Your prize? Not a million dollars, but a chance at a visa to the United States (void where prohibited, some restrictions may apply).
Although this may sound cheesy, to many Egyptians a visa to the United States represents a real chance at a seemingly unattainable opportunity.
Under the Diversity Immigrant Visa Program, run annually by the U.S. Department of State, citizens of nations that have sent less than 50,000 immigrants in the last five years to the United States are eligible to enter a lottery to win a permanent residency visa.
Prospective applicants for visas submit an entry in a lottery in which 50,000 permanent residency visas are made available. A computer at the Kentucky Consular Center tallies the amount of entrants and randomly selects winners, Powerball-style, ensuring that no more than 7 percent of the lottery's total winners are from one country.
Egyptians were among the top Diversity Visa lottery winners in 2004, in which 6,439 of the 90,000 winners (more winners are chosen than visas available, as they may for numerous reasons be unable to get their visa) were Egyptian in a lottery that saw over 6.3 million entrants worldwide.
The DV lottery is open to anyone who has attained a high school education or worked for over two years at a job that requires specialized training. For people who have no other connection to the United States - those without relatives, spouses or employers in the United States to sponsor them in their visa application process - the DV lottery offers a chance at admittance into the proverbial land of opportunity. The very name of the program suggests an effort by the U.S. government to foster "diversity" in the United States by opening the nation's doors to citizens of many nationalities.
Yet despite this premise at pluralism, to many the DV lottery is merely a gamble.
While there is no cost to entering the lottery, associated costs make entrance an expensive undertaking and limit the actual accessibility of the program.
All entries must be done online at the program's official Web site and cannot be saved offline, meaning that applicants without an Internet connection at their homes - like those from rural communities where such infrastructure is not developed - will have to pay per hour for Internet access.
Factor in the costs of multiple passport-sized photos (as the entry form requires digital photos of all entrants, their spouses and children) and entering the lottery alone can become an expensive proposition.
For the lucky winners, the costs only increase.
Winners must pay a processing fee of $45 on top of $375 for a visa; that is, if they pass the extensive process of visa interviews and background checks. Add to that transportation to and from the U.S. embassy where interviews are conducted, and getting a visa can be prohibitively expensive even for lottery winners.
A few weeks ago I spent an afternoon at a lakeside park in the middle of a desert oasis. I met an Egyptian family from the governate of Beni Suef, a predominantly agricultural community nearby.
A man in the family who spoke fairly good English asked me how to get a U.S. visa. All of the adults in the family looked very interested in hearing my response, and they asked me with a sense of urgency, as though they thought that as an American, I could somehow pull strings and get them a visa.
Their only chance at a visa may come from the DV lottery, but for a family like this, even such a chance at a chance may remain out of reach.
In a country where the average breakfast of beans and bread costs less than 20 cents, even the cost of a passport photo for the DV lottery entry form (approximately $2) could make a significant difference in how much food that family has for the week.
Part of me wanted to tell this family to rethink their hopes of travel to the United States. I wanted to tell them that opportunity doesn't always come easily, even in America, and wouldn't they prefer life in Egypt, their own country where they have their own familiy, community and language, to life as foreigners in the United States? And would they expect to find happiness with any new economic prosperity?
Then I realized that for me, with an American passport and more money on my debit card than many Egyptians make in a year, such musing was easy. At the end of the day I had the chance that they only hoped for.
