Her sharp gaze, buxom frame and firm expression are starkly at odds with her kind heart and affability, which prevail just so long as her charges ��" the inmates in the Women's Prison in el-Qanatar el-Khairia, north of Cairo ��" obey the rules. Samia Ahmed Kamal, Egypt's senior woman jail officer, has been jangling her bunch of prison keys for more than a quarter of a century now. Although she enjoys her daily 10-hour shift, she does not deny that she was very nervous when her career started in the 1980s. "It all seemed too difficult and challenging. But the more experienced prison guards helped me overcome my worries and compelled the inmates to lower their eyes in my presence," she recalls. The first thing she learnt from the prison superintendent and her colleagues was firmness and decisiveness. She was warned that she would come across hardened women, who'd brutally killed their husbands and vicious drug dealers. Samia was selected by the Ministry of Interior's Prison Authority from a number of applicants for this extraordinary job. This good news came through as she was about to get married. Thankfully, her bridegroom said that he'd always dreamed of going to bed with a prison officer! As well as doing a job she enjoys, Samia has been fortunate in having a happy family life. "My three daughters, who are all at school or university, love it when I tell them every evening about my adventures behind bars," she says. Despite her unshakeable confidence, she's always very careful when dealing with murderers. "Women who've used knives, razors and other weapons to kill people always make me and my colleagues wary. Drug traffickers and dealers are also violent. The longer they spend banged up, the more dangerous they become." But life in prison has its funny side. She recalls the time, a few years ago, when she opened the gates to welcome a new batch of prisoners. "One of them was wearing the niqab [a full-face veil]. We ordered her to remove it, in accordance with the prison rules, only to discover that she was a man!" Despite her having had to develop a thick skin, Samia has never lost her tender, feminine side. This always comes to the fore when a woman prisoner, who has given birth to a child while serving her sentence, has to hand over her baby to relatives on the outside, when it reaches the age of two. "This situation is heartbreaking. But rules are rules and it's in the baby's best interests not to grow up in prison," she told the Arabic-language magazine Radio & TV. Samia and the prison superintendent sometimes have to arrange weddings. This happens when one of their charges falls in love with a lag in the nearby Men's Prison. "Normally, the couple knew each other before being sent down. Often they commit a crime together ��" so they're partners in more ways than one. "We do all we can to help them if they want to tie the knot behind the bars," says Samia, explaining that many of the romances start in the local criminal courts.
