In Egypt, Upper Crust Gets the Bread

Egyptians share bread at a protest in Cairo against rising prices for the staple and perceived government inaction. (By Nasser Nasser -- Associated Press)

Mubarak's instruction to the military to bake and distribute more bread is intended to bypass the corruption-ridden subsidized-bakery system. The government has also ordered the Investment and Interior ministries to increase production at bakeries they control, said Magdi Radi, spokesman for Egypt's cabinet.

Egypt's economy is expected to grow by 7 percent this fiscal year and is attracting billions of dollars in foreign investment. BMW, one of many luxury carmakers active in Egypt, reported a 20 percent annual growth in sales here last year.

But the percentage of Egyptians living below the poverty line -- meaning they make less than $2 a day -- rose from 16.7 percent in 2000 to 19.6 percent in 2005, according to the World Bank. In all, about 40 percent of Egypt's population lives in poverty, the World Bank said. Strikes by workers demanding higher wages have spiked since last summer.

The inequities between Egypt's poor and rich are stark. The average monthly salary of an Egyptian civil servant is less than $100 -- and most families in Zelzal scrape by on less than that.

A high rock wall borders the area, topped by a spiked iron fence. On the other side is Katamiya Heights, where whisking sprinklers water emerald lawns and putting greens. Cabinet ministers, the leader of a government-supported religious institution and other wealthy Egyptians live in villas that have risen in value by millions of dollars over the past decade.

Bodyguards with automatic weapons protect the government officials there, and guards with handguns patrol the neighborhood's many gates.

Hashem Samir, shoveling bread off a squealing conveyor belt in Zelzal's bakery, recalled entering Katamiya Heights once to work as a laborer. Sweltering before the oven, with flour clouding the air inside the brick bakery and hungry crowds pounding on the doors, Samir said he could not reconcile the two Egypts.

"How can you compare a villa that rents for 8,000 a month" -- about $1,500 -- "to people who buy their bread for five piastres," or less than a penny? Samir asked.

In the bakery line outside, a sharp-featured woman suddenly began weeping.

"Everything is bad in Egypt. We have no hope," the woman said. She rubbed her brimming eyes with tissue. It dissolved in the sweat and tears on her face. Other women in the line leaned forward, tenderly picking off the white flecks. She declined to give her name.

Ibrahim, the 62-year-old widow, had risen before 5 a.m. Kneeling in her dark home, she prayed, then collected the scrap of wood she kept to carry the day's bread for her family.

As dawn's orange light seeped through the gray haze cloaking Cairo, she stood well back in line behind women who had arrived one and two hours earlier.