Their Eyes on Iraq, Egyptian Villagers Mourn Loss of Old World Order

With night approaching, the farmers squatted against their barns in the shade of grape arbors, drinking black tea and complaining about the occupation of Iraq.

They’re hundreds of miles from Baghdad, but the people of this tiny village have tracked every wrinkle of the war in Iraq with keen attention. And as their water buffaloes gnawed on corn husks and the air flickered with dragonflies, their talk turned yet again to politics.

How would the scandal over weapons expert David Kelly’s suicide play out in Britain, one of them wondered. Might it tarnish Prime Minister Tony Blair, and could George W. Bush face a similar political threat?

“Now, really, I want to know -- are the sons of Saddam Hussein really dead? We hear different stories, so what’s the truth?” 18-year-old farmer Sadik Mohammed pressed an American. “We didn’t expect this occupation. So what’s the real reason? Where’s Saddam Hussein? Where are the weapons? What’s going on?”

It’s a languid summer on the ancient farmlands of the Nile Delta. The mangoes are ripe in the grove near the old cemetery. The heat of day is thick and soft as butter in the fields. On the banks of the canal, men loiter with fishing poles, indifferent to the trash and sewage afloat in the green waters.

The Times first visited Mit Yaeesh in February, during the long months of anxiety that led up to the invasion. Then, the villagers dreaded an attack on Iraq, and fretted especially about the economic damage it might unleash. Now the panic is gone, and the village is calmer, because a threat that was looming has at least taken form. But helplessness and anger are deeper than ever, for the villagers sense that their fears have come true. These impoverished families dread what may come next in what many interpret as the loss of their old world order.

Hunched in the hot shadows of his family’s sitting room and picking his words carefully, Mohammed Sezziq, a recent engineering school graduate, said it was not the American people or culture he deplored, but the U.S. government.

His mother nodded in agreement. “They’re a bunch of fundamentalists,” his father called from across the sitting room.

In this poor, proud land, as in much of the Arab world, the U.S.-led invasion and occupation of Iraq have played out as a personal affront. In Mit Yaeesh, a primitive farming village less than two hours by car from Cairo, the outrage and bewilderment are palpable. Anti-American anger has swelled. The people see Arabs fighting occupation on two fronts: Iraq and the Palestinian territories. There is more talk of pan-Arab nationalism.

“There is anger, genuine anger, and hatred for the Americans and the British,” said Ahmed Lachine, head of the village. “Even in private gatherings, even in weddings, we talk only about the war. It is a very bad feeling.”

Before the invasion, the farmers predicted that war would deepen their poverty and raise prices. Indeed, since the bombs began falling in Iraq in late March, costs have swelled throughout Egypt. The price of fertilizer and farming supplies has more than doubled since February; foodstuffs also are more expensive. Economists say the price hikes have more to do with the Egyptian government’s decision to float the pound than with the war, but in Mit Yaeesh the events are mingled in popular interpretation.

“From the first day of the war, the prices have gone up and up some more,” farmer Alaa Himdan said. “Rice, flour, even the cost of gold has gone up.”

On a dusky August evening in Mit Yaeesh, the old women sat on stone stoops to cool themselves. With a glass of sweet boiled milk, Lachine rested from a day in the fields, and complained about the Americans. They’re like the Roman Empire, he said angrily, conquering land from Afghanistan to Iraq.

“The Americans know what they’re doing,” he said. “And we know what they want -- they want the entire world to follow their rules and obey them.”

Villager after villager spoke the same phrase: The United States wants to “redraw the map of the Middle East,” they said. They believe Americans want to build an empire, protect Israel and win oil. It is hard to find a single villager who believes anything else, even though Saddam Hussein is reviled here.

“Everybody is angry,” said Magda Lachine, the mother of two grown children and an administrator at one of the village schools. “Everybody is saying it’s an invasion, and the country is falling to pieces. People are sad and upset, like there’s this nightmare, and for what?”

America has long been unpopular around here, particularly because of its political and financial support for Israel, a nation many of the men here were sent to fight in the 1960s and 1970s. But when the United States bombed Baghdad, fear and resentment found a new vessel. “It’s solidified, it’s taken form,” Ahmed Lachine, the village chief, said.

“The dream of Arab youth is still to go to America,” Sezziq said. “America is a fantasy. This place -- look at it, it stinks. There’s nothing for the young, absolutely no work opportunities.”

In a few days, Sezziq would leave his village. It would be a dramatic rite for a man who in his 20 years has spent exactly one week away from home. That was for a summer course, and Sezziq couldn’t concentrate -- he was too homesick for Mit Yaeesh.

Still, he’s grateful for the chance to travel to the southern Egyptian desert, where he’s found a job on a government irrigation project. Among his high school class, he alone finished university and drummed up employment.

“I’m very lucky -- I got the job through contacts,” he said. “Most people have no contacts, and they have no work.”

Most of the men here are tenant farmers, scratching a living from dirt they don’t own. They grow clover and rice, corn and peanuts. They eat what they need, then take the leftovers to market. Now they are waiting for the rice to ripen, and the work is lighter. The boys play soccer when the heat lets up.

It’s a meager living, and sometimes it’s not enough. Many fathers and husbands join the army to get extra pay and benefits. Other families migrate to the Persian Gulf, especially Saudi Arabia, to find jobs, earn a nest egg and eventually travel home again. Those households are easy to spot along the dark dirt roads -- the homecoming migrants smear cement over their mud houses, and wash the walls in purples, pinks and limes.

In these politically charged times, the village is hungry for information. Radio news scratches at sundown from a mosque minaret. Women slip quietly under the droning speakers, baskets balanced on their heads. Children veer past on rusty bicycles. Some families have invested in satellite dishes, and the Al Jazeera station is a favorite. Newspapers are eagerly devoured and shared.

“Just the other day we saw a picture of an American soldier and a little kid who was injured, and it hurt us so much,” Ahmed Omara said. Cataracts cloud the eyes of the 65-year-old farmer, but still he walks the fields in a smeared smock and tattered moccasins.

“All of the people are depressed,” he said.

The village has an isolated air, but modern Egypt is creeping in. There are several Internet connections in Mit Yaeesh. And in a dim slab house by the canal, children clump around to do mythical battles against flashing electronic figures -- the family owns a PlayStation.

But time moves to a slower meter here. Families still refer to the lands their ancestors left to migrate to this lush, fertile run of earth 300 years ago. They say that once upon a time, six sisters married into six different families, binding the entire village in blood. “Everyone, even the Christians, we’re all related,” said Ahmad Sazziq, a retired soldier.

On a recent evening the singsong chant of the Koran rang over the town. There was a funeral that day, and also a wedding. Mourning men sat glumly before the mosque, staring over the canal with empty eyes. Nearby, the trees were strung with tiny lights for a wedding dance.

Islam exists quietly alongside the Christianity practiced by hundreds of the village’s households. From the vibrant green washes of rice paddies, the mosque minaret and the church spire rise on the horizon like bookends.

British occupation is still discussed as a recent phenomenon, and in this light the American-led invasion of Iraq is widely regarded as an untenable piece of Western folly. The Americans don’t understand the Iraqi character, the villagers say.

“The Egyptian people are kind,” Sazziq said. “If the economy is good, we forget. But the Iraqi people won’t forget. When we were all colonized, they were the only ones that weren’t colonized. They are a very stubborn people.”

Villagers here have long defined the enemy as the village across the canal. It is in a way the story, old as the Bible, of the feuding brothers -- the clumps of mud and brick houses could be mirror images. But fistfights tend to erupt between the two villages, and the opposite bank is discussed in ominous mutterings.

These days, though, the threat has drifted to a more distant place, and to what end it leads, nobody here can be sure. As the sun slid lower in the sky, Alaa Himdan sighed.

“We don’t even know what the end of the war means,” he said. “In a way we want to fight. But what are we going to fight? Where will we fight?”