“This is the first time the Party of the Couch has come down into the street,” said Sayed Sameh, the 55-year-old owner of a workshop. “We are the silent majority.”

Those sentiments were delivered less stridently in Shobra, a working-class neighborhood whose three million people outnumber the populations of some smaller Arab countries. Even on Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, its rhythm was one of perpetual motion, as sellers of grilled sweet potatoes hawked their fare beside cafes disgorging customers to the sidewalk.

A group of young men chatted on a side street, near a mural that celebrated the Jan. 25 Revolution, the favored name for the events that forced Mr. Mubarak from power. Near a pool of standing water, they complained of a reeling stock market, factories closing, chaos in the streets and the writ of the bultagiyya, slang for thugs. “No one agrees on what’s going on down there,” said Wael Arabi, a 29-year-old construction foreman, pointing in the general direction of Tahrir Square.

The men lacked the impetuosity of the rally in Abassiya. One of them compared Mr. Mubarak to Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, Egypt’s de facto ruler — “the same language, but with a different face.” Another hoped for the appearance of someone like Gamal Abdel Nasser, the authoritarian but populist leader who ruled Egypt until 1970. But together they captured the refrain that has made transitions so difficult in Syria, Libya and Yemen — the sense of the unknown after decades of grimly repressive rule. “People side with him because they’re scared,” said Ahmed Afifi, a 30-year-old engineer and self-described pessimist. “They don’t know what’s going to happen next.”

The military has stoked the flames of xenophobia, warning of plots against Egypt. Communiqué No. 85, issued this week, warned of those trying to sow chaos and, in what was essentially an appeal to vigilantism, urged people to hand over troublemakers to the authorities. Fear of spies, always a fixture here, seems especially pronounced these days. “All those people in Tahrir Square, they’re 15 or 16 years old,” said Mohammed Nooh, a 57-year-old vendor, sitting along another street. “And they’re paid from abroad.”

“We know what real revolutionaries look like,” added his friend, Zaki Sabri.

Polls in Egypt have consistently shown formidable support for the military through the transition, and even the toughest youths hurling rocks at the police this week voiced their backing for the institution, often in the same breath that they ridiculed Field Marshal Tantawi as a puppet of Mr. Mubarak. The military seems so confident in that support that Field Marshal Tantawi offered this week, without providing much detail, to hold a referendum to determine whether it should keep ruling. In the words of one of his generals, “If the people came now and said give up power, we would be relieved.”