CAIRO — A mechanic hammered a fender and boys wandered amid tin and rust as Adham Bishr, his opinions flaring on an agitated afternoon along the Nile, said Egypt's next president should give him a job, not tell him how to worship God.

Men gathered around Bishr in a scrap of shade, arguing over inflation and politics before disappearing into the grit and anger of a neighborhood at Cairo's edge. The men, mostly unemployed drivers, mill hands and laborers, want work; their sons, college students with dim prospects, wonder whether the future will bring enough money to take a wife.