Mohamed Sami Fahmi started out on the other side of the barricades.
When protesters first went into the streets last week to demand changes from Egypt's entrenched, authoritarian leaders, the clean-cut 26-year-old travel guide was with them.
But frustrated as he was by high-level corruption, he was more inclined to view President Hosni Mubarak as a fellow victim of officials he had appointed.
So when the 82-year-old Mubarak told the nation Tuesday that he would step down this fall at the end of his term, Fahmi thought that was enough.
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"Any Egyptian seeking reforms and positive change should have been convinced. Protesters should have gone home and given the president and his Cabinet a chance to fulfill their promises."
Instead, the protests picked up steam. And the longer they went on, the more damage they would cause to an economy that was already limping.
Now that everything is closed and tourism unlikely to recover for months, the Cairo University graduate thinks he'll be spending his savings to feed himself, his parents and two sisters instead of saving to get married and buy an apartment.
"People are out of work and out of money, and we reached a situation where Egyptians are fighting against and killing each other," he said.
So on Wednesday, he headed to a pro-Mubarak demonstration in the upper-middle-class neighborhood of Mohandeseen, on the other side of the Nile River from Tahrir Square, where the main anti-government protests were being staged.
