A bloody, decade-long vendetta between two southern families has finally come to an end. Salonaz Sami reports from a historic, government-brokered reconciliation in Bait Allam "Now, we can finally bury our dead," El- Hanashat family leader Abdin El-Tayeb Mohamed said. "Our family has finally decided to accept condolences." While normal vendetta rules stipulate that a vendetta victim's family should not accept condolences, or observe mourning, for their dead until their honour is "cleansed" with the rival clan's blood, bloodless reconciliation is sometimes possible too. In the village of Bait Allam in Suhag, 400 kilometres south of Cairo, authorities have been trying to engineer just such a bloodless reconciliation between the El-Hanashat and Abdel- Halim families for the three years that followed their last massacre in 2002. "We've arranged get-togethers that have included community leaders and municipal officials," said reconciliation committee head Hussein El-Assiouti. These meetings would "sometimes last till three in the morning," he said. Those sleepless nights finally appear to have paid off. The blood feud was triggered, in 1991, as the result of a fight between the village children which ended with the death of two members of El-Hanashat at the hands of the Abdel-Halims. Initial efforts by officials to prevent an immediate retaliation resulted only in the postponement of revenge for 12 years of deceptive silence. In April 2002, El-Hanashat avenged their dead with the death of two members of the rival clan -- who was not equally patient in its revenge, orchestrating a blood bath in broad daylight that left 22 Hanashat dead in one fell swoop. The attacks came as the bloodiest vendetta incident Egypt had witnessed since 1995, when 24 people were killed in a clash between two families outside a mosque in Minya. The Abdel-Halim family has -- since then -- been under a heavy security force curfew. "We weren't allowed to leave our houses. Even the four-year-old children, who couldn't possibly hurt anyone," were forced to stay indoors, said Tarek Thabet Abdel-Halim, son of the family leader. "We were being treated just like the Palestinians, confined in our own homes." On Tuesday, security was tight at the scene of the reconciliation; the tent hosting the assembly belied the use of a fancy metal detector so that unwanted weapons would not find their way inside. As the local police chief escorted the head of the Abdel-Halims, followed by other members of his family, into the tent, humility was the order of the day. The men walked with their eyes fixed to the ground; they were barefoot with their heads uncovered. Most importantly, they carried shrouds in their hands, offering them to their rivals as a symbolic gesture. Abdu Ali Khalaf, a member of the reconciliation committee, said that "initially, the two families wouldn't even consider reconciliation, though after a lot of hard work and dialogue, they eventually did." Committee member Mohamed Zaki said the families had agreed to drop the vendetta, and had paid the agreed upon amount of blood money. According to vendetta rules, a murderer can only be pardoned if he crosses the village barefoot and bareheaded, carrying a white funeral shroud (his own -- symbolising his willingness to be killed for the wrong he has done). He must then kneel at the feet of the rival clan's leader and beg for forgiveness. If the latter accepts his offer, a sacrificial animal is killed in his stead, and the repentant killer is banished from the village forever. On occasion, however, his own family might kill him for having dishonored them. In this case, the El- Hanashat family insisted on the Abdel-Halims keeping their heads bare, but agreed to allow them to wear slippers rather than cross the village barefoot. The sacrificial animal, meanwhile, was replaced with LE120,000 in compensation for each person who was killed. More than 10,000 people were in attendance at Tuesday's reconciliation, including Al-Azhar Grand Imam Sheikh Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, Sohag Governor Said El-Beltagui, Assistant Interior Minister for Upper Egypt Sameh Abul-Leil, Sohag Security Chief Gamal El-Gohari, and official representatives from the People's Assembly and the Shura Council. During a climactic moment at the ceremony, 17 members of the Abdel-Halim family walked into the tent, each of them in turn handing over his shroud to a member of the El-Hanashat family, who then declared his forgiveness of both the person and his entire family. The rivals then recited prayers for forgiveness together and asked God to have mercy on them. Some of the men trembled with emotion during this intense and historic moment, while others openly wept while the tent echoed with cheers of " Allahu Akbar" (God is great). Reconciliation committee member Zaki said, "each El- Hanashat family member chose the Abdel-Halim who would deliver him his shroud." El-Hanashat family member Samir Khalaf told Al-Ahram Weekly that he could "see the humiliation in their [the Abdel-Halims'] eyes, and it meant a lot to me." Khalaf said it was like "sending a message that we could kill them if we wanted to, but we have chosen forgiveness instead. It's the most difficult situation anyone can face." Thabet said the two families truly wanted to "turn a new page, so all of us can start living together in peace again." Explaining why matters spiraled out of hand, Thabet said "customs and traditions played a major role, and our family's honour is more precious than life itself, since the strong bonds we share oblige members of the same family to remain in solidarity at all times." Abdel-Halim family member Esmat Abdel-Mareed attributed the feud to the two families' conservative natures. "We are ruled by the notion of honour, especially when it comes to our pride." Vendettas -- tar in Arabic -- are a rather frequent occurrence in the south. Reconciliation committee member Kadri Abdel-Halim said southerners see vendettas as "a tradition that needs to be respected". They are also often used as a way to avert aggression, since people know that any aggression will be met with violent retaliation. "We're all one big family after all," said Abdel-Halim. "Fourteen of our women are married to members of the El- Hanashat family." One Abdel-Halim family member said it was quite likely that "the reconciliation agreement will be respected by both parties. Nobody wants to reopen the wounds, and God willing the future will be nothing like the past." In the end, the Abdel-Halim family paid around LE3 million pounds in "blood money" for the people they killed. After the ceremony, security officials quickly whisked the Abdel- Halims out through a back door, and Bait Allam's 16,100 residents breathed a long-awaited sigh of relief. Perhaps now the village -- which has felt deserted for years -- will come alive again.
