INTO EGYPT
I dreamed that I would go to Cairo and find m family and live with them again like when I was a child. I arrived in the city on a bus. We arrived at nigh. I was feverish. One woman traveling with me told me to go to a doctor and get some medication. Another said no, if I went to the doctor, they would see my passport and put me in quarantine and send me back to Sudan, because they were afraid of malaria. I didn’t go to the doctor.
I went to the church at Abbassia because they receive refugees there. The bus stopped near the church, and many were there to pick up other passengers. I had nobody to pick me up. I had no blanket and it was very cold that night. It was November 16, 2001. I slept with my children in the church and slept near a woman called Abuk. I don’t remember where she was from. Abuk had a big blanket with her from Suan. It was really big. I shared with her and my children.
In the morning there were people selling tea and sandwiches, so I ate. The church people brought more food and juice and milk for the children. Abuk had a family in the Ardeliwa neighborhood, and I went with her to that house. I stayed there for a week, and then Abuk and I got our own flat. Her family helped me get a job in the Zamalek neighborhood cleaning for seven hundred pounts (US$130) per month. I worked for Egyptians. It was a tiresome job for many hours every day. I would leave at eight-thirty and come home at ten at night. The food they gave me in the day was not good, and they were not very nice to me. The mistress was merciless; every day I had to polish the wood and metals in her very big house. I worked for her for four months. Abuk would watch my children at home, because she had family in America so she did not have to work.
I was not making much progress. I made seven hundred a month, and I paid over five hundred just for rent. I was safe, but I was very tired all the time from long work and my babies.
Andreas had told me to go to the UNHCR as soon as I came to Cairo, but I couldn’t. At the Abassia church I had met a woman named Flora who said she would give me fifty pounds (US$9) if I let her borrow my passport so that she could use it to buy alcohol and cigarettes from the duty-free shop. She kept my passport for a week. When I got it back, I went to the interior ministry building, the Mugammah, first. People said I had to go there first for an entry visa or else I would be kicked out of the country. I got a stamp there, and then I went to the UNHCR.
In 2001, the UNHCR was different than it is now. They gave me a piece of paper that proved I had visited them, and they made an appointment for me two years in the future, in 2003. In two years they would interview me, they said.
A DREAM
When I got to Cairo I contacted my sister-in-law, Lena. She lived back in Singa, where my son Deng was being held. She was sympathetic about my lost son. I sent her money and put her in contact with the same guy who helped me get my passport. She was afraid and was telling me maybe there would be a problem, and I said, “No, it’s okay, I just want my child.” She took Deng from Singa, and he went to Khartoum with Lena to get his photo taken to finish the documents. He stayed with her in Khartoum for about a month. At the border, Lena pretended Deng was her son and brought him to me in Cario at the close of 2001.
It was like a dream. I never imagined I’d find him again. He told me lots of bad things happened to him in Singa. He used to shepherd the sheep, and after school he had to polish people’s shoes on the street. His stepmom would beat him, treat him badly, wake him up early, and he would work all day. He told me he had wanted to come to me when I saw him in Singa, but my husband’s other wife was beating him up and treating him badly and he was so scared.
