Negar Azimi looks at the harsh circumstances that bring Cairo's urban poor and an impoverished Sudanese refugee community together Click to view caption A settlement that hundreds of thousands call home sprawls from the towering buildings of Nasr City's Hay Al-Asher district into the desolate plains through which the Suez Road cuts. Arba'a-wi-noss, whose name means 'four and a half' in Arabic, is something of a myth. It is a locale that precious few have heard of and even fewer have visited. A product, perhaps, of Cairo's struggle to house its teeming millions, Arba'a-wi-noss is a place in which tradition meets an often difficult, unforgiving modernity and where Egyptians live at close quarters with Sudanese seeking refuge from their country's ills. Ask any one of the city's taxi drivers to take you to Arba'a-wi-noss and the chances are he will give you a puzzled look first, as if wondering 'why would you want to go there?' Doubtless more than a few will tell you that this is where they make their home. But Arba'a-wi-noss, so named because of its distance in kilometres from the centre of Almaza, was not always here. Until 25 years ago the military occupied the land. When they left, Al- Haggana, the police on camel-back who were stationed at a nearby camp, moved in. The entrepreneurs among them sold plots for four pounds a square metre. To Egyptians feeling the squeeze of a burgeoning Cairo and others migrating to an urban life from Upper Egypt, the cheap plots of Arba'a-wi-noss were irresistible. And so began a land-grab of sorts in this peripheral no-man's land. That was in the mid-'70s. Today, Arba'a-wi- noss continues to grow. Al-Ezba, as it is often called by its residents, houses between half a million to one million people. Many say it is home to more. Accurate statistics are virtually impossible to obtain, while every resident has his own peculiar spin on an elusive truth. Making matters even more confusing, a new family arrives almost daily -- whether fresh off the ferry from Sudan's port city of Halfa, or from villages like Gena and Minya in Upper Egypt. Here, an entire street may be populated by families whose origins lie in the same village in Al-Sa'eed (Upper Egypt), or in Sudan's Nuba Mountains. The names of Arba'a-wi-noss's streets are derived from the landmarks on them. Everyone knows the telephone office (Centrale), the orthodox church (Al-Kenissa), the street with garages (Al-Garage), the lone primary school (Al- Madrassa). Walking can be arduous. The district is large. But you can hitch a ride on a pick-up truck from Ezbet Al-Haggana, near the Suez Road. From there, a driver can guide you through the dizzying maze. Fate dealt Arba'a-wi-noss a poor hand. There are no police stations save those in Nasr City and Heliopolis. Roads are unpaved -- a virtual disaster when it rains. Electricity only reached parts of the settlement last year, and the supply is sporadic. A water and sewage system has been in place for nearly five years, but water has yet to run through its pipes. The absence of running water makes life particularly difficult. Residents must walk several kilometres at times to find water and bring it back in plastic containers costing anywhere from 25 to 50 piastres each. Six months ago, a two-storey building collapsed. Official help arrived after eight hours, despite the frantic calls of neighbours. An elderly woman in the building did not survive. Three months ago, three residents died when they tried to connect the sewage system to their house. Neighbours said 'poisonous gases' from a valve killed them. Nothing in Arba'a-wi-noss seems permanent, though the clamour of construction work is constant. Half-built brick shelters are the norm. A characteristic of the Arba'a-wi-noss skyline is steel rods for reinforced concrete structures rising from roofs -- as if the addition of other floors is imminent. Left-over Ramadan pendants line the streets. Washing hangs from every protrusion. Old men with weathered faces gaze down at the streets. Women congregate at the few water stations to wash clothes. There are no parks, no gardens, no open spaces. Garbage dumps line the southern border. Most parents keep their children indoors for fear of their falling victim to some crime. Lotfi, originally from Minya, settled in Arba'a-wi-noss seven years ago. He is 40, but he has the lined face of a man of 60. His home, a single brick room, lies behind an enormous wrought iron gate and a concrete wall six metres high. He has fenced his family in from the street. He does not own the land on which he lives, but he gets a modest wage for guarding the adjacent building. Like many living in Arba'a-wi- noss, he awaits the day he will return to the village he once called home. His five-year-old daughter will soon leave the hardships of Arba'a-wi-noss behind as she is to be sent back home any day now. "This is not a life," he said. "Arba'a- wi-noss is where all the leftovers live. Unwanted people: criminals, people without jobs, drug addicts. There is no security here. We keep to ourselves behind this fence and hope that nobody bothers us." A tightly knit community of families from Upper Egypt lives on an elevated part of Arba'a-wi-noss. They tend to gather around Selma, a lugubrious woman of about 50 who runs a small vegetable stand. Selma serves as informal advisor to her neighbours, and volunteers her opinion -- often unsolicited -- about everything. Children on vacation from their primary and secondary schools in Hay Al-Asher play football near her stand. "You know what the problem is here?" asked Selma. "We are isolated. I have not been to central Cairo for years. We are kept behind the rest." She pointed to her son, a 12-year-old with burns on his hands and legs. "Look at him, he doesn't even go to school." Her son, like many other children, worked as a mechanic's apprentice instead of going to school; he was burned in a repair accident. Selma's 75-year-old father emerged from the home above and sat beside his daughter. He continued: "The problem with Arba'a-wi-noss is even simpler than that. We don't have schools or hospitals, and now these foreigners have arrived and made our problems worse." No one in Arba'a-wi-noss can say exactly when the first Sudanese arrived, but most put the influx at about two years ago. The event has radically altered the community's fabric. Women are now often to be seen donning the brightly coloured wraps that members of Sudan's Shawgia tribe refer to as lawa. They seem more appropriate to Juba or Kampala than Arba'a-wi- noss. In the evenings, you may also catch glimpses of traditional Dinka dancing. The distinctive two-piece dress decorated with beads and ivory is much in evidence and Dinka songs reverberate through the night air. Upwards of 500 Sudanese families make their home in the midst of Arba'a-wi-noss's narrow dirt paths -- they could be the most concentrated collection of Sudanese in Cairo. From Ramses Station, where they arrive from Halfa, Sudanese most often find their way to the refuge of the Sacred Heart Church, more commonly referred to as Sakakini, on Abbassiya's Ahmed Said Street. From there, the lure of cheap land and the promise of meeting other Sudanese families take new arrivals to go Arba'a-wi-noss . In an area referred to as Teba, not far from the orthodox church, is a snack stand jointly run by Tarek, an Egyptian of some 60 years, and Osman Siddiq, a Sudanese refugee from Omdurman. Neighbours say Osman jokes with Tarek all the time about his being fat. Tarek takes it in good stead. An old woman who lives in the building next door said: "They are both good people." Relations between Egyptian residents and the Sudanese newcomers have not, however, always been so cordial. Tales of Sudanese children being teased and attacked by neighbours are common. One morning, two young Egyptian boys threw stones at an eight-year-old Dinka boy running to the church. His sight was damaged. His vision is now blurred. Moustafa, a taxi driver who admits that his own two children 'play these games', has lived in Arba'a-wi-noss for the past eight years. He said: "The Sudanese come here for three, sometimes four months. They receive aid from the US government and the church, then they get sent to America" -- an inaccurate understanding of the process of refugee resettlement. While few social services exist for Arba'a-wi-noss's Egyptian residents, perhaps even fewer exist for Sudanese families. According to Sister Ira of CARITAS, her organisation caters to an almost wholly Egyptian clientele in Arba'a-wi-noss -- though there is nothing in its charter that prohibits them from serving Sudanese as they do elsewhere. Proper employment for the Sudanese is virtually non-existent. Work permits are impossible to obtain. What little work exists is often informal in nature and only short-term. Eligible men, both Egyptian and Sudanese, collect at Ezbet Al-Haggana in the mornings to offer themselves as cheap -- always manual -- labour. They work for as little as 10 piastres per half hour. Given the dangers of working without a permit, however, it is more often the women who become the primary bread winners, cleaning homes in Nasr City and Heliopolis for equally meagre pay. Until a year ago, there was no school for Sudanese children and registering refugee children in Egyptian schools is practically impossible since a residence permit, which nobody seems to have, is required. There was no church, save the sole orthodox church some kilometres away, and then, it only served Christians. In November 2000, Abbassiya's Sacred Heart Church launched an initiative to build a school for Sudanese children in Arba'a-wi-noss. Today, the school serves 360 children and has recently been moved to a larger location that also serves as a church. Here there are seven brightly coloured classrooms and one room that serves as a make- shift clinic and meeting room for a community women's group. According to Father Claudius of the Sacred Heart, change is taking hold: "If you look at the fact that absolutely none of these children were in school before last year and now many of them are reading, you can see that much progress has been made." But, he added: "That does not mean we do not have incredible amounts left to do in this community." Medical care is nearly non-existent for members of the Sudanese community. Most have no choice but to make the long journey to Zamalek's All Saints Cathedral to receive attention, and even that is not free. There are clinics in Arba'a- wi-noss, at CARITAS and the orthodox church, but these are small and have few resources. Diarrhoea, chronic coughs and rampant malnutrition -- all preventable -- seem the most common ailments. The Sudanese community in Arba'a-wi-noss is not the monolithic entity it is often portrayed to be. The racial, cultural, religious and political differences that have fuelled the country's civil war between the northern and southern populations do not disappear once Sudanese are in Egypt. Mohamed, a 53-year-old father of four, fled conscription into the Sudan People's Defence Forces (PDF). Originally from Khartoum, he, his wife, who was pregnant at the time, and their three children, embarked on the arduous journey to Egypt by land via Shalatin. Arba'a-wi-noss has been their home since 1997, they struggle to pay the 30 pounds a month they need for a single large room since Mohamed lost his job at a confectionery factory in Doqqi in November. Mohamed complained of discrimination against him and his family because they hail from northern Sudan. Most Sudanese in Arba'a-wi-noss are southerners and Christian. He explained: "They think of us as Arab. The churches distribute blankets and food to the doorsteps of all Sudanese but they skip our home. Our children suffer, and we never have enough to eat." Mohamed's wife, Mona, said that the mosques, a traditional source of aid, are anything but welcoming. She and her husband shook their heads vehemently when asked if they made use of the mosque facilities: "We don't feel the Egyptians or the Sudanese welcome us. What are we to do?" Mohamed and his family have a closed file with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR). In effect, that means they are stuck. He wonders now what to do next: "I am wanted in Sudan. The minute we set foot in my country the security people will kill us. But what of our life here? We have little to live for." There is no telling how many Sudanese within Arba'a-wi-noss have closed files at the UNHCR, the body charged with refugee status determination in Egypt. Applying for a reopening of files that have been closed between the years of 1994 and 2001 is theoretically possible, but it rarely happens given the refugees' lack of access to, and knowledge of, the system. For them, a return to Sudan is often out of the question given the reasons they fled in the first place. But life in Arba'a-wi-noss is precarious and miserable. Despite it all, however, the people of Arba'a- wi-noss have a sense of pride in their Egyptian- Sudanese community. When they had had enough of empty promises over their access to electric power, they staged at least five street protests last year at Nasr City's Electricity Company. Both Egyptians and Sudanese took part. In the end, they got their electricity, albeit barely. Moustafa's younger brother, Rifaat, said: "We may be forgotten here, but at least we have each other. That is our strength."
