Hosni Mubarak

It was a day of fortunes turned inside out: The Muslim Brotherhood, persecuted for decades by then-President Hosni Mubarak, moved closer Tuesday to winning Egypt's parliamentary elections while the disgraced former leader listened from a defendant's cage as a federal prosecutor demanded the "harshest penalty" for him. More than 14 million Egyptians were eligible to cast ballots Tuesday for 150 seats in nine governorates, with the Brotherhood having...

Fears and worries murmur like prayers beneath the hammered crosses of the Church of the Virgin Mary. "The whole country will collapse," says Shenouda Nasri. "I'm trying to get my family out," says Samir Ramsis. "This is the Islamists' time," says George Saied. A caretaker sweeps the stones, a woman slips into a pew. But these days Egypt's minority Coptic Christians are finding little serenity. Islamist political candidates, including puritanical Salafis, are dominating parliamentary elections.

Egyptians are going to the polls to elect a democratic parliament, an experience they have not had for over half a century. This is an extraordinary and exhilarating event. What's remarkable about it, among other things, is that only a week before the plebiscite began, an on-schedule election was thought to be impossible. The media were predicting that a fair election could not be pulled off and that, if voting did occur, it would be bloody and violent. But Egyptians weren't daunted.

Hanan Milad, a house painter's wife with two children and one on the way, stood outside a polling station Monday, biting her lip and praying for patience as crowds swelled and ballots arrived late in Egypt's first free elections since the fall of Hosni Mubarak. "I can't wait all day to vote," Milad said as soldiers stood guard at the edge of a cement factory. "But I'm here because I want a future for my children. The revolution inspired us. You can see people are poor here. We don't know a lot about politics, but we have hope.

Ibrahim Shaban said he was 15, but he looked much younger in his pajama pants and sweat shirt with the worn-away rhinestones, dirt caked on his bare feet, a knife scar on his face. He strolled through the crowds in Tahrir Square the other day, watching banners unfurl, listening to speeches. He sometimes sounded like a miniature rebel, distilling the nation's rage in his narrow body. "My father died a month ago, so I've been living in the square," he said. "He had heart problems. He sold cups and glasses in the street.

They came by the tens of thousands, swelling through neighborhoods, marching over bridges and pouring into Tahrir Square on Friday in the biggest protest yet against Egypt's increasingly isolated military rulers. Workers, mothers, activists, students and doctors, their numbers multiplying into nightfall, rallied in spirit and defiance reminiscent of the chilly February days that marked the end of Hosni Mubarak's regime. Dubbed "Last Chance Friday," the demonstration had the hardened determination of a battle and the air of a carnival.

Egypt is frayed, bloody and slipping toward a new revolt. The clashes that erupted for the second day in a row Sunday between police and protesters are the most volatile challenge in months to the nation's military leaders. The anger glimpsed through the tear gas and on the bruised faces of demonstrators marked a dangerous chasm between the Egyptian people and the generals who have refused to relinquish power to a civilian government. What is unfolding in the streets of Cairo, Suez and the coastal city of Alexandria is the compounded anger over the unrealized promise of a revolution that ousted Hosni Mubarak in February but has yet to steer the country toward a new democracy.

At least 22 people were killed in clashes between military police and Coptic Christian protesters in the latest eruption of violence highlighting Egypt's deepening sectarian divisions since President Hosni Mubarak was driven from power in February. In the bloodiest unrest since last winter's uprising, authorities said, three soldiers and 19 protesters were killed Sunday when Copts threw Molotov cocktails at riot police outside the state Radio and Television Building in downtown Cairo.

An Egyptian court Thursday sentenced a steel magnate and a former top industries official to 10 years in prison each and fined them a combined $111 million on charges stemming from the corruption that defined the era of toppled President Hosni Mubarak. The sentences handed to steel tycoon Ahmed Ezz, a confidant of Mubarak's son Gamal, and Amr Assal, deposed chairman of the country's Industrial Development Authority, struck at the core of businessmen and officials who made fortunes under Mubarak's rule.

My fingers burned with excitement. It was just weeks after Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's dramatic trip to Israel in November 1977 and my boss had just returned from Egypt, the first Israel Defense Forces officer ever to visit that nation. I was a young officer, and the "present" he brought me — a standard tourist postcard — was the most precious one I could imagine. It was something from Egypt, and it was not going to explode. Until Sadat's trip, and the 1979 Israel-Egypt peace treaty that followed, that sort of contact had been as tangible to Israelis as the moon.