On my way to Monday’s trial of Mohamed Morsi, the first democratically elected President of Egypt, and the second former President to be tried on criminal charges during the past two years, I found myself walking next to one of Morsi’s lawyers. His name was Said Hamid, and he was sweating and breathing hard. We were still in the early stages of the security gauntlet that had been set up for the trial. Any journalist or lawyer had to carry a stamped statement of approval from the Cairo Court of Appeals, and then he had to pass through four armed checkpoints and three metal detectors. Nobody was allowed to carry a camera, voice recorder, or cell phone; the state seemed determined to control all digital recordings of this event. Each attendee also had to hike for more than half a mile up a steep hill to the police academy in eastern Cairo, and this was the part that gave Hamid trouble. He was a heavyset man in a gray suit and a black robe, and he was wheezing when I pulled up alongside him. Ahead, other black-robed lawyers made a bedraggled line up the hill, trudging along like crows with clipped wings.

Hamid told me that he was on Morsi’s defense team, and he said that he was optimistic because he believed the charges had been trumped up. “Morsi is being charged for reasons that are political, not legal,” he said. Ever since July 3rd, when Morsi was removed from office, he had been held virtually incommunicado at an undisclosed location. Monday was expected to be his first public appearance since the coup. I asked Hamid if he had been allowed to meet with Morsi before the trial. “No,” he said, “we haven’t been able to consult with him.”

Along with fourteen others, Morsi was being charged with murder and other crimes in connection with events that took place last December. At the time, a committee dominated by Islamists was trying to complete a new constitution. In an attempt to neutralize the opposition, Morsi issued a Presidential declaration that temporarily granted him power beyond the reach of any court. Protestors gathered at the Presidential Palace, and, on December 5th, Morsi supporters forcibly cleared a peaceful sit-in, kicking off a night of escalating violence that eventually resulted in ten deaths and more than seven hundred people injured. “They don’t have a strong case against Morsi,” Hamid told me. “There’s no evidence.”

I asked Hamid if he was a member of the Brotherhood. “Not at all,” he said, smiling. “Actually, I’m a Nasserite. But people don’t always understand what that means. People now say that Sisi”—General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, the leader of the armed forces—“is like Gamal Abdel Nasser. That’s a lie; Sisi is nothing like Nasser. Look at everything that Nasser did—he built the Aswan Dam, he took control of the Suez Canal, he built factories. What has Sisi done? The only thing he’s done is kill Egyptians.” He was referring to what had happened in August, when security forces brutally broke up two pro-Morsi sit-ins and suppressed other protests, killing more than a thousand people.

It’s unusual for a Nasserite to sympathize with any aspect of the Muslim Brotherhood. Nasser himself tried to crush the organization, back in the nineteen-fifties and sixties, and his socialist ideas were directly opposed to the Brothers’ economic theories, which are capitalist. Hamid told me that he remains a socialist, but he stands with Morsi on principle. “It’s the right thing to do,” he said. “He should still be President.”

While we walked, I asked for his opinion about other prominent Egyptian political figures. Hamid’s answers were curt—maybe because he was breathing hard, or maybe because Egyptian political opinions tend to be unequivocal. “Sisi’s a criminal,” Hamid said.

“What about Sadat?”

“He was zeki,” he grunted. “Clever.”

“Mubarak?”

“Fesid. Corrupt.”

At the top of the hill, as we approached the next checkpoint, I asked Hamid if he was religious.

“Not very,” he said with a smile. “Some days I pray, and some days I don’t.”

There were separate checkpoints for lawyers and journalists, so we shook hands and parted. I stood in line near a high brick wall marked with spray-painted slogans. They had a timeless quality, like so much Cairo graffiti. Since the revolution began, the political cycles have moved so fast that no opinion seems either totally current or totally obsolete. When had these lines been painted? Maybe last year, maybe this morning, maybe a year from now:

“MUBARAK WILL RETURN”

“MUBARAK IS INNOCENT”

“I LOVE YOU, MUBARAK”

Morsi was being tried in the same chamber that had hosted Mubarak’s court case, which began in August of 2011. It was a long room outfitted mostly in wood; the walls were panelled and the floor descended steeply to a low stage. The floorboards were scuffed and worn; the audience sat on rough benches with attached writing surfaces, like students at a decrepit college. There were none of the usual markings of a court of law. Nobody had hung a flag, or painted a symbol, or posted a sign. It was as if the authorities had dispensed with such abstract representations of justice because the real thing—the tangible, functional tools of state control—were so obvious. On the left side of the chamber, a pair of heavy black metal cages waited for the defendants. About a hundred security officers had been posted throughout the room. Some wore uniforms but most were plainclothes, with gradations of dress and professionalism that seemed to deteriorate as you moved toward the back of the court. At the very front, a row of large men in suits and ties stood between the judge’s bench and the audience. Lines of officers had been posted along the sides of the room; these men wore neat button-down shirts but no ties. And at the very back, a group of young and poorly dressed agents slouched on benches, like kids waiting to doze off once a lecture begins.

The first defendants appeared around ten o’clock in the morning. They included Essam el-Erian and Mohamed el-Beltagy, two prominent members of the Brotherhood, and they were escorted into the cage on the far-left side of the chamber. They wore white Egyptian prison garb, and they began chanting the moment they appeared: “Down, down with military rule! Down, down with military rule!” In the spectators’ section, the Brotherhood lawyers and other supporters picked up the chant, and then a female journalist behind them—young and fierce-eyed, and wearing a head scarf—screamed out: “Death penalty, insha’allah! Death penalty!”

When Morsi finally arrived, a little before ten-thirty, the room erupted. People leaped atop benches, pushing to get a glimpse of the deposed President. He was separated from the audience by two sections of metal caging and about thirty feet, but even so he was immediately recognizable. He had refused the prison whites; he wore a light-colored shirt and a dark jacket. He held himself erect and slightly apart from the other accused men, and he waved to his supporters. They erupted in a soccer-style chant that had been common during the days of his campaign: “Morsi-i-i-i-i-i! Morsi, Morsi!” When the courtroom finally quieted, Morsi’s voice rang out: he shouted out that he was the legitimate President who had been removed by an unlawful coup. A number of journalists responded by chanting: “E’adam, e’adam! Death penalty, death penalty!”