At an entrance to Tahrir Square a yellow shirt, a striped grey sweater and a brown jacket are pinned to a wooden board. All three are splattered with blood.

Those items belong to three martyrs who died at the square last Wednesday and are exhibited as part of the "Martyrs Gallery", created by the protesters.

"We erected these to honor them and show the world that we are defiant," says Ahmed Moussa, a 20-year-old who witnessed the clashes on Wednesday . "These people are members of our family, our neighbors in our new home, Tahrir Square."

Moussa says that he is originally from Maghagha in Minya, but now his address is "Tahrir Square". The young commerce student is voicing a statement repeated by many protesters in the square that have inhabited it for almost two weeks and made it their makeshift home. They insist that they will not go anywhere unless their demands are met.

And because nobody knows how long their protest will last, the square has slowly but surely turned into a city within a city. The people now playing house in Tahrir Square are no longer the weak crowd cordoned off by government forces, unable to buy food and water, or communicate with the outside world. Now they have their own radio station, a stage with huge speakers to communicate with the crowd, a projector which screens the Al-Jazeera channel and their very own DJ who blares patriotic songs all day for the protesters.

They also have six pharmacies, eight hospitals and 13 medical points with first aid supplies for injured protesters. While at the beginning food was scarce, now sellers have begun filtering in and you can buy anything from Koshari to hot tea, as well as Egyptian flags and bandanas.

While at the beginning of the sit in, most protesters either stood or sat in the square's small grassy traffic islands, now people are taking refuge in little tents. Some are bought from shops, others are simply erected by whatever the people have available and covered with blankets, linen or even plastic sheets. Wanting to feel like they're home as much as possible, some protesters name their tents. Some named them after their native governorates, e.g. the Beheira Tent or Minya Tent. Other names were more playful, like "Freedom Resort."

Mustafa Helmy, a 40-year-old engineer who has been sleeping in his tent since the protests began on January 25, says these tents are a home away from home.

"Each one of us here brought something from home to help out," says Helmy. "It could be plates, tea cups, flashlights, blankets or whatever we need to stay comfortable."

In the "Heaven Tent," dubbed so by its inhabitants because, they say, they have spent so many happy times there, three friends have been eating and sleeping for days. Karim El Jeily, one of the tent's inhabitants, says he spends the day either chanting slogans with other protesters, participating in various volunteer activities including cleaning the square or participating in the popular committees to protect the protesters from attacks by thugs.

"This little tent here is the safest place in the world," says El Jeily. "My parents are worried, but I tell them I am fine."

Because of the difficult circumstances, protesters do what they can to survive. To use the bathroom they go to the toilet available in the Omar Makram Mosque or several other public toilets near the square.

"Sometimes you have to wait in line for half an hour to be able to go in, but it's all we have," says Mohamed Hebieshy, a protester who joined the crowd in Tahrir on Wednesday.

To communicate with the outside world, protesters are charging the mobile phones by connecting them to public lampposts, battery-operated chargers or even manual rotating ones.

"Those manual mobile phones sometimes need you to literally fill the battery for half an hour," laughs Abdel Haleem El Lemb. "But in a situation like this you have to be resourceful. We are going to drive the government crazy, I promise you that.”

In Wednesday’s battle, dubbed the “Battle of the Camel” by protesters because some government thugs entered the square on camels, a few protestors used car tires to catapult stones onto their enemies.

El Lemb however admits that living on the street does take its toll. A few days ago, he had to take two voltaren shots because his back was aching from sleeping on the ground for so long. Like other protesters, he now can go to the little makeshift pharmacies to get the medicine.

The pharmacies, spread throughout the square, get their medicine supply from protesters who come every day and ask them what they need and then go out of the square to buy them. They have everything from flu medicine, to insulin and blood pressure medicine.

"We also have people who come here to get their insulin shots and we have trained nurses to do that," says Hossam Abdel Dayem, a chemist. “Someone also volunteered a fridge and that’s where we store the insulin injections.”

Abdel Dayem points out that the pharmacy does not take money and gives the medication to the patients for free. It’s not a big problem, he says, since so many people are volunteering to buy the medicine, that their supply is more than enough to serve the thousands of protesters in the square.

“It’s not just that we have medicine, but we have the best medicine. People here get Panadol for their pains, which is L.E 20,  whereas outside they would probably buy a cheap pain killer for L.E 2,” says Abdel Dayem. “All this is thanks to the amazing people who offer to buy supplies for us. I’ve volunteered before but I’ve never experienced the level of altruism I've seen in Tahrir.”

While the chemists try to deal with as many patients as possible, sometimes the injuries are too serious and people are instructed to go to one of several hospitals that were quickly put together to deal with the injuries.

One of those is in the Abdel Rahman Mosque next to Hardees in a small corner in the square. Volunteer doctors, using their meager resources, tried to restructure the house of worship into a real life emergency room. Mats are used for beds; blankets hanging on a wash line separate the beds and different sections were made for different types of complaints. The hospital began with 30 volunteers, from various medical backgrounds, and now has 90 volunteers working in shifts 24 hours a day.

Dr. Gamal Moheb says that people come in with all sorts of injuries, including wounds from stones being hurled at them, sunstroke, flu, sore throat and skin rashes from wearing the same clothes for so long. However, nothing in his life had prepared him for some of gruesome scenes he witnessed inTahrir Square over the past few days.

“We had one patient carried in, who had stopped breathing and his head was all bloody,” remembers Moheb. “I was just starting to have a look at him, when I saw his friend running in with the patient’s brain in his hands, screaming that I should help him. His brain simply fell out of the skull and I was so shocked, I couldn’t believe what was happening.”

Another of the square’s makeshift hospitals lies near the Egyptian Museum. This is the busiest hospital of them all, because it’s near what the protesters call the “frontline”, or the most dangerous place in the square. It is from this frontline, below the 6th of October Bridge, that many of the thugs try to enter the square. Sometimes, if they succeed in entering, a battle ensues that could involve anything from swords and knives to stones.

In this area also lie several army tanks, which, according to many protesters, tried to enter the square a few days ago. Furious at their attempt to "invade their territory", about 30 protesters decided to lie in front of the tanks and refused to budge for three days, with some of them using the tank’s wheels as a pillow while they slept.

“We’re not going anywhere and I don’t care if they drive over me,” says Ramy Medhat from Mansoura. “We will do what we need to do to mark our territory.”

Medhat has not slept in days. Not only because of the army’s attempt to “invade” the square, but also because the thugs have used a stranded building on the corner of the square to throw stones at the protesters. After a couple of fights, the protesters managed to take over the house and use its second floor as a defense tower to stake out the enemy. However, yesterday they lost ground, and once again the thugs have control of the house - a great strategic loss to Medhat and his friends.

"It's difficult to see them coming if we are down here," says an irritated Medhat.

But the most difficult part, say many protesters, is coping with the psychological pressure of not knowing if their voices are being heard or not.

Ahmed Essawy, a young protester, was shocked when he heard media reports saying that his neighbor, who died in Wednesday’s battle, was beaten to death.

“She was actually shot in the chest but they don’t want to admit that they are firing live ammunition on people here,” says Essawy. “It’s weird because I gave interviews to the media and told them clearly that she was shot. It's stressful to hear them say so many lies about us.”

He had been sleeping in the square for days, but excused himself for an hour to attend his neighbor’s funeral. It’s hard to lose a loved one, but, Essawy says, it only makes him want to stay more.

“I will stay for her,” says Essawy. “Every day we become more organized, stronger and more resourceful.”