Born and raised in Nubia, southern Egypt, the 29-year-old Jehad Ashraf is the first in her family to grow up not understanding the Nubian language. “I lived in Aswan my whole life”, she says, “but none of my family spoke Nubian to me at home.”
In just two generations the language, once spoken everywhere in the region, has almost vanished. In her village, a date-farming community on the banks of the Nile, “the youngest who speak Nubian are 61 or 62. It is becoming extinct,” says Ashraf.
