Hope for stability unites Egypt's rich and poor

In a small dusty village in the Egyptian governorate of Sharqiya, about 60 miles northeast of Cairo, Hanan Ibrahim rises at 6 a.m. to open the tiny shop her husband owns on one of the village’s few roads. She works until 11 p.m. every day, except Friday, to support their three children. Ibrahim has been nervous since the Jan. 25, 2011 uprising.

The last 16 months have wreaked havoc on the country’s already strained economy. She says crime has increased and prices have gone up. “This affects everything, and makes me worry for my children,” confides the 28 year old, who wears a niqab, the full Islamic face veil.

The family’s small, fly-infested shop is not much bigger than a single room. Stacks of soap, detergent, and candy line the shelves and a lone refrigerator keeps bottles of soda cold in the stifling heat. Rising prices have meant fewer customers, and Ibrahim says the family now makes barely enough money to live off its profits.

Sharqiya has been a longtime Muslim Brotherhood stronghold. The 84-year-old Islamist group has established itself as a grassroots organization that steps in where the state is absent, running clinics and charities across the countryside. That’s why on the final day of Egypt’s two-day presidential election runoff , Ibrahim says she will be casting her vote for Mohammed Morsi, the Brotherhood candidate. Morsi, who also hails from Ibrahim’s village, is facing off against Hosni Mubarak’s ex-prime minister, Ahmed Shafiq. “He’s a man of God and he has good ethics,” she says. “Would he really abandon his own people?”

Regardless of who wins Egypt’s first competitive presidential election, the most important order of business will be satisfying a nearly universal yearning for a return to normalcy after a catastrophic 16 months for the economy. While hopes for some amount of stability run high, there’s also a sense that tough times lie ahead.