To Fatma, Nour and Hosseny

I will dedicate this blog post to my bawab and two very special children.
A bawab in Egypt is known as the house doorman , his jores include taking care of the halls, stairs, cleaning and repairing. On requests and small fee he washes cars, collects rubbish and takes your shirts to dry-clean. He should also keep an eye on who is entering the building, to keep it safe from unwanted strangers. This point has usually caused many foreigners lots of headache, because too often the doormen become too annoying and interrogate each quest and put their nose into foreigners private matters.

What makes my bawab exceptional is that she is a woman! Actually she is the wife of the bawab, but he was sentenced to jail while traveling to his home in Luxor. He was caught carrying a gun he did not own. An unfortunate victim who got caught in some tribal score settling, he cannot read or right and had no clue its forbidden to carry a gun without a permit.
Now Fatma, the wife, is in Cairo alone, does all his jobs and hers, they have 2 kids Nour and Hosseny, around 5 years old, running barefoot in the street, greeting me with big smiles every time, play with old tires and anything else interesting found in the rubbish. All three of them live in the small basement-style space on the first floor, no more than 4 m². Ive heard most of the tenants in the house give her food, medicine and tips to help her take care of the kids. I have given them bigger treats on special holidays, like a big box of "basbusa" (sweet cake made from semolina and syrup) or a full baladi chicken. While none of us can support the hundreds of thousands of poor families in Egypt, the least I can do is to make the life on my bawab and her kids more enjoyable once in a while.

My American roommate with Nour and Hosseny

In my first year in Cairo my French flatmate got a world map for the children and I was probably their first geography teacher. It went like that: I was teaching them that any green colour on the paper is land and any blue colour is the sea. The problem is that the have never been to the sea before so did't understand what I mean. So I explained it's like the river Nile - lots of flowing water. So for a while they will grow up knowing the world is surrounded by the Nile :)
This October they went to pre-school. Im not quite sure how Fatma manages to pay the school fees, for governmental ones, its very cheap, but its an big amount for her. Me and my American roommate decided to put a nice school set ready for them. We got some pens and pencils, erasers, notebooks and some candies to make the event tasty! They were thrilled and this is probably the best I can do for their education at this time.