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Ali Zaraay

Photographer
   
Crawling on the Dust

الشاعر علي جرمون قصة زبيدة و ياسين من السيرة الهلالية

Public Project
Crawling on the Dust
Copyright Ali Zaraay 2024
Updated May 2024
Location mansoura
Topics Featured Film, Videos
- Crawling on the Dust . 
the Nomadic Bedouins in Egypt’s Delta 2016 - Ongoing

Crawling on the Dust, is a long term project that started in 2017 - ongoing, with the Nomadic Bedouins in Egypt’s Delta. The project attempts to look, through Haj Hani’s family’s different generations, into the social and spatial memory of Egypt’s Nomads, their alternative narratives of “home”,their relationships to lands, animals and modes in which they resist marginalisation, under-representation and systematic oppressions by “crawling” as resistance. 

It explores how the continuous change, new roads, bridges and urban sprawling around Egypt affects not only people in the city, but also jeopardizes and challenges the lives of Haj Hani and his nomadic community in the Delta.

Through the years of working I have amassed an archive of 20k+ photographs, 7 hours of voice recordings with various members, artifacts such as studio photographs and clothing, and social media materials and field work notebooks. A selection of the  project has recently been presented as a multimedia installation in Cairo.

The Nomadic Bedouins of the Delta have been continuously  on the move with their animals for centuries. Stability is not something Hani’s people relate to, but now, urban expansion is forcing them to resettle and suffocates the lands they used to nomadically travel for generations. How do these changes alter the relationships the Nomads have with the land and reconstruct their ideas of belonging?

This project with Haj Hani, my Nomadic Bedouin friend and my access to the Nomadic Bedouins in Egypt’s Delta for more than 8 years.

 
Urban sprawling over the fertile, green lands in Egypt’s Delta suffocates the spaces Hani and his community knew for centuries by heart. Being close to the nomads in the Delta, made me see the daily life of movement, challenges, changes, dreams and modes of resistance. 


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