He had faced peril to build a different future, volunteering in a field hospital during the 18-day revolt against Mr. Mubarak, when Mr. Nour was injured by birdshot. “We’re going back to the old system,” he said. “We didn’t change the country.” So he said he was preparing to travel to the United States, out of necessity more than choice.

“I need to get out of here,” he said.

As citizens grow ever more weary, the government insists that Egypt is moving along a democratic path, and will soon have a constitution that will lead to new elections. At the same time, many fear that elections will simply confirm the restoration of the old order, as the names of generals and security officials are floated as candidates for president, including Gen. Abdul-Fattah el-Sisi, Egypt’s powerful defense minister.

Fearing that the future is already written, Sarah Radwan, 33, a graphic designer, was waiting to receive her contract to work in Qatar, having few regrets about leaving Egypt behind. After the uprising against Mr. Mubarak, “I had hoped things would get better,” she said. “This was a kind of utopia.”

Ms. Radwan said she had been disappointed by Mr. Morsi’s year as president, and was now worried about the return of the military. Frustration over the last two and a half years had led her, as it had others, to damning conclusions about her society’s capacity to change — to say things that were unthinkable just two years ago.

“The corruption is deep inside us,” she said. “I thought it would take five years. But we’re not even taking the first step.”

Like generations of Egyptians, her father had worked abroad, in Saudi Arabia, and warned about the loneliness of self-exile. “I never thought I would leave,” Ms. Radwan said, saying that in the past she had considered moving only as far as the coast, to Alexandria on the Mediterranean or Hurghada on the Red Sea.

“I love this country,” she said. “I want people to calm down.”

The desperation cuts across ideological lines and threatens to sustain the “brain drain” that stunted Egypt’s development for decades. As the government has cracked down on Mr. Morsi’s supporters, killing hundreds at protests and imprisoning thousands more, Islamists are being hounded from the country, repeating grim cycles of repression and exile from Egypt’s past.