Ali Mohammed has endured another season without his son. It is the rhythm of the Nile Delta: Crops change, children are forced away. There are few jobs here and they don’t pay much. Young men, like fathers and grandfathers before them, leave this fertile land.

Mohammed’s son Ali took a 40-hour bus ride across the desert to paint buildings in Libya.

He shares a room on the outskirts of Tripoli with four other Egyptian workers — five beds, with a table outside. The men talk and listen to a small radio. If they have jobs for the next day, they’re happy; if not, morning comes too soon. How Ali is faring can best be gauged each month when his family visits the Western Union office to collect the money he has wired.

“Egypt will not be lax with those who harm the dignity of its sons,” he told cheering MPs in parliament.

“The welfare of our citizens abroad is the responsibility of the country. We look after their rights and reject violations and transgressions against them,” he said in his first apparent reference to the diplomatic row with Algiers.

The row has erupted between Algeria and Egypt since a bus carrying the Algerian football team was stoned in Cairo last week and Egyptians were attacked by Algerian fans in Khartoum and Algiers.

Egypt twice summoned the Algerian ambassador in Cairo and on Thursday recalled its envoy in Algiers.

The dispute broke out ahead of a crunch match staged in Cairo on November 14, after Egyptian fans had stoned a bus carrying the Algerian players on its way from the airport.

Egypt beat Algeria 2-0, leading to a play-off in Khartoum for a place at next year’s World Cup finals in South Africa.

Busses carrying Algerian fans were stoned after the Cairo match and fans clashed outside hotels housing the Algerians, leaving at least 20 Algerian fans and 12 Egyptians wounded.

The attack led to reprisals in Algeria against Egyptian homes and businesses.

“The Supreme Council of Al-Azhar has decided to ban students and teachers from wearing the niqab inside female-only classrooms, that are taught by women only,” a statement from the university said.

The supreme council’s statement added that Al-Azhar does not oppose the niqab, which it said only a minority of Muslim scholars consider an obligation, but it opposes “imprinting it on the minds of girls.”

The decision came after female students who wear the niqab were banned from the women’s dormitory of the state-run Cairo University.