CAIRO — When an inauguration ceremony this weekend propels an Islamist into an Egyptian presidential palace long inhabited by secular military men, it will promote alongside him another improbable figure: a first lady who wears a conservative veil and spectacles, not jewels and makeup.

“She looks like a peasant,” Umm Ibrahim, 56, said approvingly, as she hawked pita bread in a working-class Cairo neighborhood Tuesday. “She is like us. We’re the same.” 

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