Yesterday I traveled north for 2 \u00bd hrs to a small village of some 600 souls in the Nile Delta to meet Salim and others who had fled two weeks ago from Tripoli, Libya<\/p>\n
He tells me that although he is very happy to be home, and his father gives him money. \u201clife is no good here, no chance of a job, \u00a0Libya no good, Middle East no good, there is safety here.\u201d<\/p>\n
His father earns only LE700 (\u00a373) per month as a policeman.\u00a0 They depended on his remittances from Libya, and it is obvious that they are very poor.<\/p>\n
His parent\u2019s house, with earthen floor and stone walls, consists of a narrow entrance hall with a simple half wall divider leading to the kitchen.\u00a0 To the right, without doors, is the salon with matting on the floor of about 2 metres by 1.5 metres.\u00a0 Five photographs hang on the wall: the four daughters\u2019 marriage photos and his father as a young man.\u00a0 The next room right, about 2.5 metres by 2.5 metres, is his parent\u2019s bedroom with an evidently treasured fridge and cloth curtain for privacy.\u00a0 The kitchen has a cooker set on the ground, nails on the walls for pots to hang from, and one wood shelf.\u00a0 Leading from this is a small byre for the family donkey, and steps upstairs to a small room and dovecote.\u00a0 There are no ornaments, nor books, nor television.<\/p>\n
After a family meal of rice and potatoes in tomato gravy, we walk through the village to see his cow tethered beside Salim\u2019s uncle\u2019s 100m2 plot of land. \u00a0I was told that all the new big brick houses,\u00a0 some with handsome coloured tiles, were the result of money sent home from Libya and Saudi Arabia.\u00a0\u00a0 Other older houses made of mud brick topped with second floor clay fired bricks lay between them.\u00a0\u00a0 Two new tractors passed us on the compacted black soil and donkey dung village road, also bought apparently by families lucky enough to have sons\/fathers working in Saudi.<\/p>\n
Salim tells me that he loves this place. \u00a0His deep attachment is obvious. It\u2019s quiet enough to hear the wind blow softly through the tall rushes beside irrigation ditches. Men and donkeys with boys perched aloft bales of alfalfa greet us,\u00a0 he knows them all. Green fields flow out from the village in all directions with beans and cabbages marching in rigid straight lines in black fertile soil. It\u2019s flat as far as the eye can see.\u00a0 Poplars and palm trees define the horizon.<\/p>\n
On marriage, a man must provide a home for his bride: the bride\u2019s father provides the furniture. Salim\u2019s Libyan earnings had paid for a plot of land near his parents\u2019 house, some chickens. a cow and the furniture for his youngest sister when she married. He had not yet earned enough to build his house.<\/p>\n
I met some others in the village who had been working in the Seraj and Janzour suburbs of Tripoli.\u00a0 None have much education,\u00a0nor any prospect of work in Egypt.<\/p>\n
There is almost no\u00a0 activity here, except farming on small-holdings.<\/p>\n
I was invited into the home of Yasser (36) and his wife Maha.\u00a0 Maha is Salim\u2019s sister.\u00a0 His is a success story, what they all aspire to.\u00a0 After about 10 years working in Libya he has built an apartment and bought a mini bus with the remittances from Libya.<\/p>\n
Yasser came back to the village last year.\u00a0 His comfortable, small, one-bedroom flat had all western mod-cons, a well appointed kitchen, and a huge glass-fronted cabinet in the salon with china, glass and inconguous christmas angels.\u00a0 Fluffy stuffed animals sat on the chairs and sofa, the walls carried streamers of artificial vines.\u00a0 Yasser now works driving his mini-bus.<\/p>\n
Salim\u2018s dreams are simple \u2013 to get married to Dallia and to be a farmer.\u00a0 It is hard to see how either can be easily in his grasp at the moment. His fianc\u00e9e has told him that if he doesn\u2019t find work and\/or finish off the house for her, then she will have to break off the engagement.<\/p>\n
Despite it all he is still optimistic.\u00a0 He\u2019s sure there will be peace in Libya soon, and he will be able to go back.\u00a0 In the mean-time though, life is going to be very hard in this village.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Yesterday I traveled north for 2 \u00bd hrs to a small village of some 600 souls in the Nile Delta to meet Salim and others who had fled two weeks ago from Tripoli, Libya He tells me that although he … Continue reading