DAMANHUR, Egypt — When the last light drains from the autumn sky and sinks into the fields, Damanhur could be any town in the Nile Delta. Workers wheel home on rusting bicycles. Donkey carts circle the town square. Little girls in head scarves weave arm in arm through the dusk.
As elections rolled through Egypt this fall, Damanhur was just one of the many towns where the outlawed Muslim Brotherhood fought the ruling National Democratic Party for parliamentary seats. It was a contest that reflected the decades-old struggle between the wildly popular Muslim Brotherhood and the historically repressive, secular government.
By the time election day was over, curses had been uttered, blows landed and tear gas fired in the streets of Damanhur. Known as a Muslim Brotherhood stronghold, the town of 300,000 had become an unwilling window on the tortured political evolution of Egypt -- and the Arab world beyond.
"It's the government versus the people here," said Hamdi Assar, a 30-year-old computer consultant and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. "You have a very strong Islamist tendency, support for the Muslim Brotherhood and love for this candidate. Then someone who represents a corrupt government tries to run and says, 'I'm going to win.' "
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Gamal Heshmat's biography is typical of Damanhur: The son of an Education Ministry bureaucrat, he was an Alexandria University medical student when his political conscience was roused by the rhetoric of the Muslim Brotherhood.
"It was the idea of purity, the idea of religion for the sake of religion, of serving the people without payback," Heshmat, a family doctor and professor, said in the drafty Damanhur walk-up he used as a headquarters. "The Brothers have such a long legacy, and this attracted me."
At 49, Heshmat defies Islamist stereotypes of flowing robes and unruly beard. A clean-shaven man with a single tuft of hair clinging to his forehead, he wears his glasses on a chain and dresses in the tweedy, rumpled style of a distracted professor. This is the face of the Muslim Brotherhood that puts many Egyptians at ease.
"The Brothers are not really strangers to any Egyptian family," said Assar, the computer consultant, who also serves as an aide to Heshmat. "They're everywhere. Rarely will you find a family without a Brother."
The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's most popular opposition group, has seen its activists suffer detention and torture. Perhaps realizing that the organization is woven into the fabric that is Egypt, the government has settled into a tenuous political tolerance. In recent years, the group's members have made it to parliament by running, with a nudge and a wink, as "independents." The government looks the other way.
That's how Heshmat got to parliament in 2000. Once there, he stood out as a flamboyant, name-calling critic of corruption. He also led the controversial charge against "Banquet for Seaweed," an Arabic novel whose treatment of Islam chafed religious sensibilities. When the book was banned, secular Egyptians wrung their hands.
By 2003, it seemed as if the government had lost patience with the upstart lawmaker. A judge declared Heshmat's election fraudulent and ordered a runoff. Police, soldiers and plainclothes thugs flooded the streets to keep Muslim Brotherhood supporters from the polls. Heshmat lost, and Damanhur was left with a bitter anti-government grudge that lingers today.
"There were widespread feelings of anger and humiliation," Heshmat said. "The people would meet me in the street, hug me and start crying."
It wasn't long after his ouster that Heshmat was charged with membership in an illegal organization -- an old standby invoked to jail the group's members -- and sent to prison for four months.
By the time he was freed, he was determined to get his seat back.
Seen as an Outsider
Although people here speak of him as a stranger, Moustafa Fiqi is quick to point out his prominent family's centuries-old ties to these ancient farmlands. Born in a village a few miles out of town, he was still a teenager when he moved to Cairo to study politics. He never came back.
Fiqi, 61, has spent his life attaining the trappings and titles of a ruling party heavyweight. He was the ambassador to Austria, the envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency and chairman of parliament's foreign relations committee.
But this year's election presented a new challenge: For the first time, Fiqi had to court common people. In the past, he had been handpicked for the 454-seat parliament by President Hosni Mubarak, who appoints 10 lawmakers each session. This year, Fiqi was vying to represent Damanhur.
The weeks-long election for Egypt's parliament began in mid-November. In the days before the Damanhur election, people here wondered aloud whether the government would allow a fair vote. But Fiqi entreated voters to have faith; he said it was still anybody's race.
