* Police, unidentified armed men, patrol Cairo slums
* Authorities deny intimidation
By Alexander Dziadosz
CAIRO, Feb 4 (Reuters) - While Egyptian police officers and men in plain clothes holding knives and sticks surrounded and searched our car, a 12-year-old boy with dirty hair and ragged clothes opened his switchblade, smiled and pointed it at me.
"I love you," he said, waving the knife. "We're here to take care of you".
Given how many foreign journalists said they had been beaten and detained in Egypt over the last two days, I was sceptical.
Pro-democracy protesters have held their ground in Cairo's central Tahrir Square for the last week. But in the city's sprawling slums, away from the international media's gaze, Egypt's massive police apparatus is still firmly in control.
Police stopped my colleague, our driver and me on Friday as we passed through Rod el-Farag, a poor neighbourhood near the Nile Tower, a modern building home to bank branches, a mall and the offices of several private companies.
The dizzying disparity between the tower and the grubby, decaying homes that surround it is a vivid reminder of Egypt's wealth gap, which has helped fuel 11 days of unprecedented protests against President Hosni Mubarak's three-decade rule.
Yet banners in praise of Mubarak festoon Rod el-Farag. More tellingly, the country's police, widely viewed by protesters as brutal and corrupt, openly sit and sip tea on its streets -- something they would not dare do near Tahrir.
The police deny using excessive force and say they are committed to upholding the law and public order.
Men wielding sticks, machetes and knives now block many of Cairo's roads, searching cars and checking the identification cards of passers-by. Their loyalties are not always clear, but many are clearly coordinating with uniformed policemen.
The officers who stopped us, like the knife-wielding boy, said they were trying to protect us. But this was slim reassurance after they allowed a man armed with a switchblade to squeeze into the front seat alongside me.
After the police took our passports, my government-issued press card and other documents, they escorted us to a military checkpoint. Two heavyset men in drab sweaters and grey trousers rode with us.
When our driver tried to answer his phone, one man ripped it from his hand, warning him not to try it again. The other searched my bag, flipping through notebooks full of protesters' slogans.
When we arrived at the checkpoint, a soldier at the checkpoint asked us to sit on the curb while another man in plain clothes questioned us, asking where we learned Arabic, how long we had been in Egypt and who we had been speaking with.
"Are you British?" the man asked my colleague. "Or are you Israeli?"
After about 20 minutes, the soldiers let us go. They returned my passport, but not my press card. When I asked about it, they said they had returned everything the police had given them. We were in no place to argue.
Similar stories, many documented by the Committee to Protect Journalists, have sprouted up in Cairo since Wednesday, when bands of government loyalists first appeared, attacking protesters in Tahrir with fists, rocks, sticks and whips.
Many protesters believe the men were sent by the government, something authorities have denied. Egypt's vice president said the attacks would be investigated and those behind them punished.
Whatever its source, the campaign of intimidation against foreign journalists in Egypt may subside soon. But it will likely take far longer for those who have joined the protests to feel completely safe. (Editing by Philippa Fletcher)
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