CAIRO, Egypt (CNN) -- Languishing in a Cairo prison last year, a prisoner noticed that every day, the prison staff would clean the adjacent cell, even though there was no one in it. Why, the prisoner asked his guards, did they do it? It's for Barack Obama, they responded. Because when he loses the election, he'll surely be thrown in jail, so this way, a cell will be ready for him. Every day, the prisoner said, he prayed in his cell that Obama would win. The prisoner was Ayman Nour, a liberal politician who in 2005 ran against and lost to Egypt's aging ruler, Hosni Mubarak, in the country's first multiparty presidential elections. Soon afterward, he was convicted of electoral fraud and sent to jail. He was released earlier this year.
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President Obama is heading to Egypt to make address to Muslim world
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Obama is the most popular U.S. president in years for Egyptians
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But the region has a long history of disappointment in the United States
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