Al-Ahram Weekly 25 Nov. - 1 Dec. 1999 Issue No. 457
Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875

---

	Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Profile Travel Living Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters

"After the fairytale"

By Yasmine El-Rashidi

Squished in among the mass of bodies stuffed like sardines onto Bus 44 from Hadayeq Al-Qubba to Tahrir Square, Fawziya Mohamed Soliman El-Fahham could be anyone. She is one of the millions who get pushed and shoved, elbowed and jabbed every day as they scramble for a place on one of the sporadically passing buses. She is one of the many who have to jump from bus to bus, struggling to breathe, on even the hottest days. Wearing her Turkish-style veil, Fawziya could be any woman of 71, struggling to preserve her dignity against all odds. But she is different. Very different.

From New York to Paris, London to Geneva, she has been to the world's hippest cities, stayed at the finest hotels, and ridden in the most exclusive of cars, trains and planes. And it seems to go without saying: of course, she has experienced the thrill of the Concorde, travelling back to London from New York.

Born to a police officer father and young housewife mother, Fawziya's future seemed destined to be normal. She went to an average school, in the average Alexandria district of Bakos Al-Raml, and was taught by average teachers. She should have turned out average, at best. As it turned out, though, the word just does not exist in her vocabulary.

It is little wonder that the soft-spoken Alexandrian ventured as far out of her street, district and social class as she did. Her father had quite a reputation -- for beating his children and teenage wife, just as he did the criminal suspects he dealt with on the job. Fawziya spent the first 13 years of her childhood hiding bumps and bruises, scars and belt marks.

"He was a criminal with us," she says, shaking her head in sorrow. "He would tie my hands and legs together and beat me. He never starved us, but he never gave us any affection. It was all I wanted -- just a little hug or pat on the back."

She didn't get it. Instead, her father forbade her to go to school, isolated her from her friends, ripped her precious books to shreds, and forced her to watch as he threw them off their fourth-storey balcony.

Her father decided Fawziya would serve her parents and five siblings. Like her mother, who became his bride at the age of 11 -- she was forced to stuff cotton into her bridal gown to appear a tad more developed -- Fawziya could see no way out.

"Then one day, I just said 'enough'." So she jumped on a train, begged the passengers for pennies, and bought herself a ticket to Cairo. It seemed like a whim. Her aunt, who lived in Cairo, said she would end up with her father's knife to her throat. This would have been true, if "divine powers" had not intervened.

"I was walking to my aunt's house one day and this young man started to follow me," she says, remembering her yellow polka-dot dress, her two long dark plaits, and the cheese sandwich she held in her hand. "He said, 'he who eats alone chokes'."

She told him to shut up, and continued on her way, her admirer shadowing her all the way home. He proposed, her aunt said yes, and the little 13-year-old shyly accepted.

It appeared to be a gift from God -- her guardian angel coming to her side. When she stepped into the foreign house and the family of strangers, Fawziya thought she had finally found peace of mind.

"I was only 13 and he was 25," she says. "So sometimes I would escape downstairs and play with the children in the neighbourhood. I used to hit them and they would all run upstairs to him and tell him to get his wife away from them! He put up with it all -- he really loved me."

Happier days: Fawziya (left) and her sisters at the beach in Alexandria

To a 13-year-old, he was her prince. He was a rich man by 1940s standards, earning LE50 a month as a driver. So she was finally spoilt; sprinkled with presents and affection, kisses and love. She felt human at last. And her father himself had given her that ounce of affection she had so craved, congratulating her on her marriage and three children -- the eldest of whom died aged just four months.

Then, in 1948, on a seemingly bright Monday in March, her husband died and she was alone again. Alone with the in-laws who forced her to do their housework, and refused to let her have her inheritance and belongings. Alone with a family that took her children away when she said she was going back to her father's house. "I had no children, no clothes, and no furniture," she says. "I had nothing but myself."

She was back where she had started on that fateful day in June when she boarded the train and made her way to the big city. All of a sudden, she was back in the home of the man who seemed to take pleasure in treating her like dirt. So she left again.

"There was this woman in the building opposite us," she said, "who used to see my father beating me. She gave me work."

While Fawziya's time with "Miss Emmy" lasted just a few years, it led her on to the home of British army officer George and his wife Margaret. There, she was introduced to George's Sudanese colleague Omar, who proposed the day they met. Déjà vu?

"I had no place to go," she says sadly. "Everywhere I went I got kicked out. I no longer had a place with my father, I didn't have my husband's home, and I didn't even have a home with my children. So I accepted."

Marrying Omar, she married a new life and a small fortune -- a villa by the Suez Canal, her own servant, a gardener and a maid. It was sweet, while it lasted. But then the British gave a year's notice: the troops would be withdrawing and moving to Cyprus. Omar could either move with them, or resign. He resigned.

They packed their bags, sold their belongings, and with a grand total of LE20, made their way to Khartoum. A few months later, they headed south, traveling for 18 days by boat and three by train, until they reached the city of Duba, near the borders of Uganda and Congo.

The year was 1958, and Fawziya had taken as much of the hard life as she was willing to handle. Things had to go well this time.

The couple opened a kofta and kebab restaurant. Each day, they sat at the Formica counter and counted their earnings. At first, the day's work would bring in three pounds, then five, then 50 and 60. A few months later, they were totaling 150 Sudanese pounds a day. So they decided to branch out, opening a grocery store, then a spare parts store, then a shop where they sold cloth, and another restaurant.

The shops were all called Mahallat Al-Masriya (The Egyptian's Shops). Fawziya and Omar were tycoons in Duba. "Everyone knew us," she says smiling. "When I went into town, people would bow their heads to me. Everyone loved me because I added life to our shops." Her existence had taken on a life of its own. She was now the woman behind a big business and a jet-setter's lifestyle.

The house itself was a white-picket-fence affair with neatly trimmed hedges; there was a red gabled roof and an English terrace, birds and bamboo. Fawziya would pick flowers from the trees, take walks on her grounds, and spend her mornings reading on her spacious front porch, watching the Sudanese police who brought in prisoners to trim her bushes and mow her lawns.

It was at this time that she took revenge for one of her greatest childhood deprivations -- books. She read indiscriminately: Ihsan Abdel-Quddous, Naguib Mahfouz, Agatha Christie, Anis Mansour. She felt life was good -- she had reached the top.

"The money went to his head, though," she says of her husband. "He was invited to all these big functions, and he started treating me badly. I refused to tolerate it for even a minute."

In the hope that things would be different, this time, she went north, back to Cairo and the housework brigade. She toiled meticulously, missing her luxuries but content with the peace and kind treatment. She had settled down, found herself a kind family to work for, and learned how to take care of herself. Then, on another seemingly bright Monday morning, this time in 1967, her 22-year-old daughter set fire to herself.

"They treated her badly, and she couldn't stand it anymore," she says, her eyes glistening. "So she poured gasoline on herself and struck a match."

After that, how could life ever be the same? How could she get up, get dressed and go out when in the back of her mind was the echo of her daughter's voice? How could she get on with her life when she was burdened with the terrible knowledge that she could not even help her daughter get on with hers?

She shut herself off for two years. She no longer knew if life was worth the pain. For once, she wished she was just like everyone else. She wasn't, though, and so she made herself move on, taking a succession of jobs with families in Switzerland, New York, San Francisco, the Emirates, and Saudi Arabia.

"Someone told me that if I'm still walking on this earth after all that, it's a gift from God," she says, exhausted at recounting her seemingly endless tragic tales. "He's right."

He is right, because many times she felt she would just give up. And he's right, because over the years she was convinced that her heart would say 'enough' and give out one day. But it didn't, so she moved on.

Retirement age drew nearer. She reached it, relaxed for a while, then kept straight on going. Instead of settling down, Fawziya opted to open yet another chapter. She has chosen to write a book.

She is now 140 pages into her life story, and is facing her darkest memories and thoughts. And although at times she says it is hard to remember the past -- the good and the bad -- she believes recording it is now her sole purpose in life. "I want people to read my story and learn from it," she says. "I want them to see that though life is hard, you can get through it. I did -- I had God."

Today, God is all she has. God and her book, that is.

"When I was rich, everyone wanted to know me. Now, nobody cares." Fawziya El-Fahham is now one of the millions of (no)bodies -- one of the millions in the hustle and bustle of Cairo's daily grind. Her past means nothing, on Bus 44.

As she goes back and forth every day, she stares out of the dusty window. As the swarms of people scramble for a place on the bus, they squeeze in beside her, push and shove, and, when they look at her at all, she says, it is as if she was just another old woman without a life. So she stares out the window, and remembers. She thinks about the chapters of her book, and all the pages left to turn.

	weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg