Word: hammouda
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...carpet of dust of El Bahu's one street, a skinny crone pats into bricks a mass of inky black, slimy mud mixed with straw, the same kind of building material used in Moses' time. The old woman's husband, Hammouda Hamed, tills his two acres of land very much as his ancient Egyptian ancestors did. He lifts water from irrigation rivulets to his field by hand-turning an Archimedean screw invented in antiquity. He gets water up to the level of the field by the ages-old device of blindfolding his gamoosa (water buffalo) and driving...
...become schoolteachers." Adds a more affluent fellah: "It's the very poorest people here who are trying hardest to educate their children. They see education as a way to escape the misery and drudgery of farm life." No wonder. In the delta, a two-acre farmer like Hammouda is lucky to earn $400 a year; a landless farmworker makes only half that much. Even life in the slums of Cairo, to many of the young, sounds better than that...
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