During the Egyptian summer tempers rise along with temperatures. Street fights erupt with alarming regularity. Purple faces, bulging veins and blood-curdling threats seem to portend carnage. Yet much of this is theatre, played out in the confidence that passers-by will intervene, separate combatants and make them reconcile. Emerging from decades in a deep freeze of authoritarianism, Egyptian politics is showing a similar propensity to grow dangerously heated, then subside into calm as cooler heads intervene. In recent weeks the political scene, occupied by scores of passionate new actors produced by the big bang of revolution, has looked frightening-ly polarised. It pits mostly secular forces, impatient for sweeping change, against wary conservatives who are backed by the ruling army high command and bolstered, ironically, by Islamist groups that faced repression under the pre-revolutionary regime. The tension has at times risen beyond rhetoric.
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