Love and hardship

They threw caution to the wind, but now they are paying the price. Romeo and Juliet? Hardly. Niveen Wahish looks at the daily travails of Egyptian women married to foreigners
It was a college romance that grew serious, but when Nagwa Mahmoud told her father than she and her Jordanian sweetheart wanted to get married, he tried to offer the voice of reason. Out came the news clippings, the horror stories of the difficulties faced by Egyptian women married to foreigners. But Mahmoud knew all about it. She knew that her children would not have Egyptian citizenship -- that hers would be almost a foreigner's life in her own country. But back then, it just did not seem so bad. She could not have imagined the type of problems she would face.
The separate treatment began right away with the marriage ceremony itself. A traditional katb al-kitab, the Islamic marriage contract, is not legally binding for the union of an Egyptian and a foreigner. The couple must sign the marriage contract at the Foreign Marriage Office, now located on the fourth floor of the Ministry of Justice -- a "totally unromantic situation," recalls Mariam Fayez, who married her Syrian husband seven years ago.
When Fayez got married, the Foreign Marriage Office was located in the equally unglamorous notary office, just off El- Gomhouriya Street. The ceremony was all business. The principals of the wedding ceremony -- Fayez, her father, her fiancee, his father and two witnesses trooped into the office at noon. The couple's pride of place was two government-issue wooden chairs in front of the clerk's desk. Everyone else stood around them. The usual marriage recitations, read by the clerk, were almost drowned out by street noise.
"I had always wanted a katb al-kitab celebration at home, with all my friends and family around me and a regular sheikh. I missed all the festivities," Fayez says sadly.
Nagwa Mahmoud's "government ceremony" was anything but a young girl's dream. Disappointed by the sheer bureaucratic feel of the marriage, Mahmoud actually broke down in tears during the ceremony. "My father told me that I didn't have to go through with it, my [future] husband freaked out, and everyone else in the office thought I was being married against my will," recounts Mahmoud. "It was just a bad situation and it has been so since," she says grimly.
Quick to note that the problems are not marital, Mahmoud says that the emotional difficulties presented by her excluded marital status -- not to mention the troubles her children go through -- are considerable. Because Egyptian citizenship is only given by the father, the children of non-Egyptian fathers hold an ambiguous place in society. Culturally identical to their fully Egyptian schoolmates and colleagues, their lack of citizenship is a monstrous nuisance.
As any parent knows, enrolling one's child in a proper school is hard enough, given age restrictions, high tuition fees and the like. But mothers of foreign children, including Egyptian mothers, must jump through several more hoops. First, they must obtain a "security permit" for their children, which means dealing with the educational administration to which the child's school is affiliated. Aside from the administration's forms, a slew of documents need to be amassed, including a certificate from the child's embassy, a birth certificate, a photocopy of passport with the residence, if required, clearly stamped. The customary personal photos and various stamps are also required.
This is not the end. Once these documents are in order, the parent is given two more documents, which must be stamped at the Department for Overseas Students. One of these documents goes back to the educational administration, the other to the school itself. This procedure is repeated for every child at every stage of his or her education -- kindergarten, primary school, preparatory and high school -- otherwise they are not admitted to term exams. Fayez recalls that one of her relatives married to another Syrian was so overcome with frustration at one point in this process that she actually threw herself on the floor at the Ministry of Education.
Fathia, an Egyptian married to a Syrian, lives in Agami, an hour's drive from Alexandria. Her daughter finished preparatory school in their neighbourhood, but because private high schools were not available nearby, most of the children transferred to a public school. But there were problems for Fathia because her daughter is Syrian, not Egyptian. Sending their daughter to a private school in Alexandria was out of the question, so the parents had to seek approval at various government offices in Cairo for their child to attend a nearby public school.
For the children of non-Egyptian fathers, this kind of exceptionality pervades their daily lives. Nagwa Mahmoud recounts the time when her younger son, who played handball on the team at the Heliopolis club, was nominated for the national team. When it was discovered that he was Jordanian, he was excluded from taking part in competitions. "Had I known this at the beginning, I would never have wasted all that time and effort committing him to this game," says Mahmoud. "I would have directed him towards any other individual hobby."
Similarly, Mahmoud's older son was denied extracurricular points for sporting activities done outside the school because of his nationality. He and his colleagues did parachuting exercises as a sport, but while his friends' university entry scores were boosted by the activity, his was not. "He went through the educational system just like the others," says Mahmoud. "Why should he be treated differently?"
At university, the difficulties continue. Mahmoud pays around 300 pounds sterling for her older son, who is now in the Faculty of Engineering. Despite a decision by the Ministry of Education some four years ago that foreign students with Egyptian mothers should receive the same treatment as Egyptian students, this policy has not been readily applied. Mahmoud says that there is an Arab Student Affairs office that evaluates student tuition and determines if students are exempted. But the procedures are so convoluted and tiresome that Mahmoud says anyone who can afford it pays the fees just to secure a bit of sanity.
Even something as simple as residence in the country has to be formalised legally for children of foreign fathers. Mariam Fayez's two children each need a five-year residence permit because they are juniors -- and Syrian. Mahmoud's children, who are Jordanian, do not need residence permits. The facilities granted to citizens of foreign countries depend not on domestic issues, but on the political relationships between Egypt and other countries. How Egyptians are treated in a given country greatly affects how nationals of that country will be treated in Egypt, Mahmoud says.
This tacit policy also affects how non- national residents are treated when entering Egypt. Nevine Ahmed, whose husband, Hussein Hassan, is the son of an Egyptian mother and a Sudanese father, says that Hassan has avoided travelling outside Egypt for the 23 years he has lived here simply "to avoid the hassle." Ahmed says that before her husband travels, he heads to the Ministry of Interior's Department for Nationality and Immigration at the Mugamaa government office complex -- universally feared by Egyptians and foreigners alike for its virtually impenetrable maze of bureaucratic proceedings -- to get an entry stamp on his passport that will allow him to return.
But when Hassan arrives in Egypt, presenting his passport is never enough. He is often told to step aside and wait until they check his passport -- a delay of at least half an hour. "When there was political tension between Egypt and Sudan, Sudanese [nationals] were kept for hours on end," remembers Ahmed.
Mahmoud finds similar frustrations at the airport, where she and her children must stand in different lines at passport control. Often, her children are held back while officials run a security check on their passports.
Were it only the inconvenience of personal documents, perhaps it would be tolerable. But Egyptians living a foreigner's life are expected to be able to afford that life. Membership in a sports club is far more expensive for non-citizens, for example. Ahmed says that other members at her club pay roughly LE130 annually. "But we pay 130 dollars," she says, emphasising that her husband does not get paid in dollars.
For foreign nationals, making a living can be a challenge. Finding a job that will offer a work permit is difficult enough, so the need for hard currency is a further burden. Fayez says that for 10 years her husband worked at a company owned by a friend of the family. He did not even think about applying for a different job because as a foreigner, he knew he would not be accepted. The same difficulties await their children.
Pressed on this issue, Fayez and Mahmoud say they prefer to take each day as it comes. "These children [of foreign fathers] feel they belong to Egypt," says Mahmoud. "They were born and raised here and most of the time, they have not even visited their father's country. But they are treated like foreigners."
This sense of insecurity is only the problem of children with foreign fathers. An Egyptian man married to a non-Egyptian automatically transfers citizenship to his children -- a point of obvious contention for women like Mahmoud. Her brother, who is married to a Scottish woman, experiences none of the difficulties she goes through, especially in the case of their children. She stresses that the logic is unreasonable, insisting that it is the mother who instils love for one's country in her children.
Proposed changes to the law that would allow children of Egyptian mothers to be given Egyptian nationality periodically cause a stir, but until now, the situation remains the same. Ahmed, whose husband and children are Sudanese, says there is only one real solution: moving to another country. "Since we are being treated as foreigners anyway, we should at least go somewhere where we won't feel discriminated against," she said.
Both Mahmoud and Fayez are thinking along the same lines, but it is a hard step to take. "It means leaving my parents and being uprooted," says Mahmoud. She added that the real loss is for Egypt. Well-educated individuals who are Egyptian in everything but their passport are being driven out of the country. These people could make a contribution to the country, she argues, but they will leave because they were not given the chance.
If the law remains, and the government continues to marginalise the problem, then the aggravation and alienation will continue to be passed on from one generation to the other. "I am wondering who will agree to marry any of my sons," says Mahmoud, who adds that if she had had girls, she would not have to worry so much. "Girls often marry Egyptian men and get the nationality in a couple of years," she says.
Years later, Mahmoud still thinks about how she brushed off her family's reservations about marrying a foreigner. Now the wiser, she cannot say that she regrets her decision, but she is certain of one thing: she says she would warn others about falling for a foreigner. Her family recognises the shortcomings of the law, but they also recognise how much it has affected their lives. Sometimes, she says, her sons just ask her why she married a foreigner in the first place.
Recommend this page
© Copyright Al-Ahram Weekly. All rights reserved
Send a letter to the Editor