The People Of The Nile Valley
Although the Nile Valley and its Delta represents a mere four percent of Egypt's surface area, it is home to 95 percent of the country's population. While Cairo and Alexandria account for about a quarter of this, the bulk of the people still live in small towns and villages and, as in pharaonic times, the fellaheen or peasant farmers remain the bedrock of Egyptian society. Most villages consist of flat-roofed mud-brick houses, with chickens, goats, cows and water buffalo roaming the unpaved streets, and elaborate multistorey pigeon coops (the birds are eaten and their droppings used as fertilizer). The plastered outside walls of the houses are often painted light blue (a colour believed to ward off the Evil Eye), and if the householder has made the pilgrimage to Mecca, they will be decorated with characteristic Hadj scenes (recalling the journey with images of ships and charter jets, lions and the sacred Ka'ba). Children begin work at an early age: girls feed the animals, fetch water and make the dung patties which are used for fuel (though primus stoves are increasingly popular), while by the age of nine or ten, boys are learning how to farm the land that will one day be theirs. Rural life might appear the same throughout the Nile Valley, but its character changes as you go further south. The northern part of the Valley is wider and greener, unconstrained by the desert hills; its people have a reputation for being quietly spoken and phlegmatic, notwithstanding a recent turn towards Islamic radicalism. By contrast, Egyptians characterize the Saiyidis of Upper Egypt as mercurial in character, alternating between hot-blooded passion and a state known as kismet - a kind of fatalistic stasis. To non-Saiyidis, they are also the butt of jokes mocking their stubbornness and stupidity. A further ethnic contingent of the southern reaches of the Valley are the black-skinned Nubians , whose traditional homeland extended into Sudan, but has now been submerged beneath the waters of Lake Nasser.
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