You can trace the aspirations and disappointments of Egypt’s revolution across the walls of the southern city of Assiut.
The most faded graffiti lambasts Hosni Mubarak, the autocrat who ruled for three decades until a 2011 uprising toppled him. More recent daubings take on his successors: a council of military generals and civilian president Mohamed Morsi.
Additions since the army overthrew Morsi this month attest a new wave of anger – this time from Islamists who feel cheated by his fall. “Egypt is Islamic, no matter what the Christians think,” one reads.
Another calls the army chief “a dog”.
Assiut offers a window into what the future might hold for Egypt’s Islamists, who have dominated election after election since the 2011 revolt and, until Morsi’s ouster, constituted a commanding and ever more vocal force in Egyptian public life.
The lesson for us has been to interact with the street more and more
The poor, conservative region along the Nile has for decades been a stronghold for both radical and moderate Islamists, who have cemented their influence by delivering basic services in areas where the central government has historically been aloof.
The goodwill and logistics networks built up by those groups over decades – particularly Morsi’s Muslim Brotherhood – helped win them political sway in the aftermath of Mubarak’s fall.
But even the Islamists’ heartlands have not been immune to the distrust and suspicion that has grown among many Egyptians during the past year over what they saw as the Brotherhood’s ineffective and divisive rule.
The headquarters of the Brotherhood’s political wing – which took about half the area’s Parliament seats – was ransacked and looted this month. The Governor Morsi appointed has not come to his office for weeks since protesters blocked him from entering.
The blow has inspired a mix of anger, defiance, fear and denial among Islamists in Egypt’s south. But their history and heavy presence in the impoverished region also offers an insight into how they might work their way back into political life.
“The lesson for us has been to interact with the street more and more. That’s all,” said Mohamed Senussi, an official in the Assiut branch of the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party.
“Your most basic power is in the streets.”
Assiut’s poverty is palpable outside the provincial capital. Farmers ride donkey carts through fields and harvest crops by hand. A huge cement factory run by Mexico’s Cemex is one of the few obvious intrusions of an industrialised global economy.
Despite its marginalisation, the region has contributed two figures central to the struggle between Islamists and the army that has defined much of modern Egypt’s politics: Gamal Abdel Nasser and Sayyid Qutb.
Qutb, a founder of Islamist thought and Brotherhood leader, backed Nasser and his “Free Officers” when they toppled Egypt’s monarchy in 1952. Nasser soon turned on the Islamists, imprisoning thousands, and eventually had Qutb executed.
Islamist groups were rejuvenated under Nasser’s successor Anwar Sadat and were able to expand their influence particularly in poor areas like Assiut, which became a base for the most radical and militant offshoots.
“The alternative for these societies is or used to be the Islamic movements, who could provide them with these services,” said Khalil al-Anani, an expert on political Islam at Britain’s Durham University.
“They tried to fill the gap of the absence of the state.”
Islamists’ influence and organisational strength won them a dominant voice in post-Mubarak Egypt. The Freedom and Justice Party and the ultra-conservative Nour Party won big majorities in Parliament, and the Brotherhood was able to push through a contentious constitution.
The military’s overthrow of Morsi swept away those victories. The army-backed interim Cabinet formed this week did not include a single member of either party, Parliament has been dissolved and the constitution suspended.
Anani said Morsi’s fall had brought the Islamists to a defining moment. They could end up like their Algerian counterparts, who became fractured and violent after the army cancelled their election wins in 1992.
Or they could follow Turkey’s example, where Islamists regrouped, reformed and won elections after the military pushed them from power in 1997.
“You will always have political Islam,” Anani said. “But we don’t know what it will be – which version, the progressive, the aggressive, the violent, the moderate one?”
Men with the long beards of strict Salafist Muslims gather nightly for prayers at Assiut’s Abu Bakr al-Siddiq Mosque, a hub for Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, a former militant group that later gave up violence and entered mainstream politics.
Gamaa Islamiya, which was founded in Assiut, has been a testament to the ultra conservative Salafist movement’s emergence into the light since Mubarak’s overthrow.
Back in the 1990s, the group waged a bloody campaign against security forces with the aim of creating an Islamic state. Police levelled entire sugar cane fields where the militants hid to flush them from their southern Egyptian strongholds.
After hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests, the rebellion crumbled. The group eventually renounced violence and still maintains significant influence in southern Egypt.