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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters To catch a thief
By Fayza Hassan
Like many other families, ours has its favourite beggars-and-thieves stories. Most of these accounts picture the destitute as wealthy property owners in disguise, whose children are renowned doctors and lawyers; in my childhood, in fact, the word millionaire invariably conjured up not a golden Rolls Royce or a villa in Juan-Les-Pins, but rather the image of a blind man in a tattered galabiya I had often seen sitting cross-legged on the footpath, a plateful of coins at his side, his head raised to the sky, reciting verses of the Qur'an. In my family's oral tradition, the blind had eyes as sharp as those of eagles and cripples jogged a mile every day before sitting on their straw mat to beg for a living.
Pickpockets, however, fascinated me much more than false beggars when I was a child, and I always felt a shiver of anticipation as my parents recounted how a friend or acquaintance had been relieved of his/her wallet/purse in Soliman Pasha Street in broad daylight. Though I felt vaguely sorry for the victim, I could not help applauding secretly at the point in the story when the dare-devil disappeared down a side alley with his booty, or leapt in front of a passing car to make his bold escape. Sometimes, though not very often, the culprit would be caught and handed over to the police, but I found these versions rather boring, since no one I knew even remotely ever featured in them. Actually, I soon found out that several members of my family had been cast permanently by fate in the role of the victim. My mother was particularly prone to costly mishaps involving strangers quickly brushing past her, while my sister's handbag had been spirited away in one of London's most exclusive restaurants.
In time, rumours of petty crimes increased to the point of becoming almost commonplace. A few years ago, warnings that purse snatchers were now operating from vehicles even appeared in the local press. My only experience of this new, more affluent style of piracy occurred when one of my daughter's friends had her bag -- containing travellers' checks and passport -- stolen, near our house, by a motorcyclist. At first, the police officer to whom the theft was reported had cheered us up. The thief would not be interested in personal papers, he had said. These would be returned somehow. This was the rule among pickpockets, he had insisted. They took money, and maybe jewellery if there was any, but never papers. Her attacker would find her address and send her belongings, minus the cash, by mail. He was seriously saddened by the news that events did not develop according to his predictions. "Times have changed," he sighed, but offered no further words of encouragement.
When my daughter's bicycle disappeared from the lobby of our building where it had been securely chained minutes before, my feelings shifted decidedly. These days, I no longer favour the lesser Arsène Lupin, but side whole-heartedly with the aggrieved parties whose numbers have begun to rise alarmingly. I clutch my handbag with an iron fist, and keep all my money in my pocket, using an empty wallet as a decoy. I am sincerely outraged by petty criminals' imaginative new tricks. The latest is no exception.
Waiting at a busy intersection, my brother-in-law had begun to move on as the traffic lights turned green, when he was alerted by a suspicious noise. Upon investigation, it appeared that he had run over a wood plank, which a long rusty nail was now holding fast to his front tire. He pulled up and was about to remove his spare from the boot when he was approached by a man asking for directions to Tahrir Square. "I don't know," said my brother-in-law, annoyed at the interruption. "What do you mean, you don't know?" protested the man indignantly, "are you a foreigner, then?" My brother-in-law raised his head from the task at hand, intending to give the intruder a piece of his mind, when he noticed the absence of his attaché case, which had been on the back seat just seconds before. It was now in the hands of a stranger who was gingerly, although rapidly, walking away. Grabbing the man who had been pestering him by the collar, my brother-in-law began to shake him hard, shouting harami (thief) at the top of his voice. Seeing that his accomplice had been caught, the second scoundrel dropped the case, which was too heavy to allow him a swift departure, and ran for his life. Times may be changing after all.
