THEY DID NOT GIVE ME A REASON
In November 2002, I got a telephone call to go to UNHCR for my refugee status interview. A man named Ahab interviewed me and a woman was there. They asked me questions. It was a bit weird, because they would ask me a question and then go out of the room. When they came into the room again, they would ask me how I felt about being raped. The entire interview lasted half an hour. I really didn’t get to tell them anything. They were not compassionate. When I would cry in my story, they would not comfort me. They stopped and asked if I wanted to move th appointment to another day, I said I just wanted to gt it done. They got bored, and the woman would leave and come back again. It ended. I went back in two weeks to get my results. I found I was rejected for refugee status. They did not give me a reason. They gave me a month to appeal.
I was upset. I wondered why I came to Egypt. Now I was very upset. I think that the laws of UNHCR are good, but the people there do not care about refugees. We come from Sudan, and we only know about the UN for help. We go to their office and the security guards outside treat us like shit.
I wrote an appeal in December 2002 and gave it to the UNHCR office. I received an answer in October 2003 telling me I had an inerview appointment for appeal on May 5, 2004. When May 2004 came, I was working in Alexandria, because the family I cleaned for had moved there. I told them I had to be back in Cairo by the fourth of May at the latest. The madam told me she didn’t want me to go, and if I wanted to go, I should leave and never come back. I told her to give me my money and that I would go, that the only reason I worked was to support myself while I watied for that interview so I could get away from Egypt. She said no, because she didn’t want me to leave. I did not have enough money to travel back to Cairo and I knew nobody else in Alexandria, so I missed my interview. I made it to Cairo two days later. The UNHCR gave me another appointment for June 6, so I was lucky.
When I returned on June 6, I found out that there was a decision from Geneva. They had stopped giving interviews to all Sudanese. I asked why. They said it was because Sudan now has peace as a result of the Naivasha negotiations. They said to wait until December and then we would have more news. They gave everyone there a yellow card, which means your case is undecided. Yellow only keeps them from deporting you. When December came, there was no news.
At All Saints’ Cathedral, they had a meeting and said there would be financial aid for yellow-card people. I had my three kids, and I needed the money. To get the money, I had to register with Caritas, the Catholic Relief Services. The security outside the building was absolutely awful. None of the clerks inside would come and talk to us. They treated us like wild animals. They said come back another time. I needed to make money. I gave up.
A SMALL FAMILY
I go to the church in Abbassia, and the sultans sometimes meet there. Anyone who doesn’t have a family goes to them for news of their family. In 2003, I was invited to Sakakini Church, and there in the office, they told me they had found my brothers. My brothers didn’t look the same as when they were children. Their faces hadn’t changed, except Farid became fat and huge, his face chubby and big. Deng is still thin, so his face did not change. When I met thm, it was a beautiful moment. I cried a lot. I kept them with me at my home. It was a very good time. My brothers would sell their hair creams in the market and help out in photo studios. That is how we got money and supported ourselves. Me and my children and my brothers were like a small family.
Deng and Farid told me about their time in the cattle camp when we were separated. They told me they ran away as well. They went to another city, not Abyei. Then they walked to Abyei, and then to Khartoum. Deng told me that Farid was very young at the time and got sick on the way. They were both under ten years old. They reached Khartoum. From Khartoum they came to Egypt.
They told me my youngest sister is in Dallas, Texas, and married with twin girls. She’s very happy there, and I would love to meet my nieces.
They told me my mom was in Australia. She had taken a different route to Khartoum, then to Cairo, and now she was resettled. My brothers had signed papers to meet our mother, and Australia had accepted. They were ready to see her soon. My mom sent me a form, so I filled in the form, enclosed my case, and sent it in a letter. A lawyer went to my mom and delivered the news that I was rejected. Maybe it is because of my failures with UNHCR.
The foreign lawyer helping my mom is a very nice person and used to call me every day from Australia. My mom went to the refugee affairs office and complained and said, “This is my daughter, and I want the right to have her here.” The lawyer was avery good person, and they sent me another form. Australia didn’t reply to the second form. There is nothing to do now. My brothers were resettled in 2005. They are with my mother, and everything is good in Australia.
I found another person here in 2004 – my friend Angelina from Khartoum. She heard of me, got my phone number, and called me, and now we see each other all the time. Her mother is dead now, but she’s here with her four kids and she has another in her belly. She was married, and she had a dispute with her husband who got married to another woman. He took the money, the car, the house, and everything, so she came here. I am lucky to have my friend Angelina again.
There is a man named Abdel Monid who I met in Cairo in 2005. I had met him in Sudan years ago. He is a Muslim from Darfur. When I saw him in Cairo again we recognized each other. We started to see each other in a relationship. He is a short guy and I am taller than him. I couldn’t find a man tall enough for me! He is a nice man. He was nice to my kids and would come visit us. He manages a cybercafe. I helped him start it by lending him a little money. It was a good job for him. We got married on September 1, 2005. When he asked me to marry, I thought having a man in the family would make our life better in Cairo. Eventually I came to love him, but only eventually. Then it turned out not so great. He stopped treating my kids well, and they hate him now. One day last year he disappeared, and now I hardly see him. I have not heard from him in months.
