Dotawo/content/article/sadeq.md

---
title: "A Tale of Two *Nubias*"
authors: ["abdelsadeq.md"]
abstract: For centuries, the Nubians lived between the First and Fourth Cataracts of the Nile as an ethno-linguistic group united by their language, customs and distinctive architecture. However, the construction of the High Dam in 1964 led to the displacement of Nubian villages from their historical sites to another location completely different to the environment in which the Nubian culture arose and developed. In this research I examine the daily life in Abu Hor, a Nubian village in both Old and New Nubia as a case study to explore how the Nubians could remake their homes and homeland in the aftermath of their displacement. I use auto-ethnographic tools to understand the material and social techniques they had developed to create a sense of home in New Nubia. The research demonstrates how the displacement of Nubians and the changing spatial context have deeply affected their culture, and how the Nubians could create new images of home and new cultural practices for belonging through sixty years.
keywords: ["Old Nubia", "New Nubia", "home-making", "homing", "displacement", "homeland"]
---

# Introduction

For more than fifteen centuries, Nubians lived in the Nile Valley
between the First Cataract at Aswan in southern Egypt and the Fourth
Cataract upstream from Dongola in Sudan. The cataract at Aswan, and the
barren deserts on either side of the valley isolated Nubians from other
neighboring groups, enabling them to retain their cohesiveness as an
ethno-linguistic group with distinguishing cultural traditions. Much of
the Nubian region consisted of rocky shoreline. The arable lands were
restricted to a narrow fringe of alluvial deposits, which was not enough
encouraging for permanent colonization by the empires of ancient and
medieval times (ancient Egyptian, Roman, Islamic, and so on). However,
Nubia was perceived as "The Corridor to Africa" by these same empires.
This unique situation permitted the partial independence of Nubia while
under the political influence of these empires,[^1] enabling the Nubians
to creatively adopt the belief systems of neighboring empires. These
systems became entangled with long-standing Nubian traditions.[^2]

After the construction of the Aswan dam in 1902, and its subsequent
heightening in 1912 and 1933, Northern Nubian (Arabic: *Kenuz*)
villages, were submerged under the Nile waters. This submersion forced
the Kenuz Nubians to rebuild their houses at higher levels each time.
Also, most of the agricultural land in Kenuz villages became inundated
for most of the year. Cultivation was only possible along a narrow strip
of the plain for two months during the summer. This impoverishment
forced Nubian men to migrate to Egyptian cities in search for work,
while women and children were left behind in Nubia. In Egypt, Nubian men
learned to speak Arabic and were partially acculturated by the Egyptian
culture. Thus, the isolation of Nubians that had lasted for centuries
gradually changed.[^3]

Despite the heightening of the Aswan dam, the effects of the Nile
flooding were devastating along the Valley and the Delta villages
causing much loss in life and property. Therefore, the new Egyptian
regime in 1954 decided to build the High Dam, a new dam in Aswan higher
than the already existing one. This meant that the entirety of Nubia was
to be submerged under the lake created behind the new dam. So, it was
decided to relocate the Nubians to the Kom Ombo area, 50 km north of
Aswan City. This resettlement plan compacted Egyptian Nubia from 39
villages along 320 kilometers of the Nile into 33 villages occupying a
60-kilometer-long crescent away from the Nile in the desert.[^4] Several
studies discussed the challenges of the Nubian resettlement after
displacement. These studies focused, however, on "home-building" issues
and the wide dissatisfaction among the Nubians towards their new houses
and resettlements, but they say very little on "home-making" practices
and efforts undertaken by the Nubians in the aftermath of their
displacement.

The experience of forced displacement deeply unsettles the
taken-for-granted sense of home. When the displaced person lives in a
new place, he/she does not feel like at home automatically. Home is much
more than a house or a shelter, rather it is a complex and multi-layered
concept. Some of these layers are existential; the "immersion of a self
in a locality."[^5] Home is a physical place that embodies the state of
being-at-home with its particular emotions; privacy, familiarity,
safety, comfort, control, and the expression of personal identity and
the social norms of the community.[^6] Thus, home does not simply exist,
but is made and lived.[^7] The term home-making or homing implies an
ongoing process that turns a meaningless space into a home.[^8] Material
and social practices of home-making are undertaken to overcome the
displacement gap by reflecting one's expectations not only in his/her
new house, but also the larger public environment in the neighborhood
and the city.[^9] While *home* is materially made by building
structures, placing furniture and decorating the house, it is socially
made through both routinized activities and seasonal social practices
including domestic chores, caring of the household members, relaxation,
celebrating birthdays and religious rituals, communicating with
neighbors, and so on.[^10]

In this research, I explore how the people of Abu Hor, a Kenuz Nubian
village, could remake their homes and homeland in the aftermath of their
displacement in December 1964. I am drawing on the scholarship on
home-making practices in diverse contexts of displacement, as well as
auto-ethnographic research based on narratives from elderly people with
whom I talked in order to understand the techniques they had developed
to deal with the new home life in resettlement, a life that was far from
the life they had already experienced. The research begins with an
explanation of the built environment of old Abu Hor and the
socio-cultural values that created and ordered this environment. Then,
the research focuses on the different material and social practices that
they used to create a sense of home in new Abu Hor. Finally, the
research ends with an analysis of the home-making process based on the
framework of Perez Murcia,[^11] who proposed that home can be remade in
terms of four aspects: material place, familiar landscape, social world,
and emotional space. The conclusion of the research underscores the main
outcomes of the home-making process with its challenges, resolutions, as
well as cultural continuity and change.

# Before displacement

My family originated from a small Kenuz Nubian village called Abu Hor.
The old Abu Hor was located about sixty kilometers south of the city of
Aswan, near Kalabsha village and its famous temple. The post steamboat
was the only means of transportation linking Nubian villages to Egypt,
starting from the village of Al-Shalal in Aswan to Wadi Halfa on the
Egyptian Sudanese border, passing through all the Egyptian Nubian
villages. This steamboat used to pass by our village on Wednesdays
coming from Aswan and on Mondays returning from Wadi Halfa. It carried
passengers, goods, letters, and money orders from migrating men to their
families in the village.

The topography of the old Abu Hor was rough; the Nile banks comprised of
high rock plateaus overlooking the river, leaving small plain pockets on
few locations. Kawthar Abd El-Rasoul and Mohamed Riad visited the
village in 1962 and described it. Their description is worth quoting at
length:

> This was the first time we saw Abu Hor on a summer morning, and the
> view was beautiful, (...) , the Nile had dropped below its winter
> level by about twenty meters or a little less, and we were (...)
> raising our eyes to a rock wall more than fifty meters high, and at
> the foot of the rock wall, there was a green strip no more than fifty
> meters wide, and on top of the rocks were scattered high houses, and
> due to the height, we could only see the edges of their decorated
> walls for long distances.....
>
> After about half an hour, the rock wall of Abu Hor retreated in a
> large arc, and opened up into a small agricultural basin whose depth
> did not exceed one hundred and fifty meters inward. The cultivated
> areas in this small plain did not exceed several narrow strips, while
> green grass covered the remaining areas. Numbers of camels, perhaps
> more than twenty-five camels, and numbers of goats and sheep spread
> throughout the area......[^12]
>
> A little before four o\'clock we reached the hamlets of Abu Hor. The
> Nile is much narrower, the eastern plateau is high and continuous for
> kilometers, the western bank is less high and continuous and consists
> of groups of unconnected hills.[^13]

![Photograph of old Abu Hor in 1962. Photo from Riad and Abd el-Rasoul (2014: p. 293/b).](../static/images/sadeq/fig1.jpg "Photograph of old Abu Hor in 1962. Photo from Riad and Abd el-Rasoul (2014: p. 293/b).")

**~~Figure 1. Photograph of old Abu Hor in 1962. Photo from Riad and Abd el-Rasoul (2014: p. 293/b).~~**


Abu Hor extended for ten kilometers and included 23 hamlets built on the
rugged lands at the eastern and western fringes of the valley, leaving
the narrow plain for agriculture. These hamlets extended thinly along
the Nile and were separated from each other by topographic features like
khor[^14] and steep hills. During the summer, as the water level of the
Nile used to recede, khor lands became visible and people often moved
between the hamlets by donkey or on foot. In winter, the water of the
Aswan reservoir filled the valley and backed up into the khors, making
hamlets' sites like peninsulas, so small felucca sailboats ferried the
people across the hamlets.

Since most social relations were associated with hamlets, the village
lacked the real structure of a social unit. Even so, the village had a
role of cohesiveness. It served as an administrative unit under the
supervision of a governmentally appointed mayor (Arabic: *omda*) whose
guesthouse was the place where the people of Abu Hor gathered to make
crucial decisions that concerned the entire village. The old village had
three primary schools, a telegraph office, and a health center. These
facilities were distributed among the different hamlets, and served not
only the people of *Abu Hor*, but also the adjacent villages.

![Map of the hamlets of old *Abu Hor* in 1937. Source: <https://archives.ungeneva.org/kalabsha-4>.](../static/images/sadeq/fig2.jpg "Map of the hamlets of old *Abu Hor* in 1937. Source: <https://archives.ungeneva.org/kalabsha-4>.")

**~~Figure 2. Map of the hamlets of old *Abu Hor* in 1937. Source: <https://archives.ungeneva.org/kalabsha-4>.~~**


The people of Abu Hor belonged to seven tribes, or maximal lineages,
which were divided among major lineages distributed over hamlets. Each
hamlet (Arabic: *nag'*) consisted of minor lineages forming a
patrilineal descent group that had lived in the hamlet for generations
and shared kinship ties. The nag' created a sense of belonging, as
people used to refer to themselves by their hamlet and particular
descent group, which were believed to express pride and distinctive
personalities.

The nag' served as the main social unit that formed the Nubian society.
It was the actual unit of community life that was organized through
propinquity and kinship bonds and carried important social obligations,
such as endogamous marriage, purchase on credit, mutual aid in times of
need, and taking care for the families of migrating men. The nag' served
as the appropriate domain for women to participate in social life. While
men were more concerned with village affairs and could move freely
between hamlets and villages, women were restricted to their nag' where
they practiced social and economic activities, ranging from subsistence
farming and raising livestock to participating in nag' events such as
weddings, funerals, and religious festivals.

The nag' offered the pattern of co-residence that maintained the
isolated and conservative life of the Nubians so that the foreigner
could be identified easily. Although there was no structural plan, the
nag' was a planned settlement, designed by its occupants according to
their needs and culture. The placement of dwellings was based on family
ties and the natural environment as well. It was customary for
individuals to build their houses on any even tract of land adjacent to
their relatives in order to have help nearby in case of need. The
dwellings that made up the nag' followed the natural contours of the
rocky fringes of the valley. The houses that overlooked the Nile were
detached, or semi--detached, forming clustered terraces, while the
houses that extended inland were freestanding and grouped together
around an open area. Usually there were three or four houses in each of
these arrangements. In the center of the nag', there was a large open
space where the mosque and few shops were located. The communal
guesthouse (Arabic: *sabeel*) which was used for the nag' men
gatherings, entertaining and housing male guests was also placed in the
central open space. Each nag' also maintained a cemetery and a shrine
for the local saint in its hinterland.

![Houses in old Abu Hor overlooking the Nile. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 169/a).](../static/images/sadeq/fig3.jpg "Houses in old Abu Hor overlooking the Nile. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 169/a).")

**~~Figure 3. Houses in old Abu Hor overlooking the Nile. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 169/a).~~**

![A nag' in old Abu Hor. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 171/a).](../static/images/sadeq/fig4.jpg "A nag' in old Abu Hor. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 171/a).")

**~~Figure 4. A nag' in old Abu Hor. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 171/a).~~**


The traditional house in Old Nubia was not only a shelter, but it was
also the center of most Nubian rites. The design of the house had a
strong connection to the natural environment, especially to the
topography and the climate. It also reflected Nubian social norms and
the economic condition of the proprietor. A typical house in old Abu Hor
was built of fieldstone and plastered with mud and composed of a big
walled courtyard with vaulted rooms built at the northern part of the
courtyard, while the main entrance and the loggia were often located in
the southern part and were open to the north in order to allow the best
possible access to north wind. Livestock enclosures were built in the
eastern or southern part of the courtyard, but with a separate entrance.
Guest rooms were not common in Abu Hor houses. However, the entrance
hall and the bench (Arabic: *mastaba*) built near the entrance gate
served the purpose of the guest room. The entrance hall was a
transitional zone between the semi-public, male domain outside, and the
private, female domain inside the house. The courtyard was a vital part
of the traditional Nubian house. It was not just an empty space; rather,
it was the hub for all female activity such as grinding cereals, baking
*doka* bread, and raising livestock. The courtyard also served as a
guest area for women to meet, especially on the occasion of weddings,
funerals, and other events.

![Plan of a house in old Abu Hor in 1964. Graphic from Jaritz (1973: Fig. 21 B5b).](../static/images/sadeq/fig5.jpg "Plan of a house in old Abu Hor in 1964. Graphic from Jaritz (1973: Fig. 21 B5b).")

**~~Figure 5. Plan of a house in old Abu Hor in 1964. Graphic from Jaritz (1973: Fig. 21 B5b).~~**

![Plan of a house in Abu Hor village in 1962. Graphic by Amany Abdelsadeq from Hassan Fathy drawing (1962). Source: <https://www.archnet.org/sites/14965>.](../static/images/sadeq/fig6.jpg "Plan of a house in Abu Hor village in 1962. Graphic by Amany Abdelsadeq from Hassan Fathy drawing (1962). Source: <https://www.archnet.org/sites/14965>.")

**~~Figure 6. Plan of a house in Abu Hor village in 1962. Graphic by Amany Abdelsadeq from Hassan Fathy drawing (1962). Source: <https://www.archnet.org/sites/14965>.~~**

![A traditional house in old Abu Hor. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p.168/b).](../static/images/sadeq/fig7.jpg "A traditional house in old Abu Hor. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p.168/b).")

**~~Figure 7. A traditional house in old Abu Hor. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p.168/b).~~**


Nubian ceremonies have always been the most noticeable and distinct
feature of Nubian culture reflecting its rich and intermingled history
through the ages. The ceremonies were of great symbolic importance in
the social life of Nubians. They were not just diversion from the
routines of everyday life but also had the function of uniting the nag',
reinforcing ties within community, and maintaining its solidarity, as
the ceremonies were occasions for reuniting migrants in different
Egyptian cities with their relatives in the village.

As Muslims, the Nubians celebrated the famous Islamic feasts, *Eid
al-Fitr* and *Eid al-Adha*. In these occasions, the hamlet (nag') was
the ritual unit where all rites were performed. After the Eid prayer,
the men used to make a procession to each house in their own hamlet to
congratulate their relatives for the feast. However, the Nubians had two
ceremonies that can be considered as distinctively Nubian: the wedding
ceremonies, and the local Islamic celebrations *moulid*.

Wedding rituals varied between seven and fourteen days in length. The
rituals used to start right after a new marriage was arranged and
announced. All the women and young females living in the nag' were
expected to assemble in the house of the bride\'s family to assist in
grinding the wheat to make *shaʼreya*,[^15] while the men would visit
the groom to congratulate him. Before marriage, the bride, dressed in
her bridal gown and accompanied by an elderly female relative, had to
visit all the houses around the nag' to announce the day for starting
the wedding ceremonies. In turn, the women offered gifts of *karej*[^16]
or a china plate. Then the bride would continue to visit all the major
saints\' shrines in the village and to *Abu Asha* shrine in the adjacent
village, *Murwaw*. The groom, dressed in his bridal attire, carrying a
whip, riding a camel and accompanied by the *arras*,[^17] had to visit
all the guesthouses in the village to invite the men of other hamlets to
his wedding.

Wedding ceremonies were occasions for three days and nights of communal
feasting and dancing in both the bride\'s and the groom\'s houses. On
the morning of the wedding day (the third day of wedding ceremonies),
the relatives and friends of the groom would bring his *sandouq*
*jally*[^18] and hung the *kojara*[^19] in the bride\'s house. After the
guests had eaten the *fatta* lunch at the groom\'s house, they would
form a procession with the groom\'s family to the local shrine before
going to the bride\'s house, passing in front of the *nag'* houses while
sessions of singing and dancing were carried on accompanied by gunshots
and joyful ululations of the women.

![A traditional wedding ceremony in old *Abu* *Hor*. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 158/b).](../static/images/sadeq/fig8.jpg "A traditional wedding ceremony in old *Abu* *Hor*. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 158/b).")

**~~Figure 8. A traditional wedding ceremony in old *Abu* *Hor*. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 158/b).~~**

![A picture of sandouq jally. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 39/a).](../static/images/sadeq/fig9.jpg "A picture of sandouq jally. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 39/a).")

**~~Figure 9. A picture of sandouq jally. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 39/a).~~**

The local Saints (Arabic: *sheikh*) have an important ritual ceremony
called moulid, a festival day designated as the sheikh's birthday,
usually on the fifteenth of the Islamic month of *Shaʼbān*. The moulid
was both a religious and social occasion that was celebrated by men,
women and children. The whole nag' used to combine their financial
resources in order to host the ceremonies, demonstrating their
generosity and prestige among other hamlets. From the early morning of
the moulid day, boatloads of people from neighboring villages along with
the village residents used to make long processions to the square of the
saint\'s shrine, where the men were chanting *zikr*[^20] and dancing the
*kaff* dance,[^21] the women were offering sacrificial sheep to be
slaughtered, cooked and eaten in the communal feast afterwards, and the
children were enjoying the joyful atmosphere and buying sweets and toys
from travelling vendors. The people of Abu Hor celebrated eight moulids
in different hamlets in the village, and five other moulids in the
adjacent villages.

![*Moulid* celebration in old *Abu* *Hor*. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 157/a).](../static/images/sadeq/fig10.jpg "*Moulid* celebration in old *Abu* *Hor*. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 157/a).")

**~~Figure 10. *Moulid* celebration in old *Abu* *Hor*. Photo from Hassan and Hassan (2000: p. 157/a).~~**

# After displacement

On the 27th of December 1963, the displacement of the people of Abu
Hor began to their village in New Nubia. There, the new Abu Hor is one
of the five villages that are under the administrative local council of
Kalabsha, a main village which provides the neighboring villages with
social, educational and administrative services.

The new Abu Hor was planned according to a grid pattern; the main
streets were oriented north-south and secondary streets crossed at right
angles. In the first phase of resettlement, the houses were
significantly smaller than in Old Nubia and were arranged back-to-back
in long rows based on four prototypes of houses that ranged from one to
four bedrooms. These houses were distributed according to family size;
however, this arrangement ignored the socio-spatial structure
characteristic of the Nubian villages before displacement. Relatives and
the elderly who had lived nearby in old Nubia were allocated houses far
from each other. And women, who were confined to their hamlet, found
themselves surrounded by strange neighbors from other hamlets. For
instance, my paternal grandfather (Sayed) was assigned a
three-bedroom-house away from the house of his grandfather (Ali). Thus,
the new settings in resettlement disturbed the established social fabric
of the village.

Moreover, many families didn't even receive a house in the first phase
of resettlement, so they had to live with relatives in their new small
houses. This situation was further exacerbated after the 1967 war, when
the migrant families who were living in Suez, Ismailia, and Port Said
had to evacuate these cities and moved back to new Abu Hor to live with
their relatives. This crowding had even worsened the living conditions
in the new village.

In 1970, my mother\'s family received their house (Faris' house in
Figure 11) as one of the second phase typical houses; a
thirteen-by-twenty-meter house that consisted of a courtyard, two small
bedrooms, a kitchen, and a bathroom. The walls were made of limestone
cut from nearby quarries, with 0.40m thickness and 3-meter height, while
the flat roof was made of reinforced concrete to allow the building of a
second storey using the bearing walls technique. However, this house
form disregarded the climatic and social considerations characteristic
of the traditional Nubian house. The kitchen was so small that there was
no space to store food and supplies. The rooms were also much smaller
than their house in old Abu Hor. The placement of the rooms along the
southern side of the house allowed the heat to penetrate into them, in
addition to the heat that came in from the uninsulated roof. Surrounded
by other houses on three sides, the northern winds could not reach the
house, making the living conditions intolerable during the summer
months.

![Layout of new Abu Hor. Graphic: Amany Abdelsadeq.](../static/images/sadeq/fig11.jpg "Layout of new Abu Hor. Graphic: Amany Abdelsadeq.")

**~~Figure 11. Layout of new Abu Hor. Graphic: Amany Abdelsadeq.~~**

![Governmental houses and the communal tap of *Kalabsha* and *Abu Hor* in New Nubia, as well as a new shrine built by the people of *Kalabsha*. Photo by Ralph Crane (1964). Courtesy of the LIFE Picture Collection.](../static/images/sadeq/fig12.jpg "Governmental houses and the communal tap of *Kalabsha* and *Abu Hor* in New Nubia, as well as a new shrine built by the people of *Kalabsha*. Photo by Ralph Crane (1964). Courtesy of the LIFE Picture Collection.")

**~~Figure 12. Governmental houses and the communal tap of *Kalabsha* and *Abu Hor* in New Nubia, as well as a new shrine built by the people of *Kalabsha*. Photo by Ralph Crane (1964). Courtesy of the LIFE Picture Collection.~~**


They had to make alterations in the house in order to suit their way of
life. A larger kitchen was built to be spacious enough for cooking and
storing dried food and supplies, while the former kitchen had become a
bedroom, in addition to building a new room for the children. As in Old
Nubia, the façade was plastered with mud and whitewashed, and the low
clay bench *mastaba* was built in front of the house, adding more space
for hospitality and neighbors\' gatherings. Occasionally, they were
spending their afternoons on their orchard, where they planted palm
trees and a Roselle shrub.

![My grandparents\' house before and after alterations. Graphic: Amany Abdelsadeq.](../static/images/sadeq/fig13.jpg "My grandparents\' house before and after alterations. Graphic: Amany Abdelsadeq.")

**~~Figure 13. My grandparents\' house before and after alterations. Graphic: Amany Abdelsadeq.~~**


The people of *Abu-Hor* tried to recreate the sense of community in
their new village through undertaking several cooperative projects.
Every row of houses cooperated in cleaning the street and planting
trees. The whole village collected money to build a communal guesthouse
(*sabeel*) not only for accommodating visitors, but also as a gathering
place where men can meet in the evening, hold public meetings, and
gather in communal feasts in weddings and Eid al-Adha. Moreover, an
elderly woman, who was a custodian of a saint's shrine in old Abu Hor,
built a shrine in the new village.

Nubian ceremonies maintained their importance in the social life of the
Nubians after displacement, but they have been adjusted to conform to
the new place. For instance, the people of Abu Hor used to celebrate
eight *moulids* in different hamlets in the old village, and the other
five *moulids* in the adjacent villages. After displacement, they
celebrated only one, the "Five Domes" *moulid* in *Murwaw* village,
which was celebrated on the fifteen of *Shaaban* by tens of *Kenuz* men,
women, and children by chanting *zikr*, dancing *kaff*, and communal
feast as in Old Nubia. Rather than *moulids*, the famous Islamic feasts;
*Eid al-Fitr* and *Eid al-Adha* gained a growing importance in Nubian
social life after displacement. In these occasions, the men make a
procession to each house in the village to congratulate for the feast.
Also, wedding customs were adapted for increased participation by the
whole village residents, friends from nearby villages, and migrant
relatives in Egyptian cities. While the bride celebrates in her family's
house with her friends and the women of the village, the groom holds a
wedding party for the men in the open space in front of the guesthouse
(*sabeel*).

# Discussion

*Home*, as the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard described it, is "our
corner of the world,"[^22] a "binding principle of human life ....
Without it, man would be a dispersed being."[^23] Home is the
ontological human urge to feel inside a place capable of providing
"dwelling" biologically, emotionally and socially. Dwelling, here, means
how people affirm their own existence and express their personal and
cultural identities,[^24] as Heidegger explains, "The way in which we
are and I am, the manner in which we are humans on earth, is
dwelling."[^25] Home also entails an important aspect supplied by the
environmental context and the special character of the place itself. It
is the spirit of place, or what the Romans called the *genius loci*,
which arises from the complex interplay of the significant aspects of
the place, including buildings, topographical features, climatic
conditions, in addition to people and human activities.[^26] The concept
of home also indicates a social place in which one feels belonging to a
community or a group of people, who share common experiences and
cultural practices.[^27] We can summarize the concept of home as
"wherever, or however, we feel at home."[^28]

Over centuries, Nubians lived in their hamlets and villages, enjoying
their beautiful Nubia, being interrelated by their distinctive culture
which grew out of time and place. They shaped their local environment
around them by interacting with the landscape and leaving traces in it,
so, over time, Nubians became "implicated in the landscape."[^29] Even
after building the Aswan Dam in 1902 and the migration of Nubian men to
work in Egyptian cities, they insisted to rebuild their villages at
higher levels in the same locations. They considered Old Nubia their
blessed land, where the land and water were superior to anywhere else,
and where peacefulness and honesty prevailed. Being stigmatized in
Egypt, Nubia was for the Nubians "the true home among one\'s own
people,"[^30] where they felt a sense of personal worth and importance
in their own communities. Despite being vacant most of the year, their
houses had great symbolic importance; reflecting the prosperity of its
owners, a source of their pride and self-esteem, and providing a place
for relatives' gatherings at weddings, deaths or religious
festivals.[^31]

The Nubian house was rooted in the natural landscape on which it was
built. It embodied the social world of Nubian society with its basic
values and hierarchies. The house was spatially organized to invert the
fundamental oppositions within Nubia: North/South, Nile/mountain,
public/private, male/female, human/animal. Moreover, the domestic
spatial divisions enabled inhabitants to practice traditional Nubian
rituals, especially for women. In wedding ceremonies, for instance, the
women of the nag' gathered in the courtyard of the bride's house to
participate in a seven-day ritual period of cooking, singing and
dancing. Thus, the courtyard had to be wide enough to accommodate the
guests attending these ceremonies. Similarly, other Nubian rituals were
practiced by women domestically. The Nubian house functioned as a
generative mechanism for the Nubian culture, reproducing its elements
for the inhabitants. As Bourdieu and Sayad stated, "the structure of
habitat is the symbolic projection of the most fundamental structures of
a culture."[^32]

The Nubian house served as the centerpiece of all Nubian social
organization. The spatial configurations separated the house from the
patrilineal agglomeration (nag') and the nag' from other agglomerations.
These divisions reflected the Nubian social hierarchy in a unitary
symbolic order. Therefore, the traditional Nubian house and village were
the reflection of the Nubian culture, where all life functions occur in
harmony.

However, the Nubian social life with its infinite rhythm faced a sudden
and dramatic transformation after the construction of the High Dam in
1964. The resettlement policies that relocated the Nubians placed them
in a very different natural and physical environment: planned villages
in the desert removed from the Nile. Displacement, as experienced by
Nubians driven from their homes and from their homeland, overturned the
Nubian social organization. Such transformations in domestic space had
an indelible effect on their culture.

Following displacement, as people are forced to leave their homelands, a
place where they felt socially, culturally and emotionally embedded,
they are likely to experience a sense of loss of belonging. Therefore,
emplacement is not simply re-placing people in a new place, but it is a
continuous process of making one's place in the world. Emplacement
implies the social processes, relations and encounters through which
displaced people engage with the new environment and therefore transform
the new place into a personalized and socialized one. Emplacement
emphasizes the concept of place as a process of embeddedness and
socio-affective attachment and also emphasizes the role of displaced
people in place-making processes.[^33]

The loss of a home due to displacement is such a socially disorienting,
disempowering and disruptive process that remaking one involves a
lengthy effort with no obvious start or end point. The process of
remaking a home entails more than building a physical place of shelter
and finding a source of livelihood. It requires inhabitants to establish
a feeling of being at home. This process of feeling at home involves
four dimensions: a material place, a familiar landscape, a social world,
and an emotional and existential place.[^34]

The home is not only a place where individuals can satisfy their basic
needs and protect themselves from harm threatening otherness (weather
conditions, animals, or people).[^35] It is also a place where dwellers
can take control of their own boundaries and express their personal and
social identities within them. Living in a place in which individuals
have no control over or ability to express themselves within; where they
cannot change the furnishings or the decorations, can be a deeply
frustrating. It compromises their ability to feel at home.[^36] Houses
are seldom built by their inhabitants. Thus, it is the identification,
ornamentation, and personalization processes that people enact to
transform a house into a home.[^37] According to Bourdieu, domestic
space is appropriated by the resident according to a system of customs
that are generated by past residential experience which he called
\"habitus.\" Thus, the acts of appropriation from past experience, like
building a mastaba and whitewashing the house, not only connect the
inhabitants spatially with the places in which they dwell but also
connect them with the past and the future.[^38]

Regaining the sense of being at home was also achieved through
familiarization with the new milieu, including its natural and physical
features.[^39] This is a process whereby strange places and people
become familiar.[^40] This process involved different scales of place,
from the specific home to the whole village. The meaningless house is
transformed into a home through daily practices and repetitive behavior
in everyday life events. The actions create familiarity and therefore a
sense of home,[^41] as Kim Dovey describes:

> Becoming at home is linked to the 'refrain', a form of expression with
> a different meaning every time it is repeated, as a song ventures
> forward with each verse before returning to the refrain.[^42]

Not only the house, but the streets, the mosque, the communal taps, the
orchards all take on a sense of familiarity that makes one feel at home.
Familiarity was created when people possessed a maximal spatial
knowledge of the new village and its features became familiar through
daily movement along the same paths,[^43] which Michel de Certeau called
"The opacity of the body."

> In movement, gesticulating, walking, taking its pleasure, is what
> indefinitely organizes a here in relation to an abroad, a
> \"familiarity\" in relation to a \"foreignness\"[^44]

As Korac stresses, "emplacement does not take place in a social vacuum;
rather it occurs within the context of intra -- and inter-group
relations."[^45] Creating a sense of home in new Abu Hor required
reconstructing a social world in the new village based on shared
traditions and values after centuries of belonging to nag' kin groups.
Reconstructing this social world aimed to regaining a sense of belonging
to a community, where "one recognizes people as 'one's own' and where
one feels recognized by them as such."[^46]

Through everyday social practices, visiting and chatting with neighbors
on mastabas, the people of Abu Hor could create new social attachments
within the place of resettlement, thus, creating a sense of home.
Building the village guesthouse (Sabeel) was another way the people of
Abu-Hor could reconstruct their social world, by creating "new material
forms which symbolize a former community."[^47] The guesthouse could be
conceived as a "memorialized locale" which symbolizes the lifestyle of
the past culture.[^48]

Displacement involved separating from a place that Nubians described as
"homely," a place where they had felt emotionally embedded. Displacement
was an experience full of emotional distress; whether grief for the
place left behind, the struggle of living in the present or worrying for
the future. This emotional distress of being displaced remained until
people were able to remake emotional attachments in the new village.
However, the reconstruction of the emotional feeling of being at home
did not happen automatically; for a long time, people continued to
reflect on differences between the old Abu Hor and the new village.

The people of Abu Hor could reconstruct the emotional feeling of being
at home by replicating their social and cultural traditions of Old Nubia
in the new village, such as life-cycle rituals and celebrating religious
ceremonies. Although the new setting lacked the geographical features in
which these traditions were practiced -- the Nile, hills, old shrines,
and so on -- creativity and imagination helped them to reproduce
cultural traditions by evoking the landscape that they were forced to
abandon. As Obeid explains "what seems like a yearning for the past can
contribute very much to the creation of the present and the
future."[^49]

# Conclusion

For more than fifteen centuries, Egyptian Nubians had lived in isolated
villages on the banks of the Nile, surviving the harsh environment and
the competing empires, and had slowly developed a distinctive culture
that successfully responded to numerous crises. However, the building of
the Aswan High Dam and the subsequent resettlement of Nubians in a
desert habitat has been the greatest shock to their culture that has
been characterized by continuity and change. Yet, Nubian culture did not
collapse by the backwaters of the High Dam, the vitality and flexibility
of the Nubians helped them to adjust to the different natural and social
milieu while retaining a strong sense of their historical and cultural
identity.

The idea that Nubia no longer exists made the (re)production of homeland
as a mythical place necessary for maintaining their identity.[^50] This
research illustrated the varied strategies undertaken by Nubians to
reconstruct homeland in new settlements. These strategies included house
alterations, symbolic recreation of places depicting places in Old Nubia
such as the shrine and the community guesthouse, practicing Nubian
rituals, and celebrating religious and social ceremonies. All these
strategies were significant in transforming the unfamiliar resettlement
place into a home.

Now, after sixty years of displacement, many of the older generation
have died and much of the old Nubian culture will soon be gone. The
younger generations of Nubians in resettlement villages at New Nubia,
most of them born after displacement, speak Arabic, wear Egyptian
costumes, and live in multi-storey houses. Since displacement, many of
the customs associated with the Old Nubia had already gone, and
progressive reductions in all non-Islamic rituals have been going on for
years. One example is the fact that Abu Hor, which previously had eight
moulids, now has none. The famous Islamic feast Eid al-Adha gains more
importance as migrant Nubian families in Cairo, Alexandria, and other
Egyptian cities charter trains and buses every year to spend their
vacation in resettlement villages. Also, Nubian wedding ceremonies
became, except for the songs and dancing, like that of other Egyptians.
However, wedding ceremonies continue to be an important event in the
Nubians' social life. All that indicates that neither migration from
Nubia nor displacement have totally ended the continuity of the Nubian
culture. Although greatly acculturated, the Nubian society remains
distinctly unique, where Nubian traditions and values continue to be
determinants of behavior.

Former narratives of Nubians' displacement were often colored by the
rosy view of Old Nubia, which became a mythical place to which Nubians
still long to return. Such narratives emanate from the static and fixed
Heideggerian ontology of being-in-the-world, which conceive of home and
homeland as a place of rootedness.[^51] However, the Nubian
displacement, and other experiences of displacement worldwide, challenge
this discourse. Even after displacement disrupted people's social worlds
-- the individuals' sense of being at home and their social relations --
the displaced are often able to recreate home, or what Naila Habib calls
"the evolving meaning of home ... as a dynamic and constantly changing
process."[^52] This dynamic notion of home denotes that belonging to a
place can be understood as fluid territorialization through giving
meaning to the place by individual and collective behavior,[^53] which
reminds us of Appadurai\'s thesis on the production of locality.
According to his thesis, a locality is not a given, but it is created by
social activities, ritual practices, and the collective effort of the
community to socialize the space and localize the people.[^54] In the
case of Abu Hor, villagers turned to traditional practices in addition
to building of a shrine and a community guesthouse in the new village,
which illustrates this process of (re)construction not only of Abu Hor
but also of the bond between the people and their new locality.

Indeed, this research does not aim to romanticize nor to underestimate
the precarious circumstances of Nubian displacement. Instead, the
intention of this research is to acknowledge the significance of the
contributions by Nubians to produce alternative meanings despite the
modularization of their new top -- built environment. Rather than
associating the Nubian displacement merely with loss and passivity, this
research discussed the resiliency and the spatial practices through
which Nubians could contribute to processes of homemaking and
(re)territorialization on different spatial scales.

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[^1]: Scudder, *Aswan High Dam Resettlement of Egyptian Nubians*.

[^2]: Smith, "Colonial Entanglements."

[^3]: Hopkins and Mehanna, "The Nubian Ethnological
    Survey"; Fernea and Rouchdy, "Nubian Culture
    and Ethnicity."

[^4]: Hopkins and Mehanna, "The Nubian Ethnological
    Survey: History and Methods"; Scudder, *Aswan High Dam Resettlement
    of Egyptian Nubians*.

[^5]: As quoted in Mallett, "Understanding Home," p. 79.

[^6]: Boccagni, Pérez Murcia, and Belloni, *Thinking Home
    on the Move*; Werner, Altman, and Oxley, "Temporal Aspects of
    Homes."

[^7]: Blunt and Dowling, *Home*.

[^8]: Dossa and Golubovic, "Reimagining Home in the Wake
    of Displacement"; Ilcan and Squire, "Syrian Experiences of Remaking
    Home"; Boccagni, Pérez Murcia, and Belloni, *Thinking Home on the
    Move*.

[^9]: Guetemme, "Collecting: The Migrant's Method for
    Home-Making;" Boccagni, Pérez Murcia, and Belloni, *Thinking Home on
    the Move.*

[^10]: Blunt and Dowling, *Home;* Kusenbach and Paulsen,
    "Home/House"; Mallett, "Understanding Home."

[^11]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home Following
    Displacement."

[^12]: Riad and Abd el-Rasoul. *Rihla fi Zaman al-Nuba,*
    p. 68.

[^13]: Riad and Abd el-Rasoul. *Rihla fi Zaman al-Nuba,*
    p. 132.

[^14]: *Khor*: an Arabic word stands for a natural swale
    cutting through the desert plateau at right angles to the Nile.

[^15]: *Shaʼreya*: a vermicelli-like food with milk and sugar which was
    served as breakfast to the guests and to the bride and groom after
    the wedding.

[^16]: *Karej*: Nubian traditional plates weaved of brightly
    colored palm fiber strips.

[^17]: *Arras*: a young boy relative of the groom who accompanied him
    everywhere for the whole week prior to the wedding. His role was to
    serve the groom and "guard" him from his friends\' pranks.

[^18]: *Sandouq jally*: A wooden box where the bride can
    store her clothes and perfumes. Its cover has a mirror on the
    inside, and bright-colored engravings of the groom's name, the date
    of the wedding, and Qur'anic verses are drawn on the box.

[^19]: *Kojara*: A traditional Nubian curtain was hung
    across the room.

[^20]: *Zikr*: The recitation of specific supplications to
    God and praises of the Prophet Muhammad.

[^21]: *Kaff*: A traditional Nubian dance
    performed by men to the rhythm of *tar* and *noggar*, traditional
    Nubian drums, and the strong clapping of the dancers.

[^22]: Chawla and Jones, "Introduction," p. xiii.

[^23]: Long, "Diasporic Dwelling," p. 335.

[^24]: Bognar, "A Phenomenological Approach to
    Architecture"; Dovey, "Home as Paradox."

[^25]: Long, "Diasporic Dwelling," p. 333.

[^26]: Bognar, "A Phenomenological Approach to
    Architecture"; Dovey, "Home and Homelessness."

[^27]: Kusenbach and Paulsen, "Home/House."

[^28]: Lenhard and Samanani, "Introduction," p. 4.

[^29]: Waterson, "Enduring Landscape, Changing Habitus,"
    p.334.

[^30]: Fernea, "The Blessed Land," p. 69.

[^31]: Fernea and Kennedy, "Initial Adaptations to a New
    Life for Egyptian Nubians"; Fernea, "The Blessed Land."

[^32]: As quoted in Silverstein, "Of Rooting and
    Uprooting," p. 562.

[^33]: Kothari, "Introduction."

[^34]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home
    Following Displacement."

[^35]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home
    Following Displacement."

[^36]: Somerville, "The Social Construction of Home";
    Kusenbach and Paulsen, "Home/House."

[^37]: Korosec-Serfaty, "Experience and Use of the
    Dwelling."

[^38]: Lawrence, "A More Humane History of Homes."

[^39]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home
    Following Displacement."

[^40]: Somerville, "The Social Construction of Home."

[^41]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home
    Following Displacement."

[^42]: Dovey, *Becoming Places,* p. 18.

[^43]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home
    Following Displacement."

[^44]: Leach, "Belonging," p. 299.

[^45]: Korac, *Remaking Home*, p. 42.

[^46]: Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called Home
    Following Displacement," p. 470.

[^47]: Schultze, "The Symbolic Construction of Community
    through Place," p. 291.

[^48]: As quoted in Schultze, "The Symbolic Construction
    of Community through Place," p. 291

[^49]: As quoted in Perez Murcia, "Remaking a Place Called
    Home Following Displacement," p.473.

[^50]: Korac, *Remaking Home.*

[^51]: Korac, *Remaking Home;* Leach, "Belonging"; Dovey,
    *Becoming Places.*

[^52]: As quoted in Korac, *Remaking Home*, p. 26.

[^53]: Leach, "Belonging."

[^54]: Appadurai, "The Production of Locality."