Issue No.588
Home news
Previous issue
Site map
|
|
30 May - 5 June 2002 Issue No.588 Home news |
Current issue Previous issue Site map | |
| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 | Recommend this page | ||
Cross-cultural custody battle
Another failed Egyptian-foreign marriage, with its resulting custody dispute, is in the news. This time, reports Mona El-Nahhas, the battlefield is at the Swiss Embassy
On 17 May, 38-year-old Elizabeth Hodlz fled from the house of her Egyptian divorcee Mohamed Fawzi Malash, with the couple's three children in tow, and began a sit-in at the Swiss Embassy in Cairo.
"Her only demand," announced Hodlz's lawyer, Tharwat Abdel-Shaheed, at a meeting organised on Sunday by the Egyptian Foreign Ministry's Goodwill Committee, "is to take her three children back to Switzerland. She is not going to leave the embassy until this demand is met."
The Goodwill Committee's manifest is solving marital disputes between Egyptians married to foreigners -- disputes which have been receiving a great deal of press attention, especially after an incident in Luxor last year involving an Egyptian who kidnapped three German tourists in a desperate attempt to ransom them for the return of his children from his estranged German wife.
Although the Malash-Hodlz dispute has not quite gotten that violent, the tensions between the couple over who should retain custody of 15-year-old Khaled, 13-year-old Tareq and 11-year-old Anwaar seem just as far from a resolution.
The husband, Malash, has a Cairo court order giving him the right of custody of the three children. The mother, Hodlz, has a temporary Swiss order also giving her custody of the children.
Peter Nelson, first secretary at the Swiss Embassy, told Al-Ahram Weekly that he does not expect the problem to be solved soon, as the "legal situation is very complicated [because] each of the two parties insists upon his/her legal right."
The embassy itself, as well as the Egyptian Foreign Ministry, are trying to remain neutral. Embassy officials denied that they took Hodlz's side, asserting that they have merely agreed to host her.
In a press release issued by the embassy immediately after Hodlz's arrival there, it was announced that she and the children -- who hold dual Egyptian and Swiss nationalities -- appealed to the embassy without any prior agreement with the Swiss authorities. The statement said that the embassy is going to host the four citizens temporarily, as it is not prepared for a long stay, and that it is keen on holding continuing contacts with Egyptian authorities and mediating between the two conflicting sides until a just settlement is reached.
"We did not invite her to come. We just allowed her in after she asked for the embassy's protection," Nelson said, adding that he did not know how long Hodlz intends to stay there.
Hodlz, meanwhile, has decided not to speak to the press. She has also -- somewhat problematically -- so far declined to attend any of the foreign ministry's mediation meetings, assigning her lawyer, Abdel-Shaheed, the task of representing her instead.
Malash, the husband, was more than willing to tell the press his point of view. "I really do not know how this woman thinks," he told the Weekly. "I am sure she lost her mind. Does she plan to stay at the embassy forever?"
Upset that the Swiss ambassador has not allowed him to see his children, Malash dismissed claims that the children did not want to see their father as "a mere lie." He refused to dismiss the possibility that the embassy may be more intricately involved in the dispute.
According to Malash, it is not the first time his divorcee has tried to "kidnap" the children. "Last March, she took the three children from their school and headed towards Hurghada Airport. She was planning to take them by plane to Frankfurt," but Egyptian authorities arrested her at the airport after Malash had requested a travel ban for the children.
Malash says Hodlz was set to face criminal charges for the move until he stepped in and "invited her to stay with the children in my mother's house. Now, I regret that I acted in this way with such an ungrateful woman."
Ambassador Ismail Ghoneim, who heads the Department of Foreigners' Affairs at the Foreign Ministry, thinks the only way out of the current impasse is for each of the two parties to give concessions, and listen to the other's point of view. Ghoneim hoped the mother would personally attend next Sunday's meeting of the Goodwill Committee, "as her presence will be very helpful. I spoke to the ambassador and he promised to try hard to convince her to come," Ghoneim said.
Malash and Hodlz got married in Switzerland in 1987. Malash was a computer engineer at a Swiss bank. It is unclear what prompted Hodlz to insist on a divorce after 11 years of marriage, but a divorce did indeed take place in 2000, after which Malash and the children returned to Egypt. In 2001, Malash got a court order granting him custody of his two sons, while the younger daughter was placed in the custody of Malash's mother.
Since then, Hodlz has tried to arrange for a delegate from the Swiss Embassy to meet the children every now and then, but Malash has consistently refused on the grounds that the embassy has no right to interfere in the children's affairs. As a compromise, the father pledged before the attorney-general to allow the mother to see her children any time she wants. "And this was my reward," he told the Weekly.
The crux of the issue seems to be whether the children should be brought up in Egypt or in Switzerland. Hodlz claims they have not been able to adapt to the lifestyle here, while Malash prefers that their "critical teenage years" should be spent in an Egyptian environment.
"I am sure they like Egypt," he said. "They were very happy while living here with me the past two years."
|
 |
| |||||||||||||||||
| ARCHIVES Letter from the Editor Editorial Board Subscription Advertise! |
WEEKLY ONLINE: www.ahram.org.eg/weekly Updated every Saturday at 11.00 GMT, 2pm local time weeklyweb@ahram.org.eg |
 Al-Ahram Organisation |
