Street Battles in Egypt

From the most recent article in the New York Times, this paragraph:

A block away, at Champollion Street, a similar battle raged. Several people tried to stop two young men as they hauled a case of empty Pepsi bottles to their car and tore rags, apparently attempting to make Molotov cocktails. The young men brushed those efforts off.

Almost eight years ago, I drank tea and smoked sheesha on this street. These street battles - surges from Talat Harb towards the Nile and Tahrir, I've walked those streets and can imagine the mass of people. And I'm suddenly struck by the echoes of Paris - the ways in which the European dreamings of the old Khedive gave downtown Cairo the broad boulevards modeled on Haussman's Paris, themselves the legacy of communes and rebellion. Now - once more - the stage for violence.