Tuesday
Jun212011
"New Egypt" Feature: When Idealism Meets Reality (Fadel)
Tuesday, June 21, 2011 at 8:38
A Town in the Nile DeltaOn his first political foray beyond cosmopolitan Cairo, Shady Ghazali Harb, a British-educated surgeon, hoped to find support for his effort to build a political party.
What he found instead, here [in Buzoor] in the Nile Delta, was uncertainty about the new crop of politicians emerging from Egypt’s revolution. Farmers who had gathered in a dirt yard to hear Harb speak stared blankly as the 32-year-old idealist in jeans, a purple dress shirt and Adidas sneakers spoke of his desire to set up shop “where people hang out.’’
“People don’t go to coffee shops here,” Karam el-Hadi Mohammed, 55, a merchant and farmer, told him. “They work hard and go to bed early.’’