Every day at 4 a.m., Hagg Abdel Wahab walks down a narrow path past a simple coffee and tea shop to his bakery.
For 40 years, this elderly man has donned a gray gallabeya robe smudged with white flour and baked thousands of small, round loaves of state-subsidized bread for the residents of the poor, densely packed Cairo neighborhood of Imbaba.
Mr. Wahab’s balady bread is the basic staple of the Egyptian diet, and in recent months it has come to symbolize the economic problems facing this country of 75 million.
Egyptians are living through the worst food crisis in a generation, caught in a storm of stagnant wages, rising global food prices, rampant corruption, and a quickly advancing inflation rate that hit 16.4 percent in May. The price of basic commodities like bread, wheat, rice, and cooking oil has doubled since this time last year – prompting bread riots … read this article
Entries (RSS)