The ambush came from the left, from a side street which led up the hill to Mokattam Mosque. A rush of hundreds of men running down on the march of antigovernment protesters, bringing a sudden clatter of rocks landing all around, the crack of shots fired and the whizz of tear gas canisters. Sticks, stones and metal bars flew through the smoke in both directions, and screaming women and men ran back the way they came.
Dozens of manned police vans remained parked about a kilometer away. The only sirens came from ambulances that drove through the crowds and past burning vehicles to take some 40 injured people to a hospital.
One angry woman with a bleeding mouth, eyes streaming from the tear gas, pulled off her headscarf and stood yelling at the other side, the supporters of the ruling Muslim Brotherhood. "You are not Islam! You are not Egypt! Where is my freedom?"