HER life was very calm until the end of 2003. She taught English at an elementary school in South Sudan. Her husband worked as a driver for a charitable Sudanese organisation and their six children were all at different phases of their education. Something happened one night that turned her simple, warm life into Hell. "I'll never forget the day when the police came knocking at our home at 3am, asking for my husband," recalls Mary Moussa, a refugee from South Sudan. "'Where is your husband? We need him now,” they asked her savagely. “They then ransacked our home and dragged my husband out of the bedroom,” Mary, with fear in her eyes, told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. “I told them my husband was a kind man, not at all interested in politics. They took him despite our pleas to leave him. We followed them down the street. "My brothers went to the police station and were told that the Government 'thought' my husband was a 'spy' for the opposition parties and that they would set him free in a week's time,” she added, while the tragic war between the Government, and the Christians and rebels in South Sudan dragged on. When her husband returned home, Mary thought the story had ended. Little could she have known that it had only just begun. "Every week, my husband had to go to the police station to prove that he was still in the country and hadn't escaped. We lived in constant fear that they'd arrest him again," Mary, 40, said. She decided to leave the country because she was so fearful. Her brothers helped her family get visas to leave South Sudan. They took a boat to Aswan in Upper Egypt and from there a train to Cairo, where they rented an apartment in el- Demerdash, a district in eastern Cairo. "When we arrived here, we started to breathe freedom. At last, we can sleep without fear," she said, smiling. But then her smile that revealed her bright, white teeth began to fade. She fell silent then continued: "Some people here do not accept us. They sometimes insult us and throw shoes at us. They laugh at us for no good reason," she said sadly. Some Egyptians are unaware who these dark-skinned people are who have come to settle among them. They never stop and think for a moment why these people have been forced to leave their families and properties and go and live in another country. They do not know their story. That's what Mary forgives the people who treat them badly. "When peace comes to our country, we will return," added Mary, who works as an English teacher at a refugee school in Heliopolis in Cairo. As for her husband, he works on the North Coast, cleaning villas and flats, while their children are pupils at refugee schools. "Those people who insult us don't know our story. If they did, I believe that they'd welcome us into their own homes," she said sophistically. Around 38,000 other people forcibly displaced by conflict, persecution and natural disasters have sought sanctuary in Egypt and have similar stories to tell. June 20 is World Refugee Day. In Egypt, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) celebrated it on Friday in co-operation with a number of NGOs, including Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and Caritas Egypt, at the Collège de la Salle, in el-Daher district near Ramses in central Cairo. Mary and other refugees turned up with their children at the college, selling Sudanese food and accessories. Their presence reminds you and me to remember these uprooted people who are struggling with their day-to-day lives. "Some refugees in Egypt face problems. Every month, we offer material aid to the neediest of them. In co-operation with NGOs like Caritas Egypt, we offer health aid to the refugees and their families," said Mohamed Dayri, the regional representative of UNHCR. "We have 19 State-run and private hospitals that we refer sick refugees to and we also pay 75 per cent of the price of their medicines," he told this newspaper in an interview. Sudanese refugees, according to Dayri, are the biggest refugee group in Egypt. There are 22,216, followed by refugees from Iraq (6,488), Somalia (6,464), Eritrea (1,561), Ethiopia (932) and then other countries (907). "We should forget what happened in 2005 and help them," Dayri said. He was referring to the sit-in staged between September and December 2005 by thousands of Sudanese in the garden outside Mustafa Mahmoud Mosque in the Giza plush quarter of Mohandiseen, culminating in clashes between police and protestors that left at least 23 Sudanese dead. Many refugees refuse to return to Sudan, and those who stay are not given work permits or granted refugee status. "Now the National Council for Human Rights, along with many other civil society institutions, is preparing an intensive programme to define who's a refugee and to correct the misconception that refugees are a burden on the host country," said Dayri, a Libyan who took up this job last January. The UNHCR was established in 1950 as a United Nations agency mandated to protect and support refugees at the request of a government or the UN itself and assists in their voluntary repatriation, local integration or resettlement to a third country. Its headquarters are in Geneva, Switzerland. The UNHCR is working intensively, focusing on raising people's awareness about refugees' rights. Last week, the international organisation held a workshop for journalists in co-operation with the Egyptian Press Syndicate, encouraging them to make local people more aware of refugees' plight. “The near future,” Dayri stressed, “will witness more co-operation with other NGOs in Egypt”. Despite the unwitting treatment she and her children faced sometimes here, Mary feels comfortable. "My life is better than that of other people. I hope to help other refugees who are in need of help," said Mary, while looking at the many other refugee women selling their goods next to her. .
