Related Stories Click here for more political coverage from TIME magazine. Everyone in the streets looks shabby and tired. You see few smiling faces, and only the black-market profiteers and smugglers are well dressed.
Sandy dust coats everything in a city slipping back into the desert.
A few try to escape it all. Kids squeal as they ride high on the Ferris wheel at the Luna Park fun fair, while their parents chat and stroll. Over in Martyrs Square, it is Funeral Day. The little bodies have been stored in hospital morgues, some for weeks, against Muslim law, stockpiled for these set-piece processions. The government brings in the protesters, pulling volunteers out of restaurants to join.