Amany… calling “Upper Egypt without blood feud”
For four years, Amany Abu Sahli, a lawyer, has been trying to stop the blood feud between her family and Al Makhalfa family in the city of Farshout in Qena, to no avail. Because she is not a blood relative, "that is, he did not kill her son or husband"; Until her eldest son was killed while going to school by young men from the other family.
The grieving mother did not change her attitude. She refused to submit to her family's demands for revenge against the killers. She and her husband left their home and headed to Saudi Arabia to perform umrah to escape the pressure of their family members who demanded blood feud.
The retaliatory feud between the families of Al Sahlawa and Al Makhalfa began during the 2010 Egyptian Parliamentary elections, after a quarrel between members of the two families following the loss of their candidates in these elections. This quarrel developed into altercations, and after a few days, the children from Al Makhalfa family sprayed water on the children of the other side. Clashes erupted between the two families at noon on Friday, June 23, 2011, which ended with the death of a young man from Al Makhalfa family.
After negotiations that lasted for ten months, the Reconciliation Committee succeeded in ending the conflict between the two families, but on the next day, four members of Al Makhalfa family killed Sheikh Hassan Abu Sahli while he was leaving for work at 7:30 in the morning.
Since Sheikh Hassan’s murder, clashes have begun to renew between the two families at intervals, until 12 people from the two families were killed and four from the families, who were present at the time of the clashes.
Throughout that period, Amany Abu Sahli tried in vain to stop the clashes between the two families, but she failed to do so until blood feud reached her family.
On Wednesday, June 17, 2015, at night, Amany sat down to persuade her son Saher not to go to school tomorrow morning for fear of being hurt. “The two families every little bit conflict and shoot” but her son insisted on attending the exam: “I don’t think they shoot a child.”
On Thursday morning, Saher went to school with three of his friends (all of them from Al Sahlawa family). Before they reached the school, young men from the other family attacked them, showering them with fire, killing Saher, and wounding one of his relatives.
After the child's funeral, the young men of his family gathered and prepared weapons. They discussed how to avenge him. Saher's mother, Amany, looked at them with mixed feelings of sadness, heartbreak, and pain and shouted at them, "Reconciliation is coming, you are all my children, and I am not ready to lose another one." She demanded that they be self-restraint and do not rush.
With the insistence of the family members on blood feud, she had no choice but to turn to God. Amany and her husband, the parliamentary representative Hamza Abu Sahli, left the house and headed to Saudi Arabia to perform umrah. After their return, they agreed with the security services to accept reconciliation with the other family.
Amany didn't stop at ending the feud only but adopted the idea of forming a committee for women's blood feud reconciliations "Upper without Blood feud" initiative. This initiative includes knocking on doors and talking with women to raise awareness of the dangers of the blood feud and its negative effects on families and society.
Amany said that women are the main driver of the blood feud crimes in Upper Egypt, stating that the initiative aims to end this phenomenon through talking with women about the danger of blood feud and the need to resort to the judiciary.
At the end of June 2021, Major General Ashraf Al Daoudi, governor of Qena, launched the "Qena without retaliatory feuds" initiative; to discuss the main reasons for the spread of the phenomenon of retaliatory feuds in society, to identify the obstacles that prevent access to a community free of the retaliatory feuds, and to discuss proposals and solutions that contribute to reducing the spread of the phenomenon of blood feud and completely eliminating it.
During the period from May 2014 to June 2021, the Qena governorate, in cooperation with the security directorate and the reconciliation committees, succeeded in ending 132 retaliatory feuds, according to Dr. Hazem Omar, deputy governor of Qena.
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