Sohair… revenge with money

Sohair - a pseudonym - leaned on the windowsill, watching her husband and their two children, on the way to the Al-Azhar Institute, where the husband works, and the son studies, and soon they were out of her sight, she hurried to clean the house and arrange the rooms. Moments later, she heard a thunderous scream, terrifying the hearts, "Your husband is killed."

With quick steps, the wife rushed while putting her scarf on her head, trying to deny what she heard until she reached the accident site to find her husband lying on the ground drown in his own blood. She rushed and transferred him to the hospital, hoping to rescue him, to no avail. The husband died of gunshot wounds to the body.

The victim, M.N, works at Al-Azhar institute. In addition to his culture and gentleness, he was known to provide monthly aid to the poor families; the feud with the other family did not prevent him from helping their poor.

Clashes took place nine years ago between the family of the victim and another family in Upper Egypt, which resulted in the murder of one of the young men of the other family. Barely seven months passed, some of the young men of the dead family agreed to avenge him.

One morning in 2012, sheikh M.N. accompanied his son to the Al-Azhar institute, as usual. Armed men from the other family attacked him, riding motorcycles, and showered them with fire, killing him and injuring his son.

After the murder of sheikh M.N., his wife became very angry, muttered, and shouted incomprehensible statements, inciting the family members to avenge her husband. Dozens of family members armed with firearms surrounded the other family's houses for several days, and the two sides exchanged fire without causing any injuries. Terror gripped the people, so the streets were empty, and shops were closed.

The situation calmed down gradually, and good people in the village intervened and succeeded in breaking the siege imposed on the houses of the other family, and they began to try to convince them to make reconciliation. As soon as the family's elders told the victim's wife that the mediators tried to hold a reconciliation session, it exploded like a time bomb, shouting: "I'm going out and avenge by myself," according to one of the mediators.

The young age of Sohair’s sons drove her to hire her family’s unemployed youth. She provided them with the money needed to buy weapons and ammunition, inciting them to take revenge on her husband in exchange for large sums of money. The young man from the family said, “One day took advantage of the other party's gathering to receive condolences for the death of a young man and demanded that the young men she hired, attack the mourners.”

When the armed young men were on their way to mourn, news reached the other family of the attack that sheikh M.N's wife had mobilized, so they came out armed and waited for them. They met after a few seconds, and the two sides began to exchange fire until a bullet was fired from an invisible hand to kill a member of the sheikh's family, the "victim".

That quarrel raged the conflict between the two parties and lasted for four years. The sounds of bullets spread throughout the city, and its residents took refuge in homes, making its streets empty. Merchants were forced to move to other villages in the governorate; the successive clashes resulted in the murder of 16 of the two families.

At the end of 2015, the security services, with the participation of the Blood Feud Reconciliation Committee in Qena, succeeded in ending the retaliatory feud between the two families.

If a woman is not touched or killed in retaliation, this circumstance may suggest to a researcher who looks at this culture from the outside that women should be hostile to the blood feud. And the development of practices that push young people to abandon this culture, but all studies indicate that women take a different attitude, as they defend and encourage revenge.

The source: a field study in the villages of Al-Zarabi and Al-Masoudi, Asyut

The researcher: Warda Mahfouz

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