Nashwa Abdel-Tawab sounded out a victim of the Dweiqa rockslide, who lost her means of support overnight Residents of Dweiqa, a shantytown in eastern Cairo, until recently went to sleep each night hoping for an improvement of their poverty-stricken lot. However, their routine, tough though it already was, was last Saturday morning rendered into a living nightmare when their area was smashed by a massive sudden rockslide. "Boom, a loud bang, a rockslide, clouds of dark smoke, people choked, houses collapsed, family and neighbours died and are still missing, survivors injured and hearts broken is the memory left of what happened last Saturday morning," Hanem Ahmed Omar, survivor of the rockslide that crushed her district, told Al-Ahram Weekly. Though there are no final statistics available yet, so far it has been confirmed that the rockslide has killed at least 50 people, injured almost the same number, and buried in the rubble almost 70. The injured received care at two Cairo hospitals, while survivors who had lost their homes sought refuge at two camps where 160 tents had been put up. The camps have capacity for 900 to 1,000 people, and are intended to provide shelter for victims until the government distributes apartments as compensation. Omar's flashbacks represent the drastic reality of belonging to a poor family living in a slum area in the 21st century. Her family, like millions of others worldwide, faces poverty and one human catastrophe after another with strength of character, but with all passion for life drained. They are, after all, forbidden by their poverty to taste it. Aged 39, Omar has a husband, Mohamed Tawfik, 46, who works as a wage labourer gathering aluminum and reshaping it in a workshop near the family home. He takes a wage of LE30 (almost $5) a day to sustain himself, his wife and their five kids: Ahmed aged 19, Laila, 14, Zeinab, 12, Mustafa aged nine, and Nesma, who is seven. In reality, his earnings are not sufficient and the family ends up surviving mainly on the charity work of organisations working in the area and donations by rich women who come regularly to Dweiqa, and help out where they can with bags full of basic foods, and sometimes meat and medicines to allay diseases caused by malnutrition. However terrible their material reality was on the whole, nothing could have prepared Dweiqa's residents for what happened Saturday. "In fact, Friday was a day to remember, full of laughter," recalled Omar. "We had guests over and we ate meat for Iftar. Then after the guests left we talked about finances, to plan for our elder son who is going to get married after Ramadan. Because we were talking about money things got a little tense, so we just ended up watching TV all evening." Omar went on: "Because my son's fiancée's family was round I didn't have time to wash up after our meal, so I woke up early the next day. I went out to buy some detergent when I saw sand shower down from the rocks on the side of the Moqattam mountain, overlooking our district. I was taken by it, though I have become used to seeing small rocks fall down that mountain. This time I knew I asked God to keep us safe, and ran home to try to wake the children up. Meanwhile, I warned my husband of what I had seen, who responded indifferently saying, 'Whatever God wants will happen. We have nowhere else to go.'" Unlike his wife and older kids, Tawfik does not observe Ramadan. Before making his way to work, he asked his wife to make tea for him. She could barely concentrate, however, as she stood watching the rocks from their one-storey, two-room brick house. Finally Tawfiq understood there was something wrong that morning, and he went out of the house nervously when suddenly Omar screamed loudly as she saw the massive rocks break in the hillside. "It was very smooth, as smooth as cutting a piece of cloth," said Omar. "I pushed the kids who happened to be awake at the time towards the door. How could I run for my life and leave behind my other sweethearts. Before I could move towards them the building collapsed over my head and I fainted. I felt nothing for some time. Dark smoke was everywhere. After some time I heard the sound of Tawfik's voice calling for me and the kids. He managed to save me. My body was under two rocks but my head was above them. I felt blood and pain all over." Omar was saved just after the rockslide by her husband and neighbours and taken to Hussein Hospital. Her daughter Laila and son Mustafa were rescued later, while her elder son, who was going to marry next month and her other two daughters were found dead. Omar does not yet know the full extent of the tragedy that has struck her family. "People tell me that my other kids are in another hospital," she told the Weekly. Meanwhile, Laila confesses to me: "They are dead but mum doesn't know and we won't tell her now. She loves us very much, and she is badly injured. I cry about their deaths but sheikhs who visited us told me they died as martyrs because they were fasting, and therefore they will go to Heaven. Hearing this calms me down a lot." Over the course of the interview almost every 10 minutes Egyptians belonging to NGOs or arriving independently came to visit the victims and gave them envelopes full of money, while also bringing along toys for the children of Dweiqa. They sat and talked with the victims, prayed for a fast recovery and assured their full support. "Such gestures make me feel that goodness will survive in the end," said Omar. "Talking with people all day made me feel better. I'm really grateful for their financial and psychological support." The fact that it is Ramadan has no doubt contributed to instilling in Egyptians abundant feelings of solidarity and charity. This feeling has even translated into online action, with chat rooms, Facebook and e-mail inboxes filling up with citizen attempts to gather groups to serve in the site of the catastrophe, in the morgues, at hospitals and in tent camps. Meanwhile, Tawfik spends his entire day at the site, searching for neighbours under the rubble. He is heartbroken for his children and his home. He arrives at the hospital once more at 1am, to sit with his wife and his two surviving children, and tells them the latest news while following up on their injuries. Omar has three cuts to her head. One of the cuts is more than 20 centimetres long. She was totally deformed in the face and has many bruises in her body. Her children suffered from arm and leg fractures, bruises and small cuts to the face. Although she is grateful for attention she and other victims are receiving, Omar thinks of nothing now except her children and her future. "We came to Dweiqa from Fayoum two years ago," Omar told the Weekly. "When I inherited a small piece of land after my father's death, I sold it for LE14,000 to buy this one-storey house in the district to start a new life for myself and my unemployed husband here in Cairo, where work offers are easier to come by than in Fayoum. Now I don't have any source of income to buy a house, or to pay our debts." Omar used to have a small two-eyed cooker, a gas tube, a manual washing machine and a colour TV with a satellite receiver for the kids. Now she doesn't want anything from life except to live in a house near her husband's workplace. "It's impractical to live far away from work," said Omar. "He gets paid LE30 a day, and so all his money will go towards cigarettes and transportation. I can't live like that. We left Fayoum and came to live for years under the threat of death to be beside his work because the threat of unemployment and lack of money is worse." Kissing Laila before I left and wishing her a goodnight, she stared at me as she replied: "I fear the night and the day. I fall asleep when I'm tired and when the doctors give us medicine. Otherwise, I just can't."
