I am writing this letter on 3-14-2012 from Egypt, 10th of Ramadan city. I want to tell you about my life while I have the chance, and in the hopes that someone is able to help my family and I get out of Egypt to safety and security.
I was born on 11-12-1975 in a very small village in Sharkia Government, Egypt. It is a place of much ignorance and poverty where the treatment of women is appallingly. We were a poor family of 8, and my mother and my father worked a small piece of land for a percentage of what it yielded. My father’s health deteriorated so much that it really became my mother’s sole responsibility to work the land and raise the six of us children.
My mother was never allowed to learn how to read or write, and never left our little village. Despite her lack of formal education, she was very smart and always encouraged my sisters and I to go to college. We were her hope and she wanted to give us opportunities that she never had. She wanted desperately for us to change the horrible conditions in our country where women are deprived of 90% of their rights and choices even after they have fulfilled every obligation and family responsibility.
I was given the chance to attend school, and then went on to college. I studied very hard, and eventually left our home for Cairo where there would be more opportunities for me. Because I did this instead of marrying, my father disowned me for a time. As a woman, my place was to stay home and become a wife and mother without a voice. But I knew that in order to have a future different from my mother I would have to leave the village and continue my education. In Cairo I studied business, and worked several jobs at a time (one during the day, and one every night). This was necessary in order to support myself and to put my younger sisters through college.
While there, I found an occupation that would suit my village perfectly and give women opportunities to better their lives. I chose to learn how to work with and create leather goods. I studied the business and learned the trade for about 6 years and then finally went back to the village with a project in mind that would empower our women. I started by making everything by hand from some leather scraps and iron stamps that I brought back from Cairo. I had no machines, just hopes for a better life and a dream to be treated like a human being and to help Egyptian women who had previously been denied their rights, abused and neglected.
In 2007 I was able to start a small workshop and began training my younger sister not only to make purses and wallets but how to stand up for herself, demand her rights, and even vote in elections when the time came. Then we started training other women. In four years and an amount of work that is beyond description, my little workshop became a 4-story small factory in my village. I had around 150 women working and training girls in summer, and having meetings Friday and Tuesday every week.
These women started to change. Some of them gained the courage to ask for divorce from their abusive husbands. One woman who had covered her face her entire life spent 6 months with us and then she uncovered her face. Other women even began to refuse their arranged marriages. They started to grow as individuals and realize that they deserved and could have more in their lives. My dream had become real.
From the start the Salafi Institution (Muslim Militants) of the village waged war against me. They don’t really operate based on religious tenets, but in an impoverished and ignorant society not a lot of people are able to see that. They began direct threats and made complaints against the factory, but I continued to put every penny that I earned into growing the factory and eventually helping nearly 500 women get national identification for themselves. The outside world has no idea that almost 4 million Egyptian women (not counting their children!) have no birth certificate or ID, and so effectively do not exist as individuals. This problem is especially bad in rural areas like my village. Identification is the first step for these women in claiming their civil and political rights. Women from miles around began coming to the factory not for work, but to find out about how to change their lives like the women who worked with me. Unfortunately, by the end of 2010 the threats and complaints got so bad that I had to leave the village and relocate my factory to 10th of Ramadan City (an industrial area). I knew that I was leaving behind so many women who needed me, but it was necessary in order to return stronger and with more support from all over the world.
In 10th of Ramadan City, I hired trained and skilled workers that were able to help me empower and grow my business to more than 200 workers. I was married with 2 kids (8 and 9 years old) and I put them in the American school in the city so that they didn’t have to see or be affected by the horrible treatment of women in their society. The city isn’t nearly as bad as the rural villages, but it still is clear that women have very little power. My mother always said to me “you couldn’t change it, so leave and live the good life that you deserve.” But I always wanted to come back and continue what I started.
Then in January 2011 the revolution started. I kept the momentum going with my business, and participated in the Las Vegas exhibition in Feb 2011, but the revolution never gave us any more chance than the previous regime. My clients in Egypt owed me a lot of money but because of everything that had happened here the tourists were nonexistent and the nicer stores have closed or are failing. As a result, no one paid anything. Because of this, I have lost almost $112,000.00.
Because of the feedback from the Las Vegas exhibition, I thought I may have a better chance in the U.S.. I traveled to Los Angeles and established a retail and wholesale business in the hopes of raising some money to keep the factory going and support the workers. I kept them going until October 2011, but I had to mortgage the entire factory for half of its real price in order to do it. I still can't collect money owed by my clients because as I’m sure you know, everything is still deteriorating in Egypt.
I have traveled back and forth, and am now am back in Egypt, living with my family inside the empty factory (my husband also worked there) that has become our home. We cannot get Visas to the U.S. and are trapped here. If we can’t pay the mortgage we only have one month left in the factory. I fear we will lose it and become homeless. I have tried everything. It's so difficult now with the Muslim brotherhood and the Salafi ruling the country. It has become very dangerous for me. I have no freedom to leave and I don’t have any income because the the international trade here is also paralyzed.
I have seen a lot in Egypt, and I always felt it would get better, but now I know that it won’t and I have to get my family out of here. I have always supported others and have never asked for help, but now I am forced to in order to protect my kids, who I would give my life for. I send this letter not only to my friend Summer who I consider my sister, but to my God. I have gone through poverty and a society that treats women badly, and I have struggled for years for freedom and to be treated and respected like a human being. I have fought for my mother and sisters and all of the women of our villages. But the hardest fight is against the radical direction that we are headed in my country. And this is a fight that I cannot win.
I don’t want my kids to see me or any other woman forced to cover her face if she chooses not to. I don't want them to see women forced to be silent. I don’t want them to see us walking into a black hole where women are barely allowed to exist and have no rights with regard to their lives. I am a moderate Muslim and will even leave my children to choose what to believe in, but before that I must teach them to be free as human beings with rights, no matter whether they are born boys or girls. My problem is not only a financial one, but a message to teach to my children.
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