Blog post: Upper Egypt, as I’ve seen it on TV and in my village
 
 

I’m almost 30, and one of the first depictions I can recall of Upper Egypt is the Egyptian TV series Dhiaab al-Jabal (Mountain Wolves). It has legendary characters and takes place in an Upper Egypt characterized by the ancient Hawara tribe, fugitives and cold-blooded murder. In it, a woman’s ultimate rebellion is to marry an outsider.

I grew up in a village in the Upper Egyptian governorate of Sohag, but I didn’t recognize this version of the south — nor many others that followed. The Upper Egypt portrayed in TV series and cinema is sensationalist, from the black-and-white movies that used its inhabitants as rough comic material to the Ramadan TV shows that show it as dominated by people who live in palaces surrounded by guards. So I have written this account, which is my version of the much misrepresented region.

Imagine a village divided into four main areas, each with a group of families. Each area looks down upon the others’ way of life. In my village, Kom al-Arab, in one area it is fine for unrelated young men and women to talk in public, while in another area a young man wouldn’t dare stop a female cousin on the street for any reason. Sometimes a man will not stop another man if he is accompanied by a woman, and it is considered acceptable for a man to completely ignore people if he is walking with a woman from his family.

During the 25 years I spent in my village, and during my visits from Cairo, I’ve never seen anyone walk down the street carrying a weapon, except local police. Firearms are rarely used, and when they are there are seldom casualties. Most of the time they’re just used as a threat. In my village, with a population of over 15,000, there are certainly no more than 100 hundred unlicensed guns, and most men use firearms for the first time during military service. In most fights I’ve seen or heard about, as well as knifes and short swords, people use sticks, parts of pipes, stones, soda bottles and chains.

Women, as well as men, can play a crucial role in these fights, from inciting men to join the battle and disclosing things that shouldn’t be said in public to embarrass the other side, to throwing these assorted missiles from rooftops.

The main economic activities are agriculture and physical work, usually done by nafar (unskilled laborers). A nafr might drive a tuk tuk in the morning, carry sand and bricks up on his shoulders to the top floors of houses in the evening, and go check on his land at dawn to get clover for his cattle back home.

For most Upper Egyptians, unless a task is specialized, like fixing electronics or complex plumbing, asking for help to perform ordinary duties damages one’s social status.

Farming can involve fights. After every harvest, a dangerous, male-dominated “land separation” procedure to re-draw borders takes place. Every landowner brings along family and friends carrying marked sticks and straightened palm fronds as measurement tools. Each landowner measures his land to make sure a neighbor hasn’t taken any, and village elders may arbitrate. The process can sometimes turn violent, leading to serious injuries and deaths.

When a man is traveling or deceased a woman fills in, and must act exactly “like a man” or else be run over and lose land. Bit by bit, some women start imitating men in almost every way. I know two women from my village who smoke shisha in public and keep shisha pipes at home.

Up until recently, theft in Upper Egypt was considered an act of humiliation for the victim. Thieves quickly claim responsibility for their crimes, as if to offer up some sort of challenge. People consider them courageous, and they roam the village carrying their weapons, feared by local police.

In a closed and impoverished society like Upper Egypt, sexually harassing a woman may just end up in murder. I think most men have their first sexual experience with either cattle or other men, as they spend most of their day in the fields with both.

Upper Egyptian men rarely smoke in the presence of their fathers or uncles, unless they are close in age and have sought permission.

Drug use is seen as odious. It doesn’t take place in public except for weddings, as it shames the user. Drugs are rarely cultivated in Upper Egypt as most people don’t have the know-how, except for the few who make it their career and main source of income. This happens in villages remote from the grip of police, like islands in the Nile or villages closer to the mountains.

The social classes represented in TV series do not reflect the economic reality in Upper Egypt. Lead characters are either from extravagant mansions and palaces or old rundown mud-brick houses. In reality, even the richest Upper Egyptians do not live in palaces or walk around surrounded by guards, and mud-brick houses are just monuments abandoned by those who migrated to Cairo or Alexandria decades ago, in search of better work opportunities. Red brick and cement houses are the most common village architecture.

As people can buy and sell on credit, it is acceptable to buy groceries all year long and only pay with your yield when wheat is harvested. While barter is less and less common, it’s still used — eggs and wheat are accepted currencies in most villages. I have bartered two eggs for a pack of tea. Housewives barter eggs for fruits and vegetables from street vendors who roam villages with donkey carts, or for clothes and kitchen utensils from al-bayad, the specialized vendor who only collects eggs. Riding his donkey, he carries two big baskets filled with kitchen utensils and cheap clothes for women and children, each with a special spot to keep eggs.

Because the mountains of the Eastern Desert are very close to the Nile, land is a rare commodity, and so most people do not have the luxury of a separate space to fatten cattle. They do it at home. I’ve seen households buy ceiling fans for the first time only for their cattle, because they were worried they would get sick or suffocate in the summer heat.

The main economic activity is agriculture, which makes cattle crucial. They are often treated like family members. TV series usually cast horses as symbols of wealth and power, hence the relationship between Rafie Bieh al-Azzizy and his horse in Al-Dawaa al-Sharid (Refracted Light). In reality, a great deal of attention is given to cattle. Cows, buffaloes, sheep and goats act as savings and investment. Cattle can also be the cheapest means of transport to rugged areas; camels are used to transport wheat crops from far-flung fields to the houses where it’s stored until it is sold. Donkeys transport manure to fertilize the land, and carry clover and grass back to feed productive cattle such as cows, buffaloes and goats.

Productive cattle receive a higher status than others, as one cow is worth LE25,000 — a large sum for someone who makes a living from casual labor. A cow or buffalo is a household’s major capital and only investment, so when it’s sick the entire family takes great care of it, and its death, like a family member’s, can be met with cries, screams and long periods of mourning.

Whether a suitor’s household owns cattle or not is a crucial question asked by potential brides, and the answer might be the sole reason for rejecting him. Households that own cattle require a more disciplined and austere lifestyle. A woman marrying into such a family would likely have to care for the cattle, clean up manure and urine, milk cattle and make cheese, and sometimes help cattle give birth. All this can be quiet exhausting, so university-educated women who watch glamorous Turkish TV series may reject the prospect.

Translated by Mariam Aboughazi

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Ahmed Ismail 
 
 

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