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Sameh Roshdy has seen his fair share of economic slumps in Luxor, the tourist honeypot 400 miles upriver from Cairo.
First there was the downturn which followed the Gulf War in 1991; then, a few years later, came the disastrous 1997 Luxor massacre, when 62 people were shot dead by Islamist radicals inside a temple near the Nile.
But according to Mr Roshdy, none of them had anything like the impact of last year’s Egyptian uprising.
“After 1997 it only took around three months to get back to normal,” said Mr Roshdy, a travel agent in a Luxor branch of Thomas Cook. “But I’ve never seen anything like this.”
He said that during the most recent Christmas period – usually a peak time here in Luxor – business had been down by nearly half compared to last year, while over Easter sales had dropped by around 30 per cent.
For people like tour guide Abdel Halim, the results have been miserable.
Puffing away on a shisha pipe in a tea house on one of Luxor’s main streets, he said he would usually be out working but that now there were not enough tourists.
“Before the revolution I would start work at 6am,” he said.
“There are so many poor people here without the foreigners. We have no work, no business, nothing.”
But Abdel’s life is not entirely devoid of hope.
Recently he has put his faith in Hamdeen Sabahi, the leftist presidential candidate who was in Luxor this week to speak to hundreds of his supporters.
Mr Sabahi, a long-time reformist who was imprisoned numerous times under Hosni Mubarak, has very little chance of winning, according to recent opinion polls.
Nevertheless, as the main credible “revolutionary” candidate – with a raft of glitzy celebrity endorsements to his name – his is an important voice in the race.
As the founder of the Nasserist Al-Karama Party – a political group which, although eschewing the more despotic tendencies of former demagogue Gamal Abdel Nasser, aspires towards his populist brand of Arab socialism – Mr Sabahi has published a manifesto replete with promises of land reforms and wealth redistribution.
For people like Abdel Halim, he represents a breath of fresh air. “He’s different because he comes from a poor family,” he explained, comparing him favourably to some of the other presidential contenders.
But such street appeal looks unlikely to see him claim the presidency. Right now, the smart money appears to be on the 75-year-old former foreign minister, Amr Moussa, a man derided as a regime stooge by his opponents but presented as the can-do candidate by his backers.
For many locals in Luxor, a Moussa presidency might represent a path back to prosperity following more than a year of disruptive protests and violence.
But for others, his triumph would be bad news. A historic uprising, hundreds dead, and for what? The transfer of power to a man who rose to power under the aegis of the toppled dictator?
In the minds of some activists, it doesn’t sound like a revolution that was worth fighting for.
