Where life is very hard A citizen called Abu Hemeda Marei Abu Hafez was out for a walk one night in the village where he lives, el-Manawat, near Abul Nomrus in Giza Governorate, when he spotted a little lad sleeping under a car, without even a blanket to cover him, despite the very cold Egyptian winter nights we've been experiencing for the past two or three weeks. He woke up the boy, who said that his name was Ziyyad Mohamed Ragab and that he was six years old. Abu Hemeda asked Ziyyad what he was doing sleeping under a car. He burst into tears and said he didn't know where his family were. The boy's clothes were filthy, so the kindhearted man took him home, gave him some new things to wear and a good meal, as well as ensuring he had a hot bath. He let Ziyyad stay there the night in the warmth of his home. The next morning, Abu Hemeda came up with a good idea for trying to find the lad's parents. He drove him round the village and neighbouring villages in his car and announced repeatedly using a microphone that he was looking for his family. Unfortunately, he wasn't successful. But there's still hope that Ziyyad will still find his family and not end up back on the streets, where life is very hard. But would his family want him back? (Al-Wafd) Maximum sympathy Until she was arrested, an old lady in el-Sayyeda Zeinab, southern Cairo, made some nice money renting out wheelchairs to beggars, who would pretend that they were paralysed or had some ghastly terminal illness, for LE20 a day. Naggia Khalil (69) had nine wheelchairs, which meant she ‘earned' LE180 every day. When she was caught, detectives also found LE1,200. The beggars who hired the wheelchairs would normally sit outside mosques to gain maximum sympathy from kindhearted passersby. (Al-Ahrar and Al-Gomhuria) Jumping on the wagon Last week, this column reported the plight of the residents in the informal district of el-Doweiqa in eastern Cairo, many of whose homes were destroyed and many of whom were killed in the notorious rock fall there in September 2008. A lot of the people who are suffering there are now hoping to be given new homes by the District Council. Of course we all feel very sorry for the homeless and those who live in substandard accommodation. At the same time, however, some of the residents of el-Doweiqa have been playing up. One of those who tried to jump on the wagon was a lady called Hosna Sayyed. She reported that a huge rock had tumbled down from the Moqattam Hills onto the roof of her home, located behind Block 40, the Suzanne Mubarak Buildings. A team of experts, accompanied by Mokhtar el-Hamlawi, Assistant to the Cairo Governor for the Eastern District, and General Moustafa Abada, head of Manshiyet Nasser District Council, went to take a look at the damage. Yes, there was a rock weighing about 30kg on Hosna's roof, but it had caused little damage, leading the experts to conclude that someone had carried the rock up the stairs onto the roof and dumped it there, to make it look like a rock fall. Hosna was arrested and admitted that she'd made up the story, as she and her husband wanted a new home. In the second case in el-Doweiqa, Hisham Abdullah told the District Council that his home had been demolished by the Council. The building where he claimed he had lived had indeed been demolished on January 4, a demolition order having been slapped on it the previous day. The curious thing was that he signed the contract for a flat in the building on January 6. The contract was fake and Hisham made a swift exit from the District Council HQ before he could be arrested. There was another cunning effort made by residents living in Ahmed Mohamed Hashem Street in el-Doweiqa, anxious to be rehoused. In fact, the Council recently demolished 23 building in this street, because they'd been seriously undermined by water, and gave the occupants new, better accommodation. Meanwhile, the other above-mentioned residents, living in other buildings in Ahmed Mohamed Hashem Street, decided to indulge in a bit of do-it-yourself undermining by breaking the water and sewage pipes in their homes, in order to make their homes uninhabitable. A technical committee, dispatched by the Council, guessed what they were up to and repaired the pipes. (Al-Akhbar) A plucky little fellow When fire swept through the home of eight-year-old Ahmed's seven-member family in the middle of the night, two of them died and the other five survived with nasty burns. Ahmed, in second preparatory, was the best pupil in his class. But when he returned to school after the fire with a badly deformed hand, his classmates shied away from him. Despite the pain, Ahmed, already well versed in computer programming, insisted on writing with this hand, so that the blood and pus that leaked from his wounds smudged the ink as he wrote in his exercise book. The tragedy started in Block 4 in the Health Buildings in Hadaaiq el-Zeitoun, built under the auspices of First Lady Mrs Suzanne Mubarak. Ahmed's father is suspected of torching the family home, after having a big argument with the lad's mother. Ahmed and his little sister Aya have been deeply traumatised by what happened and live in fear that it might happen again. Ahmed dreams of being a famous engineer one day and Aya of being a physician. Ahmed is certainly a plucky little fellow. If anyone cruelly teases him about his burns, he has a very clever reply: "It's better to get burnt in this world than to suffer everlasting burnings in the Hereafter." Ahmed and Aya's mother, Magda, and the latter's sister, Hala, a graduate, both suffered burns to their hands and faces that night, and needed skin grafts so that they could appear acceptable to the community again. Magda, a maths teacher, says that she fell out with her husband, who owns a weaving factory. When she was pregnant with Aya, she took Ahmed with her to her mother's, where she gave birth to her daughter and where they stayed for several years, until the fire last March. That night Magda's two children were sleeping in the same room as her mother. When the blaze broke out, the neighbours managed to rescue the two children, but their brave grandma, who'd help Ahmed and Aya escape, would die of her injuries later. The children's father was arrested in connection in the incident, but, surprisingly, was released on bail seven months afterwards. Charitable people helped pay for the operations they had to have. Ahmed and Aya's father, though wealthy, has done nothing to help them. Ahmed was back at school two months after the fired. Amazingly, despite all that he has suffered, he is still top of the class. The children's other maternal auntie, Mervet, was also badly burnt in the fire, which killed their maternal uncle, Ghareeb. Their grandmother who perished was named as Fathia Amin. Theirs were very painful deaths: Ghareeb lingered on for three months after the blaze, before he died, and his mother for a full five months. The children have moved back into the late grandmother's fire-damaged flat. There's now a new gate to the building which is kept locked at night, as well as a separate gate to their floor in the building. What keeps the family going is the dreams Ahmed and Aya have of greatness. Children are generally very resilient. Let's hope their dreams come true. (Al-Masry Al-Youm) See you in 2012 Before their exciting clash against Egypt in Luanda, Angola in the African Cup of Nations (ACN) final at the end of January, Ghana, the Black Stars, had last reached the final 28 years ago. Two years ago, the Pharaohs won the ACN in Ghana, that had been called the Gold Coast under British rule, so it was rather appropriate that the two teams should have met in the final this year. More mature readers will of course remember the love story between a pretty young Egyptian lady called Fathia Rizq and Kawame Nkrumah, a Ghanaian revolutionary. Fathia, who was born and brought up in Zeitoun, became a teacher at her school, Notre Dame des Apôtres, before getting a job in a bank. There, she met Kawame. It was love at first sight and they got married on New Year's Eve in 1957 in Accra. Kawame was a good friend of President Gamal Abdel-Nasser and the couple named their first child, a boy born in Christianborg Castle, Gamal. Fathia went on to bear her husband two more children, Samia (a girl) and Sekou (a boy). When Kawame, who'd declared Ghanaian independence in 1957, was overthrown in the military coup in 1966, he was forced into exile in Guinea, where he spent the next six years until his death in 1972. Fathia, much loved by the Ghanaian people, who thought of her as a mother figure, returned to Egypt with their three children. They lived in Maadi for many years. Three years ago, in May 2007, Fathia died in the Badrawi Hospital on the Maadi Corniche in Cairo and the new Ghanaian President, John Kufuor, had her coffin flown back to Accra, so she could be buried next to her dear husband. I'm sure Fathia and Kawame would have been the first to applaud the Pharaohs on beating Ghana 1-0. The young team from Ghana played great football and it was a very close-fought match. Who knows – they may well meet again in the final in 2012. (Al-Ahram)
