In front of Al-Ittihadiya Presidential Palace in the Heliopolis district of Cairo, a place where it is notoriously difficult to find a parking place, a woman appears blowing a whistle and dressed in a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved shirt, with her hair done up under a cap to protect her from the sun's heat. She is directing drivers to parking places as if she had been born to do the job. Like many other children, when she was young Abeer Tawfik, 31, dreamt of being a doctor or a police woman. However, her life changed when her father passed away and she continued his career by becoming a traffic sayes, or valet, as he had been. Today she works in the kind of busy area that has become yet busier as a result of the recent sit-ins and run-ins with the security forces. “Thank God my relation with people here is good,” Tawfik says, adding that at two in the afternoon every day she leaves the area to look after her children and help them with their studies. Tawfik got married at the age of 14 and dropped out of school in the third grade. At that time she wasn't working, but when her father became ill and later passed away she took her father's place in the family and started working as a sayes to help support her family. However, her husband didn't like the changes that had occurred and wanted her to quit in order to look after their daughter. Tawfik disagreed and got divorced after only two years of marriage. “Helping my mother to raise my siblings and paying back my father were much more important to me than my husband,” she said. Tawfik later got married again and had other children, all of whom she is helping to educate. “My mother is very encouraging, and I am trying to follow my father's example, who educated all his children,” she explains. “At first, I was embarrassed that my friends would see me doing this job, but now I'm not. People said that the job was not appropriate, but most of the people I meet encourage me,” she added. However, despite this encouragement Tawfik still faces problems while working. These can include poor treatment and sometimes even verbal harassment. Tawfik says that she has never experienced sexual harassment. “If a woman is polite and straightforward, she won't be harassed. If she responds to a harasser, this can be seen as a way of saying that she ‘wants' to be harassed.” The way a woman dresses can also be a factor, Tawfik said. “God didn't tell women to show off their shoulders. They don't have to be veiled, but they should dress modestly at least” — a way of saying that men should not be blamed for harassment if they don't. However, Tawfik says that she was once harassed by a shop-worker in the area. One day, after he had parked his car, she told him that his behaviour was unacceptable. When he started to argue, she slapped him on the face. The situation ended with an apology from the worker's brother, she says. Tawfik, who lives in a rented apartment with her mother and children, would like her own apartment some day. She would also like to see her mother set up a kiosk to help with the family's expenses. But, she says, “we thank God for everything. There are other people who are sleeping in the streets.”
