was present in Warsaw, Berlin, Budapest, and Prague in 1989 when non-violent revolutions swept the Communists from power, creating a brand new model of regime change. I stood in Wenceslas Square as hundreds of thousands of people rattled their keys, unleashing an eerie, shimmering sound into the air, chanting, “Your time is up!” I had lived among the Czechs for a decade in the 1970s, and I felt the power of their relief as the hated regime slipped into history.

So, not surprisingly, I was intrigued by the instant media punditry comparing the bloodless revolutions in central Europe with the recent wave of Arab uprisings in the Middle East. Even on television, I could see similarities between Prague 1989 and Cairo 2011: the peacefulness of protesters; the prominent role played by young people; the sparkling displays of public eloquence and wit; the sudden release from fear and the rebirth of civic pride; the infectious jubilation when the regime was finally brought down. But I saw big differences as well.

In 1989, British historian Timothy Garton Ash, having a celebratory beer with Václav Havel, observed that in Poland it had taken ten years to overthrow the system, in Hungary ten months, and in East Germany ten weeks; Czechoslovakia would perhaps take ten days. He was simplifying, of course, yet his remark captured something of the truth of the moment: Soviet-style Communism was a unified system run, with some minor local variations, from Moscow, and its collapse overturned the old Cold War domino theory — the belief that if Communism were not contained militarily it would spread to other countries. The revolutions of 1989 marked the end of an era, and provided an occasion for joy and optimism to everyone who had lived so long in the shadow of nuclear Armageddon.

Even from my armchair in front of the television, I could see that the events in Tahrir Square were charged with a different energy and a different meaning. Without knowing much about the misery Hosni Mubarak had inflicted on his country, I could still feel the enormous, pent-up frustration of protesters who, day after day, pushed back against the police, braving tear gas, truncheons, armoured cars, rubber bullets, and buckshot, not to mention the stones, Molotov cocktails, and bullets unleashed against them by the regime’s thugs and sharpshooters. Hundreds died and many more were injured. The battle of Tahrir Square looked and felt like a real revolution.

Yet the outcome remained far from clear. Mubarak was gone, but he was instantly replaced by an interim military junta that promised to step down after elections later in the year. The military had allowed the revolution to take its course — one of the slogans in Tahrir Square was “The people and the army are one hand!” — but as a governing body it was ham-fisted and slow, and the popular trust it enjoyed at first soon began to fray. The 1989 revolutions had been swift and decisive, their outcomes never really in doubt; Egypt’s revolution appeared to be bogging down, and had succeeded only in comparison with those in Libya, Syria, Yemen, and Bahrain, where the violence continued unabated.

Meanwhile, less optimistic analogies had begun to surface. Drawing parallels to abortive revolutions that swept through Europe in 1848 implied that the Arab revolts were vulnerable to suppression, at least in the short run. Comparisons with the 1979 revolution in Iran suggested that they could lead to nasty Islamic theocracies across the region. The Communist countries of central Europe all had unified opposition movements that were almost like governments-in-waiting and enjoyed Western support, whereas the Arab Awakening had no such coherence and seemed to make many neighbouring countries wary, even fearful. I could understand why an absolute monarchy like Saudi Arabia might feel threatened, or why Israel might worry about the future of its relationship with a democratic Egypt. But why were so many pundits outside the Middle East worried? And why in Prague, of all places, were those who had been on the front lines in 1989 asking whether the Arabs were ready for democracy? Didn’t we believe, in general, that even an imperfect democracy was better than none? Or had that belief now become so battered that we no longer trusted it?

I wanted to learn more, which is how I found myself in Cairo in March, six weeks to the day after the fall of Mubarak.

o a newcomer, the Egyptian capital can feel overwhelming — overwhelmingly brown, overwhelmingly dusty, overwhelmingly noisy, and overwhelmingly crowded. During the day, the major roads and elevated highways are jammed with bleating, blaring bumper-to-bumper traffic that appears to obey no known rules. And yet, except in rush hour, vehicles move efficiently. Walking is an adventure, and merely crossing the road (there are no crosswalks and few traffic lights) can seem like an extreme sport. The secret, I discovered, is to be bold: make your intentions clear, step out into the flow of traffic, and wait for the cars to stop, slow down, or flow harmlessly around you as you make your way to the other side alive. This experience holds a lesson: In Egypt, not everything that appears chaotic or dangerous is necessarily chaotic or dangerous. Even in matters as basic as driving habits, there is an unwritten social contract everyone understands.

Two-thirds of Greater Cairo’s population, which is approaching 20 million, live in what are euphemistically called “informal areas,” tracts of densely crowded concrete and brick buildings, some many storeys high, tightly clustered along narrow streets and laneways without regard for plans or building codes or zoning bylaws, often without access to utilities or policing. The people who live and work in these areas are mostly poor, getting by on the equivalent of a few dollars a day. And yet these are not, strictly speaking, slums or ghettos, and the streets feel relatively safe.

In downtown Cairo, which is almost European in spirit and design, the main streets teem with life, especially after dark. Clusters of boisterous young men hang out on the sidewalks, while young women walk by, arm in arm, ignoring them, or pretending to. Most women cover themselves in public, usually with a hijab or head scarf — one of many signs that Islam has made inroads into what was once a more secular society. The amplified calls to prayer that punctuate the city’s din five times a day reinforce this impression. But, as their driving habits demonstrate, Egyptians have an ambiguous relationship with rules, both religious and secular. Many young women wear colourful, outrageously flamboyant hijabs, almost pharaonic in their puffed-up splendour, which seem intended to attract rather than discourage male attention. And while they also observe the diktat against visible flesh, they frequently wear tight-fitting jeans and long-sleeved sweaters that leave little to the imagination. (Sexual harassment is a serious problem in Egypt; I was told that as more women cover themselves, the incidence of assaults has actually increased.)

I heard a joke in Cairo that encapsulated the Egyptian habit of flouting the law: “We pretend to obey the rules, and they pretend to enforce them.” It reminded me of one they told in central Europe before the fall of Communism: “We pretend to work, and they pretend to pay us.” Put side by side, the two jokes help to explain the differences between the two societies on the cusp of revolution: the anarchic vibrancy of Egypt versus the homogeneous monotony of central Europe.

When the former Polish dissident Adam Michnik contemplated the devastation that remained after decades of Communism, he came up with a memorable metaphor: Communism turned an aquarium of living fish into fish soup, he said. Our challenge is to turn the fish soup back into an aquarium of living fish.

When the Communists took power in Eastern Europe after World War II, they adopted the Soviet model and set about destroying the traditional institutions of civil society. When they were done, virtually nothing was left standing: no private property, no market economy, no independent businesses; the media entirely under state control; the churches, Catholic and Protestant, eviscerated. A single political party called the shots, and a massive security apparatus backed it all up. This was Michnik’s fish soup, and the problem confronting the new leaders after the revolution was how to bring their societies back to life. Yet they faced the future with some important assets: a high literacy rate, no real poverty, and ex-leaders who had not robbed the country blind, mainly because the centrally controlled economy produced little worth stealing (“We pretend to work, and you pretend to pay us”).

Egypt was still a colourful aquarium, despite the efforts of Gamal Abdel Nasser, the country’s first modern military dictator, to make Soviet-style fish soup of it. Anwar al-Sadat, his successor, attempted to remedy Nasser’s excesses by opening up the economy. So, in turn, did Hosni Mubarak, and today the results can be seen everywhere. Upscale Cairo neighbourhoods boast opulent neon malls selling Western clothing, cars, and services; international corporations like FedEx and Vodafone have put down roots; and Tahrir Square’s most prominent commercial landmark is a KFC outlet.

Cairo’s traditional economy seemed vigorous as well. In the narrow streets beyond the downtown core, I saw block after block of tiny workshops and wholesale outlets producing and selling plastic piping, car repair tools, packing materials, belt buckles, shoe parts, picture frames, bolts of cloth, bales of raw cotton, and on and on — all of it supporting a cottage industry economy that apparently operates beyond regulation (“We pretend to obey the rules, and they pretend to enforce them”). Judging from the number of newspapers and magazines, a lively press exists in Cairo, livelier now that censorship has been relaxed and pro-Mubarak editors have been let go. The judiciary, I was told, remains relatively independent, and the universities — once strictly monitored by the government — show signs of rousing themselves to a new, autonomous life: the American University in Cairo has just launched a new periodical called the Cairo Review of Global Affairs, devoting its inaugural issue to “The Arab Revolution.” Scholars at Al-Azhar University, whose pronouncements carry an almost papal authority in the Sunni Muslim world, have been calling on Egypt to establish “a democratic state based on a constitution that satisfies all Egyptians.”