CAIRO, Egypt - As night fell, chaos descended upon Midan Tahrir. The square, illuminated by small fires and shrouded in a cloud of tear gas, had become a battlefield. Black-clad riot police fired volleys of rubber bullets, plainclothes officers wielding batons pounced on those who fell, and yet the protesters continued to advance.

Overcome by the tear gas, I collapsed into a small alley where a group of Egyptians had taken refuge. When they saw me stumble in, blinded and coughing, they immediately came to my aid, offering vinegar and onions to clear the effects of the gas. "This is not freedom!" they shouted. "Tell your country what is happening here!"

That was Friday, Jan. 28, and 11 days later, calm has returned to the streets of Cairo. After a week that saw the city sink into violence, the banks are open, supermarket shelves are stocked and people are resuming their daily lives.

But with their government ignoring them and Western nations balking at their insistence that President Hosni Mubarak step down, the protesters in Tahrir Square, who risked everything to demand basic human rights, seemed to be on the verge of being marginalized.

On Tuesday, however, the tide shifted and the protesters turned out in record numbers. Some even moved from the square to protest at the parliament building. Then, on Wednesday, there were widespread strikes by Egyptian workers. Still, there are signs average Cairo residents are growing weary of the chaos.

"The first days were great. I agreed completely with the protests," remarked Adel, a civil servant in Cairo. "But now, it is enough. The man already promised that he will not run again." When asked about protesters' demand that Mubarak resign immediately, he replied, "The protesters are young and do not understand. We do not want to be like Iraq or Afghanistan or Somalia. The president cannot suddenly step down, otherwise there will be chaos."

Speak with most Egyptians, and the response will be more or less the same. Although a sizable majority dislikes Mubarak and his policies, after a week of fear and violence they have had enough. Even my friend Ahmed, who personifies the young, educated middle class leading the protests, has grown weary.

"I am glad that the protesters in Tahrir have not given up," he told me. "But I am also relieved to see calm return."

How could a movement that seemed destined to topple Mubarak's nearly 30-year rule become relegated to a few thousand dedicated protesters isolated in Tahrir? To understand this attitude, one only has to look at the government's response since that fateful Friday a week and a half ago.

That night in Tahrir, crouched in the alleyway with the other protesters, we watched in shock as the police jumped into their trucks and armored personnel carriers and left the square. Thinking that they had retreated, protesters streamed into the square. Little did they know, the fight had just begun.

In the following days, the city was gripped by fear. The police had not only disappeared from Tahrir, but from the entire country, and the army had taken control. Banks were closed, supermarkets were empty and bandits roamed the city.

During that time, prisons around the city were liberated, including one less than five minutes from where I live, and bursts of machine-gun fire and the explosion of tank shells punctuated the night.

Along the way, even foreigners became the target of government intimidation. Traveling downtown last week by car, my friend and I were stopped three times by pro-Mubarak militias wielding machetes and metal rods.

Each time, they demanded our passports and checked the car, no doubt looking for cameras or other signs that we were journalists. At one point, one of them demanded in Arabic that his colleagues take us to the police, but we were thankfully able to talk our way out and continue home. Others were not so lucky.

With the police off the streets, the government used chaos to intimidate the population.

With Egypt at risk of sliding back into authoritarian rule, Americans must support the protesters who have braved bullets and bullying in the name of democracy. Some would have us believe that behind the protests is a sinister plot to install an extremist, Islamic theocracy. They have never been to Egypt, nor seen what I witnessed on the streets of Cairo.

What Americans should fear is the possibility of an increasingly illegitimate regime continuing to control one of the most strategically important countries in the Mideast.

Max Mattern is a Phoenix native who has spent the past year in Egypt studying Arabic and conducting research as a Fulbright scholar.