Since this election has been one of the great guessing games of the age, I only spent the first of the two days of voting plodding the streets and stalking voters as they came in and out of schools. For what it’s worth – and I know that isn’t much – most people I spoke to in the Cairo district of Imbaba were with “new order” candidates: Sabahi, Abu al-Futuh, Mursi. Sabahi was roundly cited as an honourable, decent person; one 22-year-old woman said Abu al-Futuh had lost support because of more awareness spreading of his role in forming al-Gama’a al-Islamiya; Mursi supporters were thin on the ground until they suddenly turned up in herds – that Brotherhood machine getting to work. Around the Imbaba church that was attacked last year, Copts said they supported Moussa but many others they knew were with Shafik. I wondered if they were dissembling in front of reporters or Egyptians, saying Moussa because his name was more acceptable in polite company. However, this guy Wa’il did say: “None of them are good, but Moussa the least bad of them all. The important thing is that an Islamist doesn’t win. I feel that they do not have good intentions for Copts.”

In the evening, I heard Erian and Beltagy at the Freedom and Justice Party HQ in the face of the Interior Ministry answer various claims and accusations in the media regarding the consequences of a Brotherhood win and Brotherhood cheating, making veiled threats over rejecting the results if they brought Shafik. They referred specifically to Omar Suleiman’s warning of a coup and Shafik’s talk of “a very big problem” if the Brotherhood’s Mursi won. “The Egyptian people who gave martyrs to cleanse the past regime and after an era of corruption and repression will not accept the presence of an extension of the past regime,” Beltagy said, using ominous affirmatives. “The Egyptian people cannot with its free will bring him… It will produce a new Egyptian revolution.” They also said that the various reports of Brotherhood food bribes and breaking the election campaigning ban were false, or plots hatched by opponents (such as three alleged Mursi campaign workers walking around polling stations bearing various Signs of Mursi). As is known, enemies of the Mursilites will stop at nothing.

So, on Day Two I decided to stake out some of the remains of the revolution, attacked buildings of a certain symbolism which remain largely untouched  since that time. One is very obvious: the National Democratic Party building in central Cairo, on the edge of Tahrir Square and next to the Egyptian Museum (under army control and where activists were tortured). Given the corruption of the party and its role as the vehicle for the repression and theft of the people, it would probably be appropriate that the burned out hulk of this ugly building remains as it is for a long time to come. It has a certain beauty to it, though there’s a frightening banality 1. to drab architecture of a powerful institution, 2. the ease with which one of its nerve centres was burned up on Jan. 28, and 3. the impudent centrality it was allowed to have in the topography of a great city.

Along the corniche past the TV building Maspero (whose survival was perhaps one of the great failures of the uprising), you come to an odd Nileside district where symbols of wealth, power and Mubarak’s crony capitalism line the riverfront while behind them lie hidden poor districts like Bulaq: the Conrad Hotel, the World Trade Centre, Orascom Telecom, Nile City Towers. And the Arcadia mall and a Naguib Sawiris-owned nightclub called Kazino al-Shagara (formerly Sangria) that went through various guises as one of the nightspots for the Mubarak-era business and entertainment elite. Both were the targets of looting and attack by the lumpen proletariat – providers of baltagiyya (thugs) for the regime’s men – who lived in the nearby poor district. Arcadia was the easiest target. A young guard outside explained that when the fighting and protests started in Cairo the more wealthy establishments were careful to pay for heavy security, but not Arcadia, which was owned by a group of businessmen. One regarded as the coolest mall in town, it had been taken over by the mega outfits in Heliopolis and Nasser City. It became a dowdy place, though the building hosted a language school and other businesses. The guard remembered seeing locals running out of the building with whole bank machines in hand. Residents left the flats on the upper floors. Now some of them are coming back, while a beauty parlour is still operating out of a far corner. But the building is still a burned-out hulk for now.

Nearby, opposite the Conrad Hotel, the nightclub is still there with the signs of burning around the main entrance, though workers have been charged with cleaning up. It has been taken over by a government company, one of them explained, and no longer Sawiris’ property, and he tried to stop photos being taken. I remember once or twice being inside there, some event featuring actresses, singers, tycoons and one of the Sawiris brothers that I wagged my way into as a journalist. I don’t doubt it will return as a hang-out for the elite.

The other destination I found interesting was the Pyramids Theatre known as the permanent fixture of actor Adel Imam’s al-Za’im (The Leader) play on Pyramids Road. Pyramids Road has been the target of recurrent popular violence against the money and bad morals of the ruling order since 1952 when many establishments associated with the entertainment industry were attacked. The revolution of 2011 was rather merciful in comparison,  on Pyramids Road as on most of Cairo and the rest of the country – the people were conscientious to focus their anger on the NDP, state security and a few other symbols of the system. Adel Imam was of course one of the regime’s greatest servants in the arts, propagating in film after the film the idea that Islam was not the solution, in fact it was the great enemy that Mubarak’s secular state was there to save us from. Imam is now facing court cases raised by Islamists seeking their revenge for his years of propaganda. It’s not clear whether this was why his theatre became a target or not. Certainly the other theatres on the road were not attacked. One shop in a corner of the building reopened in recent months. Its proprietor said the theatre’s owner would open it again soon, but not with al-Za’im or any other Imam play. He also put the violence down to class revenge when the opportunity presented itself: “It wasn’t the revolutionaries who were in Tahrir that did this. It was the hungry people. After the suppression of Mubarak, people just exploded.”

Inside the theatre an anti-police poster had been slapped on the wall, letting citizens know that police beating you up is actually unacceptable. On the walls outside hopeful graffiti tried to put a revolutionary stamp on the affair: “Lying military,” it declared, “the revolution continues”. Perusing these sites around town, the thought that firmed in my mind was how restrained this revolution was when it comes to physical acts of violence and purge. NDP and state security buildings took the brunt of popular anger, with some token strikes against symbols the capitalist elite and pied pipers like Imam (who declared himself with Ahmed Shafiq in the presidential vote). The blocked streets and graffiti of the government district in central Cairo (that I wrote about a few days ago) and the vandalised and violated buildings dotted around town are signs of a revolutionary moment that did not in itself manage to change the existing order.