Selling local lemons at the weekly market
The last functioning reed mat workshop in the village. Local reed mats were displaced by imported plastic mats.
Baking bakkona bread rolls
Learning to harvest wheat with a sickle
Camels are the main means for heavy transport from the fields back to village, particularly at harvest time when tons of wheat and rice are brought in for winnowing, threshing, and storage.
Camelteers
One day's baking -- enough thin flat bread to last the family 2-3 days
Itinerant seller of local lemons
A state-owned "gama'iyya" store where basic foodstuffs such as tea, sugar, flour, and oil were sold at a discount on a ration system.
One of the 15-20 barbers, all part-time, who worked in the village.
Preparing a field for planting
Mothers and children baking bread
Several families gathered to bake mirahrah ("wide") bread
Ploughing
Preparing to bake mirahrah ("wide") bread
Preparing a field for planting
Placing rice in trays for sprouting
The "season of fighting the cotton worm" (mawsim muqawamat dud il-qutn), when children are released from school to work at picking cotton worms off the plants leaf by leaf
Preparing dried corn kernels for grinding into corn flour
Local builders constructing a house from dried mud (adobe) brick
Children picking cotton worms off of the young cotton plants
Local builders constructing a house from baked mud (adobe) brick
At the end of a day of clearing a rice paddy
Clearing a field to flood as a rice paddy -- the sprouted rice plants are visible in the upper right, waiting to be transplanted
Tulba Dissuqi and his family checking their cotton fields
Men's tailor
Carrying clover (birseem) into the village to be used as fodder.
Learning to plant rice with Tulba Dissuqi and his family
Checking the cotton crop
'Abd al-Hamid Bakhati doing school work in the corner of my room
A break from work in the fields for a cup of tea and a bowl of honey-soaked tobacco (mi'assal)
Learning to harvest wheat with a sickle
Placing rice in trays for sprouting
In the 19080's, water buffalo were the main source of milk and cream
The weekly Thursday market