CAIRO — Up until, Tuesday, Feb. 1, downtown Cairo's Tahrir Square was one of the happiest places in Egypt. Pro-democracy protesters, who have occupied the square since Jan. 28, were consistently positive, confident, and cooperative. Every day seemed to bring a new concession from a backpedaling government; the momentum, they felt, was clearly on their side.

A mass gathering planned for Friday, Feb. 4, was dubbed the "Day of Departure," and there were many in the crowd who genuinely thought this would be the day that President Hosni Mubarak would be hounded into early retirement. But then came a terrible and traumatic two days. On Wednesday -- a day on which many protesters admitted they had allowed themselves to relax a bit -- the square was suddenly besieged.

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Seemingly harmless pro-Mubarak gatherings, which at first looked like no more than a sideshow for the cameras, abruptly coalesced into mass of armed men who violently attempted to overrun the square and very nearly succeeded. On Thursday, Mubarak supporters didn't attack quite so aggressively as the previous day, but they expanded their perimeter, establishing control of the two main bridges leading to Tahrir and openly barring people seeking to bring desperately needed food and medical supplies into the square. They also assaulted just about any journalist they could get their hands on.

By Thursday, Tahrir's "people power" vibe had a distinct aura of desperation and paranoia. It was a fitting three-day microcosm of the fast-moving Egyptian uprising that has been marked as much as anything by rapid, jarring shifts in tone. But even amid the genuine fear of being overrun by the pro-Mubarak thugs, there remained a defiant back-to-the-wall attitude. As one female protester told Al Jazeera on Thursday morning, "We know that if we leave now, they'll just hunt us down one by one."

I entered the Tahrir Square on Friday morning to find that it had been transformed. Formidable metal barricades walled off every one of the many roads leading into the square. The protesters had apparently cannibalized two construction sites in the area. Men patrolling the edges wore hard hats. An arsenal of rocks and concrete chunks lay in a pile, waiting to be thrown. On Qasr el-Nil Street, a few doors down from After Eight, one of Cairo's poshest and most popular nightspots, a medieval trebuchet had been assembled -- which, given the mounted cavalry charge the protesters had endured on Wednesday, seemed entirely fitting.

The protesters had received reinforcements as well. Despite the previous day's attempt to cut them off from the rest of the city, at least one entry point through downtown's Talaat Harb Street had remained in the hands of the Tahrir protesters, enabling fresh cadres, food, and medical supplies to enter. In just a partial reconnaissance of the square, I saw three different makeshift medical clinics, each stocked with fresh supplies.

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