alexandria, a new non-governmental organization is pushing for an article that guarantees fair treatment of Egyptian dwarves. Political analyst Said Sadek, who teaches at the American University in Cairo, said there are, “urban, rural, Bedouin, upper-class, middle-class, low-class, we have educated, half-educated, no education, and people who believe they are educated and they are not educated.”

The framers of the constitution appear a little fed up with all the complaints. Manar Shorbaghy, Deputy Secretary General of the constituent assembly, said: “We have been working since June and we’re working more than 12 hours a day and it has been a long, exhausting process for everyone. By this time, now, we’re all very stressed out. It [has taken] a toll on all of us.

Shorbagy is a liberal and sympathetic to concerns, but thinks some of them are overwrought. She pointed to an article of the draft constitution, which has created an uproar. Article 68 says that said Egyptian women will have equal status with men — as long as that does not conflict with Islamic law.

“You know, many people think that this article was added in this new constitution. This article has been there in the 1971 constitution. It’s the same Xerox of this article. No change in a single word,” she said.

Yesterday nearly two dozen liberal members of the assembly withdrew from the process casting new doubt on whether the group can meet a deadline of December 12th to produce a final draft constitution. The penalty if they miss the deadline is unclear, but one scenario is that the assembly might be dissolved and the whole process will start all over again.

Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said Egypt will exert every effort to stop the aggression and achieve a sustainable truce between Israel and Hamas leaders in Gaza.

Reporter Noel King observed the visit from Egypt.

She says this was Egypt’s first high-ranking official to visit Gaza since 2007.

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Aaron Schachter: Egypt’s prime minister visited the Palestinian territory today, and while still in Gaza, he pledged his country’s support for the Palestinian people. Prime Minister Hisham Kandil said Egypt will exert every effort to stop the aggression and achieve a sustainable truce. “This is a tragedy we can’t remain silent about,” said Kandil. “The entire world should be responsible regarding this aggression.” Reporter Noel King is in Cairo. Noel, this is a huge turnaround for Egypt. The pre-revolution Egyptian government of Hosni Mubarak shied away, to say the least, from dealing with Hamas.

Noel King: That’s absolutely right. In fact, Hisham Kandil was the first high-ranking Egyptian official to visit the Gaza Strip since 2007 when Hamas took over. There were two sides to this trip today that are really worth noting. In practical terms, the visit was something of a failure. Going in there was some hope that as Kandil entered the Gaza Strip we might be looking at the beginning of a cease-fire. The timeline is a little unclear, but needless to say both sides took turns firing even as Kandil was there and that took the prospect of a cease-fire off the table. Now if you look at the symbolic, this was something of a success I would say. There’s an image that’s being widely disseminated in Egypt and I’m sure broadly in the Arab world right now. It’s a picture of Hisham Kandil and the Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh. They are together holding the body of a Palestinian toddler, a little boy who was reported killed in an Israeli air strike. That picture’s telegraphed a lot to the Egyptian people about Egypt’s support, in this case a picture worth many more than a thousand words.

Schachter: Now are people in Egypt firmly behind the Hamas government in Gaza? Is there any talk, from the Muslim Brotherhood perhaps, of repealing the peace treaty with Israel?

King: There are a couple of levels of support within the Egyptian people. Overwhelmingly, popular support is behind the Palestinian cause. Now that runs the gamut from a sort of militant strain of thinking, which I would say is a minority in Egypt. Then there’s the academic perspective which looks at both sides and sort of sighs heavily. But the majority of Egyptian people feel a really emotional pull toward the Palestinian cause, if not for Hamas, And so much of this groundswell of support within Egypt comes from a place, I think, of real emotional longing and emotional support for the Palestinians.

Schachter: The Muslim Brotherhood and Morsi’s government are in a bit of a tough spot. What are the real options now for Egypt? Militarily, they can’t risk confrontation with Israel. Where do they go from here, do you think?

King: Well that’s right. Egypt in no way wants to get drawn militarily into a broader fight. What we’ve heard today, what I’ve heard today, both from sources off the record and from analysts, is that Mohamed Morsi is negotiating frantically behind closed doors trying to find some way to broker a truce. He’s trying not to telegraph that he is entirely on the side of Hamas’ aggression, but he’s also come out and condemned Israel, which is what Egyptians sort of want him to do. So in some ways he’s played both sides of the field, and he’s played both sides of the field pretty successfully so far.

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The move is popular with resurgent religious conservatives, but is being condemned by liberals who fear increasing censorship.

We speak with reporter Noel King in Cairo.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Aaron Schachter: It’s also a time of transition in Egypt. The country has changed a lot already in the wake of the Arab Spring revolution there, but more change is on the way. A new constitution has yet to be written, and that sparked a furious debate over issues like Islamic law and freedom of speech. One salvo in that debate was fired this week by Egypt’s top prosecutor. He ordered government ministries to block access to pornographic websites. Reporter Noel King is in Cairo. She says the reaction to the porn ban highlights a deep divide within Egyptian society.

Noel King: There is a large segment of the Egyptian population which is religiously conservative, which thinks that pornography is corrosive to youth, goes against the values and norms of society, and they want to see it banned. On the other hand, the liberals who were empowered during the Egyptian revolution, have taken to social media today, to Twitter, and they said, “Look, this is absolutely ridiculous. You start with banning pornography, and before long, we’ve got a situation like the one we had under Hosni Mubarak.”

Schachter: It isn’t so terribly shocking that Arab, Islamic government in the middle east would attempt to block porn, but the difference here is that this is a democratically elected government that is supposed to uphold those principles, right?

King: This is the question. Is Egypt at heart a conservative country? Is it a Muslim nation that wants Muslim laws, that wants the sort of religiously conservative norms that you see in countries like Iran or Pakistan, or is Egypt at heart a country that respects freedom of speech and freedom of expression. Even if you don’t like pornography, and certainly many Egyptians do, does it respect freedom of expression enough to say, “We are not going to allow things to start being blocked.” Now remember, during the Egyptian elections, the men, and they were mostly men who were voted into office, were men who were conservative. They are on the side that says pornography is corrosive to Egyptian society, it’s contrary to the national ethic, and we don’t like it. They represent a good part of Egypt.

Schachter: Now, they are obviously, as you say, the majority in government, but as far as the public goes, is there any indication which side will win out?

King: I’m going to put this as delicately as I can. There are a lot of very young men in Egypt. And one of the knock on effects of the foundering economy over the past decade is that young men are not getting married at age 20, or age 21 anymore. They are getting married at 30, or 31. There is a whole decade where young Egyptian men don’t have a lot to do, which means a lot of Egyptian men are looking at pornography. So even if you exclude the moral argument, there is a very specific social argument that’s going to happen here. I will say this anecdotally. I heard from Egyptian women today on both sides of the spectrum, and what they said is, “We have to deal with enough, sexual harassment, when we walk in the street. If you take pornography away from Egyptian men, do you have any idea how bad it’s going to get for us?”

Schachter: One of the interesting aspects of this ban, is it happens to be an issue that both the current Islamic-led government and the former dictator Hosni Mubarak agreed.

King: Well, you know, the prosecutor general who called to implement the ban is, as you say, a remnant of the regime of Hosni Mubarak. He has a very chilly relationship with president Mohamed Morsi. The two men, a few weeks ago, actually clashed outright. Morsi attempted to remove the prosecutor general from his position. He said, “You haven’t done a very good job of going after the men who are accused of killing Egyptian protesters during the revolution. I’m taking you out of that top judiciary spot, and I’m sending you, believe it or not, as an ambassador to the Vatican.” The very next day, the prosecutor general came out and said, “I’m not going to leave this job unless I’m assassinated.” Now, if you are an ambitious remnant of the Mubarak regime, and you want to get along with the new guys in power, the Muslim Brotherhood, what is one of the things you can do? You can bang the drum on one of their flashpoint issues, like the banning of pornography. Some analysts believe that that’s what’s happening here. This is about political gamesmanship, as much as anything.

Schachter: Noel, as you say, hard to tell where things will go with this particular law banning pornography, but one thing we know for certain is that the software to block pornography is not cheap. Can Egypt actually afford to do this?

King: You know, that’s a great question, and in the end, that’s what this might come down to. What technology experts came up with is, the figure they came up with, is 16.5 million dollars in the first six months, and then millions of dollars each month after that. Again, we are talking about a country where about half of the population is on or below the poverty line. There is no extra money for something like this, and some of the fiercest critics have said, “Why are we not focusing on our economy, which is in disarray. Why are we talking about instituting a procedure that is going to cost us millions of dollars that we simply don’t have lying around. ”

Schachter: Reporter Noel King in Cairo. Thank you.

King: Thank you, Aaron.

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They’re viewed with suspicion and skepticism by many Egyptians.

Now Egypt’s metal heads wonder where they stand in the new Egypt, as Noel King reports from Cairo.

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The Geo Quiz takes us to a monastery this time. Monks have lived for at least 17 centuries at Saint Catherine’s Monastery — where monks have lived for at least 17 centuries.

It sits on a mountaintop – in the southern part of a triangular peninsula that sits between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.

Through the centuries this peninsula has served as a land bridge between the continents of Asia and Africa.

The answer is Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula.

It’s home to to the aforementioned Saint Catherine’s Monastery where a remarkable partnership is now underway between monks and scientists.

They’re all trying to recover some hidden writings that date back more than a millennium. Noel King reports:

Father Justin, the monastery’s librarian, affixes one page of a manuscript to the spectral imaging machine. (Photo: Noel King)

Knights from the crusades carved graffiti into the stone walls. A shrub in the courtyard is believed to be the burning bush of Biblical lore.

“In ancient times, Sinai was the most remote of all the Christian pilgrim sites,” says Father Justin, the monastery’s librarian.

“And the monks who came here were coming, like, to the edge of the inhabitable world. It was such a harsh desert, people came here for the silence and because this had been the place sanctified by the revelations of God.”

Father Justin oversees a treasure trove of ancient texts. Because the monastery is so remote, and because the dry, mountain air is so conducive to preservation, the library at St. Catherine’s holds manuscripts that date as far back as the 5th century.

For many years, monks and scholars have known that some of the manuscripts are special. They are old, yes, but there is even older writing hidden underneath their pages. These manuscripts are called palimpsests. Mike Phelps is director of the Sinai Palimpsests Project

“Writing material was extremely expensive in the ancient and medieval worlds, so a medieval scribe would scrape or wash a pre-existent manuscript to make them reusable for a new manuscript. They were never able, or almost never able, to perfectly erase the underlying layer. It appears as sort of a coffee-brown stain on the manuscript. You can see that the writing is there, but it is not necessarily legible.”

Scientists analyze the ancient palimpsests (Photo: Noel King)

In a darkened command center beside the monastery’s library, each page of a manuscript is photographed 31 times in a range of light wavelengths.

Once the page has been digitized electronically, computer programs combine all of the spectral data and, almost like invisible ink, the writing underneath emerges.

Reporter: Thirty one pictures, all of the same page. And nobody has seen the writing underneath this page for about a thousand years, is that right?
Camera Operator: Yes.
Reporter: You two are both Greek. Can you read this?
Camera Operator: I can read Pateron. P-A-T-E-R-O-N.

This turns out to be a letter of advice from an elder monk, a pateron, to a novice. Who was this monk? Why did he have access to valuable parchment? Was he someone important?

Saint Catherine's Monastery (Photo: Berthold Werner/Wiki Commons)

The simple, deliberate lifestyle at the monastery seems contrary to the high-tech science taking place here. The monks wear traditional black robes, and gather to pray several times a day. They converse mostly in Greek.

I asked the monastery’s abbot, 76-year-old Archbishop Damianos if it bothers him that the scientists mostly want to see their cutting-edge equipment work wonders – while the monks want to see what the hidden texts might reveal about God’s wonders. He says he’s thought a lot about that – and in the end, he believes scientific and theological objectives don’t have to conflict.

“Theology is not something you can come in direct contact with,” he says. “It is not material. In science, you can take a microscope and analyze things. Science is trying to find something material. Theology is trying to find the way that the soul can come closer to God. But both of them are about searching for something.”

The project is being paid for by a British charity called Arcadia Fund for the next four years – so the scientists and monks will have a good amount of time to debate how science and theology can get co-exist.

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The speaker of the dissolved house has already responded to Mursi’s decree, calling on lawmakers to meet on Tuesday.

Army units outside parliament have left and some lawmakers have gone in.

The decision by President Mursi, whose Muslim Brotherhood has most seats, sets up a potential showdown with the military.

Lisa Mullins gets the latest from reporter Noel King in Cairo.

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The text below is a phonetic transcript of a radio story broadcast by PRI’s THE WORLD. It has been created on deadline by a contractor for PRI. The transcript is included here to facilitate internet searches for audio content. Please report any transcribing errors to theworld@pri.org. This transcript may not be in its final form, and it may be updated. Please be aware that the authoritative record of material distributed by PRI’s THE WORLD is the program audio.

Lisa Mullins: I’m Lisa Mullins and this is The World. Egypt is in the midst of a political showdown between its new Islamist President and the military. President Mohammed Mursi has ordered the dissolved Egyptian parliament to reconvene. The elected body was disbanded a month ago by the country’s ruling military council. Today Egypt Supreme Court sided with the generals. They rejected Mursi’s order. The court said that a previous ruling, declaring the election of parliament unconstitutional, was final. Reporter Noel King in Cairo says that the court also acted to preserve its own authority.

Noel King: What the Supreme Court is trying to say is, “We are still in charge. What we say goes.” And that means Egypt’s Parliament is not a constitutionally elected body. What this means on the whole is that we’re being set up for a confrontation between the President Mohammed Mursi and the judiciary of Egypt.

Mullins: OK, so what does it mean for today then? Is Egypt’s parliament able to convene or not?

King: The speaker of Egypt’s parliament has said that the body will meet at 12 noon tomorrow and we expect that they will indeed go into the court. We did see something very significant this afternoon. Ever since the parliament was dissolved a month ago, there have been army units positioned outside of the parliament building. They are there to keep anyone including the now out of”¦ or parliamentarians from entering the building. Now today those army units were pulled back. And what this suggests to us is that we’re now seeing perhaps a diminished prospect of a very embarrassing and public conflict.

Mullins: So it appears now that the military council SCAF still has a significant amount of power in Egypt. What is within its round of jurisdiction?

King: What SCAF is in charge of it’s basically everything. And in the absence of a parliament SCAF is the legislative authority in Egypt. SCAF is in charge or has oversight over the national budgets. SCAF have control over their own affairs. What Mohammed Mursi appears to attempt to be doing here is exercising a bit of his own authority, flexing some political muscle, and saying all of these questions about whether or not I’m just a figurehead, whether or not the real authority is still in the hands of the ruling military council. Those questions are illegitimate. I am the democratically elected President of this country and I plan on moving forward in that vein.

Mullins: Does that amount to more than words?

King: Muhammad Mursi and the ruling military council are cutting deals behind closed doors. So again and again we feel as if we’ve been set up for a very public confrontation. We feel as if that confrontation is being litigated or played out in the national press and in the international press. And then at the end things have a tendency to calm down. One of the other very striking things that we did see today it’s worth noting. Mohamed Mursi went to a graduation ceremony for military cadets. The man he was seated next to is Field Marshal Mohammed Hussein Tantawi, the man who he’s supposed to be at political odds with.

Mullins: So for General Tantawi though, what would be his motivation and the military council, SCAF’s motivation to dissolve parliament in the first place?

King: The ruling military council’s entreasing Egypt have always been economic. One of the things that really displeased the ruling military council about this elected parliament was that the parliament was comprised mainly of Islamists, of members of the Muslim Brotherhood Party and the even more conservative Salafist Party. Those two groups had vowed that they were going to go after economic corruption. Now, the army is well-known to be at the center of a lot of that economic corruption. So the military’s interest in general seems to be protecting its economic interest, making sure that nobody has the authority to challenge them on that level.

Mullins: How well does the average Egyptian function under this kind of dissent among the authority figures in Egypt?

King: I think that’s really the critical question here. As I said this continues to be litigated in public, in the press, and the result is the Egyptian public is enormously confused and they are extremely worried. It’s worth noting that this dissolved parliament wasn’t very popular in the first place because they hadn’t gotten anything done. And I think what Egyptians want on the whole is for this country to turn itself around economically. That can’t happen if we’re going to continue on with this kind of political chaos.

Mullins: All right, speaking to us from Cairo, Egypt, reporter Noel King. Thank you.

King: Thank you.

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There was a protest march recently in Tahrir Square, but 26-year-old activist Nihal Saad Zaghloul stayed home. Zaghloul said she doesn’t feel safe in Tahrir anymore after she and two female friends were sexually assaulted by a mob of men at another demonstration.

“It was getting so crowded and we wanted to get out,” she said. “And suddenly, some men just started to grab us and, like, pull us away from each other. It was groping and, like, hands all over you and it wasn’t really nice at all. It was really aggressive. Somemen were trying to help us out but at some point you did not know who was helping and who was not.”

Cairo is never an easy city for women. Catcalling, groping and unwanted sexual advances are common. Some women find the harassment irritating; others find it frightening. Most agree that it is almost impossible to avoid. But Zaghloul said what happened to her and her friends in Tahrir Square differed from day-to-day sexual harassment.

“They didn’t get the meaning of ‘no’ and ‘leave us alone,’. “They were just going on and on and on and on. It was as if they were animals on drugs or something. It wasn’t normal. You know? It wasn’t. It wasn’t as if they were normal people. They were enjoying it was like sadistic; they were enjoying hurting us,” Zaghloul said.

Zaghloul didn’t go to the police because she knew it’s unlikely that anyone would be punished.

“The fact that many women today don’t automatically go to the police is a reflection of the fact that they know that their complaint won’t be taken seriously and won’t progress, so they think it’s a waste of time,” said Heba Morayaf, an Egypt analyst with Human Rights Watch.

“In some cases, obviously, the police is also involved in the harassment. But the truth of the matter is that even in the more serious incidents, even in the rare cases when women do insist on filing a complaint, it never goes anywhere,” Morayef said.

Police have more or less ceded control in Tahrir Square to Civilian watchdog groups. After 22-year-old engineering student Abd el Fattah Mahmoud heard about Zaghloul’s assault from a blog post she wrote about the incident, he formed a group of his own. For Abd el Fattah and many young men and women who took part in the revolution, Tahrir is a sacred space.

“For this to happen, that means the revolution is dying in eyes of the people and the hearts of the youth that started it,” Mahmoud said. “This is very significant. It’s more significant than the marches and the sit-ins. This is very significant. We can’t let this happen here.”

Abd el Fattah Mahmoud and other young revolutionaries say they believe that the assaults on women are a deliberate attempt to scare them away from the square and to tarnish Tahrir’s image.

But they can’t pinpoint who might be behind the attacks, and they have no proof that the attacks are planned. A few days after Nihal was assaulted, she and Abd el Fattah helped organize a rally in Tahrir against sexual harassment. Things got off to a slow start; only a few, mostly non-Egyptian women, turned out. And crowds of curious men quickly surrounded them.

“We’re being surrounded by other men and I don’t feel comfortable,” said one woman.

“It’s just because we’re foreign women standing around,” said another. “This is my problem. I feel so uncomfortable. They’re just surrounding us. These aren’t men here to protect us. These are men that are probably gonna assault us.”

But the women stayed and their numbers grew.Around fifty women held homemade signs and chanted against sexual harassment.

The women were ringed by men wearing neon yellow vests, members of Abd el Fattah Mahmoud’s civilian patrol.

Nihal Saad Zaghloul said it felt a bit awkward and strange being back in Tahrir Square, but seeing all of the people supporting the women made her feel better.

The rally was scheduled to last until sundown. At dusk, the group disbanded and most participants headed for home. A few stayed behind in the square. As night fell, they were attacked by a mob of men. The women fled and escaped without serious injuries.

They didn’t go to the police, and their attackers were never identified.

The demonstrations were largely peaceful. But pro-democracy activists complain that the Egyptian military keeps violating the human rights of protesters.

And that puts them on a collision course with supporters of the military.

After dark, in a dusty cul-de-sac in a ramshackle section of Cairo’s Heliopolis neighborhood, several young Egyptian men are staging a show. They’ve rigged a laptop to a precarious tower of old speakers; and they’re projecting a film onto a 3-by-3-foot screen.

Called “Kazeboon,” the film is a compilation of video clips that show Egyptian security forces chasing, beating and shooting at protesters during clashes in November and December.

Those clips are interspersed with news footage of generals from Egypt’s ruling Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, or SCAF. The generals deny that any abuse has taken place; they stress that the armed forces have exercised self-restraint. With its grainy footage and melodramatic soundtrack, the video is neither slick nor subtle, but that’s not the point.

“We organized this event to show people who didn’t go to Tahrir Square what is happening, and to make them aware of crimes the SCAF has committed,” said 22-year-old Ahmed Khalil.

Khalil, a computer science student, helped organize tonight’s viewing and said he is happy with the turnout. But in such a densely populated area, when Cairo’s famed nightlife is just hitting its stride, it would seem that 150 young men isn’t much of a crowd.

“Most of the people who live in this neighborhood aren’t interested in coming here,” Khalil said. “They prefer to stay at home because they believe that SCAF will secure the country. So even this number of people is a positive sign.”

Then, almost as if Khalil predicted it, the street behind us filled with young men chanting in support of Egypt’s ruling military council.

The activists and the pro-military youth faced off with competing chants.

The activists shouted, “Down with the military regime.”

Their rivals yelled, “the army and the people are one hand.”

Cars and buses stopped in the street while passengers gawked; and pedestrians whipped out their cell phones to take pictures. Then, after a few shoves, the youths separated.

The incident in Heliopolis illustrates how divided Egyptians are as they mark the one-year anniversary of the start of Egypt’s revolution.

The “Askar Kazeboon,” or “Military Liars,” campaign is an attempt by activists to win more people to their view that little has changed since the revolution that overthrew long-time dictator Hosni Mubarak. SCAF forces, they say, are just as brutal as Mubarak’s were.

The most recent clashes took place in mid-December and made an icon of a young Egyptian woman who was filmed being violently kicked by black-clad riot troops while lying prone, her black veil or niqab pulled up to expose her bra.

“At that point we decided enough is enough and we have to start a campaign of truth showing people what really happens on the street, altering their major media capability by going to the street with the truth,” said Ramy Shaath, general coordinator of the Free Egyptians Group which is helping coordinate some Kazeboon viewings.

Shaath said they are trying to counter Egypt’s powerful state media machine, which owns television and radio stations and newspapers. State media routinely carries the statements of the Egyptian generals – without any balance – who paint pro-democracy activists as thugs.

Egyptians who can’t afford satellite dishes, Shaath said, are entirely dependent upon state media to help form their opinions.

But is the Askar Kazeboon campaign convincing anyone? Or, is it only attracting angry young men who already view the military council as the enemy?

“I have seen the shocking effect on people. I have seen people shocked,” Shaath said. “They were not believing what they were watching and started relating the lies they heard on state TV to the reality they are watching and started remember the kind of lies they used to hate from the Mubarak regime.”

And so on Wednesday, when tens of thousands of Egyptians poured into Tahrir Square, it was with a sense of trepidation. At the day’s end, Egypt’s health ministry said around 150 people were mildly injured – but not by security forces.

Most were accidentally crushed by the large celebratory crowds in the square. Riot police and troops didn’t have the opportunity to clash with protesters. They were conspicuously absent from the celebrations.

Boston.com: Picture from Tahrir Square

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In the ensuing chaos, more than a dozen people died. But they weren’t the only casualties.

Egypt’s Scientific Institute, formed in 1798 by Napoleon Bonaparte, was burned and thousands of rare books were destroyed.

In the basement of the Egyptian National Library, a remarkable rescue effort is underway. Teams of researchers, book restorers and volunteers are attempting to save 193,000 rare manuscripts, books and scientific journals.

The books are in a sad state. Burned by fire and then drenched when desperate firefighters tried to extinguish the flames.

Magdi Montassir is vacuuming-packing the wet books. He gently places each book into a plastic bag, then puts the book into a machine that looks a little like a photocopier.

He closes the lid, turns a dial and the bag fills up with air. Then, every bit of air is pushed out with a sharp whoosh.

“The machine sealing the bag,” Montassir says. “Empty oxygen, nitrogen, okay? Now, close the machine. Now the machine work. Look. And now it gives oxygen and becomes empty. No oxygen, no grow of bacteria or no fungi.”

The vacuum-packed books are stacked haphazardly in a basement hallway. The sight of thousands of rare volumes cascading in piles in a dimly-lit hallway is shocking.
But there’s just no other place for them.

Up on the roof of the Egyptian National Archives, even more books are drying out in the sun. They’re lying on sheets of newspaper, held down by stones.

The fastest and easiest way to dry them is simply take them up to the roof of the building and let the Egyptian sun beat down on them.

Back downstairs, a young man in a white lab coat is slumped at a table aiming a neon blue hair dryer at a damp scientific journal.

Behind him is the crown jewel of Egypt’s collection: an original copy of the Description D’Egypt, a description of Egyptian customs, art, culture and history that dates back to Napoleon’s 1798 campaign.

The pages are burnt at the edges. Otherwise, the book is in decent shape.

The books are from the Institut D’Egypt, or Egypt’s Scientific Institute. The building was a national treasure that most Egyptians didn’t even know existed.
With no government funding and no digitization of the volumes, historians describe it as a sleepy library that attracted researchers with lots of time and patience on their hands.

Whoever started the fire during the height of clashes between Egyptian protesters and security forces in December, probably didn’t even know what he was destroying.

“We are a cultured people,” says Zain El Din Mohammed Abdel Hati, chairman of the Egyptian National Library.

He’s furious with the protesters who burned the Institute.

“I think who did this is the enemy of the Egyptian culture. In this moment, we have a lot of enemies,” he says.

Abdel Hati has spent a good portion of the library’s budget on the recovery effort. He is running out of money. And the rescuers are tired. Their nerves are frayed. Many of them are heartbroken about the loss.

Researcher Mohammed Hassan kneels in a basement room where fans have been turned on full-blast to help dry the books. The fans are pointed up at the ceiling to avoid disturbing the ashes and loose pages -all that is left of many books.

He is gently sifting burnt pages with a gloved hand.

Hassan won’t throw away anything though – not even the charred scraps.

Hassan: “Little, little, little paper. I keep it here,” Hassan says.

Ruxandra Guidi: “It’s impossible to tell which books those scraps of paper come from.”

Hassan: “Yes.”

GR: “So, why save them?”

Hassan: “I need somebody who is specialist in these cases to tell me to throw it away. OK, I will throw. But until now, I must keep it safe.”

Until the experts can decide which books can be saved and which can’t, volunteers will continue working for hours at a stretch – with hair dryers and shrink wrap machines – trying to salvage history, one page at a time.