Living in Fear, Speaking in Anger

Gamal Atiyeh has four young children, prays regularly and, like most of his neighbors in this Nile Delta village of unpaved roads, struggles to make ends meet.

Just coping in his impoverished world usually takes all of his time and energy, but these days, his worries go beyond the fetid canal that villagers use to wash, or the widespread unemployment that the youth encounter, or even the Palestinian-Israeli struggles, which Egyptians see as their own.

His thoughts are on America’s plan to invade Iraq.

“Why are you going to bomb Iraq?” shouted Atiyeh, 40, standing inside the one-room shop where he sells peanuts, flour and other groceries. “It is unfair, unfair, unfair.”

As far as Atiyeh is concerned, an American invasion of Iraq would be the same as an attack on his country.

Like many people here, he believes that war will be felt in the pocketbook, raising prices and scaring tourists away from Egypt.

Villagers know that war will coarsen lives already filled with daily humiliations and concessions to poverty.

There is another fear, that of a United States growing so powerful that it will feel it can do whatever it wants, even if that means acting without the support of many of its allies.

That is particularly worrisome in the Middle East, where many say the U.S. has shown little regard for Arab concerns. The anger and frustration caused by economic and political fallout are tangible -- and directed at America.

“There is no country in the world that is allowed to have its own opinion,” said Ahmed Lachine, a farmer and head of the local Community Development Assn.

“The whole world is angry with America. It’s sticking its nose into everything. Their objectives are colonialist. It’s all about their interests.... The U.S. is evil. The U.S. is the axis of evil.”

With a smile to soften the drama of his words, Atiyeh said: “Life in Egypt will die if they bomb Iraq. If they bomb Iraq, prices will increase 80%. Just the talk of war has caused prices to go up.”

A Shock to Arab Psyche

If Egypt is a barometer of the direction of the Arab world, it is villages like this one in the delta, which is home to about half the nation’s population, that show the way the nation is heading.

Even before a bomb falls on Baghdad, America is losing standing among the Egyptian people.

An invasion of Iraq may not spark riots in the streets, or the overthrow of governments -- at least not right away. But it could be as much of a shock to the Arab psyche as Israel’s victory in the 1967 Middle East War, which still darkens U.S.-Arab relations.

“If the United States has to hunker down here,” said a Western diplomat based in Cairo who spoke on the condition of anonymity, “then it will have problems throughout the Arab world.”

The United States and Egypt have had a close relationship at least since 1978, when then-President Anwar Sadat reached a peace deal with Israel and laid out an agenda for a broad regional peace. Since then, the U.S. has given more than $50 billion in military and development aid to Egypt.

For its investment, the U.S. has looked to the Arab world’s largest country -- with a population of nearly 70 million -- as a voice of moderation and stability in an otherwise volatile and increasingly anti-American region.

For generations, life has been relatively good in the Nile Delta, the lush green region north of Cairo where for centuries flood waters deposited soils rich for farming. Unlike Egyptians from the south, known for their hair-trigger tempers, delta residents have long been regarded as reserved. Both President Hosni Mubarak and Sadat, who was assassinated in 1981, hail from the delta.

Most of the residents of Mit Yaeesh village live a world away from the modern cities. Unlike their forebears, they know the promise of the modern world, and most realize that they have been left behind.

Mit Yaeesh, which means “Village of Life” in Arabic, is a collection of concrete, brick and mud homes surrounded by soft green fields filled with winter crops of wheat and clover. There are no paved road and no sewage system, and the electricity frequently cuts off. Few people have cars, computers or cellular telephones.

The village grew along the banks of a canal -- carved out long ago -- that feeds farmlands with a series of shallow irrigation ditches. It is in Dakahleya Governate, about 90 minutes north of Cairo by car, and is home to about 14,000 residents, including about 130 Christian families.

Life is quiet and conservative. Women would never think of smoking in public, and they always keep their heads covered with scarves. Even families that can afford to have a satellite dish often opt not to because they can’t control the types of shows that come into their homes.

There is no government, and when there is a conflict between residents, it’s settled by neighbors meeting as an informal council on wooden benches along the canal.

The council is run by Sheik Osama Mohammed Hafez Essawy, 50, whose ancestors have held the same position in the village for more than 100 years.

“Prices are going up,” Essawy said. He quickly tells an American: “It’s your fault.” The price of sugar has already increased more than 40%.

For many, village life starts early each morning at a small bend in a littered dirt road that runs along the canal and jags left into the center of the village. Old women in black garments sit on the dusty ground, selling tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage and other vegetables laid out on plastic sacks or in steel bowls.

A tractor rumbles by hauling a cart used to collect residential trash, and its huge wheels stir up a cloud. Men ride donkeys. Schoolgirls in head scarves amble to class with their books. A woman sells freshly fried taamiya, the Egyptian version of falafel.

A Hard Life

The canal is busy, too, with women who take off their shoes and step in ankle deep to wash dishes.

The water is green and looks thick, like gel. It is polluted with paper and plastic and human waste, but it is how people here have been living for decades. Tradition rules and they are not about to stop, not even when warned.

“Yes, it is polluted, but we are used to it,” Mona Sayed, 24, said from the top of concrete steps that disappear beneath the opaque water. “The men never do this. They are like spoiled kids.”

Many of the able-bodied men work in the fields, harvesting with small hand tools, feeding clover to the water buffaloes that they rely on for meat and milk. Some own their land, but most are renters and survive by eating what they grow.

One recent day, Mohammed Nagy took a break in the fields, sitting on the ground near a plot of dill as a neighbor harvested carrots. “What did you think of what Colin Powell said?” Nagy asked about the secretary of State’s speech to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5. Then he answered his own question: “It was all fabricated.” Nagy said he had seen Powell on Al Jazeera, the Arab television network.

The wind blows warm over the field and as the sun sets a deep orange into the horizon, the evening call to prayer echoes over the community. Farmers come in from the fields, parading through the town with their livestock in tow: sheep, goats, water buffalo. Everyone goes home for early dinner with the family.

Everyone except the young men who have had to travel 1 1/2 hours to a factory job in one town, known as 10th of Ramadan City. It used to be that villagers had to move away to get a factory job, but the advent of minibuses has made it possible to commute, and that is preferable to living in an urban slum.

Hostilities Toward U.S.

Ayman Mohammed, 24, left home at 6:30 in the morning and arrived back in the village after 9 p.m. He works in an auto-glass factory, and for his 12-hour day earns 350 pounds a month, or about $64. He pays 45 pounds a month for transportation.

What has Mohammed upset these days? America’s designs on Iraq. “It’s unfair. It’s unjust,” he said.

It was dark when Mohammed and a group of workers stepped off a small, battered minibus. Ahmed Said Abdullah, 31, had a 15-hour day -- three hours commuting and 12 hours in a carpet factory. He and a crowd of other young men overheard the conversation and gathered around to express similar ideas.

Why, they wanted to know, isn’t America forcing Israel to obey Security Council resolutions? Why isn’t America talking about invading North Korea, which might already possess weapons of mass destruction?

“Saddam Hussein didn’t do anything wrong,” Mohammed said. “He is letting inspectors in.”

Everyone in this village knows that if there is a war, tourism, which is essential to Egypt’s economy, will drop to nothing. The cost of imports will rise, and so will the cost to export goods. Though there is solidarity with the Iraqi people, this is about self-interest.

“If there is a war, the value of the pound will decrease,” said Taia Mohya Salama, 50, a friend of Essawy, the sheik. “We’ll be like Sudan. A glass of tea will cost 500 pounds.”

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This is the first of an occasional series dealing with the mood of the Arab world during the crisis over Iraq.