Mother's Day is approaching, but some mothers are not looking forward to it. One of these mothers sits alone on the pavement outside a big supermarket in Cairo, selling lemons to passersby. For many years now, the customers at this supermarket have seen her sitting in the same place, wearing her black galabiya and headscarf. Some of them give her money, others ignore her. Her home, the street, is also her workplace. Whether it's cold or hot, she never changes the place where she sits; nor does she ever change her clothes. And, when she feels hungry, she walks into the supermarket, picks up a piece of bread and begs one of the shop assistants for a lump of cheese and some pickles. The assistants and the regular customers stopped treating her as a beggar long ago. They now know her and pity her. Some of them pay for the things she takes from the supermarket. The old woman, who doesn't want to give her real name, says that she doesn't want any of her children know anything about her, as she doesn't want to bother them, although they bothered her a lot. She smiles her innocent smile that tells the story of her suffering. "Choose any name for me. Call me Bahia," she says. And in fact Bahia is the perfect name for her. Once upon a time, Bahia, who begs from people nowadays, was a wealthy landowner. She was respected by all and helped many people in her village, which she left long ago. "My father was a very rich man. I used to live in a large house and I had servants. That was long ago," recalls Bahia, now aged 70. When she was 12, her father decided to marry her to a boy of 17. Although she was far too young to get married, she was happy, at first anyway. But, as time went by, everything changed. Her teenage husband was lazy and spent his fortune, and some of hers too. "I thought that he would spend all the money that my father left me, so I insisted on getting a divorce, although my family were against this," says this poor woman, who was very brave to insist on a divorce, especially nearly half a century ago. A divorcee in her twenties, she was still young and beautiful, but had two sons to look after. She got married again, because people living in a village gossip about a divorcee. "I got married to an old man with a long beard and a prayer mark on his forehead. I thought he was a good man who would treat me and my sons well. But that never happened," she adds. The ‘man of God', as she describes him, seemed to be ignorant about anything related to God. He mistreated her and her two children. Soon there were four, as Bahia bore the ‘man of God' another two boys. "He treated his boys better than my boys, whom he used to beat. One day he stole everything I had, even my precious gold, and kicked me and my two sons out of my own, big house, leaving him and his two sons alone there with another woman. "I couldn't bear the way the village people looked at me, even though I was from a family that had lorded it over them. I left everything behind and travelled to Cairo with my two boys and no money," she continues. Many years have passed since then and now Bahia's two sons are busy fighting their two half-brothers for their mother's fortune. "I don't want them to fight or struggle, as the four of them are all my children. I don't want to see the blood of one of them shed; they are all my sons. I want them to be near me and to take care of me in my old age," she says tearfully. In folkloric stories, Egypt is described as Bahia, the name that means ‘beautiful', ‘rich', ‘proud' and ‘strong'. And the Bahia of our story is uncannily similar to the Bahia in folklore who was once rich and happy. The woman turns her face to hide her tears and asks a passerby for money, but he doesn't even look at her.
