Nazlat al-Sharif is a small Egyptian agricultural village in the Nile Valley, with a population of no more than a thousand people, but it lost 75 of its young men in the Derna flood disaster in eastern Libya despite the distance, only to return lifeless bodies after they went to seek a livelihood in Cyrenaica, Libya.
The correspondent of the French newspaper "Le Monde" Alice Morneau, in a report from inside Nazlat al-Sharif, that this town located in the governorate of Beni Suef, 160 kilometers south of Cairo, there is no house left in it only and lost a son, brother, cousin or friend, but that "some families here lost two or three men," says Sayed, who sits with his older brother Ahmed on the balcony of their house – the home of the Gorozian family – after their younger brother Mohammed was found ( 20 years old) dead in Derna.
Sayed, who shows a picture of his brother on his phone, continues, "It was a few months ago when I visited him in Libya. It's a picture taken in front of the sea in remembrance." "Exactly an hour before he died, we were talking live on Facebook. He asked me to greet my father and mother and everyone, then he asked me when I would return to see him in Libya, and I told him within hopefully month. But I will never see him again."
This young man is only one of 75 residents of Nazlat al-Sharif, who died in the Libyan storm, as the newspaper says, everywhere here mothers wear a black hijab, and girls wipe their tears silently, after the bodies of the victims were returned to Egypt by plane last weekend, although the bodies of other children from Nazlat al-Sharif who disappeared in Derna have not yet been found, so Ahmed calls on the authorities to continue the search.
All the young people of this village who died in the floods had migrated to Libya to work in construction companies in the Derna area, and to send money to their relatives in Egypt, which means that the trauma experienced by the village is accompanied by a harsh sense of financial insecurity for the loss of the dependents of most of the population, especially since the residents of this village only have access to work in the fields, which is not a rewarding work whose income does not exceed 100 Egyptian pounds per day, which is equivalent to 3 euros.
The plight of the village
In an alley, Hamad embraces his five nephews, none of whom are as young as five: "My older brother died in Libya. The news of his death shocked us. God entrusts His children to me, but I don't know how I will do it.
"I really don't have a solution, we are not educated, we only work on the land, nothing but our fields and crops," Hamad said. Hamad is a father of four and must now support his mother, wife, children and orphaned nephews. He continued, "Thank you, brother, because we ate and dressed in good clothes. And now it's over. What can I do but grieve?"
Egypt's Ministry of Social Solidarity promised 100,3000 Egyptian pounds (25,<> euros) for each bereaved family and <>,<> pounds for each injured survivor.
The authorities have also committed to paying this year's school fees to orphans and paying monthly allowances to meet their food needs, but inflation, which has reached record levels in recent weeks, is adding to the plight of villagers due to doubling prices.