Death has entered the homes of Nazlat al-Sharif. In this small farming village in the Nile valley, mothers wrap themselves in black veils and daughters wipe their tears in silence. This town in the Beni Suef governorate, 160 kilometers south of Cairo, has a population of around 1,000, and everyone here has lost a son, a brother, a cousin or a friend. The Gourouzian family lives at the entrance to the village. The two eldest siblings, Ahmad and Sayed, sat on the front porch, staring out over the corn and sugarcane fields. Their younger brother, 20-year-old Mohamed, was found dead in Derna. "May God send him to heaven. Some families here have lost two or three men," said Sayed.

On his phone, he keeps a photo of his brother. "It was a few months ago, when I visited him in Libya. It's a photo taken in front of the sea, a photo... memory." In the shot, a young man poses, smiling, leaning against the railing overlooking Derna's coastal road, still intact at the time. "Exactly an hour before he died, we were chatting live on Facebook. He told me to say hello to dad, mom and everyone," recalled Sayed. "Then he asked me when I'd be coming back to see him in Libya. I told him 'in a month, God willing.' But I'll never see him again."

His brother was swept away by the torrents of mud that devastated Derna on the night of Monday, September 11. "I miss him... I miss you, I miss your voice," said Sayed, addressing Mohamed's photo. The young man was one of the 75 residents of Nazlat al-Sharif who perished in the Libyan storm, out of a total of 145 Egyptian deaths counted to date. Their bodies were flown back to Egypt early last week. Ahmad, the eldest of the siblings, went to identify his brother's remains at the airport in Cairo.

"His body was in good condition. I examined his distinctive features one by one. This is my brother, this is my brother... But sometimes the water washed up the bodies after three or four days. Some were disfigured, totally broken. The names of each of the victims who had been identified were inscribed on their bodies, arms or feet." Mohamed was buried on September 13, along with the other village victims whose bodies could be identified, at a collective funeral attended by several local officials.

But the bodies of other children from Nazlat al-Sharif, missing from Derna, have still not been found. Ahmed calls on the authorities to continue the search. "We thank the Libyan army and the Egyptian army for bringing the bodies here. But we ask them to do one more thing: Try to bring us the bodies of the people who have disappeared, or tell us that they have been found and buried there... That's the only way to ease the pain of the people here."

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