THE CASE OF SUDANESE REFUGEES IN CAIRO

LIVING IN LIMBO WITH HOPE: THE CASE OF SUDANESE REFUGEES IN CAIRO

GAMAL ABDELRAHMAN ADAM

A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF GRADUATE STUDIES IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF

DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

GRADUATE PROGRAM IN SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY YORK UNIVERSITY

TORONTO, ONTARIO

March 2012

© Gamal A. Adam, 2012

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ABSTRACT

This dissertation is about Sudanese refugees in Cairo and is based on ten months

fieldwork carried out between August 2003 and June 2004. It highlights the resilience

and hope that distinguish refugees' lives despite the odious experience they face on a

daily basis. The dissertation has three main objectives. The first objective is to describe

and analyze the coping strategies of Sudanese who live in the situation of limbo and the

impact this situation has on them as men, women, and children. The second objective is

to explore the patterns of life and kinds of identities they have formed in response to the

exclusion and exploitation which they experience in their interactions with Egyptians.

The third objective is to investigate what kinds of hope the refugees can have in such a

situation where they are both exploited and excluded. The questions and the themes

which the research deals with revolve around urban refugees' livelihood in Egypt.

The research has resulted in several key findings. First, the refugees have adopted

a resource pooling strategy, which includes living in larger households, exempting the

newcomers from rent and purchase of food for some time, and ensuring that the

individuals who have more resources contribute more. Second, the traditional gender

roles have changed and in some cases reversed, many spouses have separated, and

children have lost the rights of play and education. And third, refugees are hopeful in

celebrating events and setting plans for a better future despite the turbulent experiences

they have gone through; most of them are resilient people who encourage each other and

ii

their agency is rejuvenated by speeches delivered during various events which they

celebrate.

The dissertation traces the Sudanese refugee problem back to 1989 when the

Islamists took over power in Sudan through a coup d'etat and declared war against almost

all the other categories of the population. It is a contribution to the literature on urban

refugees in Africa where, in most cases, refugees are held in camps with very few rights

and freedoms compared with citizens of host countries.

DEDICATION

I dedicate this dissertation to Sudanese refugees in Cairo and refugees worldwide.

iv

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This dissertation would not have been completed without the generous inputs of

many individuals and organizations. I would like to thank my committee members

Professors Dan Yon, Malcolm Blincow, and Wenona Giles for patiently guiding me

through it until it was completed. I am also grateful to Professor Peter Harries-Jones who

was able to supervise me until the middle of my Ph.D. journey. I repeat my special thanks

to Professors Dan Yon and Malcolm Blincow for their patient guidance throughout my

doctoral program from the start to the end, and to Professor Wenona Giles for accepting

to join the advisory committee. Professor Dan Yon also accepted to replace Professor

Harries-Jones as supervisor. I learned a lot from all three of them and their thoughtful

comments and corrections will remain useful to me forever. As well, I am thankful to the

members of my examining committee for the time they dedicated.

I acknowledge that this dissertation would not have been possible without the

International Development Research Center's (IDRC) generous grant. The IDRC's

Doctoral Research Award enabled me to conduct my field studies with Sudanese refugees

in Cairo for one year. It covered most of my fieldwork expenses.

At the American University in Cairo (AUC), I am especially indebted to

Professors Nicholas S. Hopkins (then Dean of the Social Sciences and Humanities) and

Barbara Harrell-Bond (then Distinguished Adjunct Professor at the Forced Migration and

Refugee Studies Program) for their help. Professor Hopkins inspired me to become an

v

anthropologist and encouraged me to study for a Ph.D. since 1996 when I was writing my

MA thesis at the American University in Cairo. Professor Harrell-Bond generously

invited me to use her home library for the secondary data on refugees.

At the University of San Francisco, I would like to thank Professors Dorothy Kidd

and Cecilia Santos for their continuous encouragement. Professor Dorothy Kidd also

proofread the draft of my dissertation and corrected my English mistakes.

I would like to express my special gratitude to Sudanese refugee men and women

in Cairo who contributed to my study in uncountable ways. They opened the doors of

their homes for me, invited and accompanied me to events, referred me to friends and

relatives, and kindly shared their experiences with me. It is unfortunate that I cannot

disclose their names for confidentiality and safety reasons.

I am also grateful to my son, Darfor Adam, for his patience and courageous spirit.

I enjoyed playing soccer and racing in the field with him after I had helped him with his

homework and had been tired of reading and writing. Finally, I will always be indebted to

my partner, Professor Anne Bartlett, for her continuous support, encouragement,

insightful comments, friendship, and patience. It is her warm, kind, and patient spirit that

always kept me going.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ii Dedication iv Acknowledgements v Table of Contents vii List of Tables x List of Figures xi

Chapter One: Introduction 1 Key Questions of this Study 9 Chapter Outline 12

Chapter Two: Refugees in East Africa and Libya 16 War and Forced Migration in Sudan 16 Refugees in East Africa 19 Camp Refugees 21 Urban Refugees 25 Malkki and Kibreab: Integration Versus Repatriation 28 Refugee Administration in East Africa 34 Profile of Sudanese Refugees in East Africa 39 Refugees in North Africa 42 Libya and Sudanese Refugees 44 Conclusion 48

Chapter Three: Sudanese Refugees in Cairo: Population Profile and Methodology for Studying them 50 Origins of this Research Project 50 Population of the Study 55 Geographical Distribution and Demographic Features of the Targeted Population 61 Return to Cairo 62 Field Activities and Methods of Data Collection 66 Advocacy and Action Research 68

Techniques of Data Collection 72 Equipment Used for Data Collection 76 Forced Migrants as the "Other" of Nationals and Nationals as the "Other" of Forced Migrants 78 Difficulties Encountered 81 Conclusion 84

Chapter Four: Sudanese Refugee Administration in Cairo 86 Egypt's Role in the Displacement of Sudanese People 86 Egyptian Government Policies and Sudanese Refugees in Cairo 88

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UNHCR and Caritas 91 The Process of Refugee Status Determination and its Impact on Sudanese Refugees 95 Who Determines the Status of Applicants to UNHCR? 99 The Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program 112

Legal Aid Project and Nadeem Center 114 The Role of Churches and Mosques 115 Role of Sudanese Organizations and Political Parties 119 Roles of Individuals 122 Conclusion 123

Chapter Five: Egyptian Refugee Policies and their Impact on Sudanese Refugees' Housing Conditions 126 Population Growth and Work and Housing Problems in Cairo 127 Sudanese Refugees' Housing and Residential Problems in Cairo 135 Description of Sudanese Refugees' Apartments 151 Conclusion 154

Chapter Six: Sudanese Refugees' Survival Strategies in Response to Difficult Residential and Work Conditions in Cairo 156 Resource Pooling as Sudanese Refugees' Survival Strategy 156 Patterns of Resource Pooling 161 Sudanese Refugees' Work Conditions in Cairo 167 Self Employment and Dependency on Relatives and Friends Abroad 175 Transforming One's Body Organs into Spare Parts for Other Bodies 178 Conclusion 187

Chapter Seven: Change of Gender Roles and its Impact on Family Life 189 Cases of Changes in Gender Roles among Sudanese Refugees in Cairo 192 The Impact of the Situation in Cairo on Sudanese Marriage and Family life 204 The Impact on Men 213 The Impact on Children 219 Conclusion 226

Chapter Eight: Sudanese Refugees: Violence and Hope 229 Violence against Sudanese Refugees in Egypt 233 Government Sponsored Violence 235 Violence by Individuals 241 Gang Violence 244 Sudanese Refugees and Hope 249

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Conclusion 263

Chapter Nine: Conclusion 267

Chapter Ten: Postscript 281 Insecurity 286 Economic Hardship 290 Other Impacts of Revolution on Sudanese Refugees 292

Abbreviations and Acronyms 297

Glossary 298

Bibliography 302

Appendix 321

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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Distribution of Refugees in East Africa 20

Table 2: Prices of Some Products before and after the Revolution 291

Table 3: Respondents from Central Sudan, Eastern Sudan, Khartoum, and Northern Sudan 321

Table 4: Respondents from Southern Sudan 323

Table 5: Respondents from Western Sudan 324

Table 6: Legal Status of Respondents 324

Table 7: Focus Group Interviews 325

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Greater Cairo 66

Figure 2: Pattern of Migration into Cairo 130

Figures 3 and 4: Population Densities in the Greater Cairo Region, 1986 and 1994 131

Figures 5 and 6: Spatial Growth of Cairo between 1965 and 1998 132

Figure 7: Peripheral Informal Housing 133

Figures 8 and 9: General Characteristics of Informal Housing 133

Figure 10: Locations and Types of Informal Housing in Cairo 134

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CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION

The twentieth century has been marked by the phenomenon of forced migration

and the trend is set to continue in the twenty-first century (Colson 2003). The ongoing

presence of wars between states, civil wars, ethnic conflicts, famine and environmental

degradation are all factors that feed forced migration. While some of these factors are

natural in origin most derive from human-made factors. Chief among these human-made

factors is conflict. Conflict sets the stage for human flight since it often produces the

conditions that bring other types of change such as insecurity, loss of properties, and

famine.1 Since World War II, conflict has been on the rise, as one observer points out in

the following excerpt:2

Open conflict between smaller 'nonstate' groups or against small nonstate groups by state governments has increased, however, in frequency and ferocity. According to one source, at least eighty times since World War II such conflict has escalated into war and over two hundred such groups have organized themselves at one time or another 'to defend or promote their collective interests against governments or other groups'.3 (Eller 1999: 1)

1 Phenomena such as tsunami, earthquake, drought and so forth can also cause insecurity and property losses but my focus in this study is on human-made factors, most particularly on conflict and war. 2 Forced migration observers, such as M. Weiner (1992), point out that governments sometimes create forced migration to achieve cultural homogeneity or foreign policy objectives or get rid of dissidents. 3 Wars between states rarely develop into direct military confrontations as happened to Ethiopia and Somalia (1978-1979), Iran and Iraq (1980s), Eritrea and Ethiopia (1998-2000), Iraq's invasion of Kuwait in 1990, and Israel's attack on southern Lebanon in 2006. Instead, the inter-state conflicts and wars are mostly fought as proxy wars in which the conflicting governments provide arms and logistic support to each other's rebels. Another factor of forced migration, which is now becoming more frequent, is the invasion (and sometimes occupation) of countries whose governments are considered to be threatening by forces of allied western countries in which the UN is sometimes involved. For example, Serbia's invasion by NATO in 1999, the invasion of Afghanistan by NATO in 2001, and the invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq by the US and UK in 2003 are all manmade factors of forced migration.

1

Writers such as Aijun Appadurai (2006) argue that violence has become a major

organizing feature of contemporary life.4 The drive towards conflict emanates from an

anxiety of incompleteness on the part of majorities, coupled with insecurity about the

future.5 This leads to predatory and ethnocidal behavior toward minority groups which in

turn escalates violence throughout the whole society(Ibid: 8).6 This dynamic can be seen

in many cases throughout East Africa where famines are deliberately caused and used as

weapons during civil wars and ethnic conflicts to exhaust groups that are considered as

enemies (Baissa 1999; Keen 1992).7 This was also the case in Ethiopia in the 1980s and

in Sudan, since the 1990s, where the government has frequently destroyed crops and

water sources and denied access for humanitarian aid organizations to reach entire areas

o whose populations are considered as political opponents.

In Africa, particularly in East Africa and the Great Lakes region, the presence of

weak political and economic structures together with endemic corruption pit excluded

segments of the population against the rulers. As a result, individuals from marginalized

segments often lead rebellions against the rulers; in response, the rulers have adopted

violent means to contain the rebellions and the result has been massive destruction and

4 In this essay, Appadurai provides a critique to his earlier work, Modernity at Large (1996), where he celebrated globalization as a primarily positive phenomenon. The focus of his critique is on the violence and fear associated with globalization. 5 Anxiety of incompleteness is a belief that the presence of the Other does not allow us to fully enjoy all that makes us ourselves. 6 In Sudan, it is the numerical minority that accumulated and monopolized the means of power and declared war against entire regions and populations. 7 In this study, I include the Horn of Africa countries of Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea as part of East Africa to avoid redundancy and confusion since the majority of the Sudanese refugees in the region are in Uganda and Kenya and Uganda and Kenya are East African countries. 8 The Ethiopian famine of 1984-85 was partly caused as punishment by Mengistu Haile Mariam's regime against groups whose members rebelled. Omar Al-Bashir's regime in Sudan has displaced many millions in Southern Sudan and in Darfur as a result of the ongoing civil wars since the 1980s; they even obstructed the transportation of relief and aid supplies to the internally displaced camps.

2

forced migration because the rebels and entire sections of the population become the

target of government attacks. As a result of the wars between states and rebels or between

ethnic groups, 1.4 million people were forced to cross international borders in East Africa

and live as refugees and many millions were internally displaced in the 1990s (Bekoe

2006).

This dissertation is about Sudanese refugees in Cairo, Egypt, and its thesis is that

resilience and hope are part of refugees' lives despite the odious experiences they are

going through. My first objective is to describe and analyze the coping strategies of

Sudanese who are living in the situation of limbo and the impact this situation has on

them as men, women, and children. The second objective is to explore the patterns of life

and kinds of identities they have formed in response to the exclusion and exploitation

which they experience in their interactions with Egyptians. The final objective is to

investigate what kinds of hope the refugees can have in such a situation where they are

both exploited and excluded. Although the focus of researchers on refugees in East

African countries has mostly been on the camps in rural areas, the experiences of urban

refugees are equally critical. As a consequence, I argue, more research should be devoted

to the study of urban refugees in East Africa.

This study is a contribution to the literature on urban refugees in Africa since the

focus has mostly been on camp refugees in rural areas. Again, refugees are often

constructed as dependent objects that need help from others because they lack agency,

but my study takes refugees' agency seriously and maintains that, like other categories of

human populations, refugees make things happen and in many cases the difficult

3

experiences they are going through make them more creative and resilient than the host

populations (Kibreab 1993; Lubkemann 2008). Another significance of this study is that

it incorporates refugee men's experiences into those of women and children. Its argument

is that displacement affects those who are displaced regardless of their sex, age, or gender

and that in many cases refugee men find it more difficult to cope with the new reality

generated by displacement than their female counterparts (Payne 1998; Jaji 2009).

Sudanese forced migrants are particularly difficult to analyze as a population

because records about them are either inadequate or in some cases non-existent. These

problems stem from the lack of any accurate census in Sudan, the fact that the

Government of Sudan does not know how many people have left the country and many

of the receiving countries, including Egypt, which is the main objective of this study, do

not have records reflecting precise numbers of Sudanese in their territory. This situation

is further complicated by the fact that the UNHCR and other aid organizations only keep

records for those covered by the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees -

actually UNHCR's records are also inaccurate.

The 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees and the African Union

Convention of 1969 stipulate that those who flee from their home country as a result of

persecution or civil war should be classified as refugees. More specifically, the 1951

Convention defines a refugee as a person who is outside of his/her country of nationality

or habitual residence because of a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons including

her/his race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political

opinion. The Convention also stresses the person's inability or unwillingness to avail

4

him/herself of the protection of that country and his/her unwillingness to return because

the events which constitute the source of his/her fear are still persistent. The OAU

Convention of 1969 adopts the 1951 UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees

and adds other factors to it, including external aggression, occupation, foreign domination

or any other events disturbing public order in an entire country or in some of its parts.9

Given this situation, most Sudanese people who came to Cairo after 1990 should

be classified as legal refugees, since it was during this time that civil war was widespread

in Sudan and public disorder in several of its regions and political persecution was at its

height. In fact, until now (2011), war continues in Sudan and persecution remains an

ongoing feature of Sudanese society. Although Egypt is a member of the abovementioned

conventions, Sudanese refugees living in Cairo are living their lives in limbo since the

majority of them are not recognized as refugees. Factors contributing to this problem are

many, including the following: First, the Egyptian authorities threw almost all the refugee

related responsibilities in their country into the hands of UNHCR which focused more on

the 1951 UN Convention rather than on the 1969 OAU Convention to assess most of the

refugee cases; second, the UNHCR office in Cairo experienced funding cuts and was

understaffed; and third, many refugees could not substantiate their cases either because

other individuals wrote the cases for them, or presented false cases (e.g. lied about their

areas of origin in Sudan or about the highest level of education they had reached, etc).

Furthermore, the Egyptian authorities also publically declare Egypt a second home for

Sudanese, giving the impression that Sudanese have the rights and obligations attached to

9 For the 1951 UN Convention, see UNHCR (1992) and for the OAU Convention, check www.unhcr.ch/refworld/refworld/legal/instrume/asvlum/ref afre.htm 1/12/2003.

5

the possession of the Egyptian nationality, but in reality they expose Sudanese refugees to

all kinds of exclusion, as I explain throughout the dissertation.10 Even worse, those who

were able to obtain the designation "refugee", have not been accorded key rights that are

stipulated by these conventions and the 1951 UN Refugee Convention's protocol of

1967, including rights to personal status, rationing, access to primary education, public

relief and assistance, and labor legislation and security (Shafie 2005).11

I demonstrate how in Cairo, whether one is recognized as a refugee, an asylum

seeker or an illegal migrant, has little practical difference for his/her day to day life. As a

start, most of the Sudanese refugee population (regardless of refugee status) is exposed to

constant negative identifications and stereotyping due to the color of their skin. In

addition to this problem, Sudanese forced migrants also experience discrimination on the

basis of the dialect of Arabic that they use. These markers or cues lead to exclusion,

exploitation and violence during interactions with Egyptians. As I show in Chapter Four,

some of these negative identifications are enshrined in law which creates structural or

institutional barriers to obtaining employment or housing for refugees. These barriers can

also found at the institutional level in the United Nations High Commission for Refugees

(UNHCR), which does not assist even those recognized as refugees. All of these factors

combine to make living conditions very difficult and to place many of the forced

migrants in a situation of limbo.12

10 Until now (2011) Egyptian nationals are only individuals whose fathers are Egyptians. Persons bom to Egyptian mothers and foreign fathers are considered non-Egyptians even if they were bom and grew up in Egypt. Therefore, there is no way that some refugees will obtain Egyptian nationality. 11 See UNHCR (1996) for the protocol relating to the status of refugees. 12

The Cambridge International Dictionary of English (1995: 823) defines the word limbo as "a state of uncertainty about a situation that you cannot control and in which there is no advancement or

6

My dissertation examines these issues utilizing the field data which I collected on

Sudanese refugees in Cairo between August 2003 and June 2004 followed by weekly

communications which I had in subsequent years until December 2010. In addition to this

fieldwork, and the literature available on forced migrants in Cairo, I draw on a large body

of existing literature on refugees in East Africa. My interest in conducting this research

was stimulated by two main issues. The first was the position of the Egyptian government

which frequently declares that Egypt is a second home for Sudanese people. The logic

behind this assertion is that if Sudanese consider Egypt as home, they should not go

through the formal process of applying for refugee status. These claims, however, stand

in direct contradiction to the behavior of the Egyptian authorities who have never made

any effort to distinguish the Sudanese refugee population from other aliens or, indeed,

make them feel at home. On many occasions, as I show throughout the dissertation, the

opposite is true and Sudanese are even more disadvantaged than other foreigners in

Cairo. This leads to a second issue, the specific incidents that occurred while I was

11 studying for my Master's degree in Cairo in the mid 1990s. Not only is there a serious

disjuncture between the discourse of the Egyptian state and its authorities' actions, a

blind eye is often turned to blatant discrimination, victimization and violence towards

Sudanese refugees on the streets of Cairo. Together, these issues stimulated my interest in

investigating the matter further.

improvement." In her In 'Closed File' Limbo: Displaced Sudanese in a Cairo Slum, Pascale Ghazaleh (2001) uses the term to mean being in a stranded situation. I use it to mean being in a situation where it is both difficult to proceed or return which applies to most of the Sudanese refugees in Cairo, regardless of their legal status, since the process of refugee status determination takes many months or even a couple of years. For more information see www.fmreview.org/text/FMR/16/08.htm 12/6/2007. 31 explain this in a more detailed way in Chapter Three.

7

Throughout this dissertation, I refer to all the subjects in the fieldwork as refugees

irrespective of whether they are officially recognized as refugees, or asylum-seekers, or

have been denied refugee status by the UNHCR and treated by the Egyptian government

as illegal migrants. I do so because, regardless of their existing official status, most of

them were forced to leave Sudan either because of the war to which the OAU Convention

applies or because of the persecution which is the mandate of the 1951 UN Convention.

Therefore, they are either forced migrants of war or forced migrants of persecution.

However, since the term forced migrant{s) is more general, and can include internally

displaced persons (IDPs) or others who are forced to leave for non-human-made causes, I

more frequently utilize the term refugee(s) than forced migrants).141 found out that there

were individuals who left Sudan for reasons other than persecution, but chose to live as

refugees. The process of living as refugees apparently made these individuals refugees:

they applied for refugee status, lived with individuals who left the country because of

persecution, participated in all refugee activities in Cairo, obtained protection documents

or were rejected like many other Sudanese, were treated by the Egyptian population and

government and refugee related institutions as refugees, and had got rid of their

properties before they came to Egypt thinking that they were immediately to be resettled

14 Recognized/Convention refugees are the persons who are protected by UNHCR and/or the host country's authorities based on international and/or regional legal instruments. Asylum-seekers are individuals whose applications for refugee status are in process or who want to apply for refugee status. They are protection seekers since the word asylum is defined as the protection of a refugee or an exile from persecution (Goodwin-Gill 1998: 172). The host country and/ or in rare cases UNHCR, as currently in Egypt and Kenya, are the ones responsible for processing the applications for refugee status determination. The decision can be negative or positive based on the case presented and the persons who conduct the interview and/or assess the case. This is when the 1951 Geneva Convention applies. Further, individuals who have been outside their country before the eruption of a civil war, an ethnic conflict or any other source of persecution causing forced migration are also eligible for refugee status in the countries where they are and they are known as "refugees sur place" (Hathaway 1991: 33). Finally, illegal migrants are forced migrants who are not recognized as refugees and do not have legal status.

8

in western countries upon their arrival in Cairo. Furthermore, many of these individuals

would face persecution if they returned because the Sudanese authorities would want to

know why they left the country and what they were doing abroad. What is important to

me here is who they have become rather than who they were. For example, I am

interested in daily activities which make them no different from other Sudanese refugees

and their interactions with these latter, the Egyptian authorities and population, and

refugee related organizations, including the UNHCR.

Key Questions of this Study

If Sudanese refugees are living life in limbo, then it is important to specify how

this limbo is created and how refugees respond to it. To accomplish this, two key

questions are addressed in relation to Sudanese refugees' existence in Cairo. The first

question is about structural, institutional and other barriers to incorporation of refugees

into Egyptian society. To answer this question, I explore the impact of Egyptian refugee

policies on Sudanese refugees in Cairo and the latter's response to them. I show that,

despite a discourse which distinguishes between categories of refugees defining who

should and should not get helped, the reality is that most of the Sudanese are denied the

kind of institutional and legal recourse to which they are theoretically entitled. This

question on related institutional and legal support, therefore, addresses the way in which

forced migrants negotiate the minefield of definitions and the de facto lack of help that

they receive from host governments and their populations. In addition, I also look at the

policies that the UNHCR's regional office in Cairo has adopted in order to protect

9

Sudanese refugees, and why the UNHCR has been spectacularly unsuccessful in

changing the situation of those who arrive seeking its help. Finally, I look at the barriers

that are created in everyday life through discriminatory attitude of Egyptians towards

Sudanese refugees. I show that negative perceptions of Sudanese refugees related to work

ethic, education and status relegate them to an inferior status or category. Johannes

Fabian has called this process allochronism (Fabian 1983: 32) which is the denial of

simultaneous existence of the Other and Self by freezing the Other in a distant past. This

behavior constitutes a very real barrier to advancement within Egyptian society and

forces Sudanese refugees to make changes to their identity and appearance in the

presence of Egyptians.

The second question relates to the reaction of Sudanese migrants to this situation,

their perception of themselves within Egyptian society, and in their relationship to home.

As I will show throughout this dissertation, there is a particular significance to looking at

the relationship between the place of origin (i.e. homeland) and the place to where the

refugees travel and later reside. In no small part, this is because the relationship between

the place of origin and arrival destination often acts to create particular kinds of labels

and ideas about the role that refugees can play in the new society. It also creates

important dynamics for identity formation. The question of boundary construction

between self and other and the way that identities are constructed in the process of

interaction is hugely important in this regard. Constant negative identification of

Sudanese refugees can act to change the behavior of Sudanese migrants or can create

hostile counter-identifications. Either way, such interactions have the capacity to create

10

new identities within forced migrant populations. In the case of Sudanese refugees in

Cairo, these dynamics of identity formation are also influenced by historical events

involving Egypt and Sudan, as I discuss later in Chapter Four.

Answering these questions in an urban context is particularly significant. Many of

the studies about refugees in East Africa, as Chapter Two shows, do so primarily from

the position of camp refugees in rural areas, the kind of "ideal-typical figure of the

African refugee" as Malkki puts it in her study of Hutu refugees in Mishamo camp,

Tanzania (1995: 52). In such a situation, a certain kind of identity and self-conscious

historicity emerges which acts to constitute a more coherent narrative of displacement

than might be the case for urban refugees. As she points out, "everyday events, processes

and relations in the camp were spontaneously and consistently interpreted and acted upon

by evoking this collective past as a charter" (Ibid: 53). In recent years however -

particularly in the displacements resulting from conflict in Sudan- more and more

refugees do not live in rural camps away from the main population, but rather find

themselves in large urban centers like Cairo, where they have no choice but to interact

with the local population if they are to survive.

Rather than simply evoking a collective past, urban refugees have to meld their

existing identities with the practical demands of living with a new population that may

not welcome them. Such changes have the capacity to significantly alter the mode of life

for refugees and may necessitate completely new survival strategies and ways of thinking

about themselves vis a vis others. For Sudanese refugees in Cairo, these problems,

coupled with the desire and longing for home, act to produce new identities and notions

11

of belonging which would be very unlikely to exist inside Sudan itself. For example, as a

result of the pressure of surviving as persona non grata among the larger Egyptian

population, Sudanese of different tribal, regional, and cultural backgrounds that would

not have seen themselves as allies while in Sudan, in Cairo, work together as part of a

larger Sudanese refugee community.15 These kinds of changes have the effect of allowing

the Sudanese to construct a protective layer or boundary between themselves and the

wider Egyptian population, and to understand and narrate their experiences and

relationship to Sudan in quite different ways than would normally be the case.

Chapter Outline

Chapter Two deals with Sudanese refugees in East Africa and Libya. In

particular, it puts the forced migration of Sudanese in the context of a state, Sudan, that

discriminates against some of its citizens. It also explores the policies that East African

countries and Libya have adopted to deal with the migrants that are supposed to be

refugees in their territories and the impact of these policies on Sudanese refugees.

In Chapter Three, I discuss the methodology that I employed to study Sudanese

refugees in Cairo. It includes my field experiences, the methods which I used for the data

collection, the concepts I utilized to write the subsequent chapters, and the difficulties I

encountered during the fieldwork. At its inception, the chapter defines the category of

Sudanese who I am studying since there are other categories of Sudanese who emigrated

15 There is another category of Sudanese population in Cairo locally known as J alia (diasporic community) that I discuss in Chapter Three. Its members arrived in Cairo more than 50 years ago and they do however identify themselves more with the local Egyptian population than with recent Sudanese arrivals.

12

to Egypt and stayed in Cairo before 1990 when Omar Al-Bashir's regime started

spreading its terror almost all over Sudan. The chapter also deals with the rough

approximations about the numbers of refugees in Cairo because they are the main

category of this study.

Chapter Four is about the administration of Sudanese refugees in Cairo. In

particular, it investigates the exclusion of refugees by the Egyptian administrative system

and shows how that exclusion obliged UNHCR and other organizations and individuals

to fill the vacuum which Egyptian authorities left. It begins with a brief explanation

about Egypt's involvement in the displacement of Sudanese, and it then describes the

plight of Sudanese refugees in the country, and the role of aid agencies, church

organizations, and community associations in providing support for them. The focus of

the last two sections of Chapter Four is on the process of refugee status determination.

Chapter Five deals with Egyptian immigration and refugee policies and their

impact on Sudanese refugees' housing conditions. In particular, it studies Sudanese

refugees' housing and working conditions in light of Egyptian immigration laws and

refugee legislation.

Chapter Six explores the survival strategies the refugees have adopted to live in

Cairo. Rather than dealing with the Sudanese refugees' survival strategies in isolation, I

develop a comparative picture that includes the survival strategies of the poor segments

of the Egyptian population. Its main theme revolves around the reaction of Sudanese

refugees to the Egyptian government's policies that deny them the right to work and to

affordable housing. Therefore, many Sudanese have adopted different ways of survival

13

based on resource pooling, while others have had to adopt riskier means of survival, such

as prostitution and selling one's own body parts— kidneys in particular— which I describe

as a collapse of their resilience.

Chapter Seven studies the impact of the difficult conditions in Cairo on Sudanese

refugees' gender roles, family structure, and children's rights of play and education. It

explores how the conditions in Egypt brought major changes to the economic roles which

Sudanese men and women played in Sudan and the impact of these changes on the

structure of families, the situation of children, and the psychological conditions of men.16

Finally, Chapter Eight explores the related concepts of violence and hope in the

Sudanese refugees' limbo situation in Cairo. In particular, it deals with some cases of

violence which reflect the conditions in which the majority of the Sudanese refugees live

in general and points out the cases of resilience and hope that have emerged in such

violent situations. The violence to which Sudanese refugees are exposed is generally

structural violence that has been produced and tolerated by Egyptian government

institutions and its social structures, including the violence that Sudanese refugees

experience directly from Egyptian authorities, from ordinary Egyptians, and from

members of Sudanese youth gangs, all of which is tolerated by the Egyptian authorities.

The latter part of the chapter explores the moments of hope that Sudanese refugees

actually enjoy, or project into their own individual future, and the collective future of

their communities in Sudan. In sum, it investigates the role of individual and group

16 The situation in Egypt has psychologically affected both men and women and, in this study, I am focusing on how their gender roles are affected (or on some occasions reversed) and their responses to these changes.

14

agency in generating and maintaining resilience and hope despite the elements of

exclusion which they encounter in different fields of struggle.

15

CHAPTER TWO REFUGEES IN EAST AFRICA AND LIYBA

In this chapter I look at the way that refugees are constructed as a category to be

assessed for intervention. I ask why host countries and international aid organizations

operating in East African countries almost completely exclude urban refugees from the

discourse on refugees. This question also applies to the situation of refugees living in

Libya, which does not have any refugee policy. In order to analyze these questions I look

at the literature on the field of refugees in East Africa and Libya. I outline the key debates

between social scientists on this issue and explore some of the administrative policies that

East African countries and Libya have adopted to deal with refugees in their territories. I

subsequently outline the demographic nature of Sudanese refugees.

First, however, I provide a background about what causes the forced migration in

Sudan in order to place the refugee flows in a context of a state that discriminates against

some of its citizens. I look at the "push" factors generating forced movement and the

policies of the host countries where such people eventually reside.

War and Forced Migration in Sudan

Sudan has known only ten years of peace (1972-1982) since its independence in

January 1956. For 44 years, the majority of the Sudanese population who would now

identify themselves as indigenous African (including Muslims and Christians), have been

struggling to force the minority in power - based largely north of the Sudanese capital

city of Khartoum and identifying as Arab Muslim- to stop corruption, nepotism, and

16

their exclusion of other Sudanese from an equitable share of power and resources.1 The

majority has, in short, been trying to construct an inclusive system for all Sudanese

governed by the rule of law.2 Nonetheless, war has constantly intervened. Until the early

1990s, armed conflict was concentrated in Southern Sudan, but it has since extended to

the regions of the Nuba Mountains, Eastern Sudan, the Southern Blue Nile, and Darfur.

As a result of these struggles for power, the situation has become unbearable for most

Sudanese. Even many non-Islamists among the arabized-Nubians were also targeted by

the rulers who adopted a policy known as al-ihala li al-saleh al- 'am (layoff for the

common good) to cleanse the public sector of non-Islamists. The Khartoum regime also

imposed unreasonable taxes, job losses and many other burdens on the populations of

these other regions as a means of punishing and controlling them.

In addition to unlawful taxes in all fields of employment, the Al-Bashir

government made participation in the war a precondition for employment, as well as

admission to and graduation from post secondary education. Unsatisfied with the

1 In Sudan, who is an Arab and who is not is a very complex issue with a long debate around it. In this study, however, 1 follow Mamdani's (2009: 107) definition of it who has argued that the condition for being an Arab is rather political than racial. In this context, by Arabs I mean a group of people who claim a genealogy leading back to Arab ancestors and act according to that claim during various interactions with others who acknowledge it. The term African is equally complex and political; and O'Fahey (2006) has traced its origins back to the early 1920s when members of the White Flag League (first revolution against the British colonialism in Sudan) led by Ali Abdel-Atif asserted what O'Fahey (Ibid: 34) calls "their Africaness". Therefore, in the Sudanese political context of today, Africans are those who say that they are not Arabs and consciously reject the state sponsored project of Arabism. In Sudan, most people who identify themselves as Africans either speak Arabic besides other languages that are their mother tongues or uniquely speak Arabic. However, the exclusive nature of Arabism whose objective has been to arabize non-Arabs and treat them as inferior Sudanese citizens at the same time, has forced groups such as the Berti and the Birgid whose members mostly speak Arabic as the mother tongue to join groups such as the Fur and the Nuba, who speak their mother tongues besides Arabic, in the resistance against the forceful Arabism. 2 The dilemma is that, with the exception of those few who change through schooling or through practical interactions with other Sudanese, most of the arabized-Nubians find themselves psychologically and emotionally closer to the Arabs in countries such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen than to the Sudanese in Darfiir, Southern Sudan, Nuba Mountains, and other regions.

17

numbers of military men recruited in this way, the Islamists set about capturing tens of

thousands of untrained young men in front of their homes, in the street or in the market,

forcefully sending them to the battlefield without the knowledge of their relatives. As a

result of this fierce and protracted war and the government's discriminatory policies, over

2, 300,000 individuals were killed and 4.3 million internally displaced in Southern Sudan

and Darfur (Deng 2001).3 However, the numbers of Sudanese who were forced to leave

the country and seek refuge elsewhere, including East Africa, Egypt and Libya, are

unknown.4

Although my focus is on Sudanese refugees in the urban centre of Cairo, I have

drawn on the pioneering studies about refugees in East African countries. East Africa has,

since the 1980s, remained one of the top forced migrant generating and hosting regions in

both Africa and the world (Bariagaber 1999: 598). In addition, most of the Sudanese

forced migrants who crossed the border took refuge in these countries; and refugee

policies in these countries have some similarities to those in Egypt. As well, since the

experience of rural refugees has become the template for both academic studies and for

state and aid agency policies, the work on rural refugees is critical to review in the study

of refugees in urban centers such as Cairo.

3 Also see UNHCR at www.unhcr.org/pagcs/49e483b76.html 19/7/2010. It should again be noted that these figures do not include the hundreds of thousands who are currently displaced in the Jabel Marra Mountains in Darfur and the IDPs of the war in Eastern Sudan. Again, over 100,000 Sudanese from Darfur also took refuge in Chad and tens of thousands others in the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, but they are excluded from the current study because other than limited news from websites no data are available on them. 4 Regarding the dispersal of Sudanese around the world, one Talha Jibreel wrote at www.sudanile.com 23/9/ 2007 that there are 10 million Sudanese that are living outside Sudan. I think that Jibreel's figure is too high, but I cannot find other estimates.

18

Refugees in East Africa

There were 1.4 million refugees in East Africa living outside their countries of

origin in the early 2000s and it appears that at least about 25 percent of them were from

Sudan (Bekoe 2006). Table 1 below illustrates the number of the refugees in East

African countries.5 However, these statistics largely exclude the forced migrants who

settled in urban areas. The absence of urban refugees from the statistical accounts about

refugees in East Africa is due to policies of both host countries and aid organizations that

largely treat refugees who live in cities as illegal refugees (Harrell-Bond 1986; Human

Rights Watch 2002; Karadawi 1999; Kibreab 1996; Sommers 2001; Malkki 1995). As a

result of this portrayal of refugees, urban refugees in East African countries are largely

excluded from the statistics which aid organizations and host countries' governments

produce about refugees. Human Rights Watch (HRW) (2002) has provided a

documentation of between 20,000 and 60,000 refugees in Nairobi whose existence

Kenyan authorities consistently deny. Consequently, Table 1 shows that there are over

294,000 Sudanese living in East African countries, mostly in Uganda and Ethiopia.

Sources on refugee movements, such as the UNHCR and the World Food Program

(WFP), document that there were between 50,000 to 70,000 Sudanese refugees in

5 These figures were gathered before the repatriation program started in 2007 as a result of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) which the Sudan People's Liberation Army/Movement (SPLM/A) and the ruling National Congress Party signed in Kenya in 2005. The National Congress Party (NCP) has always been reluctant about the full implementation of the CPA and it has violated many of its clauses, thus making its sustainability uncertain.

19

Kakuma (northwestern Kenya) alone.6 However, the number is possibly much larger than

that reported because many Sudanese refugees are located in Kenyan cities.7

Table 1: Distribution of Refugees in East Africa

Host Country Number of Refugees

Sending Country Comments

Tanzania 600,000 400,000 from Burundi8

Kenya 240,000 154,000 Somalia Other 5,000 asylum-seekers

Uganda 250,000 200,000 from Sudan

Sudan 179,000 Mostly Eritrean 4,200 Asylum-seekers

Ethiopia 116,000 90,000 from the Sudan Djibouti 18,000 Mostly from Somalia

Eritrea 4,000 Mostly from the Sudan

Somalia 18,000 Mostly from Ethiopia

Source: Lomo (2006:38)

The literature on refugees suggests that in Africa in general and East Africa in

particular, governments and host populations alike were very generous to refugees until

the mid 1970s (Harrell-Bond 1986; Kibreab 1996; Felleson 2003). After that the

generosity gradually disappeared as a result of the sudden increase in the refugee

population and the serious economic crises of most of the continent's countries.

Consequently, African leaders, including those in East Africa, became cynical about the

idea of African hospitality that UNHCR often raises, as Harrell-Bond explains:

UNHCR publications often commend Africa's hospitality towards refugees. Many African officials are cynical about such praise. They

6 See www.unhcr.ort>/cgi-bin/texis/vtx/southsudan?page=43c67e2c4. and www.wfp.org/english/7ModulelD~ 137&kev= 1968 3/7/2007. 7 For example, Disciples Home Missions reports that besides the documented refugees living in the rural camps in Kenya there were tens of thousands of undocumented refugees living in Kenyan cities, especially in Nairobi, and it is possible that the same is true in Uganda and Ethiopia where most of the Sudanese refugees in the region live. See www.discipleshomemissions.org 30/4/2008. 8 Most of these refugees have now repatriated in Burundi and others have opted for becoming Tanzanian citizens.

20

believe it has simply excused neglect of the problem they face. Most host countries are confronted with unparalleled economic crises on the domestic front and can ill afford the luxury of hospitality. They complain that although Africa hosts half of the world's refugees, the allocation of UNHCR's budget has never reflected this reality. (1986: 1)

This means that the refugee policies of most African countries have changed in

response to new economic circumstances dominated by serious hardships. The

disappearance of such hospitality from refugee policies has been a central focus of

researchers who have been studying refugees in East Africa since the mid 1980s. A

common conclusion which I draw from their research is that East African countries only

recognize as refugees the forced migrants who cross international borders and settle in

camps within their territories. The reason for this focus is visibility and the fact that

governments can mobilize the international community for more support (Harrell-Bond

1986; Bascom 1998; Payne 1998; Karadawi 1999; Verdirame 1999; Felleson 2003;

Lomo 2006).

Camp Refugees

Studies of refugees in East Africa have tended to concentrate on camp refugees

due to their heightened visibility, and the historic concentration of aid programs in these

locations. Another reason for this focus is logistical in nature, notably the fact that the

concentration of refugees in one location permits easier research. Barbara Harrell-Bond

(1986), Liisa Malkki (1992, 1994, 1995), Gaim Kibreab (1993, 1995, 1996, 1999),

Howard Adelman and John Sorenson (1994), Jennifer Hyndman (1996), Jonathan

Bascom (1998), Lina Payne (1998), Ahmed Karadawi (1999), Guglielmo Verdirame

21

(1999), Amani El Jack (2003, 2008), Mans Felleson (2003), Guglielmo Verdirame and

Barbara Harrell-Bond (2005), Zachary Lomo (2006), Howard Adelman (2008), and

Katarzyna Grabska (2010, 2011) provide the main ethnographic studies that focus on

refugee camps and settlements in the region. They deal in their research with various

issues pertaining to refugees' lives, including the policies adopted to address the

problems that refugees are facing.9

Barbara Harrell-Bond's (1986) research on Ugandan refugees who lived in camps

in Southern Sudan is a pioneering critique of the behavior and attitudes of the

professionals working in refugee aid. It is also a critique of the organizations for not

holding their workers accountable for the failure of the programs they provided. The

main argument she makes is that most of the refugee aid programs have deepened refugee

dependency instead of helping them stand on their feet, becoming self dependent, and

capable of running their own affairs by themselves. As an anthropologist closely

interacting with both refugees and professionals working for aid organizations, she

asserts that aid workers were completely oblivious to the cultural particularities of the

people they served because most of them were not anthropologists. In other words,

Harrell-Bond criticizes the fact that aid workers lump refugees together as a homogenous

mass without regard for age, sex/gender, social status, experience, vision or hope for the

future.10 This kind of action denigrates the refugees concerned and ascribes a master label

9 Some of the main issues they studied, apart from policies, are refugees' livelihoods, gender roles, and participation in host countries' development.

Although the word "hope" is included in the titles of their books, it sounds somewhat strange that authors like Kaplan (2002) and Konigseder and Westzel (2001) who have written about survivors of the Holocaust do not define it in their studies. Even Hirokazu Miyazaki (2004), the only anthropologist whose publication's main theme is "hope", has not provided any definition to the concept of hope per se but from

22

to them of dependant Other. In doing so, it empties out all of their previous capabilities

and flattens their cultural knowledge into a mono-dimensional form. Through this process

relief aid and services are provided based on a caricature rather than a multi-dimensional

picture built up from interaction with refugees themselves.

For the most part, this kind of labeling and subsequent intervention practice

creates more problems than solutions. Aid organizations often blame the refugees for the

failure of their own aid programs, attributing the failure to refugees' minds and bodies

rather than policy design. As a result of this fundamental disjuncture between the

practices of aid delivery, the attitudes of aid workers and refugees' own needs, Harrell-

Bond asserts that aid programs would be more effective if many of the aid workers and

researchers studying refugees were anthropologists or at least adopted anthropological

methods. The reason for this is that— based on their training- anthropologists are more

aware of their own position vis a vis those that they are interacting with and they have a

greater appreciation of what refugees have to offer.11 According to Harrell-Bond,

anthropologists are therefore capable of designing and providing programs that will

eliminate refugee dependency and the findings of their research on refugees could be

used by aid organizations in generating better aid programs and implementing them more

his book's context it is understandable that hope is the expectation of something good to happen in the future. Similarly, The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998: 882) defines "hope" as "a feeling of expectation and desire for a certain thing to happen" and I can add that it often involves plans and activities towards making the desired things happen. So "hope" in my research stands for the refugees' positive look at the future, the plans they draw towards it, and the efforts which they make to realize these plans. It also includes events such as weddings, farewell parties, and boys' circumcisions which they celebrate because, despite their momentary nature, these events alleviate the misery which they are experiencing. There is no doubt that such gatherings render resilient the desperate forced migrants. 11 Consider, for example, the work of Johannes Fabian (1983) Time and the Other, as an example of anthropological reflexivity.

23

effectively. Although I concur with Harrell-Bond that anthropologists are more

prepared to work with refugees because of their training, we cannot deny the contribution

of other disciplines to refugee studies and aid programs.

Barbara Harrell-Bond's critique of the practices of aid organizations has had a

strong impact on the studies of many other social scientists' research who have studied

refugees in the region. In particular, researchers such as Kibreab (1993), Karadawi

(1999), Verdirame (1999), Felleson (2003), and Lomo (2003) have also criticized aid

organizations and added to her work by including the role of host governments in their

analyses.

In this respect it is not only the host countries that prefer refugees to stay in one

camp or location; international aid organizations operating in the region's countries also

prefer the same policy. The main objective of the region's governments and relief

organizations has been the attraction of aid (Harrell-Bondl986; Lomo 2006). The host

governments and aid organizations might differ on aid distribution and administration of

refugees, but they both believe that the gathering of refugees in particular rural areas will

be more obvious and more convincing to the donor countries so that they can provide

more support. Unfortunately, many donor countries are directly complicit in the refugee

confinement policies which are adopted with regard to refugee aid administration.

For those in remote camps the opportunities for interaction are poor. These

problems are further compounded by regulations that do not permit freedom of

12 The same points were also raised in an article, which she published with Voutira, specifically on

anthropology and the study of refugees (Harrell-Bond and Voutira 1992).

24

movement either (Payne 1998; Verdirame 1999; Human Rights Watch 2002; Lomo

2006). In extreme cases, like that of Kenya, refugees are not even allowed to leave the

camp and look for firewood, let alone set up farming or establish businesses in Kenyan

markets (Oladimeji 2007). Consequently, integration is impossible in most cases even if

the refugees spend decades in the camp settlements because the host governments and

populations always treat them as aliens, and refugees themselves consider their own

presence as temporary (Bascom 1998). As Bascom has pointed out, some Eritrean and

Ethiopian refugees in Eastern Sudan remained largely dependent on the aid provided by

international organizations for almost three decades. As a result of these policies, very

few settlement programs are successful. Payne (1998) is the only researcher in the region

who has reported success, but she has underlined that the interactions between the host

population and the Sudanese refugees she studied in northern Uganda were almost non­

existent and it seems that the Ugandan government also treated them as temporary

settlers.

Urban Refugees

In East Africa, urban refugees face another kind of reality. On the whole they are

largely reduced to either self-sufficient refugees as in Uganda or to illegal migrants as in

Kenya, Sudan, and Tanzania (Horst 2002,2006; Human Rights Watch 2002; Jacobsen

and Landau 2005; Jacobsen 2006; Jaji 2009; Karadawi 1999; Lomo 2006; Sommers

2001a, 2001b; Verdirame 1999). The result of such policies is a paucity of studies and an

invisibility of the experience of refugees living in urban areas. Yet, the conditions of

25

urban refugees are even worse because in most cases they try to hide from authorities or

adopt false identities in order to protect themselves from the hostile actions of

enforcement agencies. As a result, the majority of refugees in urban areas do not have

access to food rations, healthcare, and education in addition to the lack of security. They,

therefore, spend much of their time just trying to survive.

Kok (1989) and Dryden-Peterson and Hovil (2004) are the only researchers

whose studies look at the issue of integration among some of the urban refugees they

have studied. Kok has pointed out that many of the Eritrean refugees in the eastern

Sudanese city of Kassala took over the jobs of the Sudanese people who migrated to Gulf

countries and others obtained land usufruct rights in the area surrounding the city. This

might be due to the fact that Kassala is located on Sudan's border with Eritrea and many

of the Eritrean refugees who came to Kassala already had Sudanese relatives there.

Dryden-Peterson and Hovil (2004) have also reported a success case of a Sudanese

woman who effectively used the opportunities that were available to Sudanese refugees

in northern Uganda and in Kampala and established a successful business in Kampala.

These few reported success stories among refugees in urban areas were due to freedom of

movement which most of the researchers have emphasized and urged the region's

governments to adopt it as part of their policies.

The concern with integration of refugees into the region's countries also emanates

from political instability and fragile economic systems. As a result, authorities are

reluctant to help refugees integrate into the host societies because they think that any

efforts towards the integration of refugees might even jeopardize their own control and

26

monopoly in the field of power. They fear that the presence of refugees in the city and

their competition with nationals over resources will provoke the anger of the latter who

will riot against the governments and consequently lead to their overthrow. This is why

authorities in most of the region's countries consider refugees in general, and those of

them who informally settled in urban areas in particular, as a security threat and/or an

economic burden. Kenya, for example, labeled them as "spies and criminals

masquerading as refugees" and closed down their businesses (Verdirame 1999: 72); and

Sudan rounded them up and shipped them to rural settlements and camps (Karadawi

1999). Harrell-Bond (1986) and Lomo (2006) have also pointed to the fact that

authorities in the region are worried about the presence of refugees in the cities especially

in the countries whose governments support each other's rebellions which further

justifies the host countries' leaders' suspicions that some individual refugees are agents

of their enemies and deemed dangerous.13 Tanzania is an exception in this regard.

Although Tanzania previously snubbed the presence of self-settled refugees in its cities

(Sommers 2001a, 2001b), it has given to Hutus who fled Burundi in 1972 the choice to

become Tanzanians or return to Burundi (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark 2010;

Thomson 2009; UNHCR 2011).

Refugee literature on East Africa therefore suggests that most of the policies

which governments and international aid organizations have adopted to solve the refugee

problems are generally temporary and do not lead to durable solutions (Adelman 2008).

This is especially the case because the numbers of individual refugees that are resettled in

13 For example, Sudan often hosts Ugandan, Ethiopian, and Eritrean rebels, and each of these countries supports Sudanese rebels.

27

Australia, Canada, the United States and other refugee resettlement countries are, on the

whole, very small. For those who are not afforded this opportunity, local integration or

return are the only real options. Nonetheless, it has become very difficult or even

impossible for the majority of refugees to integrate effectively in the first country of

asylum or repatriate (Adelman 2008). As Adelman has stressed (2008:21-22), the main

focus should first be on helping refugees to recover or obtain membership in a country

that "can and will provide for their protection" which will then be followed by rights and

development.

For those in urban centers like Cairo, integration is often difficult and strained as

a result of an orientation towards refugees which marks them as second class citizens. As

subsequent chapters will show, this indifference or even hostility ensures that local

populations do not mix with refugees. Moreover, they even view such migrants as a

threat to their employment prospects, housing opportunities and standard of living.

Integration is thus an ideal that has yet to be achieved by those living in urban locations.

Malkki and Kibreab: Integration versus Repatriation

As resettlement to a third country is often impossible because of the restrictive

policies adopted by western countries against refugees, asylum-seekers, and migrants

(Chimni 1998,2002), local integration into the host country and voluntary repatriation

are the most conventional solutions to the refugee problems in East African countries

despite the lack of resources and several spurious excuses which most of the region's

governments put forward in order to avoid the integration of refugees (Adelman 2008;

28

Jacobsen and Landau 2005). The types of refugee policies adopted by most of the East

African countries have led to a debate between Liisa Malkki and Gaim Kibreab about

refugees' identity and how it is constructed in situ. For Kibreab (1999), the debate is

largely about 'people, place, identity, and displacement'. He establishes this debate as a

response to Malkki's (1992,1995a, 1995b, 1996) work on Hutu refugees in Tanzania in

the mid-1980s in which she seems to be influenced by writers such as William Safran

(1991) and others.

Malkki's discussion revolves around identity construction and its relation to the

concepts of integration to the host society and/or return to the homeland. More precisely,

she is tries to establish a critique of both the scholarly literature (Gellner 1983; Smith

1986; Appadurai 1988; Hobsbawm 1990) and commonsense ideas about cultural and

national identities that fix people to particular localities within the nation-state. For

example, she quotes Appadurai (1988) who maintains that "natives are not only persons

who are from certain places, and belonging to these places, but they are also those who

are somehow incarcerated, or confined, in these places" (Malkki 1992: 26). Malkki thinks

that with such a description of natives, Appadurai has fixed them to particular places

inside nation-states whose boundaries are obviously demarcated on a world map, as

Gellner (1983), (Smith 1986), Hobsbawm (1990) have argued. There are no "vague or

'fuzzy spaces' and no bleeding boundaries" (Malkki 1992:26) that allow the presence of

refugees on these maps about peoples, cultures, and identities which scholars of

29

nationalism and native cultures have drawn.14 Similarly, commonsense assumptions also

frequently refer to terms such as "roots" and "rootedness" in order to make a connection

between people, place, culture, and identity (Malkki 1992: 27). Malkki (1992: 33) further

continues that, time and again, many topics in the literature on refugees locate "the

problem" not in the political conditions or processes that produce massive territorial

displacement of people, but, rather, within the bodies and minds (and even souls) of

people categorized as refugees". She concludes that all these assumptions have led to a

consideration of refugees as people who are external to the national order of things,

without culture or identity, as they are not citizens.

Drawing on her fieldwork on both camp and town refugees in Tanzania, Malkki

(1995a, 1996) then argues that refugees are not as culturally nude as they are claimed to

be and that refugees construct new identities in exile based on the factors that forced

them to flee their countries of origin and the circumstances surrounding them in host

countries. She further explains that refugee identities are sometimes informed by

mythical histories and memories of the homeland, as in the case of Mishamo Camp

refugees, or fashioned in more elusive ways to enable refugees to survive or even

integrate, as the case of urban refugees in Kigoma illustrates.15

Responding to Malkki, Kibreab (1999) argues that the globalization process is

accompanied by restrictive immigration and refugee policies that prevent forced migrants

from crossing borders and make the chances of integration difficult for those who

14 Malkki again maintains that even the concepts, such as "native", indigenous, autochthonous and so on which anthropologists use to study culture are also exclusive of displaced people. 15 Like diaspora (Hall 1990; Clifford 1994, 1997), refugees construct identities in response to conditions surrounding them in the host country.

30

succeed in seeking asylum.16 He cites the European Union's fears about asylum-seekers

and immigrants from non-western countries, and African countries' refugee confinement

policies, as examples of anti-integration behaviors and attitudes. He shows that certain

categories of people are personae non grata which invalidates the idea of globalization as

an all-inclusive cosmopolitan phenomenon of open borders to ideas, goods, and people.

Going further, he argues that camp refugees' continuous thinking and talking about return

are due to factors including: confinement in camps, lack of interaction with the host

population, and the host government's treatment of them as aliens. In East Africa, where

most people are dependent on land for almost everything, Kibreab argues, forced

migrants' forceful separation from the land has deeply contributed to the shaping of their

cultural and material worlds and incited the memories about return. The upshot of this

situation is that this thinking about return often transforms itself into reality whenever the

conditions of return become available.17

Although he agrees with Malkki on the fact that confinement might be the main

factor behind the refugees' continuous thinking about the homeland and return, Kibreab

continues to refer to Malkki as an exponent of "anti-sedentarist thinking":

One of the most prominent exponents of the 'anti-sedentarist thinking' in the refugee studies is Liisa Malkki. Her works on Burundi refugees in Mishamo settlement and Kigoma town in Tanzania represent the boldest attempt to contest the links between people and place represented in what she calls 'taken for granted ways of thinking about identity and territory....' (Kibreab 1999: 390)

16 Chimni (1998, 2002, 2004) also makes the same point, while discussing the shifts in the European Union's asylum and refugee policy. 17 However, not every refugee who returns stays, as Matsuoka and Sorenson (2001) have uncovered in their study of Eritrean refugees. During my visit to Sudanese opposition leaders in Asmara in 2004,1 met many Eritreans who came from Sudan to visit relatives. They told me that they felt themselves to be more Sudanese than Eritrean.

31

He also accuses Malkki of simply looking for what she calls "mythico-historical" themes

and that she was disappointed when she found that urban refugees were not constructing

and reconstructing their own collective history:

Malkki states that when she completed her study among the camp refugees in Mishamo, she moved to Kigoma town 'in pursuit of similar mythico-historical themes' which to her dismay were not apparently there. (Kibreab 1999: 393)

Kibreab (1999: 391) further argues that some of Malkki's conclusions "are not as

empirically grounded as she maintains". However, it seems to me that Malkki never

denied the relationship between people (citizens or displaced) and their territory. She

even reminds aid providing agencies and researchers alike that their activities among

refugees should seriously consider the latter's political history (Malkki 1996). Further, it

is not unusual that refugees construct different identities in host countries even if they are

originally from the same groups and lived in the same places in their homelands if they

settle in different places or settle in the same places at different times because identities

change based on place, time, and circumstances.

This debate between Malkki and Kibreab was subsequently settled by other

researchers who also conducted empirical studies on refugees in the region's countries

(Verdirame 1999; Karadawi 1999; Sommers 2001; Human Rights Watch 2002). For

example, Sommers (2001) makes it clear that almost all the Burundian refugee youths he

studied in the Tanzanian capital city of Dar es Salaam were raised in the settlement

camps and knew that their own presence in the city was illegal and dangerous. Through

participant observation, Sommers uncovered the fact that young men prevented

32

themselves or each other from mentioning the word "Burundi"; they created a linguistic

coding system for Burundi as well as the refugee camps they were coming from while

working in their tailoring shops in Dar es Salaam. Sommers further points out that the

presence of youths from a rural background in the city was generally illegal and that Dar

es Salaam was overwhelmed by young Tanzanian rural migrant men whose presence in

the city served as a cover for young Hutu men who behaved as Tanzanians. Moreover,

these young Hutus did not even trust some of their Hutu compatriots because they were

from different Hutu clans and were suspected of having connections with either the

Tanzanian or Burundi governments. Again, the death of Burundian Hutu opposition

leader, Gahutu Remi, in a Tanzanian prison further justifies the young Hutus' fears in

• • • 18 • • Tanzanian cities (Sommers 2001). Nevertheless, Tanzania has recently given a choice

to some Hutu refugees to either be naturalized or repatriate (Ministry of Foreign Affairs

of Denmark 2010) and it is probable that these young Hutu men in Dar es Salaam,

Kigoma and other Tanzanian cities have already started reconstructing their identities

according to the new situation. In sum, many urban refugees would probably opt for

naturalization, whereas camps refugees would choose repatriation. Therefore, it is

18 The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) defines fear as "An unpleasant emotion caused by the

belief that someone or something is dangerous, likely to cause pain or threat...." Joanna Bourke (2005) explores the concept of fear extensively among the British and US citizens during the twentieth century. In that study she tries to make a distinction between "fear" and "anxiety" by arguing that, in the case of fear, "a frightening person or dangerous object can be identified", whereas "anxiety" is to feel a danger or a threat without being able to identify a material source that causes such a feeling. According to Bourke, the source of anxiety is from within and not from outside. She further argues that fear is more objective whereas anxiety is more subjective. In my research I will be using the term "fear" in both instances (cases of anxiety and fear) because in everyday conversation fear is often used to mean anxiety as well. For example, I think Bourke would consider the presence of police and security agents as the source of fear for unrecognized refugees, whereas she would refer to forced migrants' worries about getting a closed file at the UNHCR office or being told that they are locally settled as anxiety. But, in my study, I refer to both instances as fear, the way Sudanese refugees do.

33

impossible to believe that everybody goes home (homeland) in any discussion about

refugees regardless of whether they are rural or urban refugees.

Refugee Administration in East Africa

The debate about the difference between the lives of those living in camps versus

those living in towns also needs to be augmented by a discussion of the way refugees are

administered in East Africa. According to the literature in the field of forced migration in

the region, refugee administration institutions can be divided into four categories: host

countries' institutions; the UNHCR and other international organizations (GOs and

NGOs); host population's indigenous NGOs; and refugees' own organizations. The

institutions of host countries provide immediate but limited relief (e.g. food, clothing,

medication, etc.), some limited protection, and land where camps and settlements are

established. Through their institutions, host governments also mobilize the international

community for more support. In particular, in countries such as Sudan and Uganda there

are government bodies that are responsible for refugee administration (Harrell-Bond

1986; Karadawi 1999; Rights Watch 2002). For instance, the Office of Commissioner for

Refugees is responsible for refugee administration in Sudan and the Office of Prime

Minister and the Special Branch are responsible for refugee status determination of the

asylum-seekers who decide to stay in urban Uganda (Human Rights Watch 2002).

However, in most cases, refugees in both rural and urban areas experience lack of

physical safety. For example, Sudanese refugees in northern Uganda were frequently

physically attacked by Ugandan rebels and Sudanese rebels also entered their settlement

34

camps in search of conscripts for their army (Lomo 2006). In Nairobi (Kenya), refugees

are victimized by the police who force them to pay bribes, sex predators who sexually

assault the young females, and robbers who invade their shelters and often physically

attack them before they loot (Human Rights Watch 2002). Again, there is also evidence

that asylum-seekers and refugees are harassed and sometimes forcibly removed back to

their countries of origin by agents of the very governments from which they have fled

(Ibid).

Where international organizations are concerned, UNHCR plays a central role in

the protection of refugees. Like the host countries, it is a major player and at the same

time responsible for the rules of the game in the field. For example, it reminds the host

countries to honor the international instruments which they signed regarding the asylum

and protection of refugees. In other words, it urges them to treat asylum-seekers and

refugees according to the 1951 Geneva Convention and its 1967 Protocol on the status of

refugees and/or the 1969 OAU Convention on refugees in Africa. However, in some rare

cases, the UNHCR also takes over the process of refugee status determination if the host

countries' authorities avoid taking it.

Other organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch also

document human rights violations and urge the host countries to treat refugees according

to international conventions. For example, Human Rights Watch (2002) conducted

research on urban refugees in Kampala and Nairobi in which it commended Kenya and

Uganda on the positive steps they took regarding the treatment of refugees and urged

them to change any policies that were still violating refugee rights. However, the story is

35

not all good news where human rights organizations are concerned. Verdirame and

Harrell-Bond (2005) have rightly criticized these organizations for only focusing on

government violations while overlooking the ones that international aid organizations

commit against the refugees.

The World Food Program takes on the role of food distribution, particularly in

settlement camps, and the World Health Organization (WHO) undertakes vaccination

campaigns against children's and adults' diseases. Oftentimes, the UNHCR has other

implementing partners such as the International Rescue Committee (IRC), Don Bosco,

and Save the Children that are responsible for health services, vocational training, and

children's education respectively. Also, in coordination with the host country's

authorities and UNHCR, organizations such as Oxfam UK can undertake temporary

settlement development programs including assistance with distribution of land for

farming and the construction of homes and schools, securing potable water sources for

the refugee population, and so on, which works very well when there is mutual

understanding and cooperation between government institutions and international

organizations (Payne 1998).

Such coordination was very helpful to some Sudanese refugees in northern

Uganda. Yet, its absence can severely affect refugees as can be seen in Kenya where the

UNHCR and its implementing partners took over the refugee administration and

sidelined the government (Verdirame 1999). As a reaction to this exclusion by

organizations operating in its own territory in the field of refugees, the Kenyan

government became so infuriated that it opposed almost every single decision that came

36

from UNHCR including even the protection cards that UNHCR issued for the recognized

refugees (Verdirame 1999; Human Rights Watch 2002). These cards became almost

useless for the refugees in Nairobi who had to bribe the police on the way between home

and market. Even those who came to the city for special purposes such as treatment,

education, or follow-up of settlement procedures also had to bribe the police (Verdirame

1999; Human Rights Watch 2002).

However, one important point here is that generally there are few local NGOs,

especially in Kenya, Sudan, and Uganda, specializing in the alleviation of refugee

problems. This is possibly due to the difficult economic conditions which the region's

countries are experiencing, mal-distribution and mismanagement of the little wealth that

is available, and funding governments' cynicism about the competence of indigenous

African institutions (including local NGOs) in genuinely managing relief and

development activities including refugee aid administration.19 Nonetheless, there are two

relatively popular indigenous NGOs specializing in refugee related issues in East Africa.

These are the Refugee Law Project at Makerere University in Kampala (Uganda) and the

Refugee Consortium of Kenya that is based in Nairobi (Human Rights Watch 2002).20

The objective of both organizations is to provide advocacy and legal protection to

asylum-seekers and refugees that are neglected by government institutions and UNHCR.

Above all, however, despite the fact that the host populations in most of the East

African countries do not have refugee assisting organizations, the populations themselves

19 Again, most of the funding countries are interested in funding their own organizations because they mostly employ their own citizens, and the only hope of some of their employees is the continuation of the problem because it leads automatically to the continuation of their employment. 0 See www.refiigeeproiect.org 5/11/2008 and www.rckkenkva.org 5/11/2008.

37

still play key roles (positive or negative) in many aspects of refugees' lives as the

refugees do in theirs as well. For example, they can informally accommodate the refugees

and share with them the few resources that are available in their areas (Harrell-Bond

1986; Kok 1989; Bascom 1998) and even provide them with protection if the authorities

are looking for refugees in order to victimize them (Verdirame 1999; Human Rights

Watch 2002). This suggests that the informal ties between refugees, on the one hand, and

their hosts, on the other hand, can sometimes serve the former better than government

institutions and international organizations because it is possible that the governments

and international organizations' help of refugees is based on particular interests whereas

the support and help which the refugees get from the host populations through informal

interactions are mainly based on host populations' goodwill towards their fellow humans,

as Bascom (1998) demonstrated in his study on Eritrean refugees in Wad el Hileau,

Eastern Sudan.

Finally, refugees' own organizations and associations also play very important

roles in refugee administration. Some of their organizations serve as liaisons between

refugee communities, relief organizations, and host governments' institutions while

others can be classified as adaptation and/or empowerment organizations. For instance,

Sudanese Women Action Network (SWAN), formed by Sudanese women in Nairobi, can

be classified as both an empowerment and adaptation organization since its main

objectives include business and literacy programs.21 However, the forced migrant

21 Sec www.education-action.org/default.asp?pageRef=26 23/5/2008.

38

literature in the region has almost completely ignored these refugee organizations, but I

believe the roles such organizations play are significant and require additional research.

Profile of Sudanese Refugees in East Africa

As I discussed earlier, some sources suggest that there are over 294,000 Sudanese

refugees in East African countries, with most in Uganda, Ethiopia, and Kenya, but their

number is larger than that suggested by these sources since there are many undocumented

refugees informally living in urban centers (Human Rights Watch 2002; Sommers 2001a,

2001b; Verdirame 1999). According to the literature on refugees in the region, most of

the Sudanese refugees who crossed the border to the neighboring East African countries

are young, but their gender makeup is less clear (Keen 1992; Payne 1998; Verdirame

1999; Human Rights Watch 2002; Lomo 2006). David Keen (1992) has documented that

about 298,900 Sudanese forced migrants had walked over 600 kilometers before they

settled in the camps of Itang (220,000 refugees), Fugnido (44,000 refugees), and Dimma

(34,900 refugees) in Ethiopia. According to Keen, most of these people who were

displaced to Ethiopia between the late 1980s and early 1990s were young men, whereas

most of the females and elderly people were displaced to provinces of Northern Sudan or

to Khartoum. The number and gender distribution of refugees in these camps were,

however, variable.22 Later sources suggested that more women were in the camps than

Keen had initially suggested.

22 For the estimates by the US Committee on Immigrants and Refugees see http://www.refupees.org/countrvreports.aspx 14/4/2008. On the other hand, the estimate for the year 2007 has been reported in www.unhcr.org/cpi-bin/texis/vtx/news/opendoc.htm 14/4/2008. According to

39

It is difficult to discuss in much more detail the demographic characteristics of

Sudanese refugees in Eritrea, as the authorities impose restrictions on research. But as its

western, southwestern, and northwestern border areas were the military base from where

various Sudanese rebels launched their attacks against the Al-Bashir regime in Khartoum,

it is expected that most of the Sudanese refugees in Eritrea were women because it is

probable that the majority of men left the camps and joined the rebellions against

Khartoum. Some of the men who fought Khartoum in the opposition armies might have

gone back to the refugee camps after the peace deals which Khartoum signed with the

SPLM/A, Sudanese National Democratic Alliance (SNDA), and Eastern Front. The first

two were signed in 2005 and the latter was signed in 2007. However, I suspect that the

lack of information about Sudanese forced migrants in Eritrea is due to the restrictions

the government of Eritrea imposes on teaching and research activities.23

Where the number of Sudanese forced migrants in Kenya is concerned, the

Kakuma camp was started by 12,000 boys and girls (Grabska 2010) who also walked

from Southern Sudan to northern Kenya but this number later increased to over 50,000

refugees, many of whom were young women. However, there are no statistics showing

the exact number of Sudanese refugees in Kenyan cities or analyzing them in terms of

sex or age but because of the harsh geographical nature between Kenya and Sudan most

these two sources, the numbers went up and down in the following way: 300,000, 90,000, 95,000, and 73,000 in the years 1991, 2002, 2003 and 2007 respectively. 23

I discovered during my visit to the University of Asmara's Departments of Anthropology and Sociology in 2004 that three individuals who were teaching in these departments had to leave their positions because the authorities were unhappy with what they were teaching and an Eritrean observer also told me that there were occasions when individual students in the classrooms often stopped their teachers from teaching particular topics. I met some Eritreans in Calgary in 201 lwho told me that the University of Asmara was closed down.

40

of the Sudanese refugees in Kenya were possibly young people (mostly men), as studies

from Kakuma (refugee camp in northwestern Kenya) have shown (Grabska 2011: 83).24

While researching on gender and violence during the war period in Southern Sudan, Jok

(1999) also points out that many men were either in combat, displaced in big cities in

other parts of Sudan, or took refuge in neighboring countries.

In Uganda, Payne's (1998) research with Sudanese refugees in the camp of Ikafe

is another study on refugees that breaks down the people studied in terms of sex and age.

She reports that of 46,297 Sudanese refugees who lived in Ikafe, 23, 510 (about 50

percent) were 16 years old or younger and that the numbers of females and males in the

camp were about the same. Although Panye's figures reflect the number of Sudanese

refugee population in one camp (Ikafe), they can be used for the further analysis of the

demographic characteristics of Sudanese refugees not only in rural Uganda but also in the

cities. Therefore, one could speculate that most of the Sudanese refugees in Uganda were

under 40 years old and those aged from the mid teens to the mid twenties were dominant,

but the number of males was relatively lower than the number of females because some

of the young men and even teenage boys possibly joined the Sudan People's Liberation

Army (SPLA), the Sudanese government's army, or even the Lord's Resistance Army as

most of its combatants are individuals from the border tribes such as the Acholi which

24 Grabska (2011: 83) has pointed out that males constituted 60 percent of the Sudanese refugee population in Kakuma, 49 percent of them were under the age of 18, and that 31 percent were between 18 and 30 years old. This means that females accounted for 40 percent of the refugee population in Kakuma. She has further pointed out that only 1 in 5 of the camp residents was older than 30 years. 5 At one point there were 48,741 refugees in Ikafe but that number later went down to 46,297 refugees

because some individuals had to leave the camp for security reasons as the Lord's Resistance Army attacked the camp several times and others might have left it for different reasons.

41

exists both in Sudan and Uganda. Also, many individuals who joined the army of one of

the warring parties were forced to do so.

Refugees in North Africa

In North Africa, the great majority of Sudanese forced migrants reside in Egypt

and Libya. The European Union's fears about sub-Saharan African migrants attempting

to reach Europe by boat from North Africa have influenced all the North African

governments and largely transformed them into the guards of the European southern

border. Libya, where most of the Sudanese refugees in the region live, is seriously

influenced by these fears. Egypt has been the exception in this regard. My review of a

variety of sources, and especially the daily newspapers, which report about individuals

trying to reach Europe by boat from the Mediterranean African coast, conclude that most

of them are from sub-Saharan Africa, including countries such as the Democratic

Republic of Congo, Chad, Liberia, Mali, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Sudan, that

experience refugee producing problems (Boubakri 2004; Crain 1999; De Hass 2005;

Goldschmidt 2006; Guetbi 2004; Lindstrom 2002).

With the exception of Egypt and Libya, the other North African countries

immediately round up the sub-Saharan African migrants- many of whom deserve

refugee status— and ship them to the desert outside their national borders where many of

them simply disappear. Moroccan authorities have reportedly been the most aggressive of

all in this regard (Baldwin-Edwards 2006; Goldschmidt 2006) even though Morocco is a

42

signatory of both the 1951 Geneva Convention on the status of refugees and its Protocol

of 1967.26

The continuous inflows of sub-Saharan African migrants to North Africa and the

aim of many of them to reach Europe horrified the EU countries that urged, through

bilateral meetings and regional agreements, the Maghreb countries to cleanse their

territories of sub-Saharan African migrants (Crain 1999; Samson 2005; Baldwin-Edwards

2006; Goldschmidt 2006). Therefore, sub-Saharan Africans have become a dominant

story of the media on both sides of the Mediterranean, whose signifiers of violence such

as black locusts, plague, and attackers are used in the media of Mediterranean countries

as references to sub-Saharan African migrants (Cheik Guetbi 2004; Goldschmidt 2006).

The mindset that is overwhelmed by these racist terms not only dehumanizes the sub-

Saharan African migrants but also obviously transforms them into dangerous beings

whose presence in North Africa is destructive to the people and their societies on both

sides of the Mediterranean; their immediate removal from North Africa is therefore

believed to be necessary. Consequently, authorities from the Mediterranean northern and

southern coasts have held conferences, signed readmission agreements, exchanged

security experts (mostly from the northern coast coming to the southern coast), raised

fences and dug ditches around the Spanish enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla, in North

Africa, and strengthened surveillance systems on both sides to stop sub-Saharan

Africans' encroachment into Europe. The process of the European Union's protection

26 See www.unhcr.ch/refworld/legal/instrume/asvlum/ref afre.htm 20/2/2007 and www.uhcr.org/pub/PUBL/eddcb8a34.pdf 14/3/2007.

43

from the sub-Saharan African migrants has further included the cleansing of North

African countries of sub-Saharan African refugees. Countries such as Morocco have

captured sub-Saharan Africans, and shipped them in trucks to be dumped in the desert

without food or water (Guemache 2005). It is a dehumanizing behavior that transforms

sub-Saharan Africans into unwanted beings. The xenophobia of the European Union has

transformed the governments of North African countries into the guards of its southern

border.

Libya and Sudanese Refugees

Although the Sudanese refugees in North Africa are mainly in Libya and Egypt, my

focus in the rest of this chapter is on the Sudanese refugees in Libya only since I am

dealing with the Sudanese refugees in Egypt in the rest of the dissertation.27 Unlike

countries such as Morocco and Egypt in whose economies the remittances of their

expatriates have played a central role, Libya has largely been the main destination

country in North Africa since it is the most affluent country in the region. However,

almost without exception forced migrants cannot claim refugee status in Libya because

Libya does not have a refugee policy. Nevertheless, Libya's doors have always been

relatively open to migrants from different countries of the world and they have been

particularly open to Africans since 1992 as a result of Gaddafi's attempt to unite African

27 There are Sudanese in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco, some of whom are forced migrants, but their numbers are not that significant.

44

• • • 1JJ countries politically and economically. A key reason that pushed Gaddafi to think about

uniting the African countries was the international embargo that significantly affected his

country's economy (Boubakri 2004).

As a result of the flexible Libyan migration policy, some observers report that the

country hosts 660,000 legal foreign workers and between 750,000 and 1,200,000 illegal

migrants and that the average number of migrants entering the country every year is from

75,000 to 100,000 individuals (Matthew Vella 2005).29 However, less conservative

estimates suggest that the total number of migrants in Libya is 2.5 million (Hamood

2006).30 According to Ray Takeyh (2000), the numbers of sub-Saharan Africans living in

Libya is 1.5 million with sizeable communities in the Libyan towns of Kufra and Sebha

(Hamood 2006: 18). Again, about one third (500,000) of the sub-Saharan Africans in

Libya are Sudanese, with the estimate of Darfiirians alone being between 150,000 and

250,000 individuals (Young et al. 2007). The majority of the Sudanese migrants in Libya

are forced migrants from Darfur and other parts of the country who have been forced by

the Islamists' genocidal and economic wars to cross the Sahara desert to Libya.

Libya is a member of the 1969 OAU Convention which it signed on April 25,

1981, but it has not signed the Geneva Convention on the status of refugees and does not

recognize the UNHCR (Baldwin-Edwards 2006). Therefore, Libya does not have

legislation on the administration of refugees in its territory and its authorities treat the

28 However, the fact that most of the leaders in Africa hold power by force will always be the main obstacle to any efforts towards the unity of the continent. So the current African Union is a club for the leaders to socialize among themselves rather than a door leading to the unification of Africans. 29 See www.fastmail.fm 13/5/2006. 30The Libyan population is only 6 million and the presence of such a larger number of foreigners indeed angers its nationals.

45

migrants as economic migrants regardless of the factors that forced them to leave their

countries of origin (Hamood 2006). Hamood has pointed out that UNHCR is

administering 11,897 (predominantly Palestinian) refugees in Tripoli despite the

difficulties it encounters in the country, but not a single Sudanese forced migrant is

included in this category.31

The conditions of Sudanese forced migrants in Libyan prisons are appalling.

Hamood's research (2006) reveals that several thousand migrants are held in Libyan

prisons for a variety of reasons including apprehension while attempting to enter Europe

by boat, readmission, and lack of proper papers, which new Libyan migration laws

require. Most importantly, however, she argues that many migrant inmates do not know

the reason for their detention as they have been working in the country for several years

and trying to establish themselves on the margins of Libyan society. The period of

imprisonment varies from a few weeks to several months and even years. Migrants

suffered enormously during their imprisonment or detention, as the following quotation

reveals;

A Sudanese man A.K. reported being detained in al-Janzur Prison, near Tripoli, in 1996 for two days, during which time he, and over 40 other Sudanese arrested alongside him, were made to roll around in dirty water until they became dizzy and immediately forced to stand and run for short distances from wall to wall, causing some to fall to the ground. He was detained for one month in late 2002/early 2003. (Hamood 2006: 32)

In Libya, sub-Saharan Africans, including Sudanese refugees, experience serious

racial discrimination which sometimes degenerates into violent attacks by mobs of angry

31 The majority of these (74 percent) were Palestinians, followed by Somalis (25 percent). Females constituted about 40 percent of the refugee population. 25 'Awon Agency also reports on May 1,2006 that about 12,000 Sudanese were in prisons in Libya and that their conditions were horrible.

46

Libyans. This happened in the northwestern city of Al-Zawia in September 2000 when a

rampaging gang of Libyans screaming 'blacks must go' attacked African settlements

while the Libyan security forces passively watched. At least 550 individuals, who came

mostly from Sudan, Chad, and Nigeria, were killed (Takeyh 2000). Moreover, authorities

officially announced the deportation of sub-Saharan African migrants to resolve the

situation rather than bringing the Libyans who victimized them to justice (Ibid). Hamood

(2006) also highlights the fact that Libyan teenagers in several parts of the country annoy

sub-Saharan Africans in the street and many adults do not pay Africans who they have

hired.

In response to the abovementioned problems caused by Libyans, Sudanese

refugees have reduced their interactions with Libyans to the minimum by displaying

goods in the market places where Africans are dominant. For example, the only Libyans I

saw during my several visits to Jinsiat al-Zahra in 2005 (located about 20 kilometers

southwest of Tripoli) were the taxi and truck drivers who were picking and dropping off

the passengers; the rest of the market consisted entirely of sub-Saharan Africans with the

Sudanese refugees being dominant among them. Most of the goods displayed were

similar to those displayed in markets in Sudan.

Most Sudanese forced migrants in Libya are young. For example, I spent a month in

Tripoli in 2005 during which time I visited Jinsiat al-Zahra on several occasions and

found that most of the Sudanese there were men in their twenties and thirties. This

contrasts markedly with Uganda and Ethiopia where the numbers of Sudanese refugee

women are equal to or even larger than those of the men. This might be because of the

47

nature of travel across the Sahara desert. However, many men were able to bring their

wives to Libya, but most of them are those who have been in Libya since the mid-1990s.

Hamood (2006) also has reached a similar conclusion when she points out that most of

the Sudanese refugees are single men, but Somalis, Ethiopians and Eritreans include

unaccompanied young women as well.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have discussed the refugee policies of East African countries

together with Libya and their impact on Sudanese refugees in these countries. The

chapter concludes by arguing that East African countries want refugees to stay in

designated camps in rural areas in order to be treated as recognized refugees. Forced

migrants are treated as prima facie refugees in these countries as long as they stay in the

camps.

However, countries of the region are reluctant to recognize forced migrants as

refugees while they are in cities. As a result of this policy, most of the Sudanese refugees

in East African cities are not recognized as refugees. Uganda is the only country in the

region which allows recognized refugees to stay in its cities as long as they want to be

self-reliant. Even harsher is the policy of Libya, the only North African country other

than Egypt where there is a larger number of Sudanese forced migrants, which does not

have any refugee policy at all except to treat Sudanese forced migrants in its territory as

simply illegal migrants. This is the case even though most of them went to Libya as a

result of President Gaddafi's policy to unite Africa. Therefore, they are dispersed in many

48

Libyan cities and towns, but can be found in larger numbers in Al-Kufra, Tripoli,

Ajdabiya, and Benghazi. Yet, the interactions between them and the Libyans are limited

as most Libyans judge sub-Saharan Africans as inferior to Libyans and consequently treat

them with hostility. In sum, authorities in both East African and North African countries

hold Sudanese refugees back from competition with nationals in various fields of valued

services such as security, work, and education.

49

CHAPTER THREE SUDANESE REFUGEES IN CAIRO: POPULATION PROFILE

AND METHODOLOGY FOR STUDYING THEM

In contrast with Eastern Africa, there are no rural refugees in Egypt. Most of the

Sudanese refugees live in Cairo. In this Chapter I compare a recent group of Sudanese

forced migrants with a group of Sudanese who immigrated and settled in Cairo in the

1940s and 1950s. I discuss their demographic characteristics and different estimates of

their population. I also outline the methods and theories applied for the data collection

and writing of the dissertation thereafter, and difficulties I faced in the field. Tables that

further illustrate some of the points in this chapter are found in the Appendix of the

dissertation.

The Origins of this Research Project

The origins of this study date back to the mid- 1990s when a number of events

brought the plight of Sudanese refugees to my attention. First, the demonstration of a

couple of dozen southern Sudanese women in the premises of the UNHCR in Cairo in

October 1994; second, the obvious change in Egyptian social and political discourses on

Sudanese refugees after the assassination attempt against President Mubarak in the

Ethiopian capital (Addis Ababa) in the summer of 1995; and third, the denial of refugee

status to almost every single Darfurian who applied for refugee status between 1994 and

50

1997, because UNHCR officials were misled to think that Sudan was then ruled by

Darfurians.1

On October 20, 1994, about 20 to 30 southern Sudanese women with their

children organized a sit-in protest at UNHCR in Cairo. They had been denied refugee

status, even though many of them were the sole supporters of their families and had many

children; and they had also learned that the Government of Kenya was giving refugee

status to their relatives and friends there. The women spent the night there inside the

premises; on the following day the office contacted Egyptian authorities who removed

them by force, rather than peacefully negotiating with them. The women were seriously

beaten up and some were injured during the evacuation process.

The assassination attempt on President Mubarak in 1995 added more Egyptian

hostility towards the Sudanese refugees. Afterwards, the government immediately

introduced a three month visa policy for Sudanese persons who had entered Egypt after

the summer of 1995, and closed access for Sudanese to work in Egypt. In addition, the

terms ibn al-Neel (son of the Nile) and ikhwa al-Sudaniyeen (our Sudanese brothers)

which officials in Egyptian public institutions had previously used to address Sudanese

they did not know by name were replaced with agnabi (foreigner) or aganib (foreigners).

At the time I was a graduate student at the American University in Cairo (AUC), and I

remember some of the librarians making it difficult for me to borrow books from the

'During an informal meeting a UNHCR official told my friend and colleague, Baballa Nour, that the information they were given by some Sudanese politicians in Cairo was that Sudan was ruled by Darfurians, and when he asked who these Darfurians were he mentioned two individuals, namely, Ali Alhaj (then Regional Affairs Minister) and Mohamed Al-Amin Khalifa (then Speaker of the appointed Parliament), at a time when more than 95 percent of the remaining portfolios were filled by individuals from Shamalya (the region that lies to the north of Khartoum) where the very politicians who misinformed UNHCR officials were originally from.

51

Reserve section by either falsely telling me that the books I needed had already been

borrowed, or that they were misplaced. More disturbingly, sometimes they brought the

books I needed, but asked me seriously why the Sudanese wanted to kill President

Mubarak. These kinds of questions often resulted in a 15 to 20 minute debate with them

before I finished the borrowing procedures and took out the books.

Nonetheless, I was one of the luckier Sudanese refugees in the country because I

was able to enroll in a graduate program at the AUC and had a fellowship that covered

my courses and provided me with full healthcare. I was suffering from a stomach

problem at the time and had to go to Al-Salam Hospital (a prestigious hospital in Egypt)

in Mohandeseen for treatment frequently. One day I had to argue with a junior doctor

who referred to me during three visits as al-agnabi da "this foreigner" even though he

knew that I was a Sudanese and Egyptians used to call Sudanese ibn Alneel "son of the

Nile" or bint Alneel "daughter of the Nile". The Addis Ababa event also changed the

attitude of ordinary Egyptians towards Sudanese people as they were more frequently

heard addressing Sudanese refugees with racial/ethnic slurs and reminding them that their

presence in Cairo was the reason behind the difficult economic situation in Egypt. I often

heard Egyptians shouting dayagtuna (you brought hardship to us) when they saw

Sudanese passing by. There were also cases when Sudanese street vendors were stabbed

in the market and the police appeared to be unconcerned about capturing the perpetrators.

For example, I visited a Fur street vendor (Idris) in his apartment in 'Ataba in October

1995 after I heard that he was stabbed by a group of Egyptian men in Shubra al-Kheima

market (northern part of Cairo) who stripped him of his goods. He told me the men told

52

him not to display his goods unless he paid them some money. He told them that he

would pay them if he sold some of the items, but the men grabbed his bags and started

walking away. Idris tried to pull his bags back and one of the men stabbed him on the

forefront of his head and when he tried to wrestle the knife from the man his right hand

fingers were seriously cut. Although the quarrel took place close to a police station, when

Idris went to report what happened, the policemen in charge told him that it was his fault

because he had come to Egypt.2

Another feature that drew my attention were the huge discrepancies between

numbers of Sudanese asylum- seekers and the violence and exclusion they faced in Cairo,

and the numbers of the individuals Sudanese recognized as convention refugees. For

example, of over 200 Darfurians who applied for asylum between 1994 and 1996 only

four were given refugee status. Three were members of prominent Sudanese political

parties (two from the Umma Party and one from the Democratic Unionist Party) and one

applied as a southern Sudanese. All the rest were denied protection even though most of

them had experienced persecution in Sudan and were not treated as citizens in Cairo.

These issues reflect the dilemma of most of the Sudanese who came to Cairo as forced

migrants and it strongly motivated me to study them. However, I was not the only person

who was preoccupied by these issues and during informal (socialization) visits with other

Sudanese graduate students and AUC alumni I discovered some of them were also

thinking about the same predicament of Sudanese. Therefore six of us put our ideas

21 visited Idris on October 11, 1995. He went back to Darfiir in 1997 and I was told that he was killed during an attack of a government force on his village in northern Darfur in 2004.

53

together and founded the Sudan Cultural Digest Project (SCDP) - a research project

funded by the Ford Foundation and hosted by the AUC.3

The main objective of the SCDP was to study coping strategies of Sudanese

refugees in Cairo and we carried out major fieldwork among the Avokaya, Azandie,

Balanda, Baria, Dinka, Fur, Kuku, Nyanguara and Shilluk communities in Cairo in 1996-

97 and wrote reports on their experiences. Among our findings, we discovered four

trends. First, UNHCR gave refugee status to high profile members of Sudanese political

parties and provided them with material support, but rejected the cases of most of the

other Sudanese persons who had to struggle on their own to support themselves and their

families. Second, southern Sudanese families depended for survival primarily on their

female household members, who were working as domestics, brewing traditional

Sudanese alcohols, or weaving female handbags; whereas Darfurian families were

generally dependent on male household members who were mainly working as street

vendors. Thirdly, some churches provided forced migrants with rations of lentils and rice,

contributed to their medical treatment, or offered English and vocational training courses;

however, we found that the priority was given to Christians among the Sudanese refugees

in some of these church services. Finally, we drew attention to the situation of children

who did not have access to study beyond high school, many of whom only spoke

Egyptian Arabic and did not know their mother tongue.

In 1997,1 had to apply to the Canadian Embassy in Cairo and got resettled in

Canada for security reasons; other members of SCDP also resettled in Canada, the US, or

3 One should also always be thankful to Professors Nicholas S. Hopkins and William S. Reed for their support of the project.

54

Australia for the same reasons, and the project stopped. Yet, I continued to think about

the refugees in Cairo and sustained my interactions with individuals through letters,

telephone calls, and e-mails. I continued ruminating on the idea until I enrolled in a

doctoral program in York University's Department of Anthropology and was ready to go

back to Cairo when my program reached the fieldwork stage.4

Population of the Study

The Sudanese diaspora in Egypt can be divided into two main groups. The first

consists of those who migrated to Egypt before Omar Al-Bashir's coup d'etat in Sudan in

1989. Members of this category are mostly Nubians and arabized-Nubians from the

northern most part of Sudan who migrated to Egypt in the 1940s (Fabos 1999; Grabska

2005). For the most part, they have settled and raised families in Ain Shams (a northern

residential area of Cairo) and they are known as al-jalia al-Sudaniya (Sudanese expatriate

community) or al-hajjana (camel riding soldiers). While there are no documents

explaining why they migrated to Egypt, or what they did when they first arrived in Cairo,

the term al-hajjana leads one to infer that the men among them were members of the

Egyptian army corps who used camels and horses during their patrol of the Egyptian

border.

The number of the Sudanese jalia population is unclear. There is only one source

available indicating that the number of Sudanese who came to Egypt before 1956 is about

41 am thankful to the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, for funding my fieldwork. The IDRC granted me a Doctoral Fieldwork Award in 2003-2004 to study Sudanese refugees in Cairo.

55

750,000 {Egyptian Gazette March 11, 1993). However, it is very difficult to concur with

this number for two reasons: there are large differences between the numbers which

different sources provide regarding the Sudanese refugees in Egypt; and the Egyptian

Gazette provided this estimate of the Sudanese jalia population together with the

estimates of the other categories of Sudanese in Egypt during the time when diplomatic

relations between the two countries had seriously deteriorated. During this time, each

country sent the other's citizens back from the airports of Cairo and Khartoum and from

the fluvial ports of Aswan and Haifa, and as a result there were serious discrepancies in

the statistics about the Sudanese population.5

However, the jalia members are culturally more Egyptian than Sudanese, socialize

more with Egyptians than with other Sudanese, and (like Egyptians) consider the

Sudanese forced migrants as lazy people who left abundant and fertile lands in their

country and came to share with Egyptians the limited resources the latter struggle for. It

is unfortunate that the Egyptian authorities could not offer Egyptian citizenship to a

5 The Egyptian Gazette documented that there were 750,000 Sudanese (non-refugees) who came to Egypt between 1956 and 1990 in addition to 500,000 asylum-seekers who came after 1990 escaping persecution. To the reader's surprise the Egyptian Gazette stressed that the 750,000 Sudanese whom it claimed came to Egypt after 1956 (and before 1990) were illegal and that they were working in the private sector as their illegal status would not allow them to work in the public sector. However, based on the treaties which Egyptian and Sudanese authorities signed in 1977 and 1982, the stay of Sudanese who came to Egypt before 1995 is automatically legal. Again, the Gazette also inaccurately documented how the Egyptian public sector is the main employer of Sudanese whose stay is legal in the country at the time when I spent many years in Egypt (from April 1994 to November 1997 and from August 2003 to June 2004) but could not find a single Sudanese, other than a couple of members of the jalia community, working for the Egyptian public sector.

56

population that has been contributing to its economy and culture for more than a half-

century.6

The Egyptian Gazette also reports that there are about 750,000 Sudanese who came

to Egypt after 1956 who are not asylum-seekers. While it is true that many Sudanese

people came to Egypt after 1956 and did not apply for asylum, my interactions with

Sudanese persons from different backgrounds in Cairo for almost five years suggest that

the number of Sudanese who came and stayed in Egypt between 1956 and 1990 is far less

than the number which the Egyptian Gazette claims.

The subjects of my dissertation are the Sudanese refugees who came to Egypt as a

result of victimization by Omar Al-Bashir's regime, who assumed power in the country

through the coup d'etat in 1989. In particular, I analyze Sudanese forced migrants who

"possess or seek to possess a particular legal status that separates them from other

migrants" (Jacobsen 2001: 274). I frequently refer to them as refugees regardless of

whether they are recognized as such by the UNHCR and/or the authorities of the host

country. Drawing on the approach of Liisa Malkki (1995) in her study on Burundian

refugees in Tanzania, I conceptualize the state of being a refugee or of "refugeeness" as a

complex and dynamic process of becoming, a gradual transformation rather than simply a

result of crossing the international border. This process incorporates the refugees'

experiences in the host country including their interactions with the host population, with

6 In Egypt it is only the children born to an Egyptian father who are considered Egyptians. The children who are bora in Egypt to an Egyptian mother and a foreign father are not given the right to Egyptian citizenship. So, the denial of Egyptian citizenship to the Sudanese jalia population is not something unique.

57

other refugees, with aid and protection organizations including the UNHCR, and the host

country's government.

As a result of the Egyptian government policy that does not authorize recognized

refugees to work, the drastic decrease in UNHCR's economic support to them (Sperl

2001; Kagan 2002; Shafie 2005; Grabska 2005), and the violent reaction of many

Egyptians to the presence of Eastern African forced migrants in Cairo (Cooper 1992;

Sudan Cultural Digest Project 1998; Al-Sharmani 2003; Le Houerou 2004, 2006), the

Sudanese people who came to Egypt as forced migrants experience similar problems

regardless of whether they are recognized as refugees, asylum-seekers, or unrecognized

refugees.7 Therefore, they all experience similar conditions - that is to say, the lack of the

most basic rights that the international legal instruments have granted to recognized

refugees. The problems which they experience collectively in different fields of struggle

in Cairo rendered the recognized refugees among them not much different from asylum-

seekers and those for whom refugee status has been denied: they are simply Sudanese

refugees with very few or no rights at all. The experiences in different fields of struggle

as refugees made them develop a particular set of cultural knowledge corresponding to

the situation in which they live. Consequently, they are forced to pool resources and live

close together in order to buy food, pay rent, and feel relatively secure.

The number of Sudanese refugees in Cairo is unknown since there are various

sources, each of which provides a different numerical picture. On the one hand, for

example, during his public speeches in the 1990s, I heard President Mubarak stating that

71 use the terms Convention refiigee(s) and recognized refiigee(s) interchangeably throughout the dissertation.

58

there are 4 million Sudanese in Egypt, and sometimes increasing that number to 5

million. Although he did not specify which group of Sudanese he was talking about, the

time when he was making these speeches and the circumstances surrounding them

indicate that he was referring to the latter group of Sudanese, those who fled to Egypt as a

result of Omar Al-Bashir's regime's terror in Sudan. On the other hand, the Egyptian

Gazette (July 2, 1993) and the US Committee for Refugees and Immigrants (2003)

document that there are 3 million Sudanese individuals in Egypt but the two sources

disagree on how many of them came to Egypt after 1989.8 At the time when the Egyptian

Gazette points out that 500,000 of the 3 million Sudanese people were in Egypt because

of the fear of persecution in their country, the US Committee for Refugees and

Immigrants says that the number of Sudanese persons who fled to Egypt because of the

fear of persecution or war in Sudan is really unknown.

Fabienne Le Houerou (2004, 2006), and I fully concur with her, argues that

Egyptian politicians and academics highly exaggerate the numbers of Sudanese refugees

in the country. She disagrees with the abovementioned statistical accounts on Sudanese

refugees, based on observations during field studies she conducted with southern

Sudanese refugees in an informal residential area in Cairo (Arba'a wa Nus). She reported

that there were 300 southern Sudanese families residing in Arba'a wa Nus at the same

time that academic reports and the media were stating that there were 500,000 Sudanese

individuals in the area. Her review of the satellite picture of the area showed that the total

8 See www.uscri.net. 17/3/2004.

59

population of Arba'a wa Nus was only about 35,000, including its predominantly

Egyptian population:9

Contrary to what has been said for so many years, the Sudanese Diaspora is very sparse in Arba'a wa-Nus. Satellite photos show us with mathematical precision that the population of the informal zone is not more than 35,000... (Le Houerou 2006: 62)

She suggested that there were about 60,000 southern Sudanese asylum-seekers

and recognized refugees in Cairo. Although she studied Darfurians as well, her estimates

do not include Darfurians and the other Sudanese forced migrants in the city. However,

Amir Idris (2005) points out that there are between 200,000 and 300,000 Sudanese

refugees in Egypt. It seems to me that Le Houerou's estimates about southern Sudanese

and Idris's estimates about all the Sudanese refugees are much closer to reality than other

estimates.

Other statistical accounts, such as those of the UNHCR, only provide the estimates

of individuals who have applied for refugee status determination. According to a report

published by UNHCR's Cairo office in July 2004, over 67,000 Sudanese forced migrants

applied for refugee status determination between 1997 and 2004. The report categorized

them as follows: over 28,700 of them were recognized; 7,300 were pending a decision;

and over 20,000 were rejected. The report further stated that over 14,300 of the

recognized refugees were resettled in third countries and about 15,000 of the rejected

cases were closed files (meaning that very few appeals were allowed). Therefore, the

total number of Sudanese who have applied to UNHCR is far less than the estimates of

9 These accounts of Egyptian sources about the statistics of Sudanese living in Egypt should make one skeptical about the censuses which Egyptian authorities provide about their own population.

60

Sudanese who came to Egypt after 1989. However, as I show in Chapter Four, there are

particular reasons why the majority of the Sudanese fleeing from the harassment inflicted

on them by their homeland government did not apply for refugee status determination.

Geographical Distribution and Demographic Features of the Targeted Population

The Sudanese refugee population is dispersed in Metropolitan Cairo (area of

86,369.3 square kilometers) (Yousry and Aboul Atta 1997) and swallowed up by its 18

million inhabitants (Sabry 2009).10 However, they are particularly concentrated in

Abbasia, Ain Shams, Arba'a wa Nus, Maadi, Madinat Nasr, and Masr el Gedida in

Muhafazat al- Gahira (Cairo Governorate) on the eastern bank of the Nile; and Agooza,

Ard el Liwa, Dokki, Imbaba, and Mohandeseen in Muhafazat al-Giza (Giza Governorate)

on the western bank of the Nile. Even in these residential areas, their settlement

distribution is based on the price and availability of apartments which they rent from

Egyptians.

While there is no doubt that the Sudanese refugee population includes males and

females, young and old, adults and children, married and single, highly educated and

illiterate, legally recognized and unrecognized, there is no systematic study of their

demographic categories. However, my observations and the samples from different

studies suggest that most people are between 24 and 39 years of age and the number of

10 Most scholars writing about Metropolitan Cairo refer to it as Greater Cairo rather than Metropolitan Cairo. Greater Cairo is the literary translation of Al-Qahira Al-Kubra/Al- 'Uzma (Arabic) and it includes the Governorates of Cairo and Giza. Therefore, Greater Cairo should be understood as Metropolitan Cairo in this study.

61

males is higher than the number of females. Most have a high school level of education,

and are likely to be single.11

Return to Cairo

1 returned to Cairo to conduct my doctoral field research in August 2003, where I

stayed until the end of June 2004.12 My intention was to study Sudanese male youths and

I had prepared my proposal accordingly a few months earlier. There were a couple of

factors that influenced my decision to study Sudanese young men in Cairo before I

started conducting fieldwork. The first of these was the Islamists' government policy in

Sudan that aimed at tying its notion of "jihad', with young men's employment, education,

and almost everything else leading them to establish a better life.13 In sum, the Islamists'

" For instance, in the samples conducted by Sudan Cultural Digest Project (1998) and UNHCR (March 2003), men constituted 60 and 69 percent of the respondents respectively. About 45 percent (39 out of 86) of UNHCR's sample were respondents with children. Yet, due to the fact that families with children were the special target of UNHCR in that study (because its focus was on recognized refugees' self-reliant activities), it is unclear whether these numbers would be reflected in a normal random sample. Regarding age, 63 percent of the respondents in the Sudan Cultural Digest Project were aged between 25 and 34, and 52.8 percent of the respondents in Grabska (2005) are between 26 and 36 years old. Similarly, 94 percent of the respondents whom I interviewed during this dissertation fieldwork are between 20 and 39 years old. Regarding the religious background, 50.9 percent of the respondents were Muslim and 48 percent were Christian in Grabska's study compared to 65.7 percent Muslims and 34.3 Christians in my research. As to marital status, 43.4 percent of the respondents are single and 39.4 percent are married in Grabska compared to 51.4 percent single, 39 percent married, 9.5 percent separated, and 4.8 percent divorced in my research. In my study, 46 of 106 respondents studied up to the high school level and 42 studied until university or higher as opposed to UNHCR (2003) which suggests that 50 percent of the Sudanese refugees are illiterate. However, UNHCR's claims about the illiteracy of the recognized refugees is relevant to the rumors that are dominant in the Sudanese refugee communities that UNHCR largely recognizes as refugees applicants with less schooling and it is therefore possible that many individuals in its sample deliberately lowered their educational level. 17

However, I had to return to Toronto for one month due to family obligations. 13 It is a meaningless jihad which Arabists disguised in the name of Islam adopted to forcefully impose their Arabism on the rest of the country. Most of the vehement Arabists in Sudan are from the tribes of Danagla, Ja'alyeen and Shaiguya who conjure up wars in which the other Sudanese die, while they stay in their villas in Khartoum and channel most of the country's resources to the rehabilitation of their desert homeland in northern Sudan (Cockett 2010). I am using the term Arabism throughout my dissertation in a sense that both O'Fahey (1996, 2005) and Mamdani (2009) have used it, which is an imposed Arabization from above

62

government has apparently emasculated many young men. In most Sudanese cultures, a

man has to get married and be the provider of his family and the protector of his

community to establish his masculinity (Boddy 1989; Kenyon 2002). But, on many

occasions, it is no longer the case under the Islamists' rule where unemployed young men

have to hide from the authorities to avoid forceful recruitment and shipment to the war

front. The Islamists' terror against young men has thus put their masculinities "on

unstable ground" (Jaji 2009) and many of them had to flee to neighboring countries to

save their own lives (Jok 1999).14

Therefore, I thought that the Sudanese refugee population in Cairo was mostly

constituted of young men who were escaping from the jihad which the Islamists in power

declared, not only against the Sudanese who rebelled against their government, but also

against young men in general, as hundreds of thousands had been killed in Southern

Sudan, Nuba Mountains, Darfur, and Eastern Sudan. Secondly, the idea of studying

young Sudanese men was nurtured by the fact that the individual Sudanese refugees in

Cairo whom I kept in contact with were all men and at the time when I left Egypt for

by those who rule the country on non-Arabs whose cultures they expose to extinction by all possible means even though Arabic language has been the medium of communication (lingua franca) among Sudanese from different ethnic backgrounds, including southern Sudanese. In 1990s, it was not uncommon to see the authorities coming to stop at gunpoint events such as weddings and nafayer (work parties) that involved traditional dances and foods in Fur villages. For example, in 1993, a female relative of mine was hit by security men in her mouth removing her front teeth while she was celebrating her wedding. The security men came to stop the party and humiliate her husband when she tried to confront them. However, Sudan's Arabism is an exclusive nationalist ideology, which aims at acculturating the non-Arabs but not accepting them as citizens with rights equal to the rights of Danagla, Ja'alyeen and Shaiguya. The way Danagla, Ja'alyeen and Shaiguya treat other Sudanese is similar to the way they themselves are treated in Arab countries where their Arabness is not recognized (O'Fahey 2005: 27). 14 Jok (1999) has pointed out that many southern Sudanese men went to northern Sudanese cities to avoid the involvement in war, but the authorities in northern Sudan captured many southern Sudanese men together with men from the regions such as Darfur, Kordofan, Nuba Mountains, Eastern Sudan, and forcefully sent them to fight against the rebels in these same regions.

63

Canada in 1997 more than 70% of the Sudanese refugee population were men.15 Thirdly,

I wrongly assumed that the UNHCR's 1997 Policy on Refugees in Urban Areas— which

stipulates that refugees in such areas should be self-reliant— might have almost

exclusively affected young men because most of them are single and young single men

are usually mistakenly described as more capable than other categories of refugees of

coping on their own with the odds of the city. Most of the observers who have assessed

this policy described it as unclear and that it does not say much about how urban refugees

will become self-reliant (Obi and Crisp 2001; Sperl 2001). The policy faced criticism not

only outside the UNHCR, but within the UNHCR as well.16

However, during the first two months of my stay in Cairo I changed my views

about the Sudanese refugees being almost exclusively young single men. This occurred

because other categories of Sudanese refugees (i.e. young women, middle aged people,

and children) were also visible, though in fewer numbers and frequency, in the street,

public transport, and places such as churches and other refugee service providing

organizations. Nonetheless, I remained convinced that the young refugee men were the

only ones struggling for survival, without any support from UNHCR, until my fourth

month in the field when I started interacting with parents, some of whom were the sole

care-givers, and had as many as five or six children, and whose cases were also closed at

the UNHCR.

15 For example, there were only seven women from Darfiir to the extent that the Fur Community Association in Cairo had to pay and train a couple of Dinka and Nuba women to represent the feminine side of the Fur culture during the Sudanese cultural festivals that took place in Cairo in 1996 and 1997. 16 The internal criticism of UNHCR's 1997 self-reliant policy was obvious in a draft of a survey which the UNHCR office in Cairo conducted on refugees' self-reliant activities in Cairo. It is dated March 2003.

64

My first interaction with a large family with a closed file17 was on January 4,

2004 when a 36- year- old relative (Sami) who was also one of my key informants invited

me to his 35- year- old Balanda friend's (Clement) apartment.18 Clement was living in

Hadayeg Al-Zatoon which is located a few kilometers to the south of Ain Shams.19 In the

late afternoon we took a microbus from Zahraa Ain Shams, where we were living, to Ain

Shams from where we took another crowded bus to Hadayeg Al-Zatoon.20 Clement knew

that we were coming and he told his wife to prepare some kanymuru (traditional

Sudanese wine brewed from sesame) before she left for work so that he could drink it

with his special guests (Sami and myself). Clement was at home with their five children

while his wife was working as a domestic for an Egyptian family.

Clement's family had a closed file at UNHCR and he and his wife had to struggle

to feed their children, the oldest of whom was only 11 years old. In the same month I met

two other families who both had five children, and closed files at UNHCR. One of them

was headed by a single mother.

I thus widened the scope of my study from the livelihood strategies of Sudanese

male youths to the livelihood strategies of Sudanese refugees in Cairo. I had gradually

discovered that even the individuals who were officially recognized as refugees could not

get any significant material support from UNHCR, or any other organization, because of

17 Closed file, reject, gubul (acceptance), and tawteen (resettlement) are new terms which the Sudanese refugees adopted in reference to their own legal situation in Cairo. Refugees with closed files are the ones who applied for refugee status determination, but their application results were negative with no chance for appeal. 1 I interviewed Clement in his apartment on January 4, 2004. He was a university student in Sudan but left and came to Egypt to avoid the forceful recruitment and then conflict in Southern Sudan. He had a closed refugee file and his stay in Egypt was illegal. 19 In this study, all the names that I have used in reference to Sudanese refugees are pseudonyms. 20 See Map 1 regarding the locations of residential areas in Cairo.

65

budget constraints they experience. Therefore I began to realize that the livelihood

strategies were similar among all forced Sudanese migrants living in Cairo.

Field Activities and Methods of Data Collection

Figure 1: Greater Cairo

: ':

/

vTTS*. MU fifaM VNIWPFO

\.

Greater Cairo Source: http://www.egvptmvwav.com/maps/cairo.html 25/3/2005

My primary research method was participant observation, even though the people

I studied were dispersed over 50 to 60% of Metropolitan Cairo's area, which is about

86,369.3 square kilometers including the region of Giza whose area alone is about

66

0 1 85,153.6 square kilometers. However, most of the fieldwork was completed in the

eastern valley of the Nile, which is called Muhafazat al- Gahira (Cairo Governorate)

whose area is about 1,215.7 square kilometers (Yoursy and Abul Atta 1997).22

Some might wonder how one could possibly conduct participant observation

research in such a vast area. I used the snowball methodology to recruit informants for

my study and mostly interacted with the 106 persons whom I individually interviewed

and some of the 74 others who participated in focus group discussions. I was also invited

and participated in several events such as marriage and wedding ceremonies, male

children's circumcision ceremonies, and farewell parties and prayers which individuals

from various parts of the city attended. In these events I was not only participating, but

observing the general scene and most of the activities that took place. I learned about

many people's lives through daily interactions and observations without interviewing

them, as their life routine was obvious to me because they were either living with me, or

living in the same building, and we frequently visited each other, and ate in each other's

homes.

I also had informal discussions with Egyptian landladies, owners and workers of

lease offices, and samasra {samsar- middleman who goes between the landlord and the

tenant) while accompanying individuals who were looking for apartments to rent.23 As

well, I observed causal interactions between Sudanese and Egyptians in the street, the

21 Egyptians and foreigners who study Metropolitan Cairo simply call it Greater Cairo. Therefore, Greater Cairo in their studies means Metropolitan Cairo and they distinguish it from the part of the city on the eastern bank of the Nile by calling the latter Cairo or Cairo Governorate. 22 See Mapl. 23 In Egypt most of the individuals who rent out apartments to foreigners are women. The five apartments in which I lived in Cairo during the period between 1994 and 1997 and in 2003-04 were owned by women and most of the Sudanese I interacted with also told me the owners of their apartments were women.

67

mosques, the market, public transportation, hospitals and clinics, and other sites - those

locations and movements when it is almost impossible to avoid the "Other" or escape

from him or her but where the interrelations of these movements mostly remain casual

(Goffmanl963; Le Houerou 2006). I studied the language and looks that were exchanged

as well as the movements of avoidance that took place during these casual interactions

and the meanings they established. It is during these interactions that the boundary

creation and its maintenance between Sudanese and Egyptians happens (Barth 1969). For

example, if a Sudanese runs into another Sudanese in a bus or a train he will greet him

even if they are separated by a space occupied by Egyptian passengers, whereas he does

not greet Egyptians sitting next to him. I also read related articles in Egyptian

newspapers, followed news on TV, attended most of the Wednesday seminar

presentations which the AUC's Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program

organized, studied what was published on refugees in Egypt in libraries, and frequently

interacted with individuals working for UNHCR, Legal Aid, and the churches that

provide help to refugees, informally discussing issues related to refugees.

Advocacy and Action Research

As social scientists, we are generally advised to be "objective" while conducting

our research. However, anthropologists Harrell-Bond (1986), John Davis (1992), and

Fabienne Le Houerou (2006), who have conducted research on refugees, have made it

clear that there is a difference between a "balanced" field and a field where abnormal

conditions such as serious suffering and violence are prevalent. For example, there should

68

always be an ethical difference between research that explores cultural aspects of a

people living in a stable village or town community and another that is conducted within

a forced migrant, or other type of community, whose population are victims of a disaster

(human-made or otherwise). That is why, in forced migration research, Le Houerou

reminds us that "there is such suffering in the field of forced migrations that it is

impossible for the researcher to remain completely distant and clearly objective"

(2006:14). I absolutely concur with her that a researcher cannot remain simply an

observer when individuals, who eat one or two pieces of bread with a cup of tea or at best

have a little meal of fava beans or lentils for the entire day, want him to help them with

some of the issues that might possibly lead to the alleviation of their suffering such as

explaining their conditions to related authorities and urging them to do more. Again, if

circumstances qualify him, the researcher can intervene if he discovers that some

individuals' lives are at immediate risk.

Le Houerou found herself running behind the UNHCR officials, employees of

resettlement countries' embassies, and individuals from the Eritrean government that she

thought would intervene and alleviate the suffering of the Ethiopian and Eritrean refugees

she was studying in Sudan. For example, at one point she indicates:

In Sudan I was very often completely submerged by the suffering of the refugees, and I remember the countless times when my emotions were more powerful than my academic distance. Tears and dry anger were the reactions I had in Sudan many times in the company of informants. One of the most painful memories was when I was accompanying one of my refugee friends who was seeking to be resettled in Australia. (Ibid: 14).24

24 She was overwhelmed by tears and anger because she accompanied her refugee friend several times to one of the most luxurious hotels in Khartoum where an agent from the Australian embassy in Cairo was staying, but they failed to see the agent because of many bureaucratic obstacles.

She further points out that she took to the Eritrean authorities the pictures of starving

Eritrean refugees abandoned by UNHCR in the semi-desert region of northeastern Sudan,

trying to convince them to help the refugees repatriate to Eritrea. While in Cairo, she

found herself seriously touched by the suffering of the Sudanese (Dinka and Fur) and

Eritrean and Ethiopian refugees she was studying:

I was always accompanied by refugees, I was walking in the streets with black refugees, and I have experienced in my 'soul' the racism that the refugees felt, the ordinary stigmatization and scorn. Their suffering became by effect of consequence my suffering. (Ibid: 15)

Similarly, Guglielmo Verdirame and Barbara Harrell-Bond's (2005) field

activities with refugees in Kenya and Uganda were also colored by advocacy. The people

they studied were victims of torture, sexual violence, forced recruitment and defections,

relationships with authorities and many other forms of injustice and abuse. They gathered

information by convincing the refugees that the information would be used for the

refugees' own benefit. Verdirame and Harrell-Bond helped refugees by providing them

with advice on their cases, or referring them to other individuals who helped them. Later

on they were able to overtly act on individual cases when the protection officers found

out that the researchers were helping with the reform of the refugee system in the two

countries. The question they have raised to those who might think that what they did was

not ideal from the point of view of pure social sciences is: "Was there any alternative?"

Like the social scientists whose field activities I reviewed above, I had to include

advocacy and action as part of my activities during my research in Cairo because I found

it crucial to raise issues, during meetings with authorities, who were very critical of the

suffering Sudanese communities. It was a moral duty for me because many of the

refugees, especially from Darfur, either knew me or had heard of me from my work in

Canada as a Sudanese civil society activist, and as president of both the Sudanese-

Canadian Organization of Human Rights and the Darfur Association of Canada (2002-

2005). I was the first person who started the documentation of violations in Darfur and

released them to the public.

As many of the forced migrants needed help, I had to get involved in advocacy

and action research. So the musa 'ideen (refugee community members appointed to assist

applicants to write their cases for refugee status) and community leaders invited me to

almost every single meeting between them and the officials of the UNHCR office in

Cairo. They knew that I was a member of their community and they wanted me to tell

UNHCR officials what I knew about the Sudanese refugee communities in Cairo as well

as about the situation in Sudan. However, it is crucial to note that some of the

musa 'ideen and other Sudanese community leaders invited me to some of these meetings

because they knew that I came to Cairo to study the Sudanese refugees and they therefore

wanted me to be aware of what was taking place in these meetings. There were also cases

when individual refugees contacted me when their roommates were in detention facing

deportation and I had to contact individuals like Barbara Harrell-Bond who in their turn

urged UNHCR officials to open a chance for such individuals to appeal if their files were

closed. In a couple of cases I had to pay for the release of detainees. Again, I had to help

some individuals to write their cases and fill out application forms and referred others to

individuals who helped them write their cases. Several times individual applicants also

25 In Egypt musa 'ideen are paid by UNHCR for their clerical and translation activities.

71

asked me to accompany them as an interpreter during their interviews at the Australian

Embassy in Cairo.

As a result of these advocacy activities, reciprocal relationships were developed

between many forced migrants and myself as a researcher to the extent that several

individuals contacted me asking to be interviewed. However, some of them did not know

me before, they had simply heard from their friends and/or relatives of a Sudanese

conducting research on Sudanese refugees and they wanted to participate with their

experiences in the study. The advocacy helped me obtain access to critical places such as

embassies and better understand the Egyptian government's attitude towards the

Sudanese refugees and UNHCR policies on them. It also helped me have a closer picture

of problems some individual refugees experienced and the ways their communities

functioned and met with community leaders, UNHCR officials and church leaders, most

of whom I would not have otherwise met.

Techniques of Data Collection

In a situation such as that of Sudanese refugees in Cairo where they are scattered

almost all over the city and reliable statistics about them are lacking, I decided to use the

snowball method for the recruitment of participants. I found it very effective. I explained

my research objectives to three of my relatives (who lived with me from my second

month in the field) and six other friends, three of whom were specialists in helping

Sudanese forced migrants with refugee status applications. One of the three case writing

specialists was a musa 'id (employed by UNHCR) and a computer teacher at St. Andrews'

72

educational program and the other two made their living from helping asylum-seekers

from different Sudanese backgrounds with their cases and were very popular among the

various Sudanese communities. One of them was from Southern Sudan and another from

Darfur but they helped individuals from all regions of Sudan with writing their cases.

One of the other three individuals was my former colleague at the AUC as well as a

colleague at the Sudan Cultural Digest Project and I had met another during one of the

Wednesday forced migrant seminars at the AUC. The last person was a generous and

respected woman from Central Sudan whom I knew through a series of links starting with

an elderly woman from Northern Sudan living in Toronto.

Therefore, I interacted with the first individuals they suggested and interviewed

them. Then I asked each of these individuals to suggest other individuals who might

participate in the research. So the circles of connection and enquiry gradually expanded

to include men and women from all parts of Sudan, reflecting its ethnic, religious and

cultural diversity. The respondents also included individuals from different age groups,

marital status, and levels of education. For example, the oldest person was Katherine (59

years old) and the youngest was Nanette (18 years old), both of them females with

children from Southern Sudan.26 There were also individuals from both middle class and

26 Katherine is half Greek and half Anywak from Southern Sudan. She completed primary school and worked in a social welfare office in Southern Sudan. She does not know whether her husband is alive or dead since their home town (Waw) was suddenly attacked in the early 1990s. I interviewed her on March 18, 2004 in the two-bedroom apartment in Maadi Arab where she lived with two daughters, her son, her son in-law, and her grandson. She was the only member of her household getting a monthly stipend from UNHCR. She is a very generous woman and many Sudanese from different backgrounds visited her every day. As to Nanette, she is a Latuka, also from Southern Sudan, and she studied until high school. I interviewed her on April 4, 2004 in her Fur friends' apartment in Hadayeg Maadi and was about to resettle in the USA. She had a one- year- old child and was working as a domestic. Nanette complained that her relatives refused to allow her boyfriend (father of her daughter) stay in the same apartment and restricted his visits to her and the child.

73

working class backgrounds in Sudan, as well as individuals with master's degrees and

others who had not completed primary school.

Despite these differences in backgrounds, life in refuge had rendered them similar

(Harrell-Bond 1986; Malkki 1995) as members of one community, the community of

Sudanese refugees whose members believed that they were pushed outside of their

country of origin by one factor, Omar Al-Bashir's regime. In Cairo they were stereotyped

by their hosts as reckless idle black intruders who had abandoned fertile lands in Sudan

and come to take away the limited resources available to Egyptians. As a result of these

experiences in the country of asylum, most of the Sudanese interacted closely with each

other, especially in front of Egyptians; many of the barriers that had divided them in

Sudan disappeared in Cairo, despite their dispersal in Greater Cairo.27 That is why, for

example, individuals with master's degrees connected me to individuals who had not

studied beyond primary school, and individuals who were members of the middle class in

Khartoum helped me recruit working class individuals from Southern or Western Sudan,

and vice versa. Consequently, the method I used has generated representative data.

However, as is clear in the appended tables, I interviewed only 18 individuals from

Western Sudan (including Darfur and Kordofan) and the main reasons for that were: first,

there were only a few individuals from Kordofan in Cairo and most of the Darfurians

27 However, this does not mean that the barriers that divide the Sudanese in Sudan completely disappeared among the refugees in Cairo. Although individual refugees from different ethnic, religious, or regional backgrounds supported one another during arguments with Egyptians in the street, and played cards together and bought tea for one another in the places where they usually gathered, they never thought about becoming roommates-they would not trust one another. In particular, some refugees from Darfur, Nuba Mountains, and Southern Sudan actually thought that individual refugees from Danagla, Ja'alyeen, and Shaiguya might have possibly been Al-Bashir's regime's secret agents disguised as refugees. Yet, they supported one another in public and spent time together in cafeterias and churches playing cards and drinking tea.

74

were just arriving to Cairo, whereas my focus was mostly on individuals who had been in

Egypt for a couple of years because I wanted to study refugee experiences in Cairo.

Second, I studied the experiences of Darfurians who had been in Cairo for a couple of

years. Many of them and I lived in the same residential areas and exchanged visits almost

every day and I included their experiences in my daily field journal (though not recorded

on tape). Again, the number of female respondents (29 individuals) is relatively smaller

compared to the number of males (76 individuals). The reasons were that I arrived in

Cairo with the objective of studying young men, as I made clear earlier in this chapter,

and I was also hesitant at the beginning to start interacting directly with women as a

result of Sudanese cultural constraints. These concerns were heightened at one point by

the fact that I met three young women from Northern Sudan who came to the Sudanese

Organization Against Torture, asking if the organization was still offering English classes

for Sudanese forced migrants. I conversed with them and told them about myself and

what I was intending to do. They seemed interested in participating in my research and

gave me their phone number but when I tried to call them afterward there was always a

man who told me they were not home. I could explain to the man who I was and told him

that I needed his help as well but he did not welcome the idea. The three women were the

very first women I approached regarding my research, but the experience I had with them

rendered me less enthusiastic about trying to include women in my study for over two

28 However, I interviewed individuals who were in Darfur when the current conflict emerged to the surface in 2003, but these data have been put aside for a different purpose. 291 met the three young women on September 4, 2003. It was during my second week in Cairo.

75

months. However, things started changing for the better gradually when my interactions

with forced migrants increased and many of them heard of my presence in the city.

Equipment Used for Data Collection

I used a tape-recorder, camera, and three notebooks for data collection. I used the

tape- recorder for the interviews which I usually set up after I had met the potential

respondent a couple of times and explained to him/her the objectives of my research

together with the informed consent. I also tape-recorded focus group discussions; the

reason why I used the focus groups besides the individual interviews was to compare the

relevance of what is said in a group to what is said in a private interview. The main

advantage of the focus group discussions was that individuals were able to confirm each

other's points, or further elaborate them. Focus group discussions also provided me with

a general idea about the main issues Sudanese in Cairo faced, but their problem was that

some individuals did not want to talk much in a group while others wanted to dominate

the discussion. I personally moderated the focus group discussions rather than asking

another person to moderate them for me. The duration of interviews ranged from 45

minutes to two hours and the focus group discussions were between 45 minutes and one

and a half hour long.

I used the camera during the events that were attended by many people such as

weddings, farewell prayers and parties, circumcisions, and picnics. I also used it in places

such as churches and some cafeterias where Sudanese refugees frequently gather. As to

the notebooks, one of them was used for the interviews and another was used for the

76

focus groups. I noted in them the dates and numbers of interviews or focus groups, short

profiles of respondents, the places where the interviews and focus groups took place,

circumstances surrounding them, and comments about how each interview or focus group

went. I used the third notebook as a daily journal covering observations on important

events which I attended, comments about the places where refugees gather and activities

taking place in them, and short reports on what happened in the neighborhoods where I

lived.

I am very much influenced by Barbara Harrell-Bond (1986), Karadawi (1999), Le

Houerou (2006) and Verdirame and Harrell-Bond (2005) in this study. It is clear that

these authors have considered the actor/respondent as the only person who has the

competence to tell his/her own story or to talk about his/her own culture. One could sense

that the role of the actor is obvious throughout their texts. They consider the refugee

experience as the "foundation" experience and that refugees are the only individuals who

are capable of telling their own stories with much more authenticity. It is an even-surface

methodology in which the researcher as an observer and the refugee as a storyteller stand

on an equal footing during the interview or any other discussion. Therefore, it does not

allow the observer to claim the lead of the situation. That is why I did not have a list of

questions to ask the respondents, I simply asked the respondent to tell me about his/her

own experience as a forced migrant living in Cairo and during focus group discussions I

asked the participants to tell me the problems they thought most of the Sudanese refugees

faced in Cairo. It was from a single question each time that the respondent assumed

his/her role as a storyteller and I assumed my role as an attentive listener. Moreover, the

77

respondents were told that they had the right to come and double check what they had

said and that it was also their right to ask for the erasure of their participation in case they

changed their mind.

Forced Migrants as the "Other" of Nationals and Nationals as the "Other" of Forced Migrants

The casual interactions between nationals and foreigners can sometimes develop in

situations where the foreigners are seen as the "Other" of nationals- a feature that did not

capture the attention of renowned theoreticians of nationalism such as Earnest Gellner

(1983), Anthony Smith (1986), Benedict Anderson (1991), and Eric Hobsbawm (1992).

In part this was because their focus was uniquely on how the leaders who are at the top

of the social and political systems can inculcate feelings of oneness in some or all the

segments of the populations whose leadership they claim. But it is certain that relatively

sudden arrivals of a large number of aliens in a country can often create a sense of

common awareness in the host population. And the awareness of the host population

about the presence of aliens can in its turn create a group sentiment among the aliens

even if they were members of different groups before their arrival in the host country.

This has been obvious in the studies by Gershon Shafir (1995) and Anna Triandafyllidou

(2001) in some parts of Europe. For example, Shafir has reviewed theories of

assimilation, segmentation and multiculturalism to describe and analyze the relationship

between immigrants and nationalists in Catalonia, the Basque Country, Latvia and

Estonia, concluding that multiculturalism can be the most suitable alternative policy of

turning immigrants into national minorities. On the other hand, Triandafyllidou has

78

investigated the role of immigrants as the Other of the nationals in Greece, Italy and

Spain. She argues that theories of nationalism have either neglected or failed to grasp the

impact of the Other on national identity formation and its change (Triandafyllidou 2001:

139). She argues that the presence of large number of immigrants in a country will

"activate a process of redefinition of national identity, which aims to raise a boundary

(cultural and symbolic, if not necessarily geographic) between the in-group and the

foreigners" (Triandafyllidou 2001: 145).

I am partly drawing from Triandafyllidou in my current study. Although the Egyptian

elite often turned to Sudanese people in order to escape from the inferior position in

which the West put them (by assigning inferior roles such as that of servant and

doorkeeper in their theatres and cinemas to Sudanese and Egyptian Nubians) (Powell

1995), the image of Sudanese people as the Other of the Egyptian Self was not that

obvious among ordinary Egyptians during my first two short visits to Egypt between late

1990 and early 1991. However, the nature of interactions between ordinary Egyptians and

Sudanese has gradually changed and Egyptians started addressing Sudanese refugees

with ethnic stereotypes such as "prostitutes" and "reckless black drunkards". But the

stereotyping of Sudanese as the Other of Egyptians is further accompanied by the much

harsher treatment of Sudanese by Egyptians in the street and neighborhood as compared

to other foreigners. This treatment of the Sudanese by ordinary Egyptians as the Other of

Egyptians coincides with the Egyptian authorities' exclusion of Sudanese in all the

services to which poor segments of the Egyptian population have access despite the same

authorities' claim in the media that Egypt is the second home for the Sudanese people (as

79

stipulated by the treaties which the two countries' authorities previously signed). Yet,

even a right as basic as resident status is denied to Sudanese persons unless they have a

good reason for staying there, such as studying or running a business, let alone their

access to services such as work, subsidized food and subsidized housing.

This treatment of Sudanese persons by both ordinary Egyptians and their

authorities (as the Other of the Egyptian socio-cultural, economic, and legal systems)

made Sudanese refugees develop a sense of collectivity. I argue that the feelings of

collectivity of the Sudanese refugees are more situational than primordial ~ they

developed in response to the new reality which they commonly faced in Cairo. My study

is partly inspired by the studies of Fredrik Barth (1969) and Abner Cohen (1969) on

ethnicity, Stuart Hall's (1990) investigation on identities, and Richard Jenkins's (2002)

research on collectivities, because the foundation of their studies is based on the fact that

the formation and continuity of human collectivities such as nations, ethnic groups, or

any other human grouping are mostly rooted in common objectives, which also holds true

in the case of Sudanese refugees in Cairo. It is the matter of what they have become and

what they imagine themselves to be that made of Sudanese refugees in Cairo one

collectivity.

The situation in which Sudanese refugees found themselves in Cairo made them

establish their own patterns of survival strategies and networks that are based on pooling

together the meager resources that are available to them. Consequently, some parts of this

study utilize the kind of social network analyses used by authors such as James Scott

(1991), S. Wasserman and K. Faust (1994), Khalid Koser (1997), Diane Singerman

80

(1997), and Peter Flom et al. (2000). Hence, in this sense, the theoretical framework of

this study is the one which Fabienne Le Houerou (2006: 12) would call "Spanish tavern"

for it patches together different theoretical frameworks in order to explain one particular

idea.

Difficulties Encountered

On Sunday September 14, 2003,1 went to the AUC to follow up the procedures of my

affiliation and to use its internet services. There, I met a 35- year- old man, Abatei, from

Southern Sudan who had just completed his master's degree at the AUC. He was working

at both AUC's Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program and St. Andrew's

church's30 educational program for refugees, but he was preparing to leave for Australia

with his wife and their five children where they were resettled. Abatei was very excited

when he discovered that I was in Cairo to study Sudanese forced migrants for my Ph.D.

dissertation and he immediately suggested that I should meet the director of St. Andrew's

church so that I could volunteer in some of its educational programs while conducting my

research. He made an appointment for me to see the director of the church on Tuesday,

September 16,2003 at 11 am.

I arrived at St. Andrew's at 10:50 am on Tuesday. Abatei was there and we waited at

the reception where he was working until 11:20 am because the director was having a

meeting in a room on the left which was probably used for small group meetings. The

meeting ended and the other individuals quickly disappeared while the director came out

30 Sudanese refugees simply called it St. Andrew's.

81

of the room and stood in the corridor. Abatei asked me to follow him to where the

director was standing and he introduced me to him. He was a slender white man,

probably in his fifties, in black pants and black shirt with a white dog collar. Abatei

introduced us and the director and I exchanged greetings shaking each other's hand. Then

Abatei went back to his desk when the director pointed to the meeting room where he and

I had to meet.

I started explaining to the director who I was and why I had come to Cairo, but he

suddenly burst out with anger when I told him that I would be very grateful if I could

volunteer in one of the educational programs his church was offering for refugees. He

started shouting: "You can be a Sudanese government agent and what you are doing will

harm some of the people who come to my church. Get out! If I see you back in the

compound of this church I will call the police for you." I tried to explain to him that I

myself was also a victim of the Sudanese regime and that I had to leave the country and

all that I love about it including my relatives in 1994, and that had not returned since

then. Also, I showed him some of the documents I had from York University, grant

letters from IDRC, and my affiliation letters from the AUC. But the man continued: "I

never heard of that university [York University]. Get out or I will call the police!"311 left

the place surprised and with a lot of questions in my mind. But I was more surprised

when 1 discovered a couple of weeks later that there were master's and doctoral students

and tourists from Canada, Europe, and the US volunteering at St. Andrew's. I stopped

going to St. Andrew's for almost a month. But St. Andrew's was so central to my

31 On several occasions I met the director of the Sacred Heart Church, Father Claudio, and he was very supportive of the idea that I was studying Sudanese refugees.

82

research because it was a meeting point between many actual and potential respondents

and myself. Therefore, I studied the problem carefully and decided to return to St.

Andrew's very frequently after I came to the conclusion that I was not putting any

respondent at risk. I only carried my camera and nothing else every time I went there to

take pictures of events such as farewell prayers, which the church authorizes.

A second problem was the false news about my death which the pro-government

newspaper al-Alwan published in Sudan. Imagine being in a field conducting research

and friends and relatives are calling you from different parts of the world to make sure

that you are still alive! So from the third week of December 2003 until about mid January

2004,1 was overwhelmed by phone calls. It is most likely that the false news about my

death was caused by my roles as community organizer and human rights activist which I

had played before I started fieldwork, since they contradicted the objectives of Omar Al-

Bashir's regime in Sudan.

The two circumstances which I have presented above were the major difficulties

which I faced when I was in the field, but there were also other minor difficulties which I

had to wrestle with. For instance, my identity as a Sudanese man from Darfur also had

some disadvantages besides its advantages. I had much easier access to men and women

from southern and western Sudanese origin than to men and women from northern

Sudanese origin because of the long conflict in the country that has now clearly divided

the Sudanese almost everywhere in the world, including Egypt, where, as I have

mentioned, they were all seen by the non-Sudanese as one category of people and as a

result of that most of the fissures that divided them in Sudan were also present here.

83

There were a few occasions when I met very reserved women and I think that their

reservation went beyond the fact that they were women and I was a man trying to learn

about their survival strategies. Again, because of my age, I was not able to obtain the

involvement of as many individuals in their late teens as possible, but several of them

who got involved were very genuine. However, some young individuals from Southern

Sudan told me that they simply did not want to participate in research conducted by a

Sudanese person like them and that they would love to be interviewed by a white person.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have discussed the main characteristics of Sudanese refugees in

Cairo, the residential areas where they live, and the methods and analytical perspectives

which I applied to study them. In particular, I put them in the context of informally

settled refugees in the city as opposed to most of the studies in East Africa that focused

on camp refugees. The study has also distinguished them from the other categories of

Sudanese whose migration to Cairo was due to factors other than war and persecution.

The chapter has further suggested that snowballing is a better way of conducting

field studies on refugees in cities because, unlike camp refugees, they are dispersed in

different parts of a city alongside the nationals. Although the search took place in Greater

Cairo, it can be described as multi-sited research (Marcus 1995) because the people who

participated in it lived in different parts of the city. Like anthropologists Harrell-Bond

(1986), John Davis (1992), and Fabienne Le Houerou (2006) who conducted research on

refugees, advocacy and action were part of my field activities in Cairo. Finally, I outlined

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the pros and cons of my identity as a Sudanese conducting research with Sudanese

refugees.

CHAPTER FOUR SUDANESE REFUGEE ADMINISRATION IN CAIRO

Egypt's Role in the Displacement of Sudanese People

On October 12, 2003, my relative Sami and I went to pay our condolences to

Wardi in Ain Shams on the death of his friend who had died suddenly of a heart attack.

He was living in a very small room built on the roof of a poorly maintained five storey

building. The stairs were very steep, narrow and unlit and I nearly fell down several times

before we got to Wardi's door. During our conversation, Wardi repeated: "Sudanese and

Egyptian governments have displaced us and we are now dying of agony away from our

relatives." He later explained in detail the role of the Egyptian government in recognizing

Omar Al-Bashir's regime in Sudan.1

Like Wardi, most of the Sudanese in Cairo believe that Egypt is indirectly

responsible for the current displacement of Sudanese in different parts of the world.

These accusations are based on the fact that Egypt was the first country to recognize the

coup of the National Islamic Front against the democratically elected government in

Sudan, on June 30,1989. The Al-Bashir regime adopted a scorched earth policy in

several parts of the country including Darfur and cleansed the civil service of non-

members of the National Islamic Front through a policy known as "lay off for the

common good." Most of the business people who did not embrace their ideology have

also become bankrupt; and Wardi is one of them. He had a thriving business when he

1 Wardi is a 43-year- old man from Omdurman (originally from Haifa, Northern Sudan). He worked in Kuwait for over a decade and established his own business and ran a soccer team upon his return to Sudan. Wardi's refugee status file was closed and his stay in Cairo was illegal.

86

returned from Kuwait, but Omar Al-Bashir's regime exposed him to bankruptcy and

forced him to leave the country. The Islamists overtaxed and restricted the businesses of

people they categorized as opponents and exempted members of their party and relatives

from any taxes. Wardi is one of the people who lost their businesses to such an unfair

treatment.

M. J. Hashim (2006), a Sudanese Nubian rights activist, points out that Egypt's

immediate recognition of the worst dictatorship in the history of Sudan and its

continuance of close ties, even after the assassination attempt on Egyptian president

Hosni Mubarak, are because Egypt is terrified of democracy in Sudan. Hashim argues

that a totalitarian regime in Sudan is convenient for Egypt, despite the apparent

ideological differences between the two regimes, because it is easier to deal with. This

explanation appears to find credence in the fact that Egypt has always been the closest

ally of the subsequently isolated Sudanese regime, helping it find a space in the

international community, and staying beside it despite the serious crimes it has

committed in Darfur and many other parts of the country.3 The Egyptian authorities

dismissed the international community's concerns about the crimes that the Sudanese

regime committed in Darfur as a Christian and Jewish plot to destabilize Sudan so that

Israel and its western allies could have access to Darfur's unexploited resources (Alsharif

2009; Ruslan 2009).4

2 The assassination attempt was planned in Sudan and financed by the Sudanese regime. 3 The International Criminal Court (ICC) has recognized the crimes committed in Darfur as genocide and an arrest warrant has been issued against President Bashir in this regard. 4 Safwat Alsharif was the Secretary General of Egypt's ruling party, the National Democratic Party (NDP), and Hani Ruslan was a specialist on Sudan in the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Both of them

Egyptian Government Policies and Sudanese Refugees in Cairo

Mona Khashaba, who was responsible for refugee issues in the Egyptian Ministry

of Foreign Affairs for many years (Nkrumah 2001) claimed that Egyptians have always

welcomed refugees with open arms since time immemorial (since the days of Joseph and

his brethren) and that the Koran specifically enjoins Muslims to enter Egypt with

confidence.5 Egypt ratified the 1951 Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees in the

early 1980s together with the Protocol of 1967. It also signed the 1969 OAU Convention

on refugee problems in Africa (Harrell-Bond 2000; Hassan 2002; Shafie 2005) and took

further steps towards refugee legislation, issuing Article 53 of May 22, 1980 that outlines

the protection of politicians who seek asylum in Egypt. Article 53 underlines the

Egyptian state's guarantee of the right to political asylum for every foreigner persecuted

for defending the people's interests, human rights, peace or justice. The same article also

prohibits the extradition of political refugees (Shafie 2005).6

However, closer inspection reveals that Article 53 only protects individuals who

were leaders in their countries, such as former kings, presidents, and government

ministers, and not those who left their country as a result of the fear of persecution

because of their race, or ethnicity, religion, membership in a particular social group or

political opinion, or because of the lack of availability of protection from the authorities

describe the conflict in Darfur in the same way. See www.sudantribune.com. 1/8/2010 and www.sudanile.com 3/2/2009 respectively. 5 Mona Khashaba was an important figure in the Egyptian government and was responsible for refugee affairs before she was appointed as Egyptian ambassador to Ukraine. For more details, see Gamal Nkrumah in Al-Ahram Weekly, December 20-26,2001. 6 For Shafie, see www.forcedmigiation.org/guides/fmo029.pdf and www.worldpress.org/Mideast/312.ctm 2/8/2007 for Hassan. Another document published at www.redress.org/studies/Egvpt.pdf explains that Egypt signed both the Geneva Convention and its protocol on May 22, 1981.

88

of their country, stipulated by the 1951 UN Convention and its Protocol, and the 1969

OAU Convention.7 Hence Article 53 does not provide protection for ordinary people who

have been victimized because of their membership of a particular race/ ethnic group,

Q religion, etc. Article 53 only seems to legislate Egypt's protection of politicians who are

thrown out of office. Article 53 also suggests that, until recently, human rights activists

were not granted protection as there is no mention of them.9

On May 22, 1984, four years after it had issued Article 53, the government issued

Presidential Decree No. 188:

The President of the Republic, after consulting the constitution and law no. 453 of 1955 concerning the organization of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as presidential decree no. 332 of 1980 concerning the accession to the UN Convention Relating to the Status of Refugees signed in Geneva on 28/7/1951, and based on what was presented by the Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of Foreign Affairs has decided: Article 1: The creation of a permanent committee for Refugee Affairs located in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, to be presided by one of the Assistants of the Minister of Foreign Affairs and whose members would consist of representatives from the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Justice, Interior and the Presidency of the Republic. Article 2: The above mentioned committee shall review asylum applications to grant refugee status as per the Refugee Convention signed in Geneva on 28/7/1957. The committee shall send its recommendations to the Minister of Foreign Affairs and whose decision would therein be considered final. Article 3: Rules currently applying to those dealing with the Office of Political Refugees

7 See Handbook on Procedures and Criteria for Defining Refugee Status, edition of January 1992. 8 As a result of such a policy, and until very recently, Palestinians were the only group whose leaders and ordinary compatriots were recognized as refugees in Egypt; others were mostly politicians and their families. Many of them were former dictators as a forced migration research guide, which the Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program (American University in Cairo) published on the Internet, explains. These politicians include, inter alia, the Czar's family members who fled the Bolshevik revolution in Russia, the former Shah of Iran, the former King of Libya, the last King of Yugoslavia, the King of Albania, the former Tunisian President Habib Bourguiba, Imam El Khomeini, Aly El-Saady, Secretary-General of the Iraqi Baath Party, former Syrian President Shoukri El Quwetelly, Laurent Kabila of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and the former President of Sudan Gaafar Nemeiri (Shafie). 9 The absence of human rights activists from the category of people to whom Egyptian authorities granted asylum may be due to the recent history of the human rights culture in the region.

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in the Presidency of the Republic shall remain in force. Article 4: The Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs are to implement this decree. (Shafie 2005)

Although it does not make any reference to the OAU 1969 Convention, Presidential

Decree No. 188 is refugee legislation that deserves commendation; it perfectly translates

the 1951 UN Convention into domestic legislation. Nevertheless, the steps which the

government took to translate the international instruments related to refugee

administration into domestic legislation have remained on paper only and the UNHCR

has continued to be responsible for refugee status determination and the administration of

refugees as I discuss later in this chapter. Therefore, the agreement that the government

of Egypt and the UNHCR signed in 1954, and which makes the UNHCR responsible for

all refugee related issues, has continued to be in effect.10 To make sure that refugees were

not integrated in the country, the government raised stronger reservations on Articles 12

(personal status), 20 (rationing), 22 (public education), 23 (public relief), and 24 (labor

legislation and social security) during its ratification of the UN Convention and its

Protocol in 1981 (Zohry 2003; Shafie 2005).11

10 According to Shafie (Ibid), the agreement stipulated the following: 1) UNHCR should cooperate with the Egyptian authorities in taking a census of refugees and

identifying individuals who are eligible in accordance with the mandate of the High Commissioner;

2) UNHCR will facilitate the voluntary repatriation of refugees from Egypt; 3) Together with the Egyptian government and competent international organizations in immigration

issues, UNHCR should encourage initiatives aiming at resettlement of refugees from Egypt to countries of immigration;

4) UNHCR should assist, in this regard, with the finances available, the most destitute individuals who fall within the mandate of the High Commissioner and;

5) It should coordinate and make sure that the government authorizes the activities of welfare societies, aiming at assisting the refugees under that mandate of the High Commissioner.

11 See The Convention and Protocol Relating to the Status of Refugees.

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These reservations completely disqualify Mona Khashaba's claim that Egypt has

continued to welcome refugees with open arms since time immemorial. It seems that

Presidential Decree No. 188 of May 22,1984 was issued in response to a particular

political circumstance and never went any further than the paper it was written on. As a

result, scant consideration is given to the situation of refugees in the country. Being

among the most visible of all the aliens in Egypt because of their large number and their

skin color, Sudanese refugees are the most victimized foreigners in Cairo, as we will see

in the remaining chapters. That is why Breima (respondent) says that Egypt signed the

international conventions on refugees and issued presidential decrees only to mislead

1 9 other countries that Egypt is a country that respects refugee rights.

UNHCR and Caritas

Since the Egyptian authorities have largely turned their back on refugee issues, it

is the UNHCR, churches, and foreign NGOs that have taken over refugee administration

(Kagan 2002). The process of refugee status determination in Egypt is a very difficult and

complex process, which I will discuss in the section below. The UNHCR is responsible

for the contradictory roles of processing the refugee status determination, and at the same

time protecting recognized refugees (Kagan 2002; Forced Migration Online 2005;

Grabska 2005; Shafie 2005; Harrell-Bond 2006).13 The organization also covers up to 75

percent of Convention refugees' medical treatment costs, selects a few of them for

12 Breima is a 27- year- old man from Kordofan (Western Sudan). I interviewed him on March 12, 2004 in Matar's room (Arba'a wa Nus). He has a BSC in computer engineering and makes his living by teaching private English lessons to refugees. His file was closed and he was not a recognized refugee.

3 Kagan (2002) and Forced Migration Online (2005) further point out that the UNHCR has been unsuccessfully trying to hand over the refugee status process to the Egyptian authorities.

vocational training, financially supports the most vulnerable groups (unaccompanied

minors, large families, elderly people, and sick individuals), and refers refugee cases to

resettlement countries. However, of the 68 Convention refugees who participated in

individual interviews and focus groups for this study, only four individuals received

monthly financial assistance from UNHCR (two of these were a couple with three

children (Siham and Tilib) and the other two were elderly women (Katherine and

Asha).14 The other 64 respondents and focus group participants had to struggle on their

own.

In 2002, the UNHCR was able to convince the Egyptian state to temporarily

recognize UNHCR's authorization of asylum seekers while their papers were processed,

with the main objective of reducing the arrest and deportation of individuals whose cases

were pending. The agreement stipulated that the UNHCR would provide yellow cards to

the principal applicant and adult dependents registered as asylum- seekers, with a space

for the initial residence permit stamp and two additional renewals. The agreement further

stipulated that the Egyptian Ministry of the Interior should issue residence permits with a

validity of 6 months. The agreement also specified that the yellow card was valid up to

18 months and that it would be in Arabic so that it could be easily understood by the

police and other Egyptian authorities (Kagan 2002: 14-15). Those applicants whose

14 Siham (wife), Tilib (husband), and their three children live in a one bedroom apartment in Ain Shams. Siham is a 39- year- old psychologist and Tilib is a 45- year- old engineer and former army officer. Tilib is a Kahili (tribe Kawahla) from Sinnar and Siham is a Ja'ali from Omdurman. I visited them many times during my field work and interviewed them in their apartment on January 15, 2004. They were recognized refugees with no chance for resettlement in a third country. On the other hand, Asha is a 55- year- old Massaleet woman from Omdurman. She left school when she was in the fourth year in primary school. She knows how to cook various types of food and was hired as a chef on important occasions such as weddings, circumcisions, and funerals. She, her daughter, and two of my friends with their one- year- old son were living in a two bedroom apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams. I visited her many times and interviewed her on April 15, 2004. She was a recognized refugee and was waiting for resettlement.

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refugee status determination results are considered as closed files immediately become

illegal migrants after 18 months when the validity of their yellow cards expires.

Kagan has described the issuing of yellow cards for asylum-seekers as a major

step in addressing the protection difficulties faced by some asylum-seekers. The cards

given to asylum-seekers are known as butagat al-saffra (yellow cards) among the

Sudanese refugees to distinguish them from butagat al-zargaa (blue cards) that are

distributed to already recognized refugees, and their validity ends when the applicant

becomes a Convention refugee, or after 18 months if the applicant's file is closed.

However, Egyptian authorities do not respect the blue cards issued for recognized

refugees, let alone the yellow ones, as I will explain later in Chapter Eight.

Kagan has asserted that, in 2001-02, the great majority of files (well over 70%)

were rejected or closed. Most of them were Sudanese from Darfur and Southern Sudan.

While he believes that many Sudanese from war torn regions might have been unjustly

excluded from attaining refugee status, he attributed the larger numbers of closed and

rejected files to the strain on the system placed by a general increase in the number of the

applicants amidst a scarcity of staffing resources at the UNHCR's office in Cairo, which

prevented the proper examination of files.

Another factor in this problem is the location of the UNHCR in Mohandeseen —

one of the most luxurious parts of Cairo on the western bank of the Nile River. Most of

those who frequent the UNHCR office go to check for news about their applications on

the boards, as it is often difficult to meet the officials. However, the office is difficult for

most of the refugees to reach, as they live far from there, and it is expensive to reach. For

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example, Mahjob, who lives in Arba'a wa Nus in the northeastern corner of Cairo, says

he pays at least three fares to reach the UNHCR office.15 He takes a microbus to Masr el

Gedida, then another microbus to Ramses, and then a bus or another microbus to the

UNHCR office. The fare from Arba'a wa Nus to Alfi Maskan is 1.5 pounds (1 US dollar

equals 5.6 Egyptian pounds) and it is the same (1.5 pound) from Alfi Maskan to Ramses.

The Catholic charity Caritas is the UNHCR's implementing partner in Cairo and

is mainly staffed by Egyptian Copts, who are themselves a minority in Cairo. Its function

is to administer the UNHCR's financial and medical assistance. I mentioned earlier that

the UNHCR provides financial assistance through Caritas to only a small number of

refugees labeled as 'the most needy', and with regard to health care it covers from 50 to

75 percent of the medical costs with the refugee being responsible for the remaining

costs. For example, a 31-year- old man (Ahmed) had a problem in his testicles which

needed an operation.16 He had the first operation before he became a recognized refugee

but he told me that he could not afford the second operation because Caritas would only

pay for 50 percent of the total operation, or about 600 Egyptian pounds. He wondered:

"Where can I find the money to cover my part which is 300 pounds because I went to see

a specialist and was asked to pay the 300 pounds in advance before the operation and

treatment begin?" As a result, Ahmed is waiting for resettlement in a western country

where he hopes to have the operation.

15 Mahjob is a 38- year- old Halfawi man from Northern Sudan. He is a graduate of a polytechnic school in Sudan. Mahjob is also a very talented artist and designer, but he was a menial worker in an Egyptian company that paid him 350 Egyptian pounds per month. I visited him many times before and after I interviewed him on January 2,2004. He was a recognized refugee and was waiting for resettlement. 16 Ahmed is a Shaigui from Khartoum and was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on March 1, 2004 and I frequently exchanged visits with him before and after the interview.

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The location of Caritas is also a problem for refugees seeking its services. It is

located in the Garden City close to the center of Cairo, far from the outer fringes where

most refugees live. Moreover, they usually have to visit Caritas at least twice for every

service; once they get there they must wait in a crowded space with few available seats.

During my three visits to Caritas, between August 2003 and June 2004, there were over a

hundred refugees, most of whom were standing for four to five hours before they were

served, or had to go home without being served. Since the office is located in an area

where there are no shops, cafeterias, or public washrooms, and the refugees did not want

to leave and give up their places before being served, they also had to hold back their

toilet needs, which caused additional suffering. The suffering which refugees experience

while waiting at the Caritas was the driving force behind the three quarrels between

refugees and Caritas officials during the time I was conducting my fieldwork. The

officials could not find ways of calming down the angry refugees other than calling the

police to force them out of the compound.

The Process of Refugee Status Determination and its Impact on Sudanese Refugees

Refugee status determination is the process by which a person is legally

recognized as a refugee or is denied refugee status, based on the case he/she presents in

addition to the knowledge of the official who interviews him/her about the situation in

his/her country of origin. I have argued that contrary to Kenya, where the UNHCR and

international organizations usurped the refugee administration (Verdirame 1999),

Egyptian authorities have avoided undertaking any responsibility towards refugees and

95

put everything in the hands of the UNHCR (Kagan 2002; Shafie 2005). An information

booklet issued by the UNHCR's office in Cairo states that the applicants can wait for up

to six months (after registration) before they are interviewed for status determination.17

The booklet further states that the result of refugee status determination is normally

issued two weeks after the interview. However, according to Kagan (2002), in Cairo

asylum-seekers waited about nine months before they were called for the refugee status

determination interview and most of the individuals whose cases were rejected also

waited about nine more months for the results of their appeals.

My own empirical research reveals that some applicants waited even more than

nine months before they were interviewed or saw the results of their appeals. For

example, a 24-year- old female respondent, Regina, told me that she had submitted an

appeal about ten months ago and that she had not received any response until the time I

interviewed her; and a 27- year-old male respondent, Osama, told me that 13 months and

two days had already elapsed between the date when he picked up a slip of paper

showing his interview date and the date when he was actually interviewed.18 Osama

further repeated that he had already spent two years before the result of his interview was

released. Another respondent, 35- year- old Mohamed, told me his wife, Victoria,

applied for refugee status determination in January 2001 and the result of her application

17 The booklet is Information Booklet for Asylum-seekers and Refugees in Egypt and was issued by UNHCR's office in Cairo in August 2003. 18 Osama is a Ja'ali from Khartoum and was interviewed in his apartment in Hilmyat Al-Zatoon on March 4, 2004. He was a recognized refugee and his papers were in process for resettlement in Canada.

96

was a rejection. She then appealed and was expecting the result of her appeal by

December 11,2003. However, until March 18,2004, there was no result of her appeal.19

Although the UNHCR tradition implies that the applicants should receive a

detailed written letter on the results of their applications (i.e. recognized, rejected, or

closed file), the UNHCR office in Cairo only posts the application numbers with a three-

letter code on its public boards (Kagan 2002). That is why asylum-seekers who expect

the results of their applications are obliged to check the UNHCR public boards every

week. Those applicants whose interview results are several months overdue can set

appointments with the Legal Aid office whose lawyers contact the UNHCR on their

behalf and inform them about the status of their applications. At one point, All Saints

0(\ , . . . Cathedral in Zamalek also played the same role. That is why, regarding his wife

Victoria's overdue appeal, Mohamed went to All Saints Cathedral to meet the person

responsible for helping refugees whose applications are several months overdue to find

out the status of her case. However, delays are also expected even at the Legal Aid and

All Saints Cathedral. Mohamed told me that he went to All Saints Cathedral to see a

woman called Ameera who was responsible for helping refugees whose case results were

delayed. Ameera, however, told him to come back on Thursday and Mohamed preferred

to return on Saturday instead since Saturday was the day of wagfa (day preceding the

Greater Bairam) hoping that the holiness of the wagfa day might make him a bit lucky.21

19 Mohamed is a Nuba from Khartoum and he was interviewed in his apartment in Maadi 'Arab on March 18, 2004. He completed high school and worked for the Ministry of Agriculture in Sudan. 20 All Saints Cathedral is also known as Kanisat el-Zamalek (Zamalek Church). 21 The -wagfa day has a lot of significance to many Muslims because it is during this day when Muslim pilgrims visit Jabel 'Arafat (Mount Arafat) in Arabia and pray there. So Mohamed chose that day because of its religious significance and according to many Muslim believers, activities done on this day are

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Mohamed's choice to return on the wagfa day is especially significant. It

establishes a special relationship between Mohamed's family and supposed supernatural

powers which might influence officials of the UNHCR to make a positive decision either

on his wife Victoria's or his own application. When the wagfa day came Mohamed

returned to Zamalek Church to inquire about the result of Victoria's application, but he

was told that there was no news about her application. However, instead of going home

from Zamalek, he went to the UNHCR in Mohandeseen and saw the result of his own

application. It was a positive result and he immediately ran to the nearest mosque and did

thanks in prayers to Allah. Mohamed always supplicated Allah to help him out and his

family with the difficult situation in Egypt:

I was very worried as the result of my wife's appeal did not come out, her younger sister's file was closed, their mother was locally settled and I have a child and did not see any light on the horizon. I asked Allah for proper guidance on the day when I went to pick up my card [UNHCR protection card]. I left it to Allah to choose what is good for me. I always ask Allah not to bring me something bad. I even asked Allah that if he thought the UN card was a bad thing not to give it to me. I always ask Allah for proper guidance during the night when something worries me so that he can make it easier for me. My hope is to be able to send my son to school until he completes his studies- it is my sole hope since I did not complete my school and I also hope to have a stable family. You know my marks qualified me for the Institute of Polytechnic Colleges but I could not study there because I had to look after my five female younger siblings. My father died when I was in junior high. He was killed during the murtazaga [mercenaries] movement.22

blessed. That is why some applicants to UNHCR believe that the results of their applications will be positive or at least that Allah decides on them in a way that pleases him. Thus, even if the result is negative, that means that Allah has decided it that way. 22 Murtazaga constituted the military corps of what is known as the National Front, the Sudanese opposition in Libya in the mid 1970s. They were mainly migrant workers from Western Sudan in Libya. Many of them were forcefully recruited in the opposition army and sent to attack Khartoum in 1976. They were called mercenaries because they were mostly from Western Sudan.

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Who Determines the Status of Applicants to UNHCR?

According to Kagan (2002), in Cairo, refugee status determination depends on the

way the applicants present their cases as well as on the process of refugee status

determination itself. Two further issues requiring attention are the problems of fluctuation

and recognition drop rates in Cairo. In this context, "fluctuation" refers to the increase

and decrease in the number of applicants for refugee status determination between years;

and "recognition drop rates" refers to the decrease in the number of applicants who get

recognized as refugees in each year. Kagan suggests that the issue of fluctuation raises

questions about whether some rejected applicants may in fact be refugees in need of

protection (Kagan 2002: 11). The UNHCR information booklet also states that it is the

asylum-seeker and his/her case who determine the result of the interview, as the

following quotation illustrates:

The purpose of a refugee status determination interview is to obtain a good understanding of your reasons for leaving, or refusing to return to, your country of origin. The facts presented by you at the interview will be evaluated in light of objectively credible and trustworthy information about conditions in your country of origin. Your statement and the available documentary evidence are evaluated against the applicable statement and the applicable legal criteria for recognition as a refugee. {Information Booklet for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Egypt 2003: 8)

Kagan (2002:11) has rightly indicated that one of the problems that leads to the largest

number of rejected and closed files is the long waiting time which the applicants spend

before they are finally interviewed. During the waiting time, applicants receive a lot of

information from their own as well as from other refugee communities and there is no

doubt that some of the information they receive is incorrect and probably influences their

99

cases in harmful ways. For instance, contrary to the UNHCR's information booklet which

states that the result of status determination is shaped by the quality of the cases

presented and the performance of the applicants during the interview, most of the

Sudanese asylum-seekers are informed by their communities that it is the interviewer's

mood and the applicant's luck that determine the results of the interview. Of 106

respondents, 78 believed that these two elements are very central in determining the

result of the refugee status determination. The following case of Osama explains how the

long waiting time before the interview affects the applicant.

Osama came to Cairo in July 2000 and asked some individuals about the

application procedures to UNHCR, but they told him that everything would depend on

his luck and on the individual who would interview him. They also told him that the

interviewer could make the interview longer or shorter, offer him refugee status or reject

his case with a chance for appeal, or close his file right away. Osama said the answers he

got from the individuals he asked made him very disappointed in the UNHCR and that

their words completely reversed the beautiful image he had in his mind about the

international organization. He said:

They have drawn a very gloomy picture about it [UNHCR] even though the office carries a very big name: The UN Regional Office for the Protection of Refugees. That name created a very beautiful and respected image in my mind but when I came to Egypt I discovered that the name was on one side and the reality on the other side.

Consequently, Osama was very depressed when he went for the refugee status interview.

He told me that the beautiful image he had in his mind about the UNHCR was now

completely replaced by one which suggested that the process would be anything but fair.

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This new ugly image about the UNHCR did not only develop in his mind because of

what he was told, but also because of the two long cold nights he spent lining up to pick

up the application form as well.23

Again, the reality Osama faced during the interview was not so different from

what he had heard from other people. The person who interviewed him was a woman and

he described the interview as a quarrel. He said right at the beginning of the interview she

told him that he had only one and a half hours during which she would ask him questions

and listen to his answers. She wanted to finish the interview within that time which she

set without any consideration to Osama's physical and psychological conditions. She

appeared to be looking for short answers and every time Osama wanted to explain a point

further she hit the desk and ordered him to stop. Both anger and sadness were clear on his

face when he was describing the way the interview went, and he told me with a sigh:

"Imagine, Gamal. You are having a case which you are recounting to me but I hit the

table and tell you to answer me with "Yes" or "No" instead of allowing you explain what

you have. What would your feelings be?" He said the story he told me was not a

complaint, but he simply wanted me to understand the suffering he experienced during

the interview. The interviewer made him leave the UNHCR premises disappointed

because several times when he wanted to explain his points she stopped him short. At one

point he even had to argue with her. He said the people outside were always afraid

23 The problem is that many Sudanese refugees came to Cairo having very high hopes for resettlement. Therefore, they became very disappointed when they discovered the process was different from what they had thought. Again, the Egyptian authorities' refusal to help the UNHCR with some of the refugee issues, especially the refugee status determination, made them develop feelings not much different from citizens' feelings toward their government. They assumed that they were becoming "citizens of UNHCR" immediately after their arrival in Cairo.

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because of such behavior. However, despite all the suffering he experienced during the

interview, Osama said he realized that UNHCR employees were few and each of them

was very tired after having interviewed six or seven individuals and that was why they

were angry and unfocused during the last interview cases. "They were tired and were not

in the mood to talk and that is why the results were mostly rejects and closed files in our

time", he said.24

On the contrary, the lucky applicants came out with a very positive image from

their refugee status interviews. For example, Ahmed said he came to Egypt in 2002 and

the person who interviewed him was a very organized and responsible woman. He further

said: "Many people are very critical about the individuals who interview them, but the

person who interviewed me deserves respect in the way she treated me. I sat with her for

about an hour and she was with me [attentive] during all that time."25

All in all, of 106 respondents and 74 focus group participants only 26 individuals

mentioned that they were fairly treated during the interviews for the refugee status

determination. Their allegations against the UNHCR officials are summarized by a 24-

year- old man (Rufaa) from Central Sudan who argued that UNHCR employees were

only looking for reasons to prove that the applicant was lying without considering the fact

that nobody would leave his own country and apply for refugee status without a genuine

reason.26 He described the interviewers as mostly young people who had recently

24 Osama was almost blind and was suffering from weakness of memory when I interviewed him. He told

me during the interview that he was already being treated for a memory weakness; he spoke very slowly and always repeated himself throughout the interview. He also had surgery in his eye retinas in 1993 when he was in Sudan, but he realized that he was having the memory problem after he came to Egypt. 25 While this is a small positive remark, it nonetheless shows that all opinions are not negative. 26 Rufaa was a participant of Focus Group 10 held in his apartment in Faisal (Giza) on January 22, 2004.

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graduated from the American University in Cairo and had very little knowledge about

Sudan. He continued that their lack of knowledge about Sudan made them ignore their

duties towards the people they interview — a thing which made them violate the rights of

the very people who seek the protection of their office. Some of the refugees' criticisms

were induced by negative results of refugee status applications, long waiting times before

refugees knew their application results, and local settlement which they called tawteen

mahalli and which many of them considered as no different from a closed file. Rufaa's

vehement criticism is possibly induced by the fact that his application result was a closed

file.

Another problem is the belief of most of the refugees in Cairo that the government

of Egypt advised the UNHCR not to recognize Sudanese asylum-seekers as refugees and

consequently not to resettle those of them who have been granted refugee status to

immigration countries. Therefore, of 106 individual interviewees and 74 focus group

participants, 122 thought Egyptian authorities do not want to allow the UNHCR to

provide refugee status to as many Sudanese as possible or to resettle those of them who

are recognized refugees to immigration countries. When I asked the reason why the

Egyptian authorities would do that, 58 of them responded that it was because of the

cooperation between the Egyptian and Sudanese governments to make life difficult for

the Sudanese refugees until they slowly die in Egypt or go back to Sudan and suffer

there. On the other hand, 64 respondents and focus group participants said the Egyptian

authorities were jealous of the resettlement of Sudanese persons in western countries. 31

of these latter explained that the Egyptian authorities know that Sudanese refugees are

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important sources of income for Egyptians (rent and other types of spending) and thus do

not want to lose them, whereas 33 others stated that the Egyptian authorities are afraid

that the resettled Sudanese refugees will go back to Sudan from western countries and

yj

contribute with new ideas and money to its development.

Sudanese refugees in Egypt — like Sudanese elsewhere — also think that Egypt

wants to keep Sudan in its armpit so that Sudan will never benefit from Nile water.28

Although six of the other nine Nile basin countries are experiencing droughts and

desertification, the Egyptian authorities consider the installation of projects that will

depend on Nile water in these countries as threats to Egyptian national security (Hamad

2003). Hamad (Ibid: 212), an Egyptian academic, has even gone as far as suggesting that

Egypt should use military force if diplomatic means fail to stop the installation of the

projects that will exploit Nile water in these countries. Again, Sudanese refugees are

aware of the political history of the two countries in which Egypt was first the colonizer

(1821-1884) and then the colonized-colonizer (1898-1956) (Powell 1995), and the

Egyptian consideration of Sudan as its natural extension but less equal to other Egyptian

provinces (Ibid). Moreover, according to Powell, Sudan and its population are used as a

way to gauge Egypt's position among "civilized nations", by Egyptian nationalists. Many

Sudanese refugees are aware of most of these issues and became skeptical towards

27 The idea that the Egyptian authorities do not want the development of Sudan is dominant among most of

the Sudanese almost everywhere, and their argument stems from the support of Egyptian governments for the worst dictatorships in Sudan and their frustration with Sudanese efforts to democratize the political system of their country. 2 Until now, Egypt is the main beneficiary of Nile water (55.5 billion cubic meters) and its current quota is larger than the quotas of the other nine Nile basin countries all together. In fact Egypt is even overdrawing 7.5 billion cubic meters more from Nile water and further increasing its annual quota to 63 billion cubic meters.

104

Egyptians in general. This was obvious on February 16, 2004 during a meeting of three

UNHCR representatives (two Egyptians and one Canadian) with members of the Peace

and Justice Committee in Sacred Heart Church. In this meeting, members of the Peace

and Justice Committee did not want any of the two Egyptians to speak. They did not trust

them until 1 intervened assuring them that the two Egyptians would not deceive them.

In spite of all of these issues, Egyptian authorities have repeatedly stated that

Egypt is a second home for the Sudanese and that they therefore should not be considered

as refugees (Idris 2005). The Egyptian authorities' argument is based on the Nile Valley

Treaty of 1978, the Charter of Integration which the two countries signed in 1982

(Woodward 1985, 1990, 1997), and the Agreement of Four Freedoms signed in 2004.

However, the situation has changed for Sudanese in Egypt in the aftermath of the

assassination attempt that Egyptian Islamists planned with the help of the Sudanese

authorities against President Mubarak of Egypt in 1995. Consequently, the Sudanese

whose files are closed are considered as illegal migrants in Cairo.30

The agreements discussed above may work for Egyptians in Sudan (where

Sudanese authorities venerate Egyptians and immediately incorporate them among the

first class citizens), but they do not work for the Sudanese in Egypt where both the

authorities and ordinary Egyptians discriminate against them. Moreover, it is probable

that the Egyptian authorities are particularly reluctant to consider Sudanese persons as

refugees because it bears an indirect condemnation of Sudanese authorities as persecuting

29 It is most likely that such statements have influenced the behavior of aid organizations toward the

Sudanese refugees in the country. 30 See Barbara Harrell-Bond's (2000) interview with Cairo Times.

105

their own citizens. Again, it is probable that such behavior also has racial implications

since most of the persecutors identify themselves as Arabs while most of the persecuted

identify themselves as indigenous African people.

Although some of these allegations sound possible, Sudanese asylum-seekers

also seem to be partly contributing to the negative results of their applications because

most of the applicants neither prepared their cases by themselves nor asked mussaideen

(mussaid -helper) to fill out the forms and write the cases for them.31 There are other

individual refugees who have specialized in writing cases and it has become their source

' t ' j

of income. Some of these individuals were very popular and well known among

Sudanese forced migrants in different parts of Cairo. Their popularity is based on the

number of successful cases they have written. Most asylum-seekers spent several weeks

and even entire months looking for the best case-writing specialists. For example, Susan,

a 34-year-old single mother with two children who came to Cairo in 1998, told me that,

until she lost her jobe, she took three weeks off to search for a good case-writing

specialist who could write an excellent appeal for her.33

Two case-writing specialists (Hasseeb and Siraj) were my key informants and

each of them used to make at least 1,400 pounds ($210) per month from the cases each

wrote. But there were many other such specialists form Darfiir, Khartoum, Central,

31 Mussaideen are individuals who are trained to help applicants fill out the forms and write their cases. Officials of UNHCR consider cases that carry signatures of mussaideen as more authentic than others, as a UNHCR official admitted during a meeting with Sudanese refugee community representatives in All Saints Cathedral on February 25,2005. 32 Mussaideen also take money for the services they provide but it is less than the money which applicants pay to private case- writing specialists. The availability of mussaideen is also recent and many refugees did not know about them. 331 interviewed Susan together with her sister, Regina, in her apartment in Maadi on March 26, 2004. Both of them were waiting for the result of their appeals for refugee status application.

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Northern and Southern Sudan. Siraj and Hasseeb and were my neighbors in Ain Shams

and they were from Darfur and Southern Sudan respectively. Siraj wrote cases for

applicants to the UNHCR and Hasseeb wrote cases for applicants to the Australian

Embassy.34 Most of the clients categorized them as such - that is to say, a specialist of

the applications to the UNHCR and a specialist of the applications to the Australian

Embassy, and they themselves believed in it to the point that they referred clients to each

other based on the clients' applications.

Although Hasseeb and Siraj lived in Ain Shams and were from Darfur and

Southern Sudan, their clients were Sudanese from different regional and cultural

backgrounds who came from other parts of Cairo as well as from Ain Shams to have their

cases written for them. In their apartments in Ain Shams (northeastern part of Cairo), I

met individuals who lived in Maadi (the southern part of Cairo) and in Mohandeseen

(southwestern part of Cairo). However, without denying the existence of a kind of

"Sudanese culture", I doubt that the case-writing specialists had accurately transformed

into written Arabic or English the cases of individuals who were not from their own

regions because they lacked the knowledge of the specific cultural aspects of other

regions and of ethnic groups which inhabit them. For instance, if a southern Sudanese

recounts his/her story to a Darfurian in Arabi Juba (the dominant Arabic dialect of

Southern Sudan) the Darfurian will skip a lot of things during his/her translation of the

southern Sudanese Arabic into English and the story will lose a greater part of its

34 It seems that the number of Sudanese refugees who travelled to Australia without the referral of UNHCR is by far larger than the number it took based on the referrals by UNHCR. That is why its embassy in Egypt was no less popular than the UNHCR.

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meaning and vice versa. Moreover, many case-writing specialists had little command of

English and therefore it is most likely that they could not accurately transform into

written form the stories they are told orally. Also, the case-writing specialists were all

men and it seems that women would not tell them all that they had experienced. For

example, it is less possible that women who experienced problems like rape would tell

male case-writing specialists the details of their stories. This is because many Sudanese

cultures consider talk about sex as taboo, particularly talk between individuals of the

opposite sex, and that is why in many cases individuals borrow terms from foreign

languages that stand for sex rather than mentioning it in their own languages. It is again

possible that the amount of money the applicants paid to have their cases written partly

affected the quality of the cases as the specialists gave more attention to the cases of

individuals who paid more.35

Consequently, advocates at Legal Aid realized that many cases are repeated over

and over with only slight changes. Again, in their cases, some applicants made

themselves members of regions and ethnic groups other than theirs. For instance, Rufaa

was from Central Sudan and Samir from Northern Sudan, but both applied to the

UNHCR as Massaleet from Darfiir even though they never visited Darfur and only

learned about the Massaleet after they came to Egypt.36 Samir was a Convention refugee,

35 Also there is a possibility that sometimes the individuals who wrote the cases made up stories that hardly corresponded to applicants' experiences or repeated some of the cases they had already written for other individuals with only slight changes to economize their time. 36 Most Sudanese learned about each other only after they came to Egypt. In Sudan, students are mostly taught that they are citizens of the Arab world for whose cause they should sacrifice everything, but are taught almost nothing about their own country and its peoples. The Sudanese school curriculum estranges Sudanese from their own country and their own people. So most of them discover the reality that the school curriculum misled them after they travel to Arab countries and try to interact with their populations.

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but it must have been usually difficult for most of the individuals who applied to UNHCR

•ym,

as members of ethnic groups other than theirs to convincingly present their cases. For

example, Rufaa and his three cousins were all given closed files and the reason is

possibly the fact that they were from the Ja'alyeen and Lahwyeen tribes from Central

Sudan and applied as Fur and Massaleet from Darfur.

These issues of misrepresentation also continued where education was concerned.

Most Sudanese refugees tended to underplay their educational level so as to make

themselves appear more likely to be refugees. This behavior emanated from the fact that

most individual Sudanese who were recognized as refugees were those who did not study

beyond high school. Therefore, many applicants who studied beyond high school wrote

in their application forms as graduates of high school or even lower because they

believed that it would increase their chances of becoming recognized refugees and

consequently being resettled in western countries. I asked the reasons why they would

think that the UNHCR largely recognized people with lower educational levels as

refugees and not those with higher educational levels. The answer was that most of the

UNHCR officials believed that forced migrants with lower educational levels were

honest in their cases.38 In sum, it is possible that individuals who did not tell the truth

about themselves were not able to effectively defend their cases as the stories they listed

might have contradicted their real identifications and behavior. Another question to be

raised here is why a considerable number of refugees continued to lie about their regional

37 Samir is a participant of Focus Group 3 which took place in his friends' apartment in Ard Al-Liwa on December 22, 2003.1 met him in Caritas and he later arranged for me to meet his friends and relatives. 38 So, it is probable that the university graduates who wrote in their applications as graduates of high school or lower would be less consistent during the interviews for refugee status determination, which might have reduced their chances for recognition.

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background and highest educational level in their applications even though the results

were quite often negative? The answer is that most refugees who did so were from

Central Sudan, Khartoum, and Northern Sudan where there was no war, but used the war

in Southern Sudan and Darfur to support their cases. As Darfurians and southern

Sudanese are stereotyped by northern and central Sudanese as backward and less

educated, many refugees from these other regions found it suitable to lower the levels of

their education in their applications. They thought that UNHCR officials would not

believe them if they applied as Darfurians or southern Sudanese with higher levels of

education. Although there was no war in their regions, refugees from Central Sudan,

Khartoum, and Northern Sudan came to Cairo as a result of two difficult options. They

had either to fight in Darfur, Eastern Sudan, and Southern Sudan or stay home hiding

most of the time with no work; as Richard Cockett (2010: 108) points out, "by 1994 the

demands for manpower had become so heavy that press gangs roamed the streets of

Khartoum to seize people for the PDF [Popular Defense Forces]."39

It was at the beginning of the interview which I conducted with Ahmed that I

discovered that many refugees and asylum-seekers had two educational levels (one for

UNHCR and another which was the real one). I asked Ahmed the highest educational

level he reached and he responded with a smile: "Which one? I mean, which educational

level do you want me to tell you ~ the one for the UN or the real one?" When I

responded that I needed both and that I wanted to know the logic behind having two

39 Popular Defense Forces, known in Sudan as Guat al difa 'a al Sha 'abi, are the government militias composed of poorly trained men recruited to fight for the government's project of Arabism in the name of Islam. Most of them were seized, trained for two to three weeks, and then forcefully taken to the war zone.

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educational identifications, he replied that he had to apply to UNHCR as a high school

graduate because if he told them about his real educational level and work experience he

would not have been recognized as a refugee. I discovered later that many Sudanese

refugee community members believed that the lower the asylum-seekers' educational

level in the application, the more probable it was they would be recognized as refugees.

That is why of 42 respondents who had university education, 13 wrote in their refugee

status determination applications as high school graduates or lower.

All the above mentioned issues, together with the global decline in countries'

commitments towards the protection of refugees (Chimni 1998; Felleson 2003; Nyers

2003), are responsible for the difficulties the Sudanese refugees encounter in Egypt.

Therefore, the number of Sudanese who are legally recognized as refugees in Egypt does

not correspond at all to the number of Sudanese refugees in general and the number of

Sudanese who applied for asylum in particular. As a result of these complications, people

from similar backgrounds and with similar experiences found themselves in separate

categories: some of them are recognized refugees while others are not and some of them

are locally protected while others are resettled in a third country. For example, 66 of the

68 recognized refugees in this research had friends, relatives and neighbors who went

through experiences similar to theirs, but got closed files.

However, one of the ways by which some of these complications could have been

overcome, is the involvement of forced migrant communities in the process of refugee

status determination. I do not mean that they would have decided who should be a

recognized refugee and who should not; rather, what I mean is that the UNHCR should

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have contacted the refugee communities to provide lists of their community members

with all the necessary information (e.g. ethnic group, family members in Egypt, province,

home area within the province, etc.). Such information would have helped in the status

determination beside the interviewers' own knowledge about Sudan and the history of its

conflict (Malkki 1996). This is important because the community leaders know members

of their own ethnic groups and areas they are coming from. Moreover, the office should

have had an outreach program of sending representatives to meet with refugee

communities and exchange ideas on the issues that would have led to cooperation rather

than suspicion between the UNHCR and refugees. Further, it would have been more

convenient if refugees from the Sudanese war torn regions of Darfur, Southern Sudan,

Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, and Eastern Sudan were admitted as prima facie

refugees and left the implementation of the individual refugee status determination to

people from the other Sudanese regions.

The Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program

The Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program at the American University

in Cairo arranges a weekly seminar on refugee issues open to the public and I found

several forced migrants keenly attending it. The program also allows qualified interested

refugees to enroll in some of its courses and charges them only symbolic fees. The

program plays a very important role in training individuals from the refugee communities

to serve as interpreters between refugees, on the one hand, and organizations that help

them, on the other hand. Consequently, several interpreters from the dominant Sudanese

refugee communities have been able to help their community members during the

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interviews at the UNHCR and embassies of resettlement countries. For example, Dinka,

Fur, and Nuer communities all had interpreters working in UNHCR office and the

Canadian and Australian embassies. They helped members of their communities during

the interviews and their employment in such institutions was also an excellent means of

survival. There were also individuals who interpreted for those applicants whose mother

tongue was Arabic.

The Forced Migration and Refugee Studies Program also made most of the

information about forced migrants in Cairo available on its website. Most of the

researchers who come to Egypt are affiliated to this program and most of the papers they

present are also published on the website. Furthermore, the program organizes a refugee

day every year at the American University in Cairo where refugees from different

backgrounds gather and celebrate. They perform different ethnic dances and sell

traditional foods and products. Some refugees also use the occasion to convey messages

to the international community, and especially the foreign journalists from widely

watched TV channels and widely heard radio stations. For example, in 2004, a group of

Fur refugees took the opportunity to express their anger against the Arab countries that

supported the Sudanese regime despite the crimes it committed in Darfur. The

demonstration was also a message to the entire international community about its

minimal action in the region despite the seriousness of the disaster. Demonstrators carried

large posters on their chests and backs and sang: "Genocide in Darfur. We are slaves in

Sudan." Some reporters of the international media, including a BBC Arabic Service

correspondent in Egypt, approached individual protesters and reported their views.

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Legal Aid Project and Nadeem Center

There are also two Egyptian organizations that are very popular among the

Sudanese refugees, the Legal Aid Project and the Nadeem Center for the Rehabilitation

of Victims of Violence. The Legal Aid Project is a paralegal organization helping

applicants whose case results are several months overdue. The Legal Aid lawyers help

refugees know about the results of their cases by contacting the UNHCR on their behalf,

assist asylum-seekers who want to write their appeals, and provide legal assistance to

individual refugees who have problems with Egyptians. For example, Regina (a 24- year-

old woman from Southern Sudan) told me that she went to the Legal Aid lawyers because

the Egyptian man for whom she worked made her 18-year- old brother sign five empty

checks as a way of pressuring her to stay with him.40

The Nadeem Center provides psychological rehabilitation for refugees who have

experienced violence and torture in their countries of origin. It works closely with the

UNHCR and most of its refugee patients were Sudanese referred by the UNHCR during

the refugee status determination interviews.41 The center also issued a strong statement

during Sudanese refugees' sit-in protest in which it stated that the UHNCR office failed

to find a just solution to the problem of Sudanese refugees. It again preemptively warned

40 She was interviewed in Maadi on March 26, 2004. Like most Sudanese, neither Regina nor her brother had an account at a bank and the fact that her employer made her brother sign empty checks would not be so scary if they ever had had experience of dealing with banks. So the employer seized Regina's and her brother's inexperience about the banking system as an opportunity to transform her into a slave-like domestic. However, the individual that Regina met at Legal Aid assured her that the employer was just playing games to guarantee her cheap labor and that he would not be able to legally use those checks against her. 41 The UNHCR refers refugees to the Nadeem Center to validate allegations about torture which asylum-seekers raise during interviews.

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the Egyptian authorities that a massacre would take place against innocent Sudanese who

organized a peaceful protest near the premises of UNHCR in Mohandeseen.42

The role of Churches and Mosques

Several churches and church related organizations are also involved in refugee

administration, or services in Egypt. These include All Saints Cathedral, St. Andrew's

Church (members of Joint Relief Ministry), Sacred Heart Church, Catholic Relief

Services (Ismail 2002: 3) and the Egyptian Coptic Church, the most popular of which are

Sacred Heart Church, St. Andrew's, and All Saints Cathedral because of their closer

location to public transportation services.

All Saints Cathedral provides medical assistance to asylum-seekers in addition to

some rations. Sacred Heart Church serves as a temporary shelter for some refugees in

addition to its functions as a club, a market, and a prayer place for Sudanese. It is the

place where they pass their spare time in the evenings in particular. I visited Sacred Heart

Church nine times during my fieldwork and each evening I observed crowds of Sudanese

standing in front of the church chatting or displaying Sudanese food products (dried okra,

dried fish, ground chilies, hibiscus, sesame oil, etc.), or cosmetics such as bakhour timan

(special Sudanese incense), or khumra (a mixture of perfumes like Fleur d'Amour and

Paris Soir and sandalwood). Some women were also selling tea. In an article dated July

31,2000, Abdalla Hassan observes the way refugees animate the Sacred Heart Church:

42 As things turned out, its predictions were correct, as we will see later in Chapter Eight.

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On any given day, the high arched ceilings of the Church of the Sacred Heart- or the Church of the Sudanese, as its neighbors know it-ring with the sounds of weddings, baptisms, and christenings.... On summer evenings, hundreds of southern Sudanese gather in the church courtyard. A canteen at one corner makes brisk business selling soda pop, tea, and sweetened warm milk. Vendors polish and mend shoes; others sell vinyl Republic of Sudan passport holders and copies of the Bible in Arabic. Sudanese youth spill out in front of the church gates.43

Above all, St. Andrew's and Sacred Heart churches provide educational and

vocational training programs and most of their staff members and students are Sudanese.

The medium of instruction in Sacred Heart Church is Arabic, whereas both adults and

children are taught in English in St. Andrew's. Despite the efforts these churches have

been making to help Sudanese refugees, my research has uncovered some problems that

need to be addressed. For example, most of the refugees believe that Sacred Heart Church

employs only Christians in its programs, but it includes Muslim students in its

classrooms. This means that teachers and other employees are all Christians. Some

refugees- particularly participants of Focus Group 10, have said that All Saints Cathedral

at one point used the name of the Canadian Embassy in Cairo to convert Sudanese

Muslim refugees to Christianity 44 They told me that the authorities of the cathedral

approached Sudanese refugees telling them that the embassy had a special resettlement

program for refugees who convert to Christianity through their cathedral. The refugees'

allegations about the goals of some Christian organizations were supported by

Ghazaleh's study (2001) which uncovered how one church organization offered to

43 See www.worldpress.org. 24/5/2005. 44 Participants of this focus group are three cousins and their friend, all from Central Sudan, and it was held in the cousins' apartment in Faisal (Giza) on January 22,2004.

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provide funding to the Sacred Heart school program, but only if all the Muslim students

were expelled. The headmaster found the idea unacceptable and subsequently refused to

implement it. Ghazaleh further uncovered that, in 2002, some Muslim refugees in Arba'a

was Nus woke up one morning in the winter to discover that blankets had only been

distributed to their Christian neighbors, and not to them.

Most of the respondents and participants commended the fairness of St. Andrew's

treatment of refugees. I visited it many times and found that there were refugees from

different ethnic, regional, cultural, and religious backgrounds teaching there in addition to

foreigners from western countries, some of whom were researchers conducting fieldwork

in Egypt. On the other hand, the Coptic Church paid 15 pounds (about 3 U.S. dollars) to

those refugees who attended prayers for 40 days. But only seven of the 180 individuals in

my research knew about the activity of the Coptic Church. There is also Maadi Church,

which teaches courses to children and adults and serves as a place for prayers.

Despite the fact that Islam has encouraged Muslims to assist and protect the

needy- including asylum-seekers, refugees, and immigrants — Islamic organizations do

not seem to play any significant role in the assistance of refugees in Cairo. This lacuna is

despite the UN's meeting with Mr. Mohamed Sayed Tantawi, the sheikh of Al-Azhar, in

an effort to mobilize Islamic organizations (Ghazaleh 2001). Al-Azhar is among the most

important Islamic institutions in today's Muslim world and the UN's visit to its leader

would have certainly mobilized the Islamic world to involve itself in refugee assistance

had Mr. Tantawi encouraged them. But Muslims and even Christians of the Arab world

support the Sudanese government and consider those running from its persecution as

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trouble-makers. Thus, the Egyptian Islamic organizations run medical centers and

provide individual care to many poor Egyptians, but they do not extend their services to

non-Egyptians in a significant way. They possibly think the government might associate

them with terrorists and victimize them if they further extend their aid operations. In

addition, the non-Islamic Egyptian NGOs do not provide any significant support to

refugees, as they also seem to think that their primary mandate is poor Egyptians.

Consequently, Hashim, a 33-year-old male respondent, is the only person of all

the Sudanese refugees I interacted with who said that he had heard about Muslim

organizations that secretly distributed rations to Muslim refugees in Arba'a wa Nus.451

asked him how those organizations distinguished Muslim from non-Muslim refugees

since all of them are mixed in the area. He replied that they have agents among the

refugees who provide them with the names of Muslim refugees and the location of their

apartments. The indifference of Islamic organizations towards providing support for the

forced migrants could also be attributed to the lack of a culture of civil society in the

region. In Egypt, as in other parts of the world where dictatorships dominate, people wait

for the president to tell them to help refugees; and since assisting Sudanese refugees

represents an indirect condemnation of the Sudanese regime, the Egyptian president will

not mobilize Egyptian organizations to assist the Sudanese forced migrants.

45 Hashim was interviewed in his apartment in Ain Shams on December 18, 2003. He is a Ja'ali from

Central Sudan. He has a bachelor's degree in engineering from a Sudanese university. The UNHCR denied him refugee status and his stay in Egypt was illegal.

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Role of Sudanese Organizations and Political Parties

The Sudanese also have their own organizations. These organizations include: the

Sudanese Development Initiative Abroad (SUDIA), the Sudan Cultural Digest Project

(SCDP), the Sudanese Human Rights Organization (SHRO), the Sudanese Organization

Against Torture (SOAT), the Sudanese Studies Center, and the Sudanese Cultural Center.

In addition, most of the Sudanese ethnic groups have their own community organizations.

SUDIA provided computer training and some English courses for Sudanese children, and

the SCDP conducted fieldwork on Sudanese cultures — particularly among southern

Sudanese and Darfur refugee communities - and made the results of its fieldwork

available to researchers and aid organizations.46 Sudanese Human Rights Organization

and the Sudanese Organization Against Torture documented individual cases of

violations and conveyed them to other human rights organizations. They also issued

testimonies on harassment and torture that had forced refugees to leave Sudan. The

refugees used these testimonies as supporting evidence while seeking refugee status and

the organizations charged them limited fees to keep themselves functioning. The

Sudanese Organization Against Torture also later offered courses on legal and human

rights in addition to English language courses. The Sudanese Studies Center organized

conferences on the democratic prospects in Sudan and the Sudanese Cultural Center

helped Sudanese in Egypt display their cultures.47

46 It is the success of SCDP that later resulted in the establishment of the Forced Migration and Refugee

Studies Program at the American University in Cairo. 47 The Ford Foundation was the major source of funding for the abovementioned Sudanese organizations.

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Unfortunately, however, most of these organizations were no longer functioning

in Egypt during the time when I was conducting my fieldwork in 2003 and 2004. The

Sudan Cultural Digest Project stopped functioning in 2000 when most of its members

resettled in Canada, USA, and Australia. The Sudanese Cultural Center also experienced

the same problem and the Sudanese Studies Center relocated to Sudan. The Sudanese

Human Rights Organization and Sudanese Organization Against Torture were forced to

close their doors in Egypt as a result of healthy relationships between the Egyptian and

Sudanese regimes and have opened up offices in London instead.

Sudanese political parties have also played a significant role in individual

refugees' lives. They issued testimonies indicating that particular applicants were their

members, employed some of them in their offices, and in some cases individuals sought

their mediation to study in Egyptian schools. There are also cases where they intervened

to release some refugees because their leaders knew top Egyptian security officers.

However, the Sudan People's Liberation Movement (SPLM) was the only political

organization that tried to connect the refugee social organizations to its political

structures. It did this by promoting within its ranks the individuals who were active in

community organizations. However, this caused a lot of fragmentation among the Fur in

Cairo. The SPLM Fur members in Cairo considered themselves as the only authentic

representatives of the "marginalized areas of Sudan", including Darfiir, and dismissed

members of the Sudanese Federal Democratic Alliance (SFDA) and the Democratic

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Unionist Party as unconcerned about Darfiir issues. They argued that such people should

be excluded from the leadership of the Fur community organization in Cairo.48

Sudanese ethnic community organizations play important roles. One of these roles

is the mediation between community members, the UNHCR and other

organizations/individuals who are interested in refugee issues. They issue letters

certifying that particular persons are their community members and that they deserve

consideration. The other functions of these organizations are social and psychological

ones. They help during occasions such as marriages, incidents, and deaths in addition to

the settlement of conflicts between community members or between members and

outsiders; as a participant from the Peace and Justice Committee put it:

We gave the responsibility for the settlement of problems to social [community] associations and to sultans [chiefs of ethnic groups]. One of these social organizations is the Union of Sudanese Associations, which we have founded. It represents all the Sudanese including the Nuba, the Fonj, the Fur, the people of southern areas [southern Sudanese] and even from the north. They have formed what is known as the Union of Sudanese Associations. They have their own social associations that address problems of their own communities. For example, groups such as the Dinka come to this church [Sacred Heart Church] every Sunday and solve family problems between husbands and wives. They would bring the man and the woman and sit down with them to settle the problem in the same way as the people do in Sudan.49

Community organizations such as the Peace and Justice Committee also testify to

the UNHCR about the marriages of southern Sudanese who do not have marriage

However, it is important to point out that members of all three political organizations expressed their strong support of the Sudan Liberation Movement that emerged as a major political power confronting the ruling National Congress Party in the region. 49I held this focus group with members of the Peace and Justice Committee in Sacred Heart Church on February 16, 2004 before the meeting which they had on the same day with representatives of UNHCR.

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certificates or who have more than one wife.50 The Peace and Justice Committee also

seeks to establish good relationships between Sudanese communities and encourages

them to live in peace. It also informs church authorities if refugees are taken to prison and

urges them to intervene and release them. I asked the eight leaders of the Peace and

Justice Committee why they did not intervene directly to release the imprisoned

community members since their committee appears to be a very important one. They

responded that they avoided meeting Egyptian authorities because their visas had expired

long ago and their residence in Egypt was illegal. Leaders of community organizations

with valid documents also serve to mediate between the community and Egyptian

authorities, especially when members of the community are detained in prison.

Roles of Individuals51

The two individuals whose roles in Sudanese forced migrant communities I would

like to discuss are Dr. Barbara Harrell-Bond, adjunct professor and advisor of the Forced

Migration and Refugee Studies Program, and Ashraf Milad Roxy, a refugee lawyer.

During several interviews by different newspapers and journals Barbara Harrell-Bond

urged the Egyptian authorities to adopt a policy that is more accommodating to refugees

by reminding them that good treatment of refugees is one of the basic principles in Islam

and that Muslim leaders should observe what their religion teaches them. In many cases

50 In most parts of Sudan married people do not need marriage certificates. Their certificates are the individuals who witness that they are married. Community organizations also organize farewell receptions, parties, and prayers for the members who are getting resettled in western countries.

1 Although many individual Sudanese played significant roles in Sudanese community organizations, I do not include them in this section because the refugees are their compatriots and working for them is part of their moral obligation.

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she also intervened to stop the deportation of individuals captured by Egyptian authorities

because they did not have valid residence permits. For example, at one point she helped

me stop the deportation of a 26-year- old male respondent (Sabih) who was arrested on

March 1, 2004 on his way back from Cairo International Airport to where he

accompanied a friend of his who was travelling to Sudan. We were finally able to bail out

Sabih for 200 pounds and he was given a piece of paper stating that he could only remain

for four more weeks in Egypt after his release. Subsequently Barbara Harrell-Bond

contacted the Legal Aid lawyers to revise Sabih's case and requested the UNHCR to

reopen his closed file since he was in danger.52

Similarly, Ashraf Roxy dedicated his time to Sudanese refugees when he was

working with Legal Aid to the extent that some of his colleagues were unhappy with his

cooperation with refugees and plotted to fire him.53 He continued to meet refugees on

every occasion even after he left the Legal Aid Project. He also played a very important

role during the Sudanese refugees' sit-in protest in Mohandeseen in 2005. He was one of

the few Egyptian voices that stood beside the protesters during and after the protest.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have discussed the Sudanese refugee administration in Cairo and

the roles which different institutions and individuals play in it. In particular, I have

explained the policies which Egyptian authorities adopted towards refugee administration

521 interviewed Sabih in his apartment in Roxy on February 28,2004 and visited him many times thereafter. He is a Ja'ali from Khartoum and completed high school. He was very thin and had a low voice. It seems that the hardship of life exhausted him. 53 He told me this during a conversation which I had with him after a Refugee Studies' seminar.

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and the impact of these policies on the function of the refugee related organizations and

the behavior of concerned individuals, including the refugees themselves.

Although Egypt has signed all the international instruments on refugees, at the

same time the government has distanced itself from refugee administration and thrown

everything into the hands of the UNHCR and other foreign organizations, including

refugees' own organizations. The conflict between UNHCR's dual role, of refugee status

determination and the protection of recognized refugees, and their lack of sufficient

staffing and resources, has seriously affected their capacity, which has led to poor

assessment of refugee cases and long delays. The Sudanese refugees believe that the

harsh treatment which most of them are exposed to during the interviews for the refugee

status determination and the lack of support which they generally experience are part of

Egyptian cultural dispositions that aim at restricting refugees' fair competition in

different fields of valued resources. The government's attitude and the UNHCR's limited

resources in Cairo constitute a social mold that shapes the survival strategies of Sudanese

refugees which I explain in the remaining chapters.

However, the difficult truth is that these apparently very local dynamics in Cairo

are in greater part caused by the post- Cold War global political and social systems that

have largely depicted displaced peoples in general and refugees in particular as dangerous

categories of humans and eroded the burden-sharing onto them. Consequently, host

countries are on many occasions allowed to shoulder the issues related to refugees alone,

regardless of the resources available to them, while rich countries have drastically

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reduced their funding to the UNHCR and often intervene to politicize its

(Hyndman 1996; Chimni 1998,2002, 2004; Adelman 2008).

CHAPTER FIVE EGYPTIAN REFUGEE POLICIES AND THEIR IMPACT ON

SUDANESE REFUGEES' HOUSING CONDITIONS

Mardi, 25 and Howa, 22 years old, both Fur from Darfur, came to Cairo with their

one year old son in February 2004. When Mardi visited us in Alfi Maskan on a Friday in

June 2004, he looked exhausted and while the other people were chatting, he seemed to

be ruminating on some problems. I asked him if he was okay and he replied:

I travelled three times between Cairo and Shalatin in the last three weeks. I was thinking that I would be able to find a job in Shalatin so that I could pay my part of the rent and buy food for my family in Cairo. But I could not find any job in Shalatin or here in Cairo. If I do not pay my part of the rent next week, we will be in the street. My wife is again pregnant and our child is only one-year- old. My head is broken [I am very desperate] and I do not know what to do.1

Mardi is not alone when it comes to housing and work problems. Housing and work

were always the first issues raised during interviews and focus group discussions. A

Kunuz woman, Ibtihal, from Khartoum put the refugees' housing and work ordeals in this

way:

The two serious problems which the Sudanese face, here in Cairo, are the problems of work and housing. However, housing problem is more serious than work problem. You can go to any Sudanese house and they will give you something to eat even if it is a piece of bread with a cup of tea. But where can you live? Many times, I suddenly ran into Sudanese persons wandering from house to house for months and months. For

1 Mardi and his family stayed with us (my three relatives and 1) in our two bedroom apartment for about a month before a Zaghawa friend of mine who recently came from Canada to meet his family in Cairo offered to accommodate them until Mardi was able to contribute to the rent in a different place. The Zaghawa friend travelled back to Canada in May 2004 and Mardi had to rent with Asha (identified in Chapter Four) and her daughter. As a result of his looking for work, Mardi never had the time to go to UNHCR to apply for refugee status determination.

126

example, they would come and knock on your door at 11, 12 or 1 at night hoping that you will accommodate them.2

Like most Sudanese refugees in Cairo, Ibtihal has put much more emphasis on housing

problems. She thinks that a Sudanese refugee can visit other Sudanese refugees in their

homes or places of gathering and will eat and drink with them based on Sudanese

hospitality. However, the subtext of Ibtihal's point in the excerpt above is the problem of

privacy when individual men or women suddenly knock on the door in the middle of the

night hoping to be accommodated in already overcrowded apartments, especially if the

occupants are from the opposite sex. In this chapter, I begin with a discussion of Cairo's

population growth and the impact that it has had on work and housing problems in Cairo

in general, and then proceed to describe and analyze Sudanese refugees' strategies to

cope with housing problems. A detailed account on their work problems is provided in

Chapter Six.

Population Growth and Work and Housing Problems in Cairo

Cairo, also known as Masr (Egypt) among Egyptians, has been growing rapidly

since the 1920s. From a population of 1 million in the 1920s, it grew to 5 million in 1970

(Yousry and Aboul Atta 1997), 15 million in 1996 (Myllyla 2001; Sims 2003), and 18

million in 2006 (Sabri 2009).3 The rapid growth is a result of both the natural growth of

its population and migration from other parts of the country. Figure 2 shows that almost

2 Ibtihal is a 41- year- old Kunuz woman from Khartoum. She graduated from high school and worked for the duty free shop in the Khartoum International Airport. I interviewed her in her friends' apartment in Arid Al-Liwa on February 8,2004. Her friends were women from Southern Sudan. She was denied refugee status. 3 Yousry and Aboul Atta (1997) also add that this population growth is supplemented by approximately 2 million daily commuters.

127

all the internal migration flows in the country are directed towards Cairo. The reason for

these unidirectional migration trends is the lopsided national development that favors

Cairo. For example, 55 percent of industrial establishments, 48 percent of industrial

employment, and 51 percent of industrial output are located in Cairo (Yousry and Aboul

Atta); Cairo's share of the service sector is even greater than its industrial share.

Radwan (2002) studied the geographical distribution of the labor force and

unemployment in Egypt in 1999 and 2000, and labor market demand in 2001 and 2005.

Greater Cairo's total labor force was 2,423,000 individuals (12.8 percent of the national

labor force) and 117,000 (4.8 percent of unemployed national labor force) of them were

unemployed; the total labor market demand in the Greater Cairo region in 2001 and 2005

was 492,000, reached 34.6 percent of the national unemployment absorption for the same

period.4 However, Fawzy (2002) has argued that Egypt (Greater Cairo not excepted) has

since the early 1990s "experienced rapid and substantial aggravation of the

unemployment problem."

The wages and salaries of those employed are also very low. In a study conducted

on 5978 Egyptian households, Nagi (2001) concludes that nearly three of every ten

households reported annual incomes below 2,400 Egyptian pounds (one US dollar = 5.6

Egyptian Pounds), which equates to less than 200 pounds per month. He also reported

that more than half (61.8%) of the households earned less than 3,600 pounds per year

(less than 400 pounds per month), and 82.4% of the households earned less than 6000

4 Radwan (2002) suggests that Greater Cairo is relatively less bad than the rest of Egypt in terms of employment.

128

pounds per year (about 500 pounds per month) (Nagi 2001:23). Nagi further shows that

46.6% of the households with the lowest per capita income lived in the poorest housing

conditions and 29.0% with the second lowest per capita income lived in the second

poorest housing conditions. It is because of these low monthly incomes that most

Egyptians prefer to live cheek by jowl in already overcrowded areas rather than looking

for newer, more spacious places to rent. This partly explains why foreigners, including

refugees, are the main targets of Egyptian landlords in most parts of the city.

The population density in Cairo has dramatically risen in most parts of the city

(Ibrahim and Ibrahim 2003: 210) (See also Figures 3 and 4). In response to this rapid

population growth, the city has been expanding both vertically and horizontally to resolve

the housing problem (Nagi 2001) (See Figures 5 and 6). In addition, most of the migrants

returning from the Arab oil producing countries have settled in Cairo thus increasing

Greater Cairo's population growth by about 300,000 inhabitants annually (Ibrahim and

Ibrahim 2003).

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Figure 2: Pattern of Migration into Cairo

Source: http://home.barton.ac.uk/curriculum/sc env/geology/Geographv%202/Migration%20&% 20pop%20growth%20in%20Cairo.htm 23/9/2006

130

Figures 3 and 4: Population Densities in the Greater Cairo Region, 1986 and 1994

1986 1904

Population/feddan (1 teddan - 0 3a ha)

>300

mrm 200 • 300

W& »oo - 20c

<100

GCR boundary

KISM (admin, unit) boundary

Source: Yousry and Aboul Atta (1997)

131

Spatial Growth of Cairo between 1965 and 1998

Figure 5 Figure 6 Source: http://home.barton.ac.uk/curriculum/sc env/geology/Geographv%202/CairoGrowth%20 AerialPhotos.htm 23/9/2006

The population explosion has had a number of consequences. First, during the

1970s and 1980s, millions of Egyptian expatriates in the oil producing countries, and

high ranking military officers invested in real estate, making it the country's fourth

largest sector after oil, manufacturing, and tourism. However, according to Elyachar

(2005), about 84 percent of these buildings should be classified as 'informal housing'

because they were built without the authorization of responsible government agencies,

did not conform to building regulations, and did not exist in official government statistics

and publications. As a result, in neighborhoods such as Imbaba, Brageel, Arba'a wa Nus,

and Zahraa Ain Shams, where large numbers of the Sudanese refugees live, most of the

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buildings do not conform to minimum urban housing standards, and could be considered

social and health risks (See Figures 7, 8, and 9, and 10 below).

Figure 7: Peripheral Informal Housing

Source: http://home.barton.ac.uk/curriculum/sc env/geology/Geographv%202/Peripheral%20info rmal%20housing.htm 23/9/2006

Figures 8 and 9: General Characteristics of Informal Housin

Figure 8 Figure 9 Source: http://home.barton.ac.uk/curriculum/sc env/geology/Geographv%202/Informal%20housi ng.htm 23/9/2006

133

Figure 10: Locations and Types of Informal Housing in Cairo

Source: http://home.barton.ac.uk/curriculum/sc env/geologv/Geographv%202/lnformal%20housi ng.htm 23/9/2006

The liberalization of economic policies by the Egyptian state in the late 1970s,

and especially the promotion of tourism, is another reason for the housing boom in Cairo,

something almost all the observers who have studied the housing industry have failed to

address. As a consequence of these policies, the country was opened up to people from

different parts of the world who came as tourists or business people. As a result, a larger

number of Egyptian landlords target foreigners when they have apartments for rent since

there are laws in place protecting Egyptian tenants. Also, most Egyptians prefer to stay in

the older parts of the city; those who are owners of apartment buildings add floors or

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rooms to their buildings so that their married children can occupy them (Singerman 1995:

113). In her study, Singerman found that several young people in the community were

able to marry "within a relatively short time either because their parents had set aside an

apartment in their building for them or added several floors to an existing building, or

else they had invested in land and constructed new housing for their offspring and other

relatives" (Ibid: 113). Again, the housing units that remained unrented until the children

are married are the ones located in the older parts of the city and not in relatively newer

ones.

Sudanese Refugees' Housing and Residential Problems in Cairo

Although some observers think that Egypt and South Africa are the only two

African countries that allow refugees to stay in urban centers (Jacobsen 2004), my data

suggests that refugees from sub-Saharan Africa, and from Sudan in particular, end up in

Cairo against the will of the Egyptian authorities who try to exclude them in all fields of

struggle including subsidized housing.5 Unlike Nairobi (Human Rights Watch 2002),

Johannesburg or Durban, where refugees are likely to build their own shacks, in Cairo the

refugees have to rent apartments from Egyptians.6 In this context, any program which

5 For Karen Jacobsen, see http://www.refugees.or^data/wrs/04/pdf/57-65.pdf 6/4/2004. Egypt is a society in which Egyptians often interact with individuals from Sudan and other sub-Saharan African countries only when an opportunity to exploit the latter occurs. Therefore, any effort toward the integration of Sudanese refugees will need a committed pressure from the international community on Egypt to change its anti-refugee integration policies. The proposed diplomatic pressure should be coupled with Egypt's assistance to achieve that end, which will only happen if the international community is seriously committed to the notion of burden sharing. 6 The brutal attacks on African refugees in urban South Africa (see BBC News between May 11 and 26, 2009) uncovered that many of them were living in shacks which they built to avoid rent. Also, the lack of space in Cairo and the easily distinguishable color of the Sudanese compared to that of most Egyptians are other problems. The refugees who lived in shacks in urban South Africa and Nairobi were somewhat

135

aims to incorporate the housing needs of refugees is impossible because such projects

will lead to the integration of refugees — a thing which both the Egyptian authorities and

n

population totally disagree with.

In addition, Sudanese refugees pay much higher rents than Egyptians for

apartments that are in poor condition. For example, an Egyptian pays khilu rigl ("key"

money) to have an apartment for decades, paying only a symbolic amount of money as

monthly rent afterwards, whereas a Sudanese pays the first month's rent and taameen

(apartment and telephone insurance) before he moves into the apartment and his monthly

payments of rent are five or six times more than that of an Egyptian. The monthly rent

paid by an Egyptian would not exceed 200 pounds. However, if a Sudanese rents a two

bedroom apartment for 600 pounds (about $100 US) a month in Ain Shams or Brageel,

before moving into the apartment, 600 pounds is required for the first month's rent, 600

pounds for apartment insurance, and an additional 300 pounds for telephone insurance.8

Subsequently, each month a payment of 600 pounds is required and additional bills for

telephone, electricity, natural gas, and water are provided. In this way refugees have

similar in color to South Africans and Kenyans respectively, and the authorities might have thought that they were nationals. 7Authors such as Grabska (2006: 301) have argued that Sudanese refugees in Cairo are partly responsible for their lack of integration in the Egyptian society and that this lack of integration is due to the experiences of discrimination which those who are from Southern Sudan among them had gone through while in Sudan. According to her, the horrible experiences which the Sudanese regime inflicted on most of the population from Southern Sudan made southern Sudanese refugees distrust Egyptians as well. However, my account uncovers that most Egyptians have closed any window for Sudanese refugees' integration in Cairo. First, Egyptians think that the Sudanese authorities had done nothing wrong; and second, on most occasions, Egyptians look at the Sudanese refugees as easy sources of exploitation, as I discuss in this chapter. Like their southern and western Sudanese counterparts, refugees from Northern Sudan (i.e. Danagla, Ja'alyeen, Shaiguya and Nubians) have also experienced discrimination and exploitation in Cairo. Marginalization of Sudanese regardless of their backgrounds in Arab countries was also discussed by (Mukhtar 200-; O'Fahey 2005). 8 Landladies/lords ask for telephone insurance, arguing that tenants might leave the apartment without paying their telephone bills.

136

become a very lucrative source of income for many Egyptians, as Grabska (2006: 302)

explains:

Refugees as foreigners pay relatively higher rents than locals who often benefit from the system of regulated rents. Almost all refugees in our sample live in rented apartments with rents between US$100 and $150 per month (as compared to $50 for locals). Based on the figures provided by the respondents of the Sudanese livelihood study, annually 270 Sudanese households contribute over LEI million (over $170,000) to the rental market.

Moreover, the refugee tenants do not only pay the landlords or landladies as

Grabska suggests. The system has created middlemen and women known as samasra

(samsar singular for male and samsara singular for female) and in most cases

landlords/ladies only accept tenants through known middlemen or housing agencies. On

many occasions potential refugee tenants who wanted to rent directly from landladies/

landlords were sent back to samasra. I asked a couple of landladies (Um Ahmed and Um

Ibrahim) reason why they would not rent apartments directly to tenants. Whereas Um

Ahmed responded that it was an established tradition and that she had to follow it, Um

Ibrahim explained to me that most samasra know well who would be a good or bad

tenant, as they are out there dealing with different types of people and added that samasra

also needed some source of income on which they could live. Some middlemen/women

charge about 200 pounds before they allow the potential tenant to see the owner of the

apartment, and housing agencies charge fees that are equal to a month's rent for the same

purpose. Then, in many cases, landlords and samasra exploit Sudanese refugees who

usually do not have the right of residence in Egypt and are therefore afraid to take any

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complaints to Egyptian authorities.9 For example, in my study, of 180 respondents and

focus group participants, 51 indicated that middlemen exploited them at least once by

taking service money from them without finding apartments for them. It appears that

most of the brokers who deceived refugees were men since none of the refugees said that

he/she was deceived by a samsara (middle-woman). This might possibly be due to the

fact that there are fewer female brokers between landlords/landladies and potential

tenants, as I found only two women working as samsarat (brokers).10 One of them was in

Maadi who helped her father in his absence and the other worked on her own in the

market of Alfi Maskan. She had a grocery store and Sudanese refugees often came and

asked if there were apartments for rent.

The case of Adam, a prominent member of the Sudanese Federal Democratic

Alliance (SFDA), illustrates some of the problems which middlemen cause to refugees

looking for apartments.11 Adam was a-43- year old man from Darfur who lived with his

wife and their three children in a very small one bedroom apartment in Alfi Maskan

(between Ain Shams and Masr el Gedida). When he was looking for a more spacious

apartment with a sitting room and separate kitchen in Masr el Gedida, he went to find

'ammi (uncle) Abdalla, the same samsar who helped me rent an apartment in Masr el

Gedida near Gisr el-Suez Street. 'Ammi Abdalla used to sit with two other samasra under

9 The difference between samsar and lease agent is that a samsar is an informal broker between the tenant and landlord, whereas a lease agent is a formal broker and pays taxes to the government. The samsar's role ends once the lease is signed. However, many of the samasra are mukhbireen (singular mukhbir- a security agent who secretly reports to the authorities about the situation in the areas where they live and /or work). 10 The reason why there are fewer women working as samsarat is probably because a samar needs to continuously interact with foreigners which Egyptian normative culture makes difficult for women. 111 did not interview Adam because I met him almost every day and observed and sometimes participated in what he was doing.

138

a tree in a small grocery market place located three blocks to the east. After looking three

times in vain for 'ammi Abdalla, one of the other two samasra, named Yousif, told Adam

that he knew of three apartments for rent in three different buildings in the area and that

he would help him rent one of them. He asked Adam for 100 pounds before he would

take him to see the apartments and another 100 when he signed the lease. When Adam

gave him the 100 pounds, Yousif counted them carefully with a big smile on his face,

kissed the bills, and put them in his main pocket. He then told Adam that the landlords

were not living in the building and that he would need two days to contact them through

i the bawabeen (one bawab- doorkeeper).

On the following day, Adam went to the market place to meet Yousif (the samsar)

to go and see the apartments. But Yousif was not there; when he went again on the two

following days, Yousif was again not there. On the fourth day, Adam and I were both in

the Sudanese Federal Democratic Alliance's (SFDA) office across the street, and saw

Yousif sitting under the tree in the market place. Adam asked me and Idris, a relative of

his visiting from Saudi Arabia, to accompany him to give our opinion on the apartments.

When we met Yousif, he told Adam that the apartments were all taken, one by a

Sudanese and two by khawajat (white men); then he asked Adam for 50 more pounds so

that he could take him immediately to see another apartment in a building three blocks

away. Adam said: "But I already paid you 100 pounds five days ago and you did not take

me to see any of the apartments." Yousif replied: "What you paid was for those other

places but this is a different place." Adam responded: "Ok. Take me to the apartment and

12 Most of the Egyptian men who wear traditional garments have a main pocket which is specially used for keeping money and sewn into special clothing worn under the garment.

139

I will give you the 50 pounds." But Yousif insisted that he would not take Adam to see

the apartment unless Adam paid the 50 pounds; he swore by Allah that he would

immediately take Adam to see the apartment. Idris took 50 pounds from his pocket and

handed them to Yousif, telling Adam that Yousif was genuine this time as he repeatedly

swore by Allah.

Yousif put the 50 pounds in his pocket and told us to follow him, and we all

walked to the building. When we got there, he told us to wait outside so that he could

inform the landlord that we were coming to see the apartment. After about ten minutes he

came out and told us that the landlord had gone to Alexandria and he asked for another

50 pounds to take us to see another apartment. Adam became furious and wanted to hit

Yousif. Idris and I intervened and told him to forget about it and find a different way of

looking for an apartment. So Adam decided to remain with his family in their small

apartment until they were finally resettled a year later in the US.

This case indicates that there are many samasra whose objective is to exploit

refugees rather than conducting honest business with them. An honest samsar usually

claims about one fourth of the monthly rent, half of which is paid to take the client to see

as many apartments as necessary until the client finds one that is suitable, with the other

1 % half paid after the lease is signed. Consequently, while it is relatively expensive to rent

through samasra, it is nonetheless the cheapest way available if the samsar is honest.

Foreigners can find apartments for rent in Cairo through lease offices but this is more

expensive because the tenant has to pay half of one month's rent to the lease office in

13 Some lease agents charge an amount that is equal to a month's rent.

140

addition to two and a half months' rent to the landlord. With the exception of one case, in

which I played an important role, I found no Sudanese refugees who rented an apartment

through a lease office.

There is also considerable inequity in the way that contracts are negotiated

between landlords and tenants in Cairo that leads to exploitation of Sudanese refugees.

Frequently, contracts stipulate that the landlord has the right to end the agreement and

evict the tenant at anytime if he needs the apartment back; they also stipulate that the

tenant has to inform the landlord a month ahead if he wants to move out of the apartment.

Landlords often use this clause to remove Sudanese tenants from the property, telling

their Sudanese tenants that they wanted the apartments back only two or three weeks after

having signed a 12 month lease, and without refunding the money paid as insurance for

the apartment and telephone. Many landlords used this as a quick way of making money

as they can lease out one apartment two or three times in one or two months. 46 of the

106 respondents and 34 of the 74 focus group participants were evicted from their

apartments several months before the end of the period for which they signed the lease

and were not paid back the money they had paid as the apartment and telephone

insurance.

The first time I lived in Cairo, between April 1994 and November 1997, Sudanese

refugees were only expected to pay the first month's rent and the taameen (insurance)

before moving into the apartment. However, when I returned to Cairo in 2003,1 found

that in many cases landlords also added what is known as taameen al-telefon (telephone

insurance) which equals a half month's rent and is paid together with the first month's

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rent and taameen before the tenant moved into the apartment. Therefore, many landlords

use the presence of Sudanese forced migrants to create an opportunity to satisfy their

urgent financial needs by renting out apartments to them and subsequently evicting them.

The case of Shogar, a 28- year- old man from Darfiir, illustrates this issue. When

Shogar and his three cousins rented a two bedroom apartment in Alfi Maskan, they were

evicted six weeks after they moved into the apartment.14 A landlady, whom I call Tuna,

knew a Darfurian, Musa, who was also a friend of Shogar. Musa lived in her

neighborhood and she asked him to find a good Sudanese person for a tenant. Musa

subsequently mentioned it to Shogar during his visit to my apartment where the two of

them met by chance. Shogar liked the idea and asked Musa to let Tuna know that he and

his three cousins needed the apartment. So Tuna fixed the date to meet Shogar and his

cousins on the third day late in the afternoon. Shogar, two of his cousins (Sin and

Sambil), Musa, and I went to see the apartment. We knocked on the door and Tuna

opened it for us. She looked like she was in her mid fifties. Her daughter, Dalia, was also

there and, unlike Egyptian tradition, she was already preparing tea for us. Dalia was in

her late teens and had just graduated from high school. Tuna was very talkative and

charming, and during our 45 minute visit she said more than ten times that she would be

delighted if any of us would marry her daughter, Dalia. She also told us that she was

divorced, that her ex- husband was an architect living in the coastal city of Ismailia, and

her son was a student in a technical college in Upper Egypt. She repeated that she would

14 Shogar and his cousins were also with me almost every day and I learned about their experiences during daily interactions, which also included participant observation and therefore I did not interview them. Shogar and his cousins were street vendors. Shogar was denied refugee status.

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never relax until her children (son and daughter) got married. However, the most striking

thing was that Tuna and Dalia were still living in the apartment when we came to see it

and everything seemed unpacked. So I asked her how she could rent the apartment to

other people while she and her daughter were still living there. She told us that they were

moving out in two days and that Shogar and his cousins could move in a day later.

So Tuna called the lease office and the office sent a woman with three copies of

the lease form. The woman from the lease office filled out the forms with all the

necessary information, signed on behalf of the office, made Tuna and Shogar sign their

parts, gave a copy to Tuna, another to Shogar, and kept a copy for the lease office. The

lease agreement was for 12 months and the total amount of money paid immediately was

1550 pounds of which 1250 was paid by Shogar and his cousins as first month's pay,

apartment insurance, and telephone insurance; and I paid the lease office 300 pounds

after the papers were signed. On June 1 Shogar and I went to pick up the key at about 11

am, and he and his cousins moved in later that afternoon. Tuna was there waiting and

gave us the key, but she did not tell us where she was moving or how she could be

reached. She answered that it was not necessary for us to know where she was living, and

gave Shogar a telephone number of a friend where she could be contacted.

I visited Shogar and his cousins a couple of times before I left Egypt in early July

2004. One thing that surprised us all was that Tuna and Dalia left most of their

belongings in the apartment. Some were packed in wooded boxes, while some of their

dresses, utensils and other things remained unpacked. The apartment was on the top floor

(fifth floor) and Tuna's brothers, sisters, and their children occupied the rest of the

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building. During the second week Shogar and his cousins learned from one of her

nephews, living in the same building, that she was constructing a home in al-Marg, at the

northernmost end of Cairo. We also learned from Tuna's nephew that her plan was that

she and her daughter, Dalia, would stay in al- Marg so that her son who was a college

student could get married and stay with his wife in Alfi Maskan, in the apartment which

Shogar and his cousins rented. In the meantime, she needed the money to build her new

home and that was why she rented out the apartment.

When I left Egypt in early July, Shogar and his cousins told me that Tuna had

come in the last week of June to collect the rent for July (500 pounds). When I called

them in the second week of July from Asmara to check how they were doing, they told

me that she had called and given them a five day notice to leave the apartment, using the

pretext of a visit of two Sudanese friends who spent a couple of hours in the apartment on

a Friday. I called Shogar again a week later on his cell phone and he told me that he and

his cousins were evicted and were staying with friends in three different apartments in

Ain Shams until they could find another place to rent. Tuna had used them for a

particular purpose and evicted them after only a month and a half without giving them

back any of the money they paid.

These cases are evidence that, in the housing field, things are structured in such a

way that actual and prospective tenants among the refugees are seriously disadvantaged.

Although they constitute an important source of income for the landlords, lease offices,

and samasra, there is no stipulation whatsoever for their tenancy rights in lease

documents. Therefore, samasra such as Yousif and landlords such as Tuna found lease

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conditions and absence of laws protecting refugee rights encouraging for the maximum

possible exploitation and abuse of Sudanese refugees. The exploitation and abuse of

Sudanese refugees constitute a routine behavior of many Egyptians during their

interaction with Sudanese as landlords or samasra. They are aware that refugees will not

resort to Egyptian legal institutions to get back the money which they unlawfully take.

This lack of protection of refugees' rights encouraged landlords, samasra and others in

the field of housing to gradually develop a culture of exploitation of refugees.

Some landlords and samasra believe any money paid to them is theirs and should

not be paid back even if they violate the contract or fail to deliver the service. For

instance, I had signed a year's lease in January 2004 with my landlady, whom I refer to

as Um Dina, before I moved to Zahraa Ain Shams. Um Dina was a divorced woman in

her forties, very dynamic and talkative. She had one daughter, Dina, in her early twenties,

studying business at Ain Shams University. Um Dina was a tailor who spent most of the

time at her sewing machine designing and sewing dresses for women. She was nice to her

Sudanese tenants and on a couple of occasions I even saw individual Sudanese among her

tenants sitting in her apartment. She lived on the ground floor and always left her door

open so that she could see the individuals who were coming in or going out of the

building. Her only problem was that she would follow every Sudanese woman coming to

my apartment and ask me if I knew her and why she was coming there. Although I

always told Um Dina that I was conducting research and my interaction with both

Sudanese men and women was necessary and left the door of my apartment open to show

her that I was doing nothing morally unacceptable, she would come back several times to

145

make sure that we were in the sitting room. However, I would say that things were fine

between us as landlady and tenant until April when Um Dina told me that she was

obliged to tell me to leave the apartment as her younger brother, a bearded man in his mid

thirties whom I call Mohamed, was coming back from the Emirates with his family for a

three month vacation. She told me she was sorry that Mohamed did not want single men

in the building, particularly when he was coming to stay in the apartment next to mine,

but I could come back after three months when her brother would have left. We agreed

that I would leave the apartment and she would pay me back the money which I had paid

as apartment and telephone insurance. Surprisingly, she told me that she did not owe me

any money when I came to collect it and walked about the building crying loudly as if

something very terrible had happened to her as soon as I said to her that I would take the

issue to the court. Many individuals from the neighborhood, some of whom were armed

with knives and cleavers, rushed to the building. Realizing that the issue was not as easy

as I had thought, I withdrew myself quietly, leaving Um Dina with my 750 pounds.

There are other cases where landlords evict Sudanese tenants because they fail to

pay their monthly rent due to unstable working conditions. For instance, Baboor, a 38-

year- old male (from Jibal al-Nuba, Nuba Mountains), was helped by a kinsman to stay

with shabab (young men) from the Miri (name of a Nuba tribe) living in Zahraa Ain

Shams.15 After only one month, the landlord decided to evict them because they were 50

pounds short on the 500 pound rent. Baboor had been unable to pay his part because he

was new in Egypt, was not working, and did not have any friends that could have helped

15 Baboor was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on February 13, 2004. He was denied refugee status.

146

him out. So they were all evicted at midnight without any notice. They took their luggage

to a Sudanese family that was living in a nearby building and each of them went and

found a place to stay for that night. After a couple of weeks of wandering between

friends' apartments, Baboor and his roommates were able to find another place to rent.

This time, after only three days, they were again evicted at midnight, without notice;

when other Sudanese tenants in the same building argued with the landlord, he decided to

evict all the Sudanese tenants from the building. However, in this case, the landlord paid

Baboor and his colleagues back most of the money he owed them.

Evicting Sudanese tenants at midnight is a common practice, regardless of

whether the tenants had violated the rental agreement, were sick or had small children.

Mussa, a 35-year- old male (Guraani) from Khartoum, explained his situation:

It is difficult to say that sit al beit (landlady) is good or bad. I told her that my wife had a caesarian birth and that I could not work to earn the money for rent since I had to take care of her, the new born, and the other two children. First, she agreed to wait until my wife gets better and is able to take care of herself and the children, then I will pay her the arrears. But she changed her mind and suddenly told me that she needed to rent her apartment to somebody else and that she decided to evict me.

Mussa tried to convince his landlady that he would channel all of his income after his

wife's recovery towards the payment of the debt, but she would not believe him. She

decided to evict him instead. Therefore, Yousif s family was evicted at midnight even

though his wife had not recovered yet and their newborn baby was less than two weeks

old. He continued recounting his situation to me saying:

So she came at midnight and told me to leave. I told her that I am magbool [a recognized refugee] and that I would direct any help that I got from the UNHCR towards paying the money, which I owed her. But she took my passport and evicted me from the apartment. Yasin and his

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roommates were my neighbors. They emptied a room for me with my family and told me to stay in it until I will be able to rent my own apartment. Their apartment is a three bedroom apartment but the third room is very small. So my wife, our three children, my cousin, and I sleep in one room, Yasin and another fellow in the other room, and Awab sleeps in the small room.

Similarly, Nimat, a 28-year- old Mahasi woman from Kassala, told me how disgusted she

was by the way a landlord forced her friend and neighbor, Intisar, and her family to leave

the apartment in Imbaba at midnight.16 Intisar, her husband, and their two children had to

spend two nights in the street when they couldn't pay the rent. So Intisar had to learn

halawa (known in the West as Brazilian waxing) and the art of henna to avoid future

eviction at night with the children.17 Ibtihal told me that she, her husband and their five

children were evicted from their apartment at night and had to go to Sacred Heart Church

where the seven of them were given a small room with two beds and one table and had to

share the kitchen and the bathroom with other refugees.

Midnight evictions not only constitute a strategic position of Egyptian landlords

to put more pressure on their refugee tenants, but also establish a sadistic orientation to

161 interviewed Nimat in All Saints Cathedral in Zamalek on March 26, 2004. She is a university graduate and was studying English at Sacred Heart Church. She was always worried that she was already 28 and did not have any fianc6. Her first application for refugee status was rejected and she was waiting for the result of the appeal. I interviewed Mussa in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on April 15, 2004. He completed high school and was a trader in Sudan. He was a street vendor in Egypt. He was a recognized refugee with no right for resettlement to a third country through UNHCR. 17 Brazilian wax, also known as G-Wax, is a procedure involving: "the complete removal of the hair from the buttocks and areas adjacent to the anus, perineum and vulva (labia majora and mons pubis). The majority of the types of Brazilian waxing leave a small line of pubic hair above the vulva, commonly known as the 'G-Wax' or just 'Brazilian'." For more information, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian-waxinf; 14/8/2006. However, in Sudan, the waxing includes the removal of the hair from the abovementioned areas of the body plus the hair of legs and arms. In our case, Intisar's clients are the families of Sudanese businessmen who relocated with their businesses to Egypt, and a few female refugees that enjoy a luxurious life because of their connection with diplomats, western tourists, foreign businessmen, and night clubs.

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humiliate them as it is more panicking to a tenant to be suddenly forced to leave a

residence at night than it is during the day. It is a behavior that stems from landlords'

culture which informs them on how to deal with tenants who do not fulfill some of their

expectations. This type of culture also shapes landlords' emotions in that they do not take

pity on tenants they decide to evict, regardless of whether they include small children,

women who recently have recently given birth, or sick individuals; they are just black

people who, based on my conversations with several Egyptians, can endure hardships and

pain more than other categories of the human population.

There are a very few landlords who want their tenants to stay and allow them to

pay any amount until they are able to find the money to pay the accumulated debt (rent).

This was obvious in Sayed's (a 30- year- old male J'afari from Omdurman) situation,

whose landlady wanted him to pay any amount he could afford until he would later be

able to pay the arrears he owed her.18 He said he lived in the same apartment with many

people from different parts of Sudan but most of them were from Western and Southern

Sudan. They rented with him until they got resettled in Canada, the USA or Australia.

The last individuals who moved in were Nuer from Southern Sudan. They lived with him

about eight months, when one of them went to the USA and others went to Australia.

When they left, Sayed was alone in the three bedroom apartment, but he could not afford

to pay by himself, and he told the landlady that he wanted to move out. He told me that

the landlady had gotten used to him living in the apartment, and did not want him to

18 Sayed was interviewed in Katherine and Mohamed's apartment in Maadi 'Arab on March 18, 2004. A graduate of junior high and a taxi driver in Sudan, he was working for a car wash in Egypt. His biggest worry was his forceful separation from his wife and his baby daughter by his wife's mother. His first case for refugee status was rejected and he was waiting for the result of the appeal.

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move out. So she told him to give her any amount he could afford until he could find

other individuals to share the rent. He said she told him: "You can pay me five pounds,

ten pounds, twenty pounds, fifty pounds, etc., just anything you can afford; there is no

problem." He described her as a good and understanding person. But she was furious

when Sayed told her that he had to leave because the arrears would accumulate to the

point where it would be difficult for him to pay. When she realized that Sayed was

planning to move out she insisted that he should pay the whole amount he owed her, but

Sayed told her that he would leave something valuable as a guarantee until he could pay

the money.

Sayed's landlady's treatment of him is an exception to the way in which Egyptian

landlords generally treat their Sudanese refugee tenants. It means that not everything in

the field of housing is about making a profit or about winners and losers (Warde 2004).

He did not pay her for several months, but, still, she was accommodating to him

considering the circumstance he was in. Sayed mentioned one main thing distinguishing

his landlady from the majority of the landlords, which is that she was used to having

Sayed as her permanent tenant for a long time, an indication that Sayed's presence as her

familiar tenant added a new dimension to her perception of Sudanese refugees.19 This

means that culture incorporates new elements as individuals move across different fields

(McLeod 2005).

Another exception is Tairab, a Fur in his mid thirties who lived two blocks away

from my apartment in Alfi Maskan. He dropped by my apartment with his eight-year- old

19 She also told Sayed that her husband had worked in Sudan. All these factors together made her different from many other landladies/lords.

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son several times in their white jallabiyas (Sudanese traditional male garments) either on

their way to mosque for Friday prayers or back from it. During one of their short visits to

my apartment I asked Tairab about the nature of the relationship between him and his

landlord. He told me that his landlord was a very nice man - a man who always wore a

thick beard and shaved his moustache. He prayed at the same mosque where Tairab and

his son used to pray and was sometimes imam during some prayers. Tairab said that his

landlord had a special place in his house where he raised chickens and pigeons and that

he often killed and gave some of them to Tairab and his family, in addition to an Eid

(Muslim celebration) lamb which his family always shared with Tairab's family.20

Tairab's landlord is one of few exceptions when it comes to Egyptian landlords'

treatment to their Sudanese tenants.

Description of Sudanese Refugees' Apartments

In most cases, the apartments rented to Sudanese are in the worst locations in the

buildings, on the ground or top floors. Ground floors are humid and very hot during the

summer time, and cold and wet during the winter, because they are located closer to

cesspools where waste water from different parts of the building accumulates before it

runs into the main cesspools buried in main streets where it is siphoned off. The waste

water often leaks out of the buried cesspools, particularly in the old and poorly

maintained slums and runs in the narrow streets between the blocks of buildings. For

20 Muslims celebrate Eid twice a year. The first Eid is celebrated immediately after the end of Ramadan (month of fast) and the second (Greater Bairam) is celebrated when Muslims go to the Arabia for hajj. I did not have a chance to interview Tairab, as he was working and Friday was his only day off on which he visited friends and relatives after prayers.

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example, in A1 Zahraa (Ain Shams), 11 of 19 Sudanese refugees' apartments that I visited

were on the ground floor. In this neighborhood, it is not unusual to see the waste water

filling the narrow streets and entries of buildings making the access to some buildings

and main streets difficult. In the building where I lived, the landlady used to pile stones

and bricks on top of each other for the residents to step on while walking in and out of the

building on the days when there was a problem in the sewage system and the dirty water

transformed the entry of the building into a swamp. Further, ground floors are targets of

theft and vandalism. 23 of 180 respondents and focus group participants were victims of

theft because their apartments were broken into while they were out.

Top floor apartments are also poorly located. There is often a lack of water on top

floor apartments and residents have to use pumps to draw the water upstairs and plastic

containers and barrels to store it. Pumps require more electricity, which is expensive. In

sum, more than 75% of the Sudanese apartments that I visited were either on the top or

ground floors. Of the 31 apartments I went to as a visitor or tenant (tenant of three) in Ain

Shams, Alfi Maskan, and Masr el Gedida, 12 were located on the top floor and 14 on the

ground floor. Three apartments where I was the tenant (first in Masr el Gedida, then in

Zahraa Ain Shams, and finally in Alfi Maskan) were top floor apartments, and

particularly in Zahraa Ain Shams and Alfi Maskan we had a major problem with the

water.

Most of the Sudanese forced migrants' apartments are poorly furnished, not well

maintained, and bathrooms are often wet because of the old taps and rusted pipes

supplying the water. Landlords rent them out as furnished apartments, but supply them

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with their old and broken furniture, including beds, mattresses, chairs, stoves, plates,

televisions and telephones. Ahmed (identified in Chapter Four) told me that the one

bedroom apartment where he and three other Sudanese lived was considered a furnished

apartment even though his bed fell apart several times every night while he was trying to

sleep. Ahmed also stated that most of the furniture was made of wood where, unlike

metal, insects and germs can live for a long time. Pointing to his bed and the chairs he

said they were all old, and of exhausted wood; the mattresses were all old which was why

their hair was always full of cotton or sponge particles when they woke up in the

morning: "So everything here is a problem but we are forced to stay because we do not

have a choice and since we do not have a choice we have to follow the only hard option

1 that is available to us". In addition to cotton and sponge particles, the apartments, such

as the one I rented in Alfi Maskan, are foil of fleas and lice.

Baboor told me that most apartments rented to Sudanese had a limited number of

beds. Those who could not afford to buy mattresses or plastic mats on which they could

sleep had to sleep on cardboard. Consequently, Baboor had already slept on cardboard for

nearly a year before he was able to buy a mattress which he spread on the floor; the few

times he slept in a bed was when he visited friends or relatives. So he was now

comfortable because he was able to own a mattress on which he said he enjoyed sleeping.

2UlTarkab alsaab", Ahmed said. It means, in Sudanese Arabic, that you have to take the only difficult option that is available. 2 A non- Sudanese may wonder how Baboor can sleep in a bed while visiting friends since there is always a shortage of beds in Sudanese refugees' apartments. However, the reality in most parts of Sudan is that members of the household always do all they can to feed their visitor/guest with the best food they can afford and prepare the best sleeping conditions for him/her. Therefore, it is normal that members of the households who sleep in beds prepared one of their beds for Baboor to sleep in.

In sum, the problems which most of the Sudanese refugees face in Cairo would

lead one to an argument that the Egyptian authorities did not honor the Four Freedoms

Agreement which they signed with their Sudanese counterparts in January 2004

(Nkrumah 2004). The Four Freedoms Agreement authorizes both Egyptians and

Sudanese to move freely between their respective countries and reside, own property, and

work in either of them. Therefore, based on the Four Freedoms Agreement, the Nile

Valley Treaty of 1978, and the Charter of Integration of 1982, Sudanese refugees at least

deserve to be legally protected from the exploitation of landlords/landladies and samasra

since they are Sudanese and these agreements stipulate that Sudanese should not be

treated differently from Egyptians.

Conclusion

In this chapter, I have discussed how the general population growth and

unemployment in Cairo have exacerbated conditions for Sudanese refugees. The

Egyptian authorities have adopted policies that exclude the refugees from integration in

Egypt. The policy adopted has created fields of struggle in which Sudanese are often kept

as disadvantaged tenants. In addition, the lack of laws to protect refugee rights has

created adverse conditions for Sudanese refugees as tenants of Egyptians in Cairo. The

Sudanese refugees' housing conditions also reflect the Egyptian discrimination of

Sudanese as of lower human value compared to Egyptians and other non-African

foreigners even though there are several agreements which the Egyptian and Sudanese

authorities have signed to create special status to their citizens in each other's countries.

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The lack of government protection and the Egyptian landlords' and employers' behaviors

and attitudes indicate that Sudanese refugees are allowed to be exploited and controlled.

They are relegated to the worst housing, for which they have to pay higher rates, and

from which they can be evicted without being paid back the money which the landlords

owe them.

The integration of Sudanese refugees in Egypt is not easy - it is something that

needs a committed international effort to pressure Egypt to abandon its anti-refugee

integration policies. This pressure has to be accompanied by assistance and development

programs that will encourage Egypt to move to a more refugee accommodating direction

which is impossible to achieve unless the global socioeconomic and political trajectories

shift towards considering refugees as a shared global rather than regional or individual

countries' responsibility.

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CHAPTER SIX SUDANESE REFUGEES' SURVIVAL STRATEGIES IN RESPONSE

TO DIFFICULT RESIDENTIAL AND WORK CONDITIONS IN CAIRO

The main objective of this chapter is to describe some of the survival strategies

adopted by Sudanese refugees in response to their situation in Cairo. These include, inter

alia, resource pooling, acceptance of job duties beyond what they were initially told,

avoidance of arguments with their employers, and adoption of income-generating

activities in the informal economy such as street vending, or selling handicrafts, alcoholic

drinks, or their own body organs.1 Sudanese refugees also have formed community

associations, borrowed from their relatives, and refrained from going to medical

institutions during illness.2Although, most of the strategies they have adopted in response

to their victimized situation could be understood as resilience, strategies such as kidney

selling could be interpreted as a collapse of resilience.

Resource Pooling as Sudanese Refugees' Survival Strategy

Most of the Sudanese in Cairo, in response to the difficult situation in the city,

have added new aspects to their cultural knowledge by adopting a system of resource

pooling which extends beyond kinship and regional affinities, to national affinities. These

affinities have become key sources of survival of individuals and household members.

My analysis draws from the household affinity studies of Hein (1993), Singerman (1997),

1 Prostitution is also adopted as a survival strategy by individual refugees, but its discussion is beyond the scope of this study. 2 Formation of community associations is among the survival strategies the Sudanese refugees adopted in Cairo, which I have already discussed in Chapter Four.

and Hoodfar (1997); and from Koser's (1997) idea of affinity, which he used to study the

adaptation of Iranian refugees in the Netherlands. The networks that I am using in this

section differ from Hoodfar's (1997) vertical networks, as my respondents' networks do

not usually extend to government institutions. They can be considered one-mode

networks since their actors are members of one marginal group (Flom et al. 2004;

Wasserman and Faust 1994). Although Sudanese refugees were members of different

backgrounds prior to migration, their presence in Cairo as an undesirable Other has

reduced them to members of the same group: the group of those who are dominated,

exploited, and controlled. However, through group and individual agency, refugees

transformed their situation as an undesirable Other into an important factor for

community formation and empowerment. In Cairo, during their interactions with

Egyptians, Sudanese refugees made the fact that they are Sudanese transcend class,

cultural, tribal, religious, and regional schisms that are quickly transforming Sudan into

smaller fragmented political entities. Yet, some of these schisms are sometimes revisited

during the interactions of refugees between themselves.

Pooling resources is an important means that most of the Sudanese in Cairo have

adopted to make life easier for themselves. By pooling resources I mean that, in most

cases, individuals who are able to contribute to the rent and the purchase of food, host

and feed those who are unable to pay their part of rent and/or contribute to the purchase

3 Southern Sudan became an independent country on July 9, 2011. Darfur, Kordofan, Nuba Mountains, Southern Blue Nile, Eastern Sudan, and Central Sudan are expected to follow the lead of Southern Sudan if the government continues to forcefully impose its arabization policies in the name of Islam on the non-Arab population. The non-Arabs are still by far the majority even after the breakaway of Southern Sudan. Even liberals among Sudanese Arab intellectuals are against the exploitation of Islam and Arabism to exclude the majority of the Sudanese people.

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of food until the latter are able to do so. It is a system in which everybody pays what they

can afford and those who have more pay more.

After more than a decade of field research in Cairo, Homa Hoodfar (1997), Diane

Singerman (1995), and Unni Wikan (1980,1996) conclude that there are particular kinds

of strategies that Cairo's poor population adopt in order to survive. Among these

strategies are attempts to preserve extended family ties, establish and maintain networks

involving neighbors, co-workers and individuals working in public institutions, and

adding new networks through marrying their children to spouses who are able to

financially support them. These anthropologists have come to the conclusion that almost

every activity in Cairo is based on networks and that without these networks survival

would have been impossible for the Egyptian poor.

Like Cairo's poor Egyptian households, Sudanese refugees' resource pooling

strategies are also based on networks. However, their strategies do not extend to

government institutions. It was only in rare cases when individual Sudanese were able to

establish and benefit from networks with individuals working in Egyptian government

institutions. For example, Siham and her husband, Tilib, were able to send their nine year

old son to school based on the relationship with the school headmistress who had rented

her apartment to them.4 The second example is that of Ahmed who talked proudly about

an Egyptian security officer who entrusted him with some of his family duties when he

was on a mission to other Egyptian cities. The final example, here, is that of the two Fur

men (Rasul) and (Seraj) who, through a connection to an Egyptian psychiatrist for whom

4 Siham and Tilib are identified in Chapter Four.

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they worked, were able to have one of their kinsmen admitted twice for treatment in

Bahman Hospital, a prestigious private hospital for psychiatric diseases, at a discounted

fee.5 These three cases were among the few exceptions.

In most cases, the Sudanese refugees' networks do not extend to government

institutions and the members of these networks are mostly Sudanese. My study suggests

that the density [to borrow from James Scott (1991)], of Sudanese forced migrant

networks is the greatest between members of the same ethnic group, less between

individuals from the same regional background, and even less between individuals who

say that they are just Sudanese persons. For example, 10 of the 15 focus groups were held

in apartments whose tenants were roommates from the same ethnic, religious, and

regional backgrounds and four were held in apartments whose tenants were Sudanese

from different ethnic, religious, and regional backgrounds. Similarly, 75 of 106

respondents were sharing apartments with their kinsmen, whereas 31 were living with

roommates of backgrounds different from theirs. Therefore, although ethnic bonds are the

strongest force organizing Sudanese refugees in Cairo in households, circumstances have

obliged Sudanese of different regional, ethnic, and religious backgrounds to rent together

to overcome residential problems— a phenomenon which does not exist in the households

of poor Egyptians.6 For instance, Ahmed and Hashim (both identified earlier) said that

they always lived with Sudanese of different backgrounds. Hashim even made the point

that refugees with the strongest propensity for renting together with individuals from the

5 According to Seraj and Rasul, it is at Bahman Hospital for Psychiatric Diseases where famous Egyptian actors and businesspeople and politicians resort for convalescence after sickness. The two men were among my acquaintances during my stays in Cairo and both of them had been denied refugee status. 6 It is almost inconceivable to find Egyptians from different religious backgrounds mixing together. In most cases religion separates them from each other.

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same ethnic and religious backgrounds are those from regions other than Khartoum and

Central Sudan.

In several cases individuals who shared apartments with their kinsmen partly

depended on individuals from other ethnic groups to support themselves and their

roommates and vice versa. For example, Sami (36- year- old man from Darfur), who

lived with his Fur relatives in Zahraa Ain Shams, received from time to time a couple of

hundred dollars from his non-Fur friends from Darfur who were resettled in the USA. His

35- year- old Balanda (tribe) friend, Clement, from Southern Sudan, often invited him

and his roommates to drink their special kanymuru (type of local beer). Clement said:

"Sami and his relatives are my favorite friends here, in Cairo. I frequently ask my wife,

Mary, to brew kanymuru so that they can come spend some time with me chatting and

drinking. It is a good way of forgetting the worries of life for a while."7 Another example

is Yak, a -37 year- old male Dinka from Southern Sudan. Yak lived in Ain Shams and

was dependent on his Fur friend, Yahya, who was resettled in Australia.8 When Yahya

made his wife come to Egypt en route to join him in Australia, Yak helped her find a

place to rent and visited her weekly. Yahya was not only sponsoring his wife; he was

sponsoring Yak as well. Yak told me that Yahya had already put his papers in process for

resettlement to Australia before his wife came to Egypt, but that Yak would wait until he

71 did not need to interview Sami because he lived with me during fieldwork. He was also one of my key informants. He was a recognized refugee, but was denied the chance for resettlement in a third country on the ground that he came to Egypt from another country and not directly from Sudan, a form of punishment adopted by UNHCR against individuals who move to countries where they have relatives or where they think refugees are better protected . Clement is identified in Chapter Three. 8 Yak was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on January 17,2004. He is from the Upper Nile area in Southern Sudan. He completed high school in Sudan and is an excellent carpenter.

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could travel together with his friend Yahya's wife. Although Yak and Yahya first met in

Egypt in 2002, Yak said Yahya was closer to him than most of his own relatives.

Patterns of Resource Pooling

The resource pooling of Sudanese is partly organized on the basis of seniority and

security of stay in Cairo. First of all, the Sudanese whose stay is legal in Egypt, either

because they came before 1995 or because they are recognized refugees, often sign the

lease on behalf of the other roommates. Individuals who have just arrived in Egypt are

exempt from rent and food purchases for one to three months. Mayo who lived in a two-

bedroom apartment in Ain Shams with four roommates explained the system they had

established in their apartment to treat three other Sudanese refugees who had recently

arrived in Cairo and who were staying with them:

The tradition here in Egypt is that the person who comes to Egypt and stays with friends or relatives is exempt from contribution to the rent in the first month. In the second month they can pay their part of rent. So the three individuals who are staying with us are in their first month and they do not pay the rent. They came only last week and they can stay until the end of the next month before they can contribute to the rent. It is we, the first five individuals, who originally rented the apartment who pay the rent. We cannot take the money from the other three because they came recently from Sudan.9

As I have mentioned earlier, roommates, relatives, or friends who cannot afford to

contribute to the rent and purchase of food are not asked until they are able to do so. For

9 Mayo did not know the ethnic backgrounds of his roommates and those of the three individuals they were hosting. The fact of being Sudanese is what brought them together. He was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on January 6,2004. He was always hopeful and smiled even though he coughed every few seconds. He had tuberculosis at the time when I interviewed him and was admitted to a hospital several times before and after I interviewed him. He completed his high school in Sudan and was planning to leave Egypt as fast as he could because he had a closed file at the UNHCR.

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instance, Yasin and his roommates hosted Mussa (see Chapter Five) and his family (wife

and three children) and exempted him from paying rent until his situation improved. They

told Mussa that the little money he earned from street vending could be used to buy

things for his children; they accepted that Mussa's wife would cook for the household.

Mussa told me that he did not know the ethnic origins of Yasin and his roommates, as he

had only met them in Cairo, but he added that they looked like they came from Western

Sudan. Clearly, Yasin and his roommates provided Mussa and his family with support

based on regional rather than ethnic affinity. Similarly, there are individuals who live at

their work places as domestics or other kinds of work but regularly pay their part of rent

since it helps those who stay in the apartments on a regular basis and these are the places

where they can return to during their off days or if their jobs terminate. Such patterns do

not exist in poor Egyptian survival strategies; even in Wikan's studies (1980, 1996);

when she points out that when the long term bonds between members of extended

families and neighbors lead to the provision of shelter during family conflicts and visits,

the help provided is more temporary. The Sudanese support networks are much more

immediate and open, stemming from a type of culture in which relatives and friends are

hosted for many months or even years without being asked to leave.

As a result of such cooperative behavior, none of the 180 respondents and focus

group participants was living alone. The apartments that I visited were often

overcrowded: one bedroom apartments were often occupied by three or four individuals

and two bedroom apartments by five or six individuals. In many cases people just

dropped in on friends' and relatives' apartments without prior notice. The most crowded

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of all the apartments I visited was a three bedroom apartment in Agooza (on the western

bank of the Nile) where 18 individuals from the same ethnic group (Fur) lived.

Sudanese refugees' resource-pooling strategies often extend to friends and

relatives who live somewhere else in Cairo, or even abroad. Individuals whose economic

situation is relatively better often help friends or relatives, who are not their roommates,

with the rent and purchase of food. For instance, for a year and two months, Zaki, a

Massaleet from Gadarif, Eastern Sudan, who lived in Masr el Gedida, helped 29- year-

old Siddig, another male Massaleet from Gadarif, who was living in Ain Shams, with

rent and other living expenses until Siddig was able to find a job and support himself.

Siddig told me his story, saying:10

I did not know anybody when I arrived in Cairo. As there was nobody whom I would stay with, I went to a fundug [hotel], and then later I asked about the whereabouts of the Massaleet in the city. Someone gave me the address of the Sudanese Federal Democratic Alliance. I went there and found Zaki and I told him that I was looking for some Massaleet individuals and he told me that he was one of them and supported me a lot. He told me: "I will take you to some people so that you can live with them." And he took me to these people in Hammamat el Gubba.

Hammamat el Gubba is a residential area located to the west of Masr el Gedida where

Zaki lived. None of the individuals Siddig was taken to live with was a Massaleet — they

were only Zaki's acquaintances whom he first met at one of the two teashops (Aaya) in

northern Cairo where Sudanese refugees spent time socializing. Siddig's roommates

were four individuals in a two-bedroom apartment with a salon and two balconies. They

101 interviewed Siddig in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on February 15, 2004. He studied until Grade Six in Sudan and worked as a farmer. But harassment forced him to leave the country. His file was closed at the UNHCR.

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rented it for 500 pounds per month which means that everybody paid 100 pounds per

month and Zaki paid for Siddig since he was not working, as Siddig thus explained:

Everyone contributed 100 pounds for the rent and Zaki always paid my part of the rent and gave me massareef (pocket money) for food, transportation and cigarettes. I started working only two months ago. I am doubtful that even my own brother could have helped me the way Zaki has supported me. He supported me for a year and two months until I worked only two months ago.

Siddig has pointed out that the help he received from Zaki would not probably have

received from his own brother. One would concur with Siddig that on many occasions

friends can be more helpful than relatives. For example, there were two brothers (Yasir

and Mahmoud) whom I knew very well since the mid-1980s in Khartoum. They came to

Cairo in the early 1990s. Yasir who had come to Cairo earlier was very helpful to

Mahmoud who joined him. There was a time when Yasir was forced to leave his job, but

Mahmoud, who was still working, did not help him. Therefore, Yasir had to depend on a

friend (Shakir) in the southwestern part of Cairo (Dokki), even though he lived in the

northwestern side of the city (Hadaig el Gubba). Although all the three men were Fur,

Shakir only met Yasir and Mahmoud in Cairo for the first time.

Moreover, in some cases Sudanese refugees found other Sudanese asylum seekers

stranded at Sacred Heart Church, the train station, or the airport after they arrived in

Cairo, and took them home. For example, Baboor (identified earlier) explained that the

first place where he lived was Hadayeg el Gubba (residential area near Ain Shams) with

awlad junubyeen (young men from Southern Sudan). He had not known anybody when

he first arrived. He had walked out of the airport and stood in front of the taxi station,

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even though he did not have the money to pay the taxi fare and did not know where to go.

While he was standing there, a Sudanese man came by, exchanged greetings and asked

what happened to him. When Baboor told him that he had just arrived from Sudan, and

did not know where to go, the man told him to wait until his own relatives arrived, and

they would all go together. So Baboor waited with him until his relatives came and then

they all went in a taxi to the apartment where the man and his kinsmen lived.

Once they got to the apartment the man asked Baboor where he was from in

Sudan and Baboor told him that he was from Jibal (Nuba Mountains in Western Sudan)

and he said he knew the people of the Jibal. Baboor told him about his difficult

experience in Sudan and that he wanted to apply for refugee status determination. The

man took Baboor to the UNHCR office where he applied for refugee status determination

and Baboor remained with him and his kinsmen in their apartment until he later found

individuals from Jibal and rented with them. Baboor is a Nuba from Western Sudan and

the individuals who met him at the airport and took him home are Nuer from Southern

Sudan.

Similarly, Sudanese refugees help other Sudanese who do not have the money to

pay for transportation. For instance, Basamat, a 25- year- old female Ja'ali from

Khartoum who was living in Tawfeeg at the time of interview, explained how a

compatriot from Southern Sudan helped her after he realized that she did not have the

money to pay for bus fare:11

1 1 1 interviewed Basamat in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on Apri l 5 , 2004 . She was a univers i ty student, but had to leave the university because of persecution. She was pregnant at the time when I interviewed her and was living with her husband's friend's family supported by the friend's mother. Her husband went back to Sudan to bring their two- year- old son who was left in Sudan with Basamat's

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.. .1 went to the UN one day and when I finished from there I realized that I lost the money, which I had for transportation. I had a credit of 75 piaster on my cellular phone and called a friend to bring me money. 1 waited for three hours and he did not come. A southern Sudanese found me waiting and we started chatting after we had exchanged greetings. We did not know each other before and he even speaks Juba Arabic [special dialect of Arabic spoken in Southern Sudan]. He understood during our conversation that I was waiting for somebody and he asked me: "Why you are waiting for him?" I told him that I lost the money, which I was supposed to use for transport to go home. He called a taxi, paid the driver, and gave me some pocket money. He did not think that I was a woman from Northern Sudan. As a Sudanese, he felt that it was his responsibility to help me.

Hoodfar (1997: 228) has pointed out that Egyptian men sometimes helped each

other with services, but that their networking rarely involves direct material transactions,

such as borrowing money, because Egyptians consider such transactions risky for

friendships. This observation may partly explain why Egyptians were often confused

when they saw Sudanese refugees paying the fare for five, six, or seven other Sudanese

refugees on public transport.

Refugees' resource pooling strategies are partly based on the concepts of trust that

are dominant in Sudanese culture, but not in the Egyptian culture. However, almost all

the respondents, except a 31- year- old Shilluk woman, Mary, from Khartoum, stated that

they learned about Sudanese ethnic groups from other regions only after meeting up with

• i 'y them in Egypt. These interactions reduced the distrust and skepticism which the

Sudanese authorities had created or reinforced between Sudanese people from different

backgrounds. For instance, although many of the southern Sudanese were highly

relatives. She gave birth to another baby about five days after the interview. She was denied refugee status by the UNHCR and applied at the Australian Embassy in Cairo for resettlement to Australia. 12 Mary's father was a teacher who lived with his family in many parts of Sudan and Mary was a boarding student in high school and university, which is how she knew about most of the Sudanese ethnic groups before she came to Egypt.

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educated, they said they were surprised to discover that many ethnic groups in other parts

of Sudan, such as Darfur or the Nuba Mountains, had also been victimized. They had

believed that all the other Sudanese were just Mundukuru, a reference to Arabs in Juba

Arabic, prior to their arrival in Cairo.

Sudanese Refugees' Work Conditions in Cairo

As mentioned earlier, the Sudanese refugees' arrival in Cairo coincided with a

serious unemployment problem. Fawzy (2002: 11) makes it clear that the unemployment

estimation rates are between 15 and 17.5 percent and that the "accumulated

unemployment increased from 1.4 million in the early 1990s to 1.5- 2 million in 2000."

The factors contributing to unemployment included, among others: liberalization of the

economy, saturation of the government and agricultural sectors, and the decrease in the

number of Egyptian migrants leaving to work in the Arab oil producing countries. Both

Fawzi (Ibid) and Nagi (2001) agree that the market liberalization policies could not

absorb the growing numbers of people looking for work, as most of the capital was

invested in sectors with lower rates of employment and the result was joblessness. At the

same time, informal economic activities were growing substantially. My study

corresponds to Fawzy and Nagi's conclusion concerning unemployment. I observed

during my fieldwork that many young men aged between their late teens and mid

twenties were loitering on street corners in most parts of the city, making racist remarks

to black people passing by and improper advances to women. Added to all of these was

the corruption of the leaders of the ruling National Democratic Party who directed most

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of the country's resources to their personal benefit causing serious hardship in the

country, resulting in the January-February 2011 Youth Revolution calling upon President

Mubarak and his circle to resign from Egypt's leadership.13

Therefore, Sudanese refugees had to compete with Egyptians in an overwhelmed

labor market. To protect their citizens, Egyptian authorities do not allow the Sudanese,

including those that are recognized refugees, to obtain jobs in the formal labor market.

Consequently, the informal economic sector is the only sector where Sudanese refugees

can work. The patterns of the Sudanese refugee jobs include house-keeping, construction,

factories, shops, street vending (including wallets, bags, cheaper perfumes, etc.) at the

edges of markets or street corners, and foraging in the junkyard of 6th of October City for

recyclable metal pieces. Moreover, some of the Sudanese women weave baskets and

bags, and crochet table cloths and bed sheets. Most of these jobs are overwhelmed with

problems. Below I discuss the particularly difficult problems that Sudanese refugees

encounter in domestic work, constituting new behavioral trends both among the Sudanese

domestics and their Egyptian employers.

Although it is mostly women from the Southern Sudan who work in housekeeping

in Egypt, some men, and a few women from other parts of Sudan, also work there. Of the

180 respondents and focus group participants, only 18 worked in housekeeping and I had

four unsuccessful appointments with women working in housekeeping whose work

conditions prevented them from being interviewed. Of the 18,11 were women (nine from

13 Different news sources including BBC, Aljazeera, and Alarabiya reported on February 4,2011 that President Mubarak's and his family's net worth is estimated to be between 40 and 70 billion dollars, most of which is in foreign banks.

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Southern Sudan and two from Northern Sudan), and seven were men (four from Southern

Sudan and three from Darfur). They worked for wealthy Egyptian families and, in some

rare cases, for foreign diplomats or businesspeople. The housekeeping business pays

women better (minimum 500 pounds- about 75 dollars US per month) than men

(between 350 and 400 pounds) and those women who work as mubeet or igama (staying

at the work place day and night) are paid even better, and can make up to 800 or 900

Egyptian pounds. I think that the reason why Egyptian employers pay Sudanese women

better than Sudanese men working as domestics is possibly because they think that

domestic work is a women's field of activity.14 This increase in pay for female domestics

comes at a price. Many are exploited and are semi-slaves, as Regina, who was working

mubeet at the time I interviewed her, explained to me.

Regina said that for the young women who have mothers, fathers, brothers and

sisters who needed help, mubeet was the only option to secure food and clothing and pay

the rent. She referred to the situation of young women working as mubeet as ghurba

marratein (double alienation) meaning that they were alienated from their country of

origin, and from their relatives in Egypt, because in most cases they only see their

relatives two or four days in a month; and there are times, especially in the summer

months when their employers leave for coastal resorts, when they must stay more than a

month at work without visiting their relatives. During the winter, Regina took care of a

14 Yet, Sudanese female domestic workers are paid less than domestic workers from countries like Eritrea, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Philippines, and Sri Lanka (Jureidini 2009,2010). Although Ray Jureidini points out that Sudanese domestic workers in Cairo are paid less than their counterparts from these other countries, he does not say why that is the case. However, my Sudanese informants believe that female domestic workers from other countries are paid more than Sudanese domestic workers because they speak English which they think is considered by Egyptian employers as a symbol of prestige.

three-bedroom apartment in Cairo. In the summer she accompanied her employers to

their summer resort in Alexandria, where the work is much more difficult, because her

employers would often invite friends and relatives, and have more parties, and she had to

serve them and clean up the mess they made both in the villa and on the beach. She also

added that she cleaned up the villa until early in the morning, then took the furniture and

other things and followed the employers to the beach, and then cleaned up the beach and

collected the furniture from the beach before they returned to the villa. In addition to

housekeeping Regina had to babysit. Her employers would wake her up anytime at night,

even if they needed a simple thing such as a cup of water, and in most cases (particularly

at the resort) she often stayed awake until 1 or 2 am and then started the following day

early in the morning. However, her salary was the same in both places, despite the change

in the nature of her work. These allegations of long hours work are confirmed by Ray

Jureidini (2009: 85) who states that "75 percent of live-in domestic workers, on average,

work 12 or more hours per day." He continues further that 17 percent of his respondents

worked 18 or more hours per day.

Regina was paid 900 pounds a month because she was a woman. Abbaker, a 26-

year- old Fur male from Khartoum, said that he was hired for 300 pounds per month to

clean up a villa, but he discovered that the job also included carrying an old man on his

back to the washroom and then back to his bed.15 Moreover, some employers are

sadistically rude; some designate particular plates and cups for their house keepers, and

15 Abbaker was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Sashms on October 10, 2004. Abbaker is a high school graduate and worked as a construction worker in Sudan. He became a recognized refugee after an appeal.

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others go as far as asking their housekeeper to sleep in the bathroom as Kawthar, a 30-

year- old female Tama, participant of Focus Group 7 from Jazira (Central Sudan), who

lived in Zahraa Ain Shams, pointed out. She said that the women, who live in as mubeet,

often work 24 hours; and the employers are so rude as it is as if they were revengeful

about the money they paid the housekeepers.16 Where she worked, the intigam (revenge)

for the money she was paid reached the extent that she had to bring her own cup, because

she was not allowed to share her employer's cups, and had to bring her own food and

sandwiches. Her situation was relatively better than Alweil's friend's. Alweil is a 19-

year- old Dinka woman.17 She told me that a relative of hers (Maria) was told to sleep in

a bathroom, as if she was not considered a human being. She said:

Maria preferred to live without passport than sleeping in the bathroom. She was sent to buy tomato paste from a nearby corner store, but she came home instead and left her passport with her employers. They took her passport on the previous day as part of the procedures of allowing her to work with them.18

In addition to long working hours and little pay, Egyptian employers generally do

not treat their Sudanese workers well. They usually will not pay wages until at least the

16 She and her husband hosted this focus group in their apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on January 9, 2009. Her husband was also one of my key informants and earned his living as a specialist in writing cases for applicants to the Australian Embassy. He was also writing his master's thesis. They were recognized refugees and were later resettled in Canada. 17 Alweil is a very clever young woman. She completed high school in Sudan and was hoping to become a medical doctor in the future. I had met her several times at St. Andrew's where she was studying before I interviewed her at her Fur friend's apartment in Hadayeg Maadi on April 4, 2004. Aside from studying, Alweil was also working as a domestic to feed her family but her work conditions were relatively better than those of her relative, Maria. She was sobbing during the interview when she told me the story of her father about whom she never heard since their town in Southern Sudan was attacked in the mid 1990s. The father was not home during the attack and they had never heard from him since. She said she was only six or seven years old at the time. She was a recognized refugee and was waiting for resettlement. 18 This treatment is based on the Egyptian, almost caste- like, social system where members of the higher class do not associate with those of the lower class. The cruel treatment of Sudanese domestics stems from it and Egyptian domestics are probably treated in the same way.

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first week of the following month. In many cases, they keep their workers' passports as a

way of guaranteeing the continuation of their cheap labor. Sometimes, Egyptian

employers often falsely accuse their Sudanese employees of theft when the employees

inform them that they want to leave their jobs, ask about unpaid salaries or wages, or

about their documents that are on hold. All the 180 respondents and focus group

participants indicated that they had either experienced such accusations themselves or

knew individuals who were victims of such false accusations. Many respondents,

including Abbaker, Alweil, and Kawthar, said that female employers usually accuse their

employees of stealing their jewelry, particularly gold, and male employers accuse their

employees of stealing cell phones, computers, or printers. For example, Khamis, a Fur

refugee, worked for an Egyptian police officer as a housekeeper. The officer paid him in

the first month the money he was entitled to; however, in the subsequent months the

officer sometimes paid him late or less than the money he was supposed to receive. When

Khamis told the officer that he would not continue working in that way, the officer

accused him of stealing his cellular phone. Khamis tried to quit the job several times and

each time he ran away the officer searched for him and brought him back to work. When

his friends and relatives asked him why he did not tell the officer that he would never go

back to work instead of hiding from him, Khamis replied that he was afraid of being

deported because he was not a recognized refugee and that his residence visa had expired

several years ago.19 Cases like this of Khamis fall in a category which Jureidini and

Moukarbel (2004: 597) call "modern contract slavery of domestic workers". To them,

1 9 1 wanted to interview Khamis af ter I heard h is s tory from his re lat ives and fr iends , but I could not because his employer did not allow him to visit them.

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any violence or threat of violence (physical or emotional) used by employers to dominate

workers is slavery.20

Working as a domestic is not only difficult and exploitive, but also very risky.

There are many cases when male employers and/ or their male relatives sexually harass

their female housekeepers. For example, Nasma, a 28- year- old woman from Kordofan

in Western Sudan, told me with an exhausted voice and tears trickling down both cheeks

that she worked as a housekeeper for a couple of days, but had to quit it because of the

sexual harassment she experienced.21 Even worse, there are cases when Egyptian

employers kill their Sudanese employees and get away with the crime. For example, Um

Zahra told me that her 18 year old daughter, Zahra, was hired as a domestic by a young

family in Mohandeseen, in the second week of July 2005. During that week, Zahra had to

accompany her employers to their summer resort in Alexandria. On the twelfth day (July

23, 2005), the employers called Um Zahra from Alexandria and told her that her daughter

had drowned in the family's swimming pool and that she would find her body in a

hospital in Alexandria. Um Zahra and her relatives tried to meet or at least speak with

Zahra's employers, but the employers refused to communicate with them. They went to

the Sudanese embassy in Cairo, but the embassy failed to help them. Um Zahra said:

The embassy could not help us. They say the man's father is a very famous lawyer and member of Egyptian parliament, very close to the

20 Also see K. Bales (1999) and B. Anderson (2000). 21

Nasma was interviewed together with her 30- year- old husband, Abushanab, in their apartment in Ain Shams on September 12, 2003. She was from Kawahla (Kordofan) and her husband was from Shaiguia, Northern Sudan. They were recognized refugees and were waiting for resettlement to Finland. The husband had a broken leg and she was taking care of everything alone inside the apartment.

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President. So we just bought a piece of land at Ain Shams Graves and buried her. My Zahra is just finished like that.22

The interaction between Sudanese refugees and their Egyptian employers in

domestic work constitute an encounter of two different sets of cultural perspectives with

most Egyptian employers not being hesitant about treating their domestic workers with

disrespect and cruelty and Sudanese domestics being shocked by the new cultural matrix

and carefully dealing with it. In Egypt, domestic workers and doorkeepers establish a

category whose members do not go to school, quickly stand up when they see employers

or their family members nearby, are always the ones who greet asking if they need any

help while they look around authoritatively, do not sit on their chairs or eat with them,

and so on. The rule also follows that domestics always address the employers and their

family members as Beigh (Turkish- Bey) or Basha (Turkish- Pasha) which mean Sir or

Mr., or Hanim (Turkish), Madame (French) and Mademoiselle (French) which are terms

for lady; employers call them walad (Arabic-boy) or bint (Arabic-girl). A 15-year- old

boy or girl can call a 50-year- old male doorkeeper ya wala/walad (You, boy) and he has

to respond: "aiywaya Beigh (Yes, Sir)."

It is a new environment overwhelmed with unfamiliar titles and practices for

Sudanese domestics, many of whom graduated from high school or university and are

leaders of refugee communities, carefully crafting their way in it. They speak the

Egyptian dialect of Arabic and use these titles during various interactions with Egyptians.

2 2 1 interviewed Um Zahra on the phone from Toronto af ter a fr iend o f mine ca l led me from Egypt and to ld me about Zahra's death. I interviewed Um Zahra on September 30, 2005. Um Zahra is from Southern Sudan and her husband is from Darfur. Zahra was the second of their six children (two boys and four girls) and was the main family provider.

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These elements might have started as tactically performative activities but some of them

are gradually adding themselves to the repertoires of refugees' culture. It is noticeable in

the lives of many former Sudanese refugees now resettled in Canada and the US who mix

Sudanese and Egyptian Arabic dialects even when they speak with their fellow Sudanese.

Self-Employment and Dependency on Relatives and Friends Abroad

Many forced migrants chose to be self-employed rather than working for

Egyptians. Consequently, many men are street vendors selling goods in different parts of

the city; some even travel to neighboring towns to avoid the problems facing street

vendors in Cairo such as confiscation of their goods, payment of bribes, fines and even

imprisonment. For example, Muhieldin, a 38- year- old Fur, from Darfur, earns his living

as a street vendor. To avoid such problems, he travels to Badrashin (about 7 kilometers

south of Cairo) where he displays his goods a couple of days in a week. He packs his

bags early in the evening so that he can be on his way to Badrashin at 6 am on the

following day. He says that there is nobody confiscating his goods in Badrashin, and that

he got used to people there and they got used to him:

They are fallahin ghalaba [poor peasants]. They do not cause any problem and 'ammi (uncle) Subhi can even protect me from anybody who would cause a problem to me. Some of them and I even often contribute money and buy lunch which we eat together. There is a wife of one of them who cooks it and we pay her for her service.23

23 Muhieldin lived with me throughout the time when I was conducting my fieldwork. He is a very hardworking person. He is enrolled for a bachelor's degree at a university in Egypt and is also a singer composing his own songs about Darfur and the conflict there. He is a recognized refugee. The Canadian Embassy in Cairo interviewed him for settlement in Canada, but it later cancelled the process without telling him the reason.

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Many women crochet table cloths, bed sheets, sofa-sets and pillowcases, and

weave baskets. Many southern Sudanese women said that they had learned tatreez

(crocheting) and decoration of tablecloths, bed-sheets, etc. as children. It is usually

tourists visiting Egypt, and Sudanese refugees who have been resettled in the USA,

Australia, and Canada, who buy these handicrafts. The women often send these products

to relatives and friends in resettlement countries to sell and send back the money, as I

discuss in some detail in Chapter Seven.

Some women brew araguie (arrack) to support themselves and their families.

Most of the araguie consumers are Sudanese male refugees.24 However, the number of its

consumers is increasing among Sudanese refugee women — particularly the younger

women. According to Curley (2004:1), araguie has become a symbol of Sudanese

national identity in Egypt. If we ignore for a moment its negative consequences on the

body, since it is among the strongest alcoholic drinks, araguie is an excellent source of

income. However, it can also put both its producers and consumers in a risky situation

with the authorities, as Adaw explained:

This thing [araguie] generates income, but we are afraid because we, the Sudanese, are experiencing a lot of problems here. It will be very dangerous if these people [Egyptians] know about it. So, one has to be very careful and has to sell it to individuals whom she knows.

24 In Sudan it is largely the women who brew local alcoholic drinks such as araguie, marissa, and sharbot, but the consumers are largely men. The milder drinks (compared to araguie) such as marissa, beer made of fermented millet or sorghum flour, played a very important role, particularly in Darfur, in work parties organized during the cultivation and harvest of crops. Men consume them as sources of energy and fun so that they can be as productive as possible. 25 The 36- year- old single mother of six (Adaw) is a very hardworking woman. Although she used to be a nurse in Sudan, in Egypt she works as a housekeeper, handicraft woman, and araguie seller. She was denied refugee status and has to struggle alone to raise her children. I interviewed her in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on March 2, 2004.

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Another important element of support networks were those relatives who had

resettled in western countries. These remittances were so important for survival of those

who remained in Egypt that some Sudanese joked that the Western Union had opened

new branches in the parts of the city where there are larger numbers of Sudanese

refugees. My observations confirm this: I visited four offices of the Western Union, in

Ain Shams, Masr el Gedida, and downtown Cairo, seven times to cash money, and other

times for the purpose of research, and found that Sudanese persons outnumbered the

other customers on every occasion. My visits were at different hours of the day (one of

them was as early as 8:00 am and another was as late as 11:00 pm). With the exception of

three individuals at the Western Union office in Masr el Gedida, sending money to a

relative in the USA, all the other Sudanese individuals whom I met in these four Western

Union offices went there to receive money.

Although only 10 individuals of the 106 respondents said they were dependent on

relatives and friends living in western countries, every single person knew at least one

person supported by a relative living in a western country. Many Sudanese also received

remittances from relatives and friends in Gulf countries, although these transfers do not

come through Western Union. Unlike the networks of Egyptian poor, whose density is

greater in the Arab oil producing countries (El-Gawhary (1995; Singerman 1995;

Hoodfar 1996,1997), the density of Sudanese refugees' networks is greater in the

resettlement countries, such as the United States, Canada, and Australia. However, the

26 The three individuals were from families of Sudanese businessmen who fled with their businesses to Egypt after the National Islamic Front took over power in Sudan. Sudanese own some of the biggest factories in the Egyptian industrial cities such as 6th of October, 10th of Ramadan, and Sadat City.

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resources that Sudanese refugees generate are used for the benefit of households and not

for individual actors' consumption only.

Transforming One's Body Organs into Spare Parts for Other Bodies

.. .we are becoming bags of organs. If one of the contents of the bag (or the bag itself) is damaged or wears out, we can now imagine a sequence of continual replacement. This is not the return of organism, but nor is it the free play of code. Life, for those who are able to occupy the position of such a patient, promises a future of a stutter between surgeries. (Cohen 2002: 23)

This excerpt from Lawrence Cohen explains that the advancement in organ

transplantation medicine has transformed human bodies into bags of replaceable organs

whose contents can be replaced if they are damaged or removed to replace the ineffective

organs of other bodies whenever there is a need for them. The advancement in organ

transplantation medicine has led to the development of an organ retail business to the

extent that there are reports talking about the existence of "kidney bazaars" in some parts

of the world (Cohen 2002: 17). This phenomenon has raised a heated debate between

those who believe that body organs should remain a private and autonomous domain, and

others who look at them as commodities that can be retailed on the market, based on

supply and demand (Scheper-Hughes 2002: 3).

Lawrence Cohen's (2002) research in India and Nancy Scheper-Hughes's (2002)

investigations in Latin America, Africa, Europe, Asia, and the United States provide a lot

of evidence of individuals transforming parts of their own bodies into commodities.

There is also considerable evidence that organs are often harvested without the consent of

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the individuals whose organs are removed.27 Whereas Cohen uncovered that, in India,

individuals are deceptively persuaded to sell one of their kidneys, Scheper-Hughes has

pointed out that in Latin America and apartheid South Africa, organs were harvested

without the patients' or their relatives' knowledge, which has raised serious ethical

concerns. Matas and Kilgour (2007) have also similarly concluded that Falun Gong

practitioners, and other prisoners, in China have been murdered for their organs. The

ultimate conclusions of these studies are: organs are either removed with or without the

owner's or his/her relatives' consent; people whose organs are removed are usually of the

poorest categories of their own societies, whereas the recipients are of the rich categories

of their own societies, or of richer societies; and finally, those whose organs are removed

are almost always invisible, whereas the recipients are the focus of a lot of attention.

The very difficult situation facing Sudanese refugees meant that some of them felt

forced to transform their organs, mostly kidneys, into commodities that they could sell to

improve their economic situation. Although almost every Sudanese refugee replied that

s/he had heard about some other Sudanese refugees who have sold their own kidneys,

only 14 respondents really knew any individuals who had done so. Unlike Cohen's

(2002) study in India, where most of the individuals who sold their kidneys were married

women, with the exception of Mayo who said that he knew a woman who sold her

2 7 1 am not us ing the terms "donor" or "giver" as that impl ies that the removal i s done with the owner's consent.

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kidney, the other respondents said that all the individuals were unmarried men in their

twenties and thirties. Mayo said:

Well, I did not only hear of it but a friend of ours did it. I know him from Sudan. He is originally from Shimalya but lived in Jazeera. He came and spent some period of time with us in our apartment here in Egypt. After that he sold a kidney, went to Sudan, Chad, and came back to Egypt. Now he is staying here in Egypt. There is another guy who also sold a kidney and one of my roommates knows him. The third is a southern Sudanese woman who lives in Hay al-'Ashir. She sold a kidney and bought an apartment and a luxurious car. She is now working in drug business. I knew the fourth person who sold his kidney but he died. He died as gadar elahi [died as Allah's decision- meaning not because of the kidney that was removed]. He was living in Maadi. With the exception of the woman who is from Southern Sudan all others are Shimalyeen.

The excerpt above suggests that money earned from kidney transplants may be misused

or invested in dangerous activities. For example, the woman became a drug dealer, while

one of the men travelled to Sudan, Chad and then back to Egypt and the other took

residence in a luxurious area of Cairo, Maadi, and hired Ethiopian women to serve him

and call him Pasha, as Mayo further explained:

With the kidney money, the guy who later died in Maadi hired three Ethiopian women: two women who always sat at his sides and one housekeeper. All of them called him: "Basha [Pasha]", like wealthy Egyptians are called. Anytime when people called on the phone, the women had to say: "Do you want to talk to Khaleel Pasha?" [Unfortunately] his only kidney was infected and could not be treated until he died. At the end he reached the point that he could not walk. I think that his kidney was infected because he was consuming too much

28 There is evidence that most of the young Sudanese refugee men who sold one of their kidneys did so to save love relations. Some of the women with whom they were involved loved them for money. For example, Muru, a male Fur in his late twenties, would have sold one of his kidneys in 1996 unless some of his friends had discovered his plan and stopped him. The woman he loved was an Egyptian Nubian and she tried to coax him to do so for money, but his neighbors and friends discovered what he was planning, and convinced him to stop.

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alcohol and drugs until he died. He thought that he had money and there was no problem.

Ahmed also told me stories of other refugees who sold their kidney:

I have three examples of people who sold one of their kidneys. I know Fawzi who sold one of his kidneys and died after a couple of months and there are.. .Zaid and Wasim who also sold their kidney and they are now living in very deplorable conditions.

It is obvious in these stories that most of the individuals who sold one of their kidneys in

Cairo either died or lived in miserable conditions, possibly due to the lack of medical

follow-up. This is relevant to Scheper-Hughes's (2002: 4) concerns that in most cases

individuals who provide organs remain invisible and discredited, whereas organ receivers

are always focused on and enjoy medical care. Unlike Mayo who stated that, with the

exception of one woman who was from Southern Sudan, all the individuals who sold

their kidney were from Northern Sudan, the three individuals known to Ahmed that sold

their kidney were from Central Sudan, Khartoum, and Kordofan (Western Sudan)

respectively. He further identified them and the doctors who were involved in the organ

removal business in the following way:

I know these individuals and socialize with them. They themselves told me about what they did to themselves. Zaid is originally from Halfaya in Bahri [Khartoum North], Fawzi was from Obeid in Northern Kordofan and Wasim is from Damazeen in the Blue Nile. I know all these people and they are all Muslims. The middlemen and the doctors who trade in these organs are also Muslims. And the victims I know them by their ethnic groups. For example, one of the people whom I mentioned earlier to you is Zaid and he is a Ja'ali, Fawzi was from Jawamaa, and Wasim is from Fallata [Fulani].

However, despite the spread of the news about the selling of kidneys, only one

respondent, Mohamed (identified in Chapter Four) told me about a specific incident

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which occurred to him. He said that an Egyptian broker approached and asked him if he

knew a young healthy man like himself who wanted to sell one of his kidneys. Mohamed

answered that he knew nobody who wanted to do so. Then the broker asked him if he

wanted to sell one of his. Mohamed replied that he could sell one of his kidneys if the

price was convincing. The broker told him that it was $ 5000 dollars ($1000 before the

operation and $4000 after it) and that he would become a rich man. Mohamed told the

broker that he would meet him on the following day. However, Mohamed did not go to

meet the broker. He only wanted to know if the rumors about trading with human organs

29 were true.

On the other hand, there are stories of individuals whose organs (kidneys in

particular) were secretly removed during their admission to hospitals. 19 respondents

were able to identify several women who gave caesarean births in Cairo and discovered

after their resettlement in Australia and the US that one of their kidneys was missing.

There are also cases that have been reported where Sudanese refugees are murdered for

their organs. All the respondents and focus group participants believed that there were

doctors in some Egyptian medical institutions that murdered Sudanese refugee patients

for the harvest of their organs, and there were cases which they provided as evidence.

For instance, a 30-year-old male Dinka, Deng, from Jazeera (Central Sudan) who was

living in Dokki at the time when I interviewed him, told me the following:30

2 9 1 tr ied to meet wi th some of Ahmed's and Mayo's fr iends that so ld one of the ir k idneys , but I needed more time in the field and there was no way to do that. 30 Deng is a Dinka from Central Sudan and was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on March 2, 2004. He worked as a soldier in Sudan and was studying at a university after he came to Cairo. He was a recognized refugee and was waiting for resettlement.

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This story happened in 2003 to somebody whom we knew well. He was sick and was taken to the hospital for treatment. The people of the hospital said that one of his kidneys was damaged and it should be removed. He came home after the operation and was doing well for some time, but later his body started to swell.

Deng added that the man was his acquaintance and he used to meet him quite often

because both of them were living in the Dokki area. He continued that the man was a

Convention refugee, a Shilluk from the Southern Sudan, and that the UNHCR speeded up

the process of his resettlement in the USA where he would have been treated, but that he

died of organ removal complications as soon as he arrived:

He was already a recognized refugee and was waiting for resettlement to America. He was a Shilluk from Southern Sudan. His situation became very critical and the UN processed quickly his papers for resettlement.... But he died a few days after he had arrived there. His body was taken for autopsy and doctors found that many of his body organs were removed and replaced by artificial ones; they even found that he had an artificial heart.

The hospital on which Deng and others lay the claims of responsibility for their friend's

death is one of the most important public medical institutions in Cairo in which I visited a

Fur man (Shafi) in 1996 who had a very critical but successful brain operation free of

charge. I was very impressed with the way Shafi was treated. Although doctors in the

same hospital decided to remove a relative's (Layla's) breast without her prior consent in

1997 and her tumor was a benign tumor that was treated later at Cleopatra Hospital, the

hospital in question still had an excellent reputation by regional standards. If Deng's and

his colleagues' claims were accurate, it means that the hospital where their Shilluk

friend's organs were stolen had changed drastically in a few years.

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Similarly, 87 respondents recounted the story of a Dinka woman who went for

plastic surgery and was brought back dead with most of her organs removed. Adaw

(identified earlier) knew the victim well, as they had lived in the same town of Rank in

Southern Sudan, and she recounted the tragic story:

I was really afraid because a terrible incident happened at the time when we came to Cairo. A Sudanese woman whom I knew very well went for a plastic surgery, but all her things were taken. They took the kidneys and organs of the stomach. They brought her back dead. She had big breasts and wanted plastic surgeons to make them smaller, but she went alone to the clinic. She was from the Dinka of Baur but I knew her very well because she was with us in Rank. Her father came from Nairobi and took her body to Sudan.

This incident horrified Adaw to such an extent that she refused to go for a minor eye

surgery until her cousin, Engineer Lawal, accompanied her to the hospital where she had

the eye surgery. The Dinka woman Adaw was talking about was going to resettle in the

USA and unfortunately thought that her bigger breasts would have caused her stigma, as

is the case in some Sudanese cultures in which women with bigger breasts are sometimes

subjected to name-calling. Moreover, 91 respondents narrated the story of a young man

from Southern Sudan who died in a hospital. They said that the young man had jumped

from the balcony of his apartment because of an unsuccessful love affair. The story runs

that doctors in the hospital killed him, removed his organs and gave his empty body to his

relatives. The relatives had refused to accept his body until his father came from Sudan

and saw what happened to his son's body.

Four respondents (Hassan, Salma, Deng and Makeen) also narrated the story of a

young male refugee, Ishag, from Central Sudan who was accompanied by his friend,

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Hamdi, to a hospital and disappeared from it after a couple of days.31 One of the doctors

was very kind to Ishag, the patient, and convinced Hamdi who was attending him that

there was no need for him to stay near Ishag during the night because he (the doctor) was

doing the night shift and would be taking care of the patient. One morning when Hamdi

went back to the hospital as usual to attend his friend, he found that Ishag was no longer

there. He asked the authorities of the hospital about the whereabouts of his friend and the

authorities responded that they never had a patient of the description and with the

identification he provided. He also asked about the "friendly" doctor who was taking care

of Ishag and the authorities said they did not have such a doctor either. Three days later,

the Sudanese refugees in Cairo were surprised that Ishag's body was found thrown under

the Bridge of Maadi, but most of his organs including kidneys and eyes were removed.

Makeen, a 24- year- old male from Darfiir, who lived in Dokki during the time of the

interview, told me that Ishag was his acquaintance and that some of Ishag's friends

contacted the Embassy of Sudan in Cairo. However, the embassy not only refused to

intervene, they also argued that Ishag was not Sudanese.32 Although Mayo and a few

other respondents believe that public hospitals are safer than private clinics, Makeen said

this incident happened in January 2004 in another very popular public hospital.

31 Hassan and Salma were a husband and a wife with two daughters. Both of them were university graduates from Darfur. Hassan is from Habbania (tribe) and Salma is from Krobat (tribe). I interviewed them in their apartment in Ain Shams on February 28, 2004. They were recognized refugees and were later resettled in Canada. 3 2 1 interviewed Makeen together wi th h is fr iend Deng in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on March 2 , 2004. Makeen and Deng were roommates and were studying law at a university in Cairo. Deng was a Dinka from Central Sudan and Makeen was a Fur from Darfur. Makeen was a recognized refugee and was waiting for resettlement in the US.

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These and many other stories made many Sudanese refugees believe that they no

longer owned their own bodies when they visited clinics and/or hospitals for treatment.

They had heard many reports of individuals in these medical institutions violating the

sovereignty of refugees' bodies, treating them as assemblages of organs that can be

disassembled into parts, and retailed to the rich who need them. Consequently, the

avoidance of medical institutions has become a way of survival and self-protection for

many Sudanese refugees, who in most cases do not seek treatment in hospitals or clinics

until they are very sick. It has become an element of their culture to the extent that when

one of them does have to go to the hospital, he/she is always accompanied by several

individuals for protection or to act as witnesses, in case something bad happens to the

patient.

Sudanese forced migrants believe that organ harvesting and transplantation have

become a lucrative business for some Egyptian medical doctors and that the recipients are

mostly individuals from the rich Gulf countries, particularly from Saudi Arabia.

According to respondents, such as Ahmed, testicles were sold more expensively ($40,000

US for one) than kidneys (between $30,000 and $35,000 US for one). The uterus and

eyes were also among the organs that Sudanese refugees said some Egyptian doctors

often harvested and sold to individuals from Gulf countries, but they did not specify their

prices. Most Sudanese refugees believe that these medical doctors and their patients

(recipients) value Sudanese refugees' bodies dead more than alive and for many of them

"medical research, no matter how far advanced, comes face to face with the same old

capacity for good and evil" (Matas and Kilgour 2007: 9).

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Conclusion

In this chapter, I have discussed some of the survival mechanisms which

Sudanese refugees have adopted in response to the structural and institutional exclusions

which they experienced in Cairo. The rules of the game in the fields of employment and

housing were set in such a way that Sudanese refugees could not effectively compete

with Egyptians or even survive in Egypt if they acted individually. Therefore, they had to

adopt new ways of survival, and the primary new cultural tradition is what I am referring

to as resource pooling. This means that the refugees regrouped themselves in most cases

in larger households, with those with greater access to money and resources helping those

who were the most destitute, expecting that, one day, their assistance would be

reciprocated. This has proven to be a very effective strategy for survival. The resources

pooling strategy has also strengthened the ethnic and national bonds within the Sudanese

refugee population as individuals helped each other with food, accommodation, and

transportation.

Flexibility and endurance of difficult, demanding and less paying jobs are also

other behavioral characteristics which the Sudanese refugees adopted to survive in Cairo.

We have seen that there are cases when refugees discovered that they were asked to do

things that were not part of the initial job agreements, but they would not refuse them, in

order to protect their own survival and the survival of their relatives in the country. One

respondent, Susan (see Chapter Four), has specified in this regard that those refugees who

try to argue with employers because they are given more tasks than they were previously

told, are looking for problems. "Do not say "No" if they told you yesterday that your job

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is to clean the house and they are telling to take care of the children as today", she said.

She added that there is no point for argument because the difficult life the refugees were

experiencing was temporary as they would ultimately get resettled in a third country or

go back to Sudan.

However, not all of these survival strategies are effective. Domestic workers have

suffered considerable harassment regardless of how much they have endured. Again,

some individual refugees' resilience collapses and they make risky choices such as

selling one's kidney. As a result of the flourishing organ transplantation business in

Cairo, individual Egyptian nationals in the field of medicine see the refugees as a cheap

source of organ harvest. They either secretly removed organs of their refugee patients, or

killed them in order to remove the organs. The incidents that involve organ removals

made Sudanese refugees avoid treatment in hospitals and clinics and those of them who

are obliged to go for treatment in such institutions are usually accompanied by a group of

friends and relatives as a means of protection.

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CHAPTER SEVEN CHANGE OF GENDER ROLES AND ITS IMPACT ON FAMILY

LIFE

Social and cultural institutions gradually prepare individuals to behave in certain

ways in particular circumstances from childhood. Therefore, the roles which women and

men play are mostly grounded in the interpretation of members of their societies to their

bodies since early childhood through cultural knowledge that is available to them.

However, this knowledge is of a generative nature that can take various shapes in

response to circumstances in which people live in a given place at given point in time.

My objective in this chapter is to explore the changes that have happened to men's and

women's domains in relation to new fields across which they are passing in Egypt and

the impact of these changes on family members and relationships between them.

In their Introduction to Gender, Marchbank and Letherby (2007: 10) argue that

"the term gender refers to the economic, social and cultural attributes and opportunities

associated with being male or female." Similarly, Nencel (2007: 7) quotes Lamphere et

al. (1997:3) arguing that:

Gender is historically contingent and constructed, simultaneously embedded in material relations, social institutions and cultural meanings. Finally gender is intimately bound up with inequalities, not only in the often dominant relation of men to women but also to those of class and race.

Consequently, combining Marchbank and Letherby's (2007) definition of gender with

Nencel's (2007) definition of the term, I define gender as .. .economic, social and

cultural attributes and opportunities associated with being male or female, but that are

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liable to change in accordance with the physical and social realities in which the

members of a given society live. So cultures direct their members to acquire particular

attributes from childhood and allow them access to particular opportunities based on their

ethno-biological classification as males or females, and their class, racial/ethnic

backgrounds. Cultures also direct their members to occupy particular spaces according to

their sex differences (Boddy 1989).

In her study of a village in Northern Sudan, which she calls Hofriyat, Janice

Boddy argues that once the boys are circumcised and girls undergo clitoridectomy, they

are separated and live in two different spheres of the same culture where they gradually

learn things specifically related to their domains as future men and women of the

community. Greenglass (1982) and Eickelman (1998) emphasize similar patterns in their

respective studies.1

Based on the discussion above, one could argue that gender roles encompass

almost every aspect of human activity, including work inside and outside the home,

economic production, domestic activities such as food preparation and child-rearing,

religious rituals, education, social status, political leadership, and so on. I emphasize in

this study that gender roles are of a contingent nature even though they appear to be static

and unchanging.

For example, Greenglass (1982) points out that once the child's sex is known the parents and members of his/her community will start socializing him/her on how to behave based on the appearance of his/her genitals, and that members of her/his society will expect him/her to play particular roles on any given occasion based on that difference. Similarly, Eickelman (1998) argues that behavioral attitudes that constitute gender, class, ethnicity, etc. are experiential- that is to say, learned through practice by individuals as members of a given society.

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Boddy (1989: 6) discusses "gender complementarity" in Northern Sudan. She

argues that when both men and women are playing their expected roles without

considering themselves subordinate to members of the other sex, their roles complement

one another. For example, she makes it clear that, in Northern Sudan, when it comes to

spirituality, the zar cult is the female domain, whereas Islam is the male domain (Ibid: 6-

7). She explains further that the income generating activities and travel and work outside

the village are the man's domain, while domestic activities such as taking care of children

and animals, and preparing food, are the woman's domain (Ibid: 36-37).2 She considers

these domains as parallel, but contiguous, worlds in a single physical plane (Ibid: 6).

Gender roles, like other cultural attributes, however inflexible they might appear

to be, can change based on circumstances which people face. In Cairo, for example, the

gender roles of refugee women's and men's domains overlap and, in many cases, seem to

be reversed ~ a phenomenon which extends further Janice Boddy's and other observers'

analyses on gender among the Sudanese populations. Ibrahim, a 34- year- old Baka

(tribe) man from Southern Sudan, explained:3

2 El Bakri and Kameir (1990), Bernal (1994), Hutchinson (1996), Elfadil (2003), and Edward (2007), whose focus has been on gender in Northern or Southern Sudan, all agree with Janice Boddy (1989) that men were responsible for income generating activities outside the home, whereas women were responsible for domestic activities. However, Haaland (1969) and Kevane and Gray (1995), who studied gender in Darfur and Kordofan respectively, found that women, in many cases, combined both economic and domestic domains. 3 Ibrahim lived in Hadayeg Maadi, where I interviewed him on April 2,2004. He is Ghada's brother. He, his parents, his sisters, and his brother all lived in one apartment. Like Ghada, he identified himself as Baka even though their father was from the Misseiria tribe from Kordofan. He said that he was from Juba but he lived most of his life in Khartoum. In Sudan, he worked for Coca-Cola. He came to Cairo in December 2000 and was ultimately recognized as a refugee by the UNHCR after an appeal. He repeatedly said that his biggest mistake was to come to Egypt.

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The problem that the Sudanese men face here, in Egypt, is that most of them do not have jobs. The few men who work earn less money than women. For example, the men who work earn between 200 and 300 pounds [Egyptian pounds], whereas women earn between 800 and even 1000 pounds. So it becomes difficult for men to be family providers. The question is what can the man do with 300 pounds? Let us assume that he smokes cigarettes and there is no doubt that he needs money for transportation. This means that nothing is left for him to help the family with.

Ibrahim also described Sudanese men as just bodies walking in the streets of Cairo, torn

from inside because of the low paying jobs and the lack of them. My first objective in this

chapter, therefore, is to discuss the structural and institutional policies in Cairo which

have led to changes in gender roles within the Sudanese refugee communities. The

second objective is to explain the effects of this situation on men, women and children.

Cases of Changes in Gender Roles among Sudanese Refugees in Cairo

Gocek and Balaghi (1994: 5) have argued that Orientalism has influenced most of

the scholars from western countries who conduct research in the developing world. As a

result, they have treated social processes in cultures and societies other than western as

static, or at best as derivative of western cultures. They further maintain, for example,

that many of the western researchers have been misled about gender roles in the Middle

East, including North Africa, attributing a generalized image derived from some religious

leaders and politicians of what it is to be a man or a woman and their respective roles.4

41 would like to specify here that the Middle East includes North Africa because there is a gradually growing, but wrong, assumption in the media that reduces the Middle East to Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and Syria; the Middle East also includes countries such as Morocco, Sudan, Turkey, and Iran. Sometimes

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Hijab's (1988) and Eickelman's (1998) respective studies conclude that gender roles are

highly politicized in the Middle East; they appear to most outsiders as more uniform and

static than they really are. These two researchers suggest that any serious study on gender

in the Middle East has to go beyond the public statements of normative gender roles in

order to grasp the evidence; in reality the economic and social roles which women and

men play do differ from country to country, and from area to area within the same

countries, and also within members of a particular group based on the circumstantial

contexts surrounding the group and its individual members. For instance, Eickelman has

drawn upon Rosen (1978, 1984) to explain how men's and women's assumptions about

what is to be a man and a woman differ within the population of the same localities. It is

with this notion of gender, as contingent and constructed within material (and cultural)

relations (Lamphere et al. 1997), that I study Sudanese refugee gender roles in Cairo.

However, one could argue that any study about gender, not only in the Middle

East but in many parts of the world, has to be tested against Janice Boddy's (1989) notion

of gender complementarity which implies that the roles which men and women play are

often complementary and that what men do complements what women do and vice versa

even though the domains which women and men occupy in her study seem to be static

and unchanging. One of my objectives in this chapter is to investigate if refugees

consider the roles which the new situation in Cairo imposed on them as complementary.

In her study of a northern Sudanese village, Boddy argued that both men and women

willingly accepted the roles that their culture had assigned to them and that members of

people even include Afghanistan and Pakistan in the Middle East, depending on who is talking. However, the region is culturally and geographically very diverse.

193

each gender believed that the roles they played complemented the roles which members

of the other gender played. However, my study suggests that there are cases where

individuals, men in particular, rejected in many ways the new roles which the reality in

Cairo brought to their communities. So the questions that arise here and which I will try

to answer in this chapter are: What kind of impact does the sudden change in gender roles

have on refugee family members? And do the refugee men and women adapt to the roles

which they are forced to play in Cairo, and do they consider them as complementary?

In this section I look at four cases which explain the changes of gender roles

among the Sudanese refugees in Cairo. The first two cases reflect the situation of

southern Sudanese women, the third case explains the economic roles most of the riverain

northern Sudanese women play, and the fourth case discusses the gender roles among

Darfur men and women in Cairo.5

The first case is Ghada, a 37- year- old unmarried woman of a southern Sudanese

mother and a western Sudanese father. She was the head of a family of eight adult

individuals, including her two parents, two brothers, two sisters, and a female cousin.

Although her father and her two brothers Ibrahim, 34, and Abbas, in his late twenties,

lived in the same apartment, Ghada ran the family with the help of her two sisters, and

her female cousin. She crocheted table clothes, bed sheets, and pillow cases, and plaited

hair for women; her two sisters and her female cousin worked as domestics and gave

Ghada their earnings which she then spent where it was needed. She told me that she had

conducted research on survival strategies of internally displaced women from Southern

5 See the Appendix for more detailed information on the individuals who constitute these case studies.

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Sudan in the 1990s and discovered that activities such as crocheting and plaiting hair

were economically very important for the survival of family members. Consequently,

when she came to Egypt as a forced migrant she had to resort to the same strategies of the

women she had studied.

On talking further to Ghada it was clear that her resilience started early on. When

she was in high school, she, her mother, and Ibrahim worked hard to supplement her

father's meager income. The mother sold tea, Ghada sold cookies locally known as

zalabia (dough of wheat flour fried in hot oil), and her brother sold tassali (salted

watermelon seeds). Ghada later worked as an Arabic and English typist for the UNICEF

office in Khartoum, then for the office of a member of the so-called Revolution's

Command Council of the 1989 coup d'etat, and finally for the Council of Ministers.

However, she had to leave her job as a typist for the Council of Ministers because she

experienced discriminatory remarks from her colleagues, who were mostly young women

from the northern region of Sudan.

The second case relates to the married couple, Mohamed and Rose. Mohamed

was a 35- year- old Nuba from Khartoum, and Rose was a 31- year- old woman from

Southern Sudan. They came to Egypt in September 2002, and lived in a two-bedroom

apartment with their two- year- old son, Rose's mother, Katherine, her 10-year- old

brother, and her 13- year- old sister. Rose was the main person who supported the family

since Mohamed was not working most of the time (he could not find a job) and

Katherine's meager support from the UNHCR could hardly cover a week's food and pay

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the utilities.6 Therefore, Rose had to look for other ways to support the family. She

cleaned and tidied up the houses of several individuals (Egyptians and foreigners) on

what Mohamed referred to as yawmiat or contract piecework basis. But the 350 Egyptian

pounds per month she earned from the yawmiat was not sufficient since the rent alone

was 500 Egyptian pounds per month. Like many other Sudanese women in Cairo, she had

to become a handicraftswoman. She learned how to decorate bed-sheets, pillow cases,

and table cloths and then started a small business to supplement the other sources of

household income. She bought the cloth, took it to a tailor who cut it into bed sheets,

table cloths, and pillow cases, and then she designed drawings which the tailor traced

with colorful strings. She paid the tailor between 40 and 80 Egyptian pounds per bed

sheet. She then gave the finalized bed sheets, table cloths, and pillow cases to individuals

who were leaving Egypt for resettlement in Australia, Canada, and the USA who sold

them and sent her the money. Mohamed called her the dynamo of the family because she

was not only the source of survival for the household, but also the power that held it

together. Every time I visited them she was either outside doing yawmiat, inside the

kitchen cooking for the family and visitors, or decorating bed-sheets, pillow cases, and

table cloths.

As he was not working most of the time, Mohamed had to follow up the family's

refugee status applications. He looked for good individuals to write the appeals for his

family members, checked for their application numbers on the UNHCR boards, and

6 Katherine was interviewed in Maadi 'Arab on March 18,2004. Also see Chapter Four for Mohamed's interview date and place. I could not interview Rose because she was always busy, but Mohamed (her husband) and Katherine (her mother) told me about her and how she supported the family and I observed her activities as well.

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asked individuals at the Legal Aid and All Saints Cathedral to contact the UNHCR on his

behalf. He also often swept their apartment and took his two-year- old son and his brother

in-law to play outside. He told me that he was always thankful to his wife, but at the same

time he was ashamed when he saw her struggling alone to support the family and hoped

for a time when he would be able to find a job to support his family and be able to tell his

wife to sit down and relax. Mohamed often said that he felt as if he was passing through a

long bad dream because many people who knew him in Sudan would not believe that he

was dependent on his wife. He had grown up as a resilient and resourceful young man

who was admitted as an engineering student to the Sudan Polytechnic School in 1987,

when he was 18 years old. But when his parents died, as the older child and only son he

had to sacrifice his career for his four female siblings who needed his immediate

attention.

The third case is Mahasin, a 51-year- old Ja'ali from Madani, Central Sudan. She

was a mother of two teenage girls (14 and 19 years) and a 23- year- old son, Ali.7 Her

husband was a prominent lawyer and a leading member of a Sudanese opposition

political party. However the social and economic situation of their family drastically

changed after 1989 when Omar Al-Bashir's rule made life very difficult for everybody

outside of their own organizations. Consequently, Mahasin decided to leave the country

to look for better educational opportunities for her two daughters, as the prospects for

better education in the new regime were quickly disappearing. The family first decided to

71 interviewed Ali in my apartment in Masr el Gedida on October 11, 2003 and interviewed his mother, Mahasin, in their apartment in Tawfeeg on February 23, 2004 and I visited them frequently because Mahasin was one of my key informants. Mahasin's two daughters had agreed that I could interview them but I was running out of money and could not stay in Cairo any longer.

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send their son to study in Lebanon, with Mahasin and the two daughters going to Cairo in

the middle of 1999, hoping to be resettled in a western country.

However, Mahasin's application for refugee status was not successful. Her son,

Ali, subsequently joined them from Lebanon in 2003. Ali's application was not

successful either and he was not able to do anything to support his mother and two

sisters. Therefore, Mahasin transformed her knowledge of henna decoration, halawa

(body waxing) and preparation of traditional Sudanese cosmetics into a business to

support her family.8 She waxed the brides and decorated their feet and hands with henna.

She also prepared the traditional Sudanese perfume known as khumra (a compound of

perfumes including fleur d'amour, pounded sandalwood, etc., usually worn by urban

married people in Sudan) and sold them to Sudanese opposition politicians' wives and

wives of Sudanese businessmen who had relocated their businesses to Egypt. From her

business income, Mahasin was able to pay the monthly rent of 700 Egyptian pounds, and

buy food and other immediate necessities for her two daughters and her son. Moreover,

when her son's friend was unable to support his 25- year- old wife, Basamat, he brought

her to Mahasin's apartment where she gave birth while he went back to Sudan to bring

their son.

The final case in this section is Azza, a mother of two in her mid thirties and her

husband, Matar, in his mid forties.9 They left their older child, a ten- year- old daughter,

in Darfur and came to Egypt with their five-year- old son in 2000. Like most of the

8 See Chapter Five for information on halawa. 91 did not interview Matar and Azza because they were my neighbors in the same building in Zahraa Ain Shams and I met them every day for over five months. Therefore, I learned almost every aspect of their life in Egypt through daily interaction and conversation.

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Darfiir men in Cairo, Matar was a street vendor displaying goods such as wallets, purses,

and cactus oil in the market near Is'af subway station and he also helped individuals

transfer money to Sudan. They were recognized refugees and were expected to resettle in

Canada. As they were a small and relatively young family, they did not receive a monthly

stipend from the UNHCR, and Matar had to support his family without any external aid

from any organization. His daily schedule started at about 8 am with a shower, ablutions,

and prayers. Then he had his tea and breakfast between 9 and 10 am, often with two or

three single men from his ethnic group (Zaghawa) who were living in the same

neighborhood in Zahraa Ain Shams. He always left home between 10:30 and 11 am,

stayed in the market place until 9:30 or 10 pm, and came home between 10:30 and 11

pm. This was his daily routine except for some Fridays when he came back before 6 pm,

or did not go to work.

On the other hand, Azza always woke up about an hour earlier, at 7am to prepare

tea and breakfast before Matar left for work. After her husband had eaten and left the

home, she warned her son not to go out of the building. She often would leave him with

visitors before she left for the shopping with money given to her by Matar. Azza

normally shopped in the Zahraa market, located about three blocks to the east of our

building. There, she got almost everything she needed to feed her family and then came

back after 45 minutes or an hour.

The striking thing was that many of the single Zaghawa men who lived in two

overcrowded apartments in the same neighborhood came to Matar and Azza's apartment

individually or in groups of two or three. Azza fed them food, tea, and juice, cooking and

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making tea for almost the whole day, until Matar came back. Sometimes they would stay

until midnight, when, exhausted, Matar would almost fall asleep in his chair while trying

to converse with them. Mr. Haggar, who came recently from Canada to meet his wife and

his son coming from Sudan, was unhappy with the way single Zaghawa men exploited

Azza who fed them the whole day, and he offered to help her with enrollment in a

language or other program in a church school or commercial institute; but she responded

that feeding those single men was not a problem to her, adding that she and her husband

were helping them because their economic situation was worse.

The first two cases show the resilience and resourcefulness of southern Sudanese

women in Cairo, whereas the third reflects the resilience and resourcefulness of most of

the northern Sudanese women, and the fourth mirrors the generosity and hard work of

Darfurian men and women. They are the patterns of life that are dominant in each of the

three communities respectively. These patterns also correspond to findings of earlier

studies by Sudan Cultural Digest Project (1998), Fabos (1999, 2001,2008), and Edward

(2007).

Aisha in Le Houerou's (2006) study is one of the few exceptions, one of only two

Darfur women in Cairo who ran their own restaurants to support their families. Both

women ran their restaurants not far from where they lived on the western bank of the Nile

River. Aisha was a single mother of three young men in their late teens and early

twenties. None of her sons was working and they were all dependent on her, but at the

same time these dependent young men had the power to separate their mother from a man

who was preparing to marry her. They harassed the man, threatening to kill him if he

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approached their mother again because they wanted her to go back to their father, or stay

unmarried. Despite the fact that she was the head of the family, she could not pick the

man she loved and was thus forced to stay single. Aisha's case with her teenage sons

illustrates men's domination and control of women among members of the Darfur

community in Cairo, regardless of men's age and economic status.

The second woman, Halima, a relative of mine, had a husband who was an

unsuccessful street vendor. She had six children, the oldest of whom was only 18 years

old, and ran her restaurant for over a decade until she resettled in the US.10 Like Le

Houerou's case of Aisha's restaurant, Halima's restaurant was also the meeting place of

Darfurians and of many other Sudanese in the neighborhood as well. These two Darfur

women were the only breadwinners for their families in Cairo; almost all the rest were

dependent on their husbands and male relatives who were mostly street vendors. This

contrasts with the situation in Darfur, where women were mostly self dependent as they

combined food and cash crop production with animal husbandry (Haaland 1969). In sum,

Darfur women have lost the economic role which they had played beside the domestic

realm before their arrival in Cairo, while Darfur men maintained theirs. There are three

reasons behind this phenomenon: first, most of the Darfur women were from rural and

farming or herding backgrounds whose skills were not easily transferable in Cairo;

second, their command of Egyptian Arabic dialect was not satisfactory; and third, the

street vending by male relatives covered most of the households' basic needs.

10 Halima ran her restaurant business from the early 1990s when I was studying at the American University in Cairo. She gave birth recently when I visited her at home in 2004 and she told me that she was tired of working and that she was going to stay home and leave her husband to find a way to provide for the family.

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Gender complementary (Boddy 1989) could be applied to the two married

couples, Mohamed and Rose, and Matar and Azza. In these two cases Azza and

Mohamed constructed alternative femininities and masculinities respectively (Jaji 2009).

Azza accepted her new role as a housewife only, which she had previously combined

with herding, and Mohamed had to take on activities such as sweeping the floor, washing

the dishes, and taking care of the children that are traditionally considered as part of the

feminine domain. Although Mohamed often felt ashamed because it was his wife who

was supporting the family, he believed that the reversal in the economic roles was due to

the new situation and he had to accept it so long as they were in Egypt. He also thought

that his activities, such as taking his child to the park, and following up family members'

refugee status applications, complemented the wage earning activities of his wife. He told

me that he tried to do his best but could not find work to enable him to support his family

and therefore had to leave the wage-earning role to her. The same role complementarities

apply to Matar and Azza; Matar was responsible for income generating activities, and

Azza for work within the household.

Similarly, Ghada's female family members, including her mother, her two sisters

and her cousin, were in agreement with the fact that it was Ghada who was running the

family affairs and not their father or their brothers. However, the male family members

responded negatively to Ghada's leadership of the family affairs. For instance, one of

their brothers, Ibrahim, explained how this situation impacted him:

.. .and the crime which I committed is that I came to Egypt where everything is completely opposite to what I experienced in Sudan. To see the hareem [women] dress the way they like, hareem go out at anytime they want, they go up, they go down, they work, etc., I found it here in

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Egypt. It is not a problem that women work but what shocked me the most is that all my sisters are working and they are working as domestic servants and the problem is that I do not see some of them for an entire week. This made me psychologically uncomfortable. I tried to find a job but there is no job.... So I was staying in the apartment sleeping most of the time. There was no way to go for a walk and I did not have friends to visit. All these problems rendered me diabetic.

Their other brother, Abbas, was always outside the house and their father either sat

quietly in his bed or went to the mosque. Each of Ghada's family's male members thus

rebelled against the new situation in his own way. In contrast with Boddy's (1989:73)

argument that "women's quarters are situated in the rear of the compound, as is the

kitchen, where kisra is baked", Ghada always sat at the front space of the apartment

conversing with whoever was visiting, while her brother Ibrahim and her father sat or lay

quietly in their beds. The inability to work and support the family affected Ibrahim and

his father psychologically (Payne 1998; Lukunda 2011). The fact that they were silently

lying in their beds most of the time was an expression of helplessness.

These findings confirm the fact that the roles which Muslim men and women play

are different from what religious leaders and politicians think the roles should be. Again,

Ghada and her siblings, including Ibrahim and Abbas, identify themselves with her

mother's ethnic group (Baka from Southern Sudan) which supports Eickelman's (1998)

idea that the truth about most of the cultural processes including gender always lies

beyond its normative order. This means that what leaders and many of their subjects tell

outsiders about their cultures is different from what the people really do.

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Similarly, Hijab (1988) points out that need, opportunity, and availability produce

change in gender roles.11 In her studies of Jordan in the 1970s and Iraq in the 1980s, she

maintains that the lack of male labor in both Jordan and Iraq led to authorities playing

down the cultural norms about gender that usually prevented women's work, and

consequently individual women were able to pick up non-traditional jobs corresponding

to their skills in different fields. In the case of the Sudanese refugees in Cairo there was a

need for money for survival, and as women's labor as domestics and their handicrafts of

netting and crocheting became more valuable than the labor and skills of their male

counterparts, they had to take over those income generating activities to support their

households. This is the new reality that life in exile has imposed on Sudanese men and

women in Cairo, and their communities are in the process of adapting to it — by

constructing alternative femininities and masculinities — despite the problems it generates

within many families. It is a new set of practices adding itself to refugees' cultural

knowledge in response to social and economic fields which they encountered in Cairo.

The Impact of the Situation in Cairo on Sudanese Marriage and Family Life

The changes in economic roles among the refugees in Cairo have seriously

affected many marriages and family lives. In many cases, particularly in the southern

Sudanese communities, these changes have resulted in marital conflict, separation or

divorce, as on many occasions men responded to the new situation with anger. Some of

11 Hijab (1988) came to this conclusion while studying Jordanian and Iraqi societies in the 1970s and 1980s respectively. She reported that the migration of Jordanian men to the Gulf countries and the involvement of Iraqi men in the war against Iran forced Jordanian and Iraqi societies to accept women's work in different economic sectors.

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this conflict can be attributed to the nature of domestic work where women work in the

homes of people whom their husbands do not know. It is a new situation on field to

which some refugee men in Cairo responded with violence because they felt that it

emasculated them (Lukunka 2011). The new field generates a crisis thereby establishing

reflexivity among the refugees who realize that some of the taken-for-granted

assumptions are challenged and adopt new ways in response, including violence. In the

following paragraphs I discuss cases reflecting each of these problems. The first case

represents family conflict, the second and the third separation of husbands and wives, and

the fourth and fifth divorce.

The first case is that of Ghada's 15- year-old cousin, Tracy, and her 24- year- old

husband, Manyang, who came to Egypt in 2003. Tracy was made pregnant by Manyang

before they got married and as pregnancy before marriage is considered a crime in both

of their communities, as it is in most Sudanese communities, they had to escape to

t *y Egypt. So at first she hid her husband from her relatives in Cairo, but eventually had to

bring Manyang to Ghada's family, since Ghada's mother is her father's sister.

Manyang found work at a cafeteria in the American University in Cairo when he

first arrived as one of his relatives was working there; he then worked at another cafeteria

in Masr el Gedida. However, he was not able to continue working at either cafeteria for

very long: first, he did not have enough command of Egyptian Arabic to effectively

communicate with people at work and some of his Egyptian colleagues ridiculed him;

12 The Nuba communities are among the few exceptions in this regard. In some Nuba communities it is preferred that the relationship between a man and a woman leads to a successful pregnancy and the birth of a healthy baby before the community approves their suitability for getting married.

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and second, the salary he earned from either of the cafeterias hardly paid the rent or milk

for his baby. So Tracy had to work as a domestic servant while Manyang stayed home

babysitting their daughter. Her salary supported the family since she earned 600 pounds

per month, of which they paid 300 for rent and the remaining 300 to cover their other

expenses. Manyang babysat their daughter but did not complete the other domestic

chores and left them for Tracy. However, Tracy was completely exhausted by the time

she finished her paid domestic job; this affected their sexual life because she was often

too tired to have intercourse with her husband.

Tracy's tiredness and unwillingness to have sex and perhaps Manyang's

unwillingness to do the domestic work, had a number of consequences. She came back

from work and completed the domestic chores that Manyang had not done, but often

refused his sexual advances because she was tired. Any time when she refused to have

sex, Manyang immediately accused her of adultery with her Basha (the man for whose

family she worked). He supported his accusation with the evidence of two empty bags

and the little money that the Basha had once given her, with which she bought a tape-

recorder.13 He told her that she must have had an affair with the Basha or some other man

or she would not have accepted those things and brought them home. So one day he

grabbed her by both shoulders and shook her with all his force, asking her to tell him

which men had given her those gifts.

13 The Turkish language is one of the foreign languages by which Egyptian Arabic is influenced and Basha is an Egyptian borrowing from it. Pasha in Turkish is the title of an officer of a high rank, but Egyptians use it as the title for someone who has money and power at the same time.

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They later called Ghada to come and help them resolve the problem. But Ghada

told them that she could not make it to their apartment and that she would discuss the

matter with them on the phone. Ghada explained to me:

I talked to them several times on the phone and told them that I tested al-murra wa al-hilwa [bitter and sweet sides of life] in Southern Sudan, Western Sudan, and Khartoum and now in Cairo. My experiences from all these places could tell that that is not the right way of dealing with family issues specially in ghurba [foreign land] and they, as a couple, should be more supportive of each other.

However, the talk by phone did not work well. About 10: 30 at night, in the last week of

March 2004, Ghada's telephone rang. Ghada was asleep but the rest of her family

members were awake. Ghada's mother picked up the telephone and heard Tracy crying

on the phone, calling for help. She said that Manyang wanted to kill her. Consequently,

Ghada's mother and her other family members, (leaving Ghada asleep), ran to Tracy's

rescue. They found Tracy seriously beaten up and took Manyang to the police where he

signed an agreement that he would never beat her again. Tracy was still sick during the

first week of April 2004 when I visited Ghada's family. Ghada said the fact that Manyang

signed the agreement in front of the police only settled the problem temporarily; Tracy

had said that Manyang had threatened to hire people to kill her if they got resettled in a

western country. Ghada's family then scheduled a bigger meeting to involve more

relatives to seriously discuss the issue. Ghada's opinion was that the couple should get

divorced as they were not able to get along since it was the second time that Manyang

had threatened to kill her and Tracy was terrified and did not want to go back to him.

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The second case is Ashol, a 24-year- old Dinka woman, from Southern Sudan,

who was the mother of a one-month- old baby daughter.14 Her husband, Diar, came to

Cairo earlier than her and became a recognized refugee; he then brought her to Egypt and

added her to his UNHCR file. She had been a student of engineering in a university in

Sudan. She was excited by her husband's status as a recognized refugee and left the

university, joining him in Egypt so they could resettle together in a western country

where she could resume her studies. However, he was unable to support her and sent her

to her sister, who was working and supporting their mother and other two siblings. Ashol

gave birth at her sister's apartment. Diar was living with a group of men in a two

bedroom apartment in another neighborhood. The couple spoke on the phone almost

every day, with Diar visiting Ashol and the baby about once a week. I asked Ashol if she,

her husband, and their baby could live together after she recovered from the exhaustion

of pregnancy and delivery. She replied that there was no way that she and her husband

would live together until the baby grew up a little bit, and she could pick up a domestic

job and leave the baby with him; the job he was doing only allowed him to pay his part of

the rent, and hardly paid for his food.

Cynthia was a 32-year-old mother of two boys from Southern Sudan.15 She had

been a student of architecture in a university in Khartoum, but had to leave the country in

1999, and join her husband who had come to Egypt five months earlier. She found her

husband sharing a three bedroom apartment in Ain Shams with several single men. She

spent the first month with her husband, but found it very difficult because he was not

14 Ashol was interviewed in her sister's apartment in Ain Shams on February 15, 2004. 1 5 1 interviewed Cynthia in her s i s ter Jane's apartment on May 7 , 2004 .

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working and was always drunk; he could not support her and the children. She and the

children began to stay with her 25- year- old divorced sister, Jane. Jane was a hair

dresser, whose clients included some young men from West Africa who played

professional soccer for Egyptian teams. She was well off and rented a spacious apartment

in a most luxurious part of Maadi. Jane had a two-year- old daughter; in addition to

Cynthia and her two boys, she also allowed her 26- year-old unmarried female friend,

Suaad, from Southern Sudan, to live with her. Jane's apartment was generally full of

visitors. I asked Cynthia how often she spent time with her husband and she replied that

they met very rarely, and added that most of the time it was she who had to contact him

via his nephew because her husband did not have a telephone. I asked her if she and her

husband sometimes met to satisfy their sexual needs and she replied that she was

psychologically unprepared to think about sexual needs.

On the other hand, Abuk was a 40 -year- old mother from Southern Sudan who

had left school at Grade Four.16 She came to Egypt with her five daughters and her

husband in 1999. She had divorced her husband and stayed with the children in Dir al-

Malak while her ex-husband rented with other relatives in Ain Shams; the children

visited their father almost every week. She stated that the main reason for their divorce

was that two of their daughters had become seriously ill during the first days of their

arrival in Cairo, and had been admitted to hospital. As a result of this illness she asked

the hospital authorities to vacate an entire room for her so that she could leave her older

daughter to take care of the sick and other younger children until she came back from

1 6 1 interviewed Abuk in her apartment on January 30 , 2004 . Like most o f the Sudanese women who work as domestics, she spoke the Egyptian dialect of Arabic and hardly spoke any Sudanese Arabic.

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work. She said that her husband did nothing when she was struggling alone with the

children and her domestic servant job; he just stayed at home rather than helping her with

the children in the hospital. 1 asked if the husband came to see the sick children at the

hospital and she said "yes", but added that his visits were not significant because he came

with empty hands.

However, it seems that there is another explanation for Abuk's divorce. Although

she usually cited economic hardship, on one occasion she told me that the father of her

three older children was dead, and that she had had to marry his older brother according

to Dinka tradition, and had had with him the two younger daughters. Her tone and her

body language indicated that she did not like the man particularly; she said: " Wa

gawwazuni be akhuhu hasab 'adaat al- gabeela fi al-junub (And they had to marry me

with his brother based on the tribal tradition in the South)".17

Jane, the hairdresser, had divorced her husband because he was not working and

because he thought she was having affairs with her male customers. She said she felt

sorry for him after the divorce, but implied that he should not intervene in her business.

She was thinking, she told me, to re-marry him if he would refrain from intervening in

her business. She generally talked positively about her husband and joked quite often

about him in front of her visitors that he was the man of her choice, and she did not care

if he did not work; she just did not want him to chase her customers away. But, she never

17 Therefore, she probably found exile as the right place where she could rebel against the tribal tradition

which stipulates that one of the husband's male relatives from his father's side should replace him when he dies in order to continue producing children in his name and expand his lineage.

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visited him and had not allowed him to visit her in the year since their divorce. She said

she wanted to teach him a lesson.

These cases describe the impact of the situation in Egypt on the life of southern

Sudanese families. Although the Sudan Cultural Digest Project (1998) partly focused on

the change of gender roles among the southern and western Sudanese communities in

Cairo, it did not uncover these kinds of problems, probably because the number of

Sudanese refugees with families was still relatively small and life was comparatively less

expensive. Edward (2007) conducted her field studies later in 2001, and uncovered many

cases of spousal separation; in some cases spouses just left their wives or their husbands

with the children, and joined other men or women with whom they formed new

relationships. The changed nature of women's work and their relatively higher monthly

earnings aroused men's jealousy, which, because the men failed to accept the new reality

in exile, led to several cases of family conflict, and consequently to separation or divorce.

There is also some considerable possibility that some working women used work as a

pretext in order to have extramarital relationships with other men. Another adaptation

was that many women, whose husbands were not able to support them, went and stayed

with their female relatives ~ a practice that is uncommon in different parts of Sudan

where women generally seek male rather than female relatives' support.18

18 However, the tradition has changed in Egypt because the male relatives are rendered weak by the lack of

better paying jobs.

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Another, but a less dominant, factor that caused family crisis in the Sudanese

refugee communities resulted from the problems of obtaining refugee status. Individuals

from both genders sometimes left their spouses because they were not recognized

refugees and entered into new relationships with others who were recognized refugees so

that the latter could add them to their files and get resettled with them. Although Edward

(2007: 100) has discussed this as a main source of family problems, none of my

respondents told me of anyone who had left their spouse with the children, and re­

married a recognized refugee, in order to resettle in an immigration country. Although

unmarried recognized refugees who were about to resettle were preferred suitors in

Sudanese refugee communities, most of the men among them arranged their marriages in

Sudan and waited for their wives before they departed. The men prefer the women whom

they marry in Sudan and sponsor to join them in Cairo because they believe that they will

be conservative, obedient, and faithful wives.

A further additional point to Edward (2007) and Fabos (1999,2001,2008), who

have studied gender among the Sudanese refugee communities in Cairo, is that many

teenage girls, some of whom worked as domestics, got into relationships with young idle

men whom their parents rejected. These relationships resulted in family conflicts and

parents, in some cases, were resettled without their daughters. Similar to what Kibreab

(1995) has uncovered among the Eritrean women in Khartoum, some Sudanese males

exploited their working female counterparts. In Cairo, there were men in their twenties

and early thirties who had married women in their late thirties and even forties; most of

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my respondents thought this phenomenon was uniquely based on men's interest in the

women's money and that such marriages would not last long.

The Impact on Men

The psychological devastation of these changes on men - particularly those who

used to be the breadwinners and family caretakers ~ was evident and led in many cases to

problems and family crisis. Alcoholism, sleep problems (sleeping for longer hours or not

sleeping at all for days), absence from home most of the time, self-seclusion, and

indifference, have become major problems among northern and southern Sudanese men.

These phenomena reflect the collapse of resilience among the refugee men who deny

their reality, and are unable to cope with the situation. It is also an indication that gender

complementarity was disrupted, because these men could not resort to zar spirits to

negotiate their subordinate position as women did in Boddy's (1989: 346) study.

Studies on refugees in East Africa (Payne 1998; Jaji 2009; Grabska 2011;

Lukunka 2011) have uncovered that old masculinities - assumptions of what is it to be a

man prior to displacement and refuge - are, in many ways, seriously challenged.

Likewise, Sudanese male refugees' old masculinities are challenged and refugees

responded to these challenges in various, ways depending on cultural background. For

example, many southern Sudanese men who felt emasculated responded to the challenges

with violence accusing, their wives of having affairs with other men. Accusations of

working wives and female relatives of adultery was one of the problems that caused crisis

in southern Sudanese communities, with Tracy's and Jane's husbands being two

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examples among many. The same skepticism about working wives was raised by

Clement during a meeting that I had with members of the Peace and Justice Committee.

He stated that one of the main problems the southern Sudanese communities were facing

was that working women were cheating on their husbands, using work as a pretext; when

their husbands decided to work and leave them at home they still cheated on them with

younger men who did not work. He then emphasized:19

You know? One of the problems of our community here is that some women are pretending that they are going to work but what they are really doing is that they are cheating on their husbands with these boys who do not work. Even if husbands decide that they work and women stay home still these boys will come and meet them at home.

What is surprising is that none of the six men and one woman who were in the meeting

tried to challenge this statement — it seems as if they all agreed with Clement whose own

wife was also working. However, like in any human society, there is a possibility that

there were women as well as men cheating on their spouses in Sudanese refugee

communities in Cairo and individuals who wanted to cheat on their spouses could do so

whether or not they were working. Yet, refugee men's inability to find paid jobs to

restore their lost self confidence, and consequently their challenged masculinities, made

them feel that working women were simply hanging out with other men. Refugee men's

accusations of their spouses of adultery indicate that refugee men thought that they were

no longer good for their wives and worried themselves sick over women's work. The

191 held this meeting with members of the Peace and Justice Committee in Sacred Heart Church on February 16, 2004, two hours ahead of the meeting which the committee had with the UNHCR representatives. The only woman who attended this focus group is a Fujulu from Equatoria, Southern Sudan, and I did not have a chance to ask her questions in particular, why she kept quiet, while Clement accused southern Sudanese women of adultery without making any exceptions.

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problem is that if women had not worked as domestics or otherwise many Sudanese

refugees, including men, would possibly have lived on the streets by begging.

Although there were many women who were sincerely committed to their

marriages, the only woman present in the meeting did not try to confront Clement for

unjustly laying a charge of adultery on all southern Sudanese women, probably due to

cultural restrictions that do not allow women to be articulate in front of men or due to the

fact that adultery is such a major taboo to women that it can be generalized to all women

if it is committed by some of them. Nonetheless, the Peace and Justice Committee ~

which was the highest traditional intercommunity authority that represented almost all the

southern Sudanese communities in Cairo - seemed to have generalized the problem to all

women who were working. This opinion of the Peace and Justice Committee was shared

by many southern Sudanese men who mentioned it quite often during my conversations

with them. Northern Sudanese men had developed these same kinds of attitudes around

northern Sudanese women who supported their families by making henna decorations

and waxing, as Fabos (1999) has also found out, but it did not lead to such wider family

conflicts and divorce.

Another serious problem was the growing alcoholism among many refugee men,

particularly from northern and southern Sudan. Previously, I explained that Cynthia left

her husband and had to stay with her sister not only because he was not working, but also

because he was drinking too much. She said that he was drunk most of the time to the

extent that he was not able to save even two or three pounds from the pocket money

which his nephew and other relatives gave him to pay for transport to visit her and the

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children. He always bought araguie with the little money he was given, she said.

Similarly, Abuk's husband was not working either and also became alcoholic. Cynthia

told me that her husband used to drink occasionally before he came to Egypt, whereas

Abuk's husband had never used alcohol at all when they were in Sudan; but the situation

in Egypt had reduced him to a drunkard. Fabos (1999,2001, 2008), who conducted field

studies earlier with northern Sudanese refugees, raised this problem and my studies

confirm it.

Nevertheless, there were some differences among regional groups. Wek, a 23-

year- old man from Southern Sudan, and Ghada, both stated that the alcoholism of

northern Sudanese men was not that obvious since most of them stayed home when they

were drunk, while many of the drunken southern Sudanese were tottering in the

street.20Another reason was that the number of young drunken men, in their late teens and

early twenties, was larger among the southern Sudanese, whereas most of the northern

Sudanese men who consumed alcohol were in their twenties or older. Therefore, it was

the young among the southern Sudanese men who could not control themselves when

they were drunk and tottered in the streets; it was this type of behavior that some

Egyptians used to justify their racism against the Sudanese in Cairo.

One of the subtitles of an article by Hilal et al. (2000: 25) in Rose El Yousef is:

"yu'akisun alnisaa wayata'atun albango wayaskarunfi alshawar'ai wayuzahimunana

20 Wek was interviewed in my apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams on January 16, 2004. He is a very brilliant young man and very knowledgeable about Sudanese problems. He is a high school graduate and came to Egypt in July 2002.1 first met him in his relatives' apartment but later he became one of my key informants. He automatically volunteered to help me without any request from me. He knew my cousin, Omar Fur, who was the head of SLM/A office in Cairo between 1999 and 2002, and he said Omar was like a brother to him and that it was his duty to help me with what he could.

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fi furas al 'amal (they molest women, consume hashish and alcohol in the street and take

chances of work from us)." This article by Hilal et al. can be viewed as severely

misleading for several reasons. There were of course, some young Sudanese men who

consumed alcohol in Cairo's streets. However, this was a minor phenomenon compared

to the much larger incidence of young Egyptian men who exhibited other forms of drug

addictions, and, in addition, behaved in an inappropriate manner towards Sudanese and

other Africans, and towards women of all races and ethnicities. For example, many young

Egyptian men could be found sitting on street corners calling names at Sudanese and

other Africans and throwing rocks at them. Many of these young Egyptian men were also

consuming sarasir (literally means cockroaches), a drug which Sudanese refugees in

Cairo said was usually prescribed for patients with problems in their nervous system, but

had found its way to the street. It was not unusual for Sudanese to hear Egyptian men

emerging from the street corners and quietly asking: "Bango (hashish)?" Moreover, it is

not unusual to see men molesting women in crowded buses or subway trains involving

Egyptian men of different ages; even many female anthropologists such as Wikan (1996)

who took public transport while conducting field work could not escape from it. Hilal et

al. did not talk about young Egyptian men's drug consumption, their harassment of

foreigners of both sexes, and their inappropriate behavior towards women including

Egyptian girls. For example, many of the conflicts among Egyptians in the squatter

neighborhood, Zaraa Ain Shams, where I lived, were caused by such young men's

behavior towards young women passing by. Hilal et al. seem to have taken all of these

issues for granted since they are caused by Egyptian men.

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On the other hand, some of the Sudanese men who did not work and did not resort

to alcoholism just slept too much. These were the men to whom Anita Fabos (1999,

2008) refers as "ga 'adeen fil bayt (those who stay at home), though she did not study

their sleep problem. This sleep problem existed among the northern and the southern

Sudanese communities. Below I describe three men who suffered from this problem, two

from Central Sudan, but originally from Northern Sudan, and another from Southern

Sudan; all three are related to the respondents described in previous paragraphs.

I visited Ashol in Ain Shams three times in February and March 2004, all

between noon and 3 pm. Each time I went there her 18-year- old brother was sleeping.

She told me that his schedule was to sleep until about 6 or 7 pm, then wake up, take a

shower, eat, and go out to meet his friends in a cafeteria across the street. He stayed at the

cafeteria until 12:30 or 1 am and then came back to sleep. As a consequence, I never saw

Ashol's brother because he was in bed asleep every time I was there.

In the late afternoon of April, 2, 20041 went to visit Ali, the 23-year- old son of

Mahasin, and his family. I rang the bell and the younger of his two sisters opened the

door. There were two men and a woman sitting in the sitting room near Ali who was

asleep in his bed. Mahasin was inside her room, and the older of Ali's sisters and a

female roommate were preparing to go out and meet friends.21 After we exchanged

greetings, the girls left, and I joined the three people in the sitting room. A few moments

later Mahasin came and joined us too. Everyone was talking and laughing normally as if

there was nobody sleeping and did not need to be disturbed. I asked Mahasin if Ali was

21 The roommate came from Saudi Arabia to study in Egypt.

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fine, as his younger sister had told me that he had been sleeping since the previous day.

She responded that he was fine but that he had been sleeping a lot lately. On the other

hand, one of the visitors, the 32- year- old Rashid, responded that he had not slept for two

days and never felt sleepy.22 He added that Egypt is a strange country and that such

things were expected to happen to Sudanese people. He spent the preceding two days

with fellow Sudanese he visited in Dokki playing cards, but was worried about staying

awake alone the whole night after he returned to Tawfeeg.

The Impact on Children

The situation of Sudanese children remains largely understudied. Afifi (2003),

Dingemans (2002), and Edward (2007) are the only observers whose field studies shed

some light on their dilemma. Dingemans' is the only study that provides an estimate

about the number of Sudanese refugee children: approximately 9000 Sudanese forced

migrant children under the age of 18, most of them from Southern Sudan. Whereas

Afifi's focus is on educational opportunities available to refugee children in Egypt in

general, Dingemans and Edward have investigated educational needs and priorities for

southern Sudanese refugees in Cairo. Another difference is that Afifi's respondents were

mostly individuals from Egyptian educational institutions, whereas Dingemans and

Edward's respondents were parents and authorities of church schools that provide

educational programs for forced migrant children; they have gone further to investigate

the problems which refugee children and their parents encountered, including the lack of

221 interviewed Rashid in Mahasin's apartment at Tawfeeg on February 23,2004. He is a Ja'ali from Bahri (Khartoum North). He walked around most of the time, visited friends and relatives, and chatted with them.

219

access to schooling. Edward also touches on the impact of the difficult conditions on the

children's behavior when they become teenagers and young adults.

All three of these writers agree that refugee children in Egypt do not enjoy the

rights which Articles 28,29, and 39 of the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the

Child have stipulated.23 According to Article 28, "all children have a right to primary and

secondary education of all types, including general and vocational education"

(Dingemans 2002:9). In the same way, Article 29 stipulates that the education of the

children should be directed to the development of respect for their parents, their cultural

identity, their language and values as well as the national values of host countries and of

countries of origin. Article 39 also encourages the member countries to promote physical

and psychological recovery and social reintegration of children who are victims of

conflict (Ibid).

Although Egypt signed the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child in February

1990, most of the Sudanese refugee children in Cairo do not enjoy these rights and were

at home without schooling and no access to play, let alone partaking in measures for their

physical and psychological recovery.24 This situation is partly imposed by the Egyptian

authorities, and partly a result of the poor quality of schooling that is available. In the first

instance, Egyptian schools require refugees to provide a letter from the Sudanese

embassy in Cairo together with the records of their children from previous schools

stamped by the Sudanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. My conversation with Rahma, an

23See http://www.cirp.org/librarv/ethicsAJN-convention/ 30/9/2007. 24 See www.treaties.un.org for the date at which Egypt joined the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child.

220

11- year- old boy from Khartoum, unravels some of the barriers facing parents who

wanted to take their children to an Egyptian school.

It was around midday on Friday, April 9,2004 when I met Rahma in Mardi's

apartment in Zahraa Ain Shams. I asked him:

"What is your name?"

"My name is Rahma," he replied.

"Where are you from?"

"From Sudan."

"When did you come to Cairo?"

"About a year ago."

"And why did you come to Egypt?"

"To go to America", he replied.

"Do you go to school here in Egypt?"

"No. My parents tried to register me at a school but the school refused to take me

because we did not have papers from the embassy. I completed grade four in

Sudan and I was supposed to be in grade five now", he responded.

Rahma was unable to secure the stamped letter from the Sudanese embassy.

The larger bureaucratic barrier for most other Sudanese refugee children is that

they are unable to get birth certificates. In rural areas most children are born at home with

the help of older female midwives, with no official record of their birth. Obtaining a birth

certificate is a time consuming process which requires stamps and seals from the city.

Most children, particularly in rural Sudan, start their schooling without birth certificates

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and have the age estimation certificates issued for them later through the Council of

Physicians when they are in high school or university.25

As a result, church based educational programs were the only programs in Cairo

that absorbed a relatively sizeable number of Sudanese children. According to

Dingemans (2002: 13), the largest program incorporated over a thousand students

whereas each of the other four programs absorbed between 60 and 150 students.

However, most of the parents and relatives said that the largest church education

program, Sacred Heart Church, provided schooling of a very poor quality.

A conversation with Regina, a 24- year- old unmarried woman from Southern

Sudan, elaborates on some of the problems with this type of schooling. Regina lived with

her mother and brother in Maadi in the same building where her 34- year- old sister,

Susan, lived with her 13- year- old boy and 11- year- old girl. The children were

watching TV while she, her sister, and I were discussing the problems they were facing in

Egypt. Regina pointed to her sister's children and said: "They do not have any future."

The children were in grades five and seven. She said that the boy who was in grade seven

would study until grade nine and that would be the end of his schooling, since there was

no place where he could continue his studies. He would learn how to write and read

newspapers and would stay home and his destiny would be unknown. She added that the

education they had was only education in name because it was not comparable with

25 In most cases individuals of rural origin who leave school before high school do not even have the birth estimate certificates. The lack of documentation is one of the reasons why the numbers of Sudanese refugees in neighboring countries is unknown.

222

Egyptian education, or with the education back home; the teachers were not serious and

sometimes she heard that some male teachers had girlfriends among their own students.

Nonetheless, regardless of the quality of education provided, going to school

provides some momentary psychological relief for the children. Abuk concisely

summarized this as follows:

You cannot call it education. But the man who does not have a job can take his children to Sakakini (Sacred Heart Church) in the morning and bring them back in the afternoon so that they can feel that they are still alive [valuable beings]. When you take them there and they are told that they are in grade one, or grade two, they will think that they are doing something and that makes them feel alive even though the education is not good. But they are a bit better than the locked-up children because when they get out of the apartment they can see that there are certain things which people do in the morning and mixed up with other people [children]. However, those who do not have relatives to help them do such things are locked up in the apartments. For example, I am a mother. But as I am going to work, I have to lock up my children in my apartment since there is nowhere else that I can leave them. I leave the apartment at six in the morning and come back only at night. There is no other alternative.

For Abuk, the reason that her children were not going to school was partly a result

of the family crises, caused by the abrupt change in economic roles among Sudanese men

and women in Cairo - a change that emasculated many refugee men who either became

violent or alcoholic, slept most of the rime, or did not sleep at all for several days. She

had to go out to work and had to lock the children up while she did so, rather than being

able to look after them at home or leave them with relatives. She would be somewhat

happy if she was in a position to send her children to any school, even if the quality, such

as that of Sacred Heart Church School, was poor. However, since she and her husband

were divorced and living in different parts of the city, this was not an alternative.

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Children as young as five years of age were locked up alone in apartments. Abuk

pointed to her five year- old- younger daughter who stayed in the apartment with her

when the four older daughters went to visit their father. She had already reached the age

of staying home alone; many children who were even younger stayed at home alone

while their parents went to work. The parents just warned them not to open the door to

anybody, not even if Egyptians had to read the electricity meter, or collect the money for

electricity and water bills. Many children were left at home alone most of the time, only

able to leave occasionally when their parents had a day off and wanted to visit relatives,

or go to church.

Adaw, a 36-year- old single mother of six boys had to sacrifice the schooling of

two of her sons. She left her nine and seven year old sons at home to babysit their two

and a half year old brother, while their three older siblings went to school. Therefore,

they had to stay with their younger brother. Adaw woke up early in the morning, cooked

for the children, and put the food in the fridge so that they could eat it during the day. The

oldest son went to school at noon, and the second and third oldest boys went to school in

the morning. The oldest boy warmed up the food for his youngest siblings, and helped

them eat their breakfast before he went to school; while he was on his way to school, the

second and third oldest boys were already coming home. Adaw was happy and proud that

her older son knew how to cook which allowed her to stay at work until the night.

The world for many children is the apartment. Many children would stay in front

of the TV watching any channels that were accessible to them; the lucky ones were those

who had other children to play with in the sitting-room. The parents such as Abuk, Adaw,

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and Susan all stated that they cooked at night after they came from work and put the food

in the fridge which their children then warmed up and ate during the day.

Another serious consequence was the lack of safety of children left on their own

in the apartment. Mothers continually warned their children to be careful about the stove,

and that it was dangerous to play near the gas cylinder. Nevertheless, despite the

continuous warnings things can go wrong because children are children and their stay in

the apartment can be risky. Ghada explained that there were many incidents of fire in

Sudanese apartments because the children were either alone in the apartment, or their

parents fell asleep because of the exhaustion of long hours of work. She told me about a

fire in an apartment across the street, on the northern side of Mustafa Kamil Street in

building number 11. The parents had not yet returned from work, and the children were

trying to make milk tea. However, they did not know how to control the stove properly,

and the apartment suddenly came on fire. The oldest child was only five or six at the

time. Luckily the children were not killed in this incident as Sudanese neighbors were

able to break the door of the apartment and rescue them.

Staying alone in the apartment, without somebody to speak with, also seriously

affected the psychological development of some of the children. The worst case of all

was that of a five- year- old boy whose single parent father, according to Ibrahim, Ghada,

and Bona, was working and had to leave him alone most of the day. The boy was so

seriously affected that he stopped talking. They all said that he had been by himself since

he was three years old. Edward (2007) makes it clear that the way in which most of the

southern Sudanese children grew up in Egypt was the main factor behind the large

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number of teenage and young adult deviants in their communities. For example, youth

gangs and teenage pregnancy are among the problems attributed to such an upbringing.

Abuk summed up the dilemma of Sudanese refugee children. She argued that the

children whose parents were not separated were relatively better off, because one of the

parents could take the children to the school in the morning, and bring them back in the

afternoon while the other (probably the mother) was working. Therefore, even if the

quality of education provided at school might have been poor, the fact that the children

were leaving the apartment in the morning to go to school could make them feel that they

were valuable beings. Going to school in itself would be an opportunity for the children

to play with each other and gain psychological and physical skills and strength.

Conclusion

The situation in Egypt has in many cases changed the roles which the Sudanese

people traditionally played in economic and domestic realms, and has disrupted the

gender dialogue which Janice Boddy refers to as gender complementarity. These changes

are due to the socio-cultural and political structures that prevent Sudanese refugees to

freely compete with Egyptians in different fields of valuable resources. Most of the few

jobs to which Sudanese refugees have access are cheap, performed in risky conditions,

and are largely available to refugee women rather than to refugee men because most of

them are domestic jobs. A few refugee men, especially from Darfur, became street

vendors and continued to be breadwinners as they had been in Sudan while their female

counterparts who had previously combined domestic chores with income generating

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activities were unable to work in Cairo and largely depended on their male relatives.26

Yet, they found their domestic activities complementary to those of their male

counterparts.

However, many southern and northern Sudanese refugee men, who were largely

breadwinners and heads of their families in Sudan, found themselves with no work in

Cairo and were largely dependent on their female relatives. In consequence, some of the

non-working men were able to construct alternative masculinities and helped their

spouses with family chores while the latter were involved in income generating activities,

thus establishing gender complementarities. Many northern and southern Sudanese

refugee men failed to establish alternative masculinities to complement their female

counterparts' income generating activities. Consequently, some of the non-working

refugee men responded to this doubly emasculating situation with violence, alcoholism,

and sleep problems and many of them were either separated from their wives or the wives

had to divorce them.27

This situation seriously affected the children whose rights their parents had to

compromise with work. Unfortunately, single parents' children spent most of the day

alone locked up in apartments while their parents were working and, as a result of that

situation, many of them fell victim to incidents such as fire, while others were impacted

psychologically. Problems such as gang related violence, which I explore in Chapter

26 However, displaying goods on street corners is also a risky business since street vendors are often rounded up, taken to prison, and their goods confiscated, as I explain in pervious chapters. 27 According to many Sudanese cultures, a real man is the male person who protects his family and his village during war and feeds his family in peaceful times. Therefore, running from the war in Sudan is a type of emasculation and depending on others for food and other necessities in Cairo is another type of emasculation.

227

r

Eight, constitute a further tangible example. Again, as a result of the Egyptian

government policy of keeping Sudanese people subordinate in different fields of struggle,

the schooling opportunities for Sudanese children remained slimmer.

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CHAPTER EIGHT SUDANESE REFUGEES: VIOLENCE AND HOPE

In this chapter I discuss the different types of violence experienced by Sudanese

refugees in Cairo, as well as the kinds of hope that exist in such desperate situations. I

demonstrate how refugees are always trying to find remedies for the problems they face,

celebrate the richness of their lives and communities, and search for better futures, even

amidst the violent situations such as those facing them in Cairo. Although the violence

that consumes human societies has been the focus of much contemporary social science

research, in most cases researchers focus either on the perpetration of violence, or the

incidences of hope, and not on the dynamics of the relationship between the two. This

chapter instead argues that amidst the violence, there are always cases of hope.

The concept of violence has been the focus of a number of anthropologists

(Bourdieu 1990, 1991; Scheper-Hughes 1992; Nagengast 1994; Das et al. 2000; Scheper-

Hughes and Bourgois 2004; and Das 2007). Bourdieu speaks about symbolic violence

while dealing with the relations of domination between the rich and poor in Kabyle

society.1 On the other hand, Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004) use the term structural

violence to make sense of the exclusions imposed by governments on segments of the

He argues that in Kabyle society, money and other material objects that the rich loan to the poor, and the gifts that they provide to them, generate moral obligations and emotional attachments of the poor to the rich. It is in this way that what Bourdieu termed symbolic or censored violence is established and maintained; the more the gifts and/or loans provided, the more the giver establishes domination over the receiver, which can lead to a kind of relationship similar to that of master and slave.

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population in a given society.2 Their studies are useful in explaining the exclusion of

Sudanese refugees in Cairo from different fields of struggle, and their humiliation, by

Egyptian social and political institutions. The structural violence from which Sudanese

refugees suffer sometimes extends further, to the form of physical violence by Egyptian

police and security.3

Also of relevance to the situation of Sudanese refugees in Cairo is Ramphele's

(2000) study. She examined how the former South African apartheid regime produced

violence within the black population of poor residential areas in Cape Town. She argues

that the violence in apartheid South Africa was both structural and physical. It was

inherent in the apartheid state's institutions, but it was physically excessively realized in

the poor black neighborhoods. Indeed, in these neighborhoods, the regime created a war

between the young men (comrades) who rebelled against it, and their fathers, who the

regime used as tools to suppress the younger men's rebellion. The young men took over

the control of the black neighborhoods and at one point they established courts at which

they publicly flogged negligent or abusive husbands reported by their wives or children.4

2 Scheper-Hughes and Bourgois (2004) define structural violence as the violence of poverty, hunger, social exclusion and humiliation, and therefore it is violence that is embedded in social, political, and economic institutions of a given society. 3 However, it should be understood that Egypt is not the only country where refugees are victims of structural violence. Felleson (2003) has shown that after the Cold War, the attention of most of the world's countries turned more to alien civilians as a security threat rather than focusing on states themselves. European Union and Maghreb countries' fears about Africans attempting to cross the Mediterranean (de Haas 2005) and most of the Eastern African countries' policy of keeping forced migrants in camps in rural areas constitute tangible evidence of structural violence against the forced migrants. 4 But that was not the only type of conflict that occurred during the apartheid regime as young men formed gangs whose members violently attacked each other. In addition, the rape of young women and family violence was and is rampant. Thus, the violence produced by white rulers of the apartheid state was mostly perpetrated in black neighborhoods by blacks themselves.

230

Most of the ideas and concepts about violence discussed by these social scientists

are relevant to the first part of this chapter. The major difference is that my study deals

with a group of people who survive in a country which they do not call and cannot call

home, and where the nation does not claim and cannot claim them as its citizens. Even

though they may call Sudan their country, they have lost their country in the sense that

they cannot make it theirs, so long as the conditions that forced them to leave are still in

place.5 The types of violence that Sudanese in Cairo experience include the violence of

the Egyptian state, the violence of UNHCR and its implementing partner (Caritas), the

violence of the host population, and the violence of Sudanese youth gangs as well as the

long-lasting violence of the Sudanese regime that forced them out of their country. These

types of violence take structural, symbolic and physical forms.

In contrast to the extensive literature on violence, there has been little discussion

about hope in anthropology. Miyazaki's (2004) The Method of Hope seems to be the only

source in anthropology whose entire theme is hope. He discusses the concept of hope as a

"methodological problem for knowledge" and as "method of knowledge" (Ibid: 2); his

discussion is very helpful for the understanding of the literal meaning of hope which is

one of the issues I explore in this study. For example, his discussion of Fiji's Savavou

people, and their struggle to petition the government to regain their ancestral land, which

had been removed from them during the late nineteenth century, speaks to what hope

literally means: that is to say, the expectation of something good whose achievement is

usually difficult because of the obstacles in place between it and the person who hopes to

5 They are simply "citizens of humanity" (Malkki 1994) or "abject cosmopolitanism" (Nyers 2003).

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get it. Hope can also be a sign of optimism in a totally pessimistic situation, and a sign of

resilience in an environment dominated by adversity.

Although Ramphele (2000) and Reynolds (2000) do not use hope as a central

concept in their studies of the dilemma of South African black youth during the apartheid

regime, their case studies reflected instances of hope, despite the fear, hatred, and

violence that resulted in jail, torture, and death of many people among the South African

black communities.6 The apartheid regime took all possible measures to disadvantage

these young men and women in all fields (Bourdieu 1991; Swartz 1997), but they did not

give up and continued struggling until they succeeded. Sudanese refugees in Cairo also

adopted similar means against the exclusion, domination and control of Egyptian

authorities and UNHCR.

These cases of hope which Ramphele (2000) and Reynolds (2000) provided

emerged from both structural and physical types of violence that targeted the black South

African neighborhoods. These types of violence not only physically destroyed people and

their communities, they also seriously damaged their kinship structures and the traditions

6 Ramphele provides cases of a young man (Bulelani) and a young woman (Bulelwa) as examples of young people's resilience and hope despite the difficult conditions in which they lived during the apartheid regime in South Africa. The young man grew up with his mother, and the young woman grew up with her grandparents, one of whom she lost before she was eighteen. The young man was once victimized by a group of gangsters and later had to join one of the gangs for self-defense, and the young woman grew up without adequate material and emotional support. But resilience was a wave that carried each of them to hope: they were able to make it to college. On the other hand, Reynolds studied 62 young black South African people, 40 of whom were either university or college students, or technicians. Most of the young men and young women spent several months and even years in prison, and were severely tortured. However, she identifies five factors that constituted resilience despite the adversities they endured. Therefore, in addition to their individual selves, their families, peers, and political institutions of which they were adherents, together played central roles in the formation of their stronger identities. So the total sum of all or some of these factors constituted hope in them, at a time when good education and better employment were not expected by young black men and women.

232

that held them together. However, the individual's will and family support, together with

other means of support which South Africans who stood up against the apartheid regime

were able to establish, served for many as a buffer zone against the adversities. These

ingredients of resilience constituted a wave that finally carried individuals to hope. They

were the means by which some of the young South African Blacks were able to alter the

status quo that the apartheid regime imposed on them.

I therefore first look at cases of violence which the Sudanese refugees

experienced in Cairo, and then explore cases of hope later in the chapter.

Violence against Sudanese Refugees in Egypt

I argue that the violence against Sudanese refugees in Cairo is structural in nature.

They find almost no material or moral support from the Egyptian government

institutions, such as any kind of social support and access to subsidized housing, and are

furthermore not allowed to work, all of which are denied to them, regardless of whether

or not they are recognized as refugees. In addition, the authorities do not protect them if

they experience exploitation, assaults on their dignity, or physical attacks. This kind of

discrimination and exclusion does not stop at the lack of protection from violence

perpetrated by individual Egyptians in the street, neighborhood, or public service

institutions. It also includes cases when the Egyptian state's security and military forces

have physically attacked Sudanese refugees.

For example, they attacked Sudanese refugees three times in 2003,2004 and

2005, either within or near the UNHCR compound, while they were protesting against

233

the UNHCR. These protests occurred because Sudanese refugees believed that the

UNHCR unjustly denied them refugee status and provided insufficient support to those

who were recognized refugees. The bloodiest attack of the Egyptian state on Sudanese

refugees is the one that took place in December 2005 known as mazbahat al-

Mohandeseen (Mohandeseen massacre), when more than 50 Sudanese people were killed

and many others wounded. Since 2006, Egyptian forces have killed more than a dozen

Sudanese persons trying to escape to Israel.7

Le Houerou (2004,2006) is the only author who deals in her study with the

violence between Sudanese refugees and their Egyptian neighbors, as well as within one

of the Sudanese refugee communities. However, her study does not deal with the

violence that the Egyptian authorities have inflicted on Sudanese forced migrants. In part

this is because the violence between Sudanese refugees and Egyptians, and among

Sudanese refugees themselves in Arba'a wa Nus, is due to what Scheper-Hughes and

Bourgois (2004) would consider the structural violence the Egyptian government has

inflicted on the Sudanese through exclusion and which is revealed in their everyday life.

In other words, the exclusion from any kind of support and denial of access to basic

services such as work and subsidized housing, and the encounter with racism during

interaction with Egyptians, has generated violence within Sudanese refugee communities

in some parts of the city, most particularly in Arba'a wa Nus.

7 The most recent of these attacks was reported by the BBC on August 13,2010 during which six refugees were killed by an Egyptian force on their way to Israel. Most of the Sudanese refugees who are killed on the way to Israel are from Darfur.

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Furthermore, Le Houerou (Ibid) discusses the violence within a Dinka refugee

community as general and unorganized violence. However, my study builds on her

research to include the role of organized violence by Sudanese gangs whose members are

mostly young Dinka men but also include individuals from other tribes. By organized

violence, I mean the violence that has been mediated in a purposive manner. It can

include violence towards members of the group itself, who are marginalized for whatever

reason, or who want to leave it. Sudanese gang violence is organized and identity

specific, since it excludes Egyptians and foreigners of non-sub Saharan African origin,

and mainly targets victims who are their fellow Sudanese refugees.

Below, I attempt to fill in this major lacuna in the research, and provide case

studies to explain how Sudanese refugee communities have been victimized by the

Egyptian government and the UNHCR, by individual Egyptians, and male youths of their

own community. As I have mentioned earlier, all these types of violence are structural

ramifications of the situation that Egyptian government and the UNHCR have created, in

one way or another, since they are the institutional powers that set and control the rules of

the game in the field of refugee administration. Therefore, the Egyptian state, and to

some extent the UNHCR's Cairo office, are the invisible sources of violence experienced

by the Sudanese refugee communities in Cairo.

Government Sponsored Violence

On January 28 and 29, 2003, hundreds of Sudanese refugees in Maadi - the

southern part of Cairo ~ were suddenly seized from their apartments and from streets,

shipped in police trucks, and put in detention centers.8 Men and women alike were

arrested and jailed, regardless of whether or not they had valid residence permits, or the

UNHCR blue cards that are normally issued for the recognized refugees. Observers who

reported these arrests have pointed out that among those rounded up were individuals

married or living with European diplomats.9 They were just forced to climb into police

trucks without being told what the reason was, or being asked if they had a valid

residence visa.

In the detention centers they were separated and put into small and crowded cells,

together with the Egyptian prison population, which included individuals detained for

serious crimes such as murder and theft. 32 year old Duku, who was seized on January 28

while on his way home from work, told me that there were five Egyptians and one

Sudanese man already in the small and dirty cell where he was detained, and two more

Sudanese refugees were added on the following day.10 One of the other Sudanese men in

his cell was stabbed by an Egyptian, who Duku described as a gang member. The

Sudanese man was stabbed because he refused to give his belongings to the gang

member, but was not taken for treatment until his relatives paid a bribe. Duku added that

there was no food, and the guards did not allow them to get the food supplies and clothes

which their relatives and friends brought for them. The relatives and friends then had to

contact human rights groups and church leaders, who pressured the authorities to finally

8 Ashton (2003) points out that 200 black people (mostly Sudanese) were arrested during these two days. 9 Ibid. 101 interviewed Duku at the American University in Cairo on October 7,2003. He is from the Kuku tribe (Southern Sudan). He studied until high school and he was an executive member of the Kuku community association in Cairo and was later elected its president. He was denied refugee status and his stay in Egypt was therefore illegal. He did cleaning on a short contract basis for a living.

236

allow them to visit the detainees. The prison authorities failed to provide an explanation

for the detentions, and refused to set them free until the relatives and friends had paid

money (a bribe) for their release.

This was not the first time such a large number of Sudanese refugees were

arrested, as two other campaigns of arrest had taken place in May of 2000 and December

of 2002.1 asked many Sudanese, some of whom were victims of these arrests, why it was

only Sudanese people and a small number of other sub-Saharan Africans, who were

targeted.11 Some individuals thought that politics explained the arrests of Sudanese in

May 2000 since they took place at the time when the late Colonel John Garang, president

of the Sudan People's Liberation Movement and commander in chief of Sudanese

opposition forces, was visiting Cairo. They believed that the arrests were a message from

Egyptian authorities for Garang, because Garang had continued his support for the IGAD

(Intergovernmental Authority for Development) peace proposal, even after Egypt had put

forward what is known as the Egyptian-Libyan Initiative to solve the Sudanese conflict.12

Other Sudanese said that the police officers wanted to show the Ministry of Interior that

they were doing something important so that they would get promoted to higher ranks.

The Sudanese refugees who believed this latter idea thought that forced migrants should

be careful during the months of December, January and May when police officers in

Cairo were looking for rationales to enhance their promotion prospects.

11 Refugees from many other countries, including Palestine, Yemen, and even Somalia were not exposed to

such experiences. 12 The IGAD is a regional organization that includes Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Somalia, Djibouti, Ethiopia, and Eritrea. The IGAD peace proposal came out in 1997. It is stronger than the Egyptian-Libyan peace initiative, launched in 1999, since it gives the right to self-determination to Southern Sudan. Moreover, IGAD includes seven countries and is supported by many western countries known as friends of IGAD, whereas the Egyptian-Libyan initiative was only endorsed by the Sudanese regime.

237

Two foreign observers have provided two more explanations for the actions of the

Egyptian authorities. Apiku (2003) reported that the Ministry of Interior first said that

they were looking for a murder suspect who was an African; the same ministry later

argued that the round-ups were a routine means of verifying the legal status of foreigners.

On the other hand, Ashton (2003) reported that some police officers had argued that they

rounded up Sudanese refugees in the Maadi and Basatin areas because they believed that

some of the Sudanese women who were prostitutes were causing friction between

Sudanese and Egyptian gangs. However, none of these arguments fully explains or could

justify the arrest and detention of such a large number of people of both genders, of

different ages, and different legal statuses. In addition, regardless of the reasons provided

by the authorities, the roundup and detention of Sudanese refugees constituted structural

violence that targeted only their population in Cairo.

The Egyptian government's violence against Sudanese refugees reached its

greatest level on December 29 and 30,2005, when a joint force of between 3000 and

6000 individuals from the security and riot police departments launched an attack on

about 3000 Sudanese refugees who had organized a peaceful sit-in protest in Mustafa

Mahmud Park, located in front of the UNHCR premises in Mohandeseen, on the western

11 bank of the Nile. The leaders of the sit-in protest stated that 156 of their people were

killed during this incident and their bodies were dispersed in different hospitals.14 It was

13 According to Williams (2005), the number of helmeted riot police was 3000 individuals, whereas Morse (2006) and Roxy (2006) reported that their number was 5000 and 6000 respectively. Also see Abdulzahir in Afag 'Arabiya of January 5,2006. 14 According to Roxy (see www.sudaneseonline. com 21/1/2006), the sit-in protest leaders' own records indicate that there were 74 bodies at Zeinhum Hospital, 40 at Is'af Hospital, 28 at Sanabil Hospital, 13 at 6th of October Hospital, and one at Imbaba Hospital. They also reported that they did not know the

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the extremely difficult conditions in which the Sudanese refugees in Cairo live that

forced some of them to present a list of demands to the UNHCR and organize the

peaceful sit-in protest that lasted for three months.15 It also suggests a very high level of

social and political organization. The demands were very clear and very sophisticated.

These issues suggest that agency plays an important role in refugee communities. It not

only helped refugees form associations to mediate between members of their

communities and Egyptian authorities and UHNCR. It also helped them create peaceful

and orderly resistance against the struggles of Egyptian authorities to control them.

However, the sheer level of violence directed at the Sudanese refugees suggests

that something other than irritation with the sit-in was going on. It might well be argued

that the sit-in challenged the pre-existing system of exclusion orchestrated by the

Egyptian government and did so in a very public way. In order to maintain the status quo

of discrimination and unequal treatment, the Egyptian government had to exercise

whereabouts of 400 individuals. But other Egyptian sources such as Tal'at et al. (2006) and A1 Jamel (2006) report that the number of the Sudanese refugees killed was 65 and 56 respectively (see Sawt Al Umma of January 9,2006 and Al Masry Al Youm of January 20, 2006). 15 The following were the points that they included in their statement: 1) rejection of the voluntary return program which the UNHCR office in Cairo launched in 2004; 2) rejection of the local integration program; 3) discontinuation of the arrests of Sudanese refugees without any legal grounds; 4) rejection of the unjust measures the UNHCR adopted to deal with Sudanese forced migrants; 5) rejection of discrimination against Sudanese forced migrants; 6) reopening of Sudanese asylum-seekers' closed files at the UNHCR; 7) treatment of Sudanese refugees as individuals and not as groups; 8) dealing with Sudanese refugees directly as individuals and not through their associations and community organizations because these bodies might be exploited by UNHCR to implement its plans for voluntary repatriation and local integration; 9) rejection of the application of the Agreement of Four Freedoms on Sudanese refugees; 10) protection of Sudanese refugees in Cairo against the agents of the Sudanese regime; 11) immediate registration of new asylum-seekers after their arrival in Egypt; 12) search for disappeared refugees; 13) withdrawal of the military force in front of the UNHCR office; 14) distribution of the aid that comes from organizations to all Sudanese refugees without discrimination; 15) enlightenment of the Egyptian police and security personnel about the rights of Sudanese refugees; 16) special support for the elderly, children, and women without providers; 17) response to all the complaints presented by Sudanese refugees; 18) non-provocation of Sudanese refugees by employees of UNHCR; 19) arrangement of resettlement meetings, reopening of all the files that are closed, and speeding up the process after resettlement interviews and; 20) a complete solution of the problems of Sudanese refugees, or their resettlement in any other country.

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extreme forms of violence. Moreover they had to frame the situation as the fault of

Sudanese refugees rather than government brutality. The Egyptian government described

unarmed Sudanese refugees as the ones who initiated the attack, whereas their well

prepared riot force that came to remove the refugees in their sit-in protest camp was only

defending itself.16 The government reports on this incident were headed by a photo of

two men with bandages on their arms lying in hospital beds, and the minister of interior

visiting them to show members of the riot police who were injured by Sudanese

protesters. The photos were used to transform the victimized Sudanese protesters into

perpetrators. Moreover Tal'at et al. (2006) in particular clearly emphasized how the

police played with the numbers of the Sudanese refugees they killed, after they had burnt

their identity cards first.17

Returning to Bourdieu (1991), this situation shows that in the field of struggle

around refugee administration in Cairo, the government is able to wield large amounts of

what might be termed 'structural violence'. It is backed up by a monopoly over the use of

physical force and media power to represent its opponents in ways that support its

position. In the same field of refugee administration, Sudanese people occupy a much

less powerful position and are forced to endure physical violence, and the

representational violence which unfairly characterizes their behavior. The Egyptian

authorities did everything they could to justify their brutal attack on Sudanese refugees

who were protesting peacefully because, according to them, the refugees violated the

16 Brigadier Tarig Abdelrazig, riot force commander, opened criminal case number 9975 at Dokki police department (on the western bank of the Nile River) against the protesters (see Ashraf Roxy's report at www.sudaneseonline.com 21/1/2006). 17 By this attack the Egyptian government also tried to send a message to the Egyptian opposition parties that the government was capable of maintaining the status quo if they tried to demonstrate.

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tradition of the global political society in which marginalized peoples, including refugees

and non-status humans, do not have a legitimate voice unless it is given to them by the

state or international organizations (Moulin and Nyers 2007).

Violence by Individuals

In this section I describe two cases of violence by individual Egyptians against

individual Sudanese refugees. The first case concerns Adil, a street vendor from Darfur

who used to sell wallets, purses, and cactus oil in the Kitkat market on the western bank

of the Nile.18 The second case is Lual, a southern Sudanese man in his twenties who was

stabbed to death by an Egyptian young man. The story of his death was told to me by his

neighbors Ameir, a young woman, and Kiir, a young man, both in their twenties.19

In the early evening of April 23, 2004, Adil was going home after a very long,

hot, and disappointing day, as he had not been able to sell a single item. Two Egyptian

men called: "Samara, samara!" and stopped him. They told him that they were security

men looking for a Sudanese suspect. The men stripped him of his UNHCR card (he was a

recognized refugee), robbed him of the only 11 pounds he had, and warned him not to go

to Kitkat again if he did not want to be handcuffed and sent to the Sudanese security with

his UNHCR card stapled on the back of his shirt. One of the two men was apparently an

18 Adil was a Fur and he was interviewed in my apartment in Alfi Maskan on June 23,2004. He heard that I was conducting research on Sudanese refugees in Cairo and came to tell me his story. 19 Ameir and Kiir were part of Focus Group 8 that took place on January 10, 2004 in Ameir's apartment in Hadayeg Al-Zatoon. The other individuals including Ameir's mother were also participants of this focus group. The focus group was organized by Ameir, whom I also later interviewed individually, and I stayed in contact with her until I left Egypt. Their friend's death dominated the discussion because it weighed heavily on almost every southern Sudanese in the area.

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Egyptian security man since he was openly carrying a pistol on his belt. He was a

member of the Egyptian regime's Secret Service as he was in civilian clothes.

Adil reported the incident to the UNHCR. The authorities first tried to convince

him that the two men might have been Sudanese security men, or just ordinary Egyptian

thieves. However, after he insisted that the two men were Egyptian security men and that

he wanted justice to be done, the office delegated a person to go with him to the Agooza

police department. The authorities at the police department then opened a file of theft for

Adil, after they discussed the matter behind closed doors with the UNHCR delegate who

was also an Egyptian. Adil was angered a lot by the fact that the UNHCR delegate agreed

with the police authorities to open a case alleging that ordinary Egyptians stole his money

and his UNHCR card. He repeatedly told them that being robbed of his money and his

card was normal and even expected, but what really shocked him was that the UNHCR

representative agreed with the police officers, and deliberately misrepresented the fact

that one of the men who stripped him of his belongings was indeed a security man.

In the case of Lual's murder, he was accompanying Kiir's female cousins back to

their home from the studio where they went to have their farewell pictures taken. The

girls were leaving to resettle in the USA in a few days. One of them was his girlfriend.

The incident took place in Hadayeg Al-Zatoon at about midnight. Kiir and the girls

passed by three Egyptian young men from the neighborhood, who started addressing

them with racist slurs such as wunga, bunga bunga, and shakshuka as soon as they saw

them.20

20 All of them are derogatory terms for blacks in Cairo.

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Lual was particularly angered by the term shakshuka because it is a variant of the

term prostitute, and one of the girls was his girlfriend. They loved one another, and

planned to get married in the future, and consequently he could not control his temper.

He went up to the three Egyptian men, and told them to be polite and stop repeating such

bad words. One of the men suddenly collared him yelling: "We are descendents of the

pharaohs; what can you teach?" While he was collaring Lual and Lual was trying to

collar him as well, another Egyptian took out a knife and stabbed Lual twice near the

heart. Lual fell down, and his entire body was covered in blood. The three men then ran

away after they realized that Lual was in a critical condition. The girls called a taxi and

took him to a hospital where he died. The murderer was arrested; he was from the same

neighborhood and the girls knew him. However, he was only detained for less than a

month. Ameir and Kiir told me that they often saw him across the street, walking freely;

every time they saw him they remembered their friend, and felt that Sudanese refugees

were the least valued beings in Egypt, and asked God to help them out.

Although the two incidents took place in different parts of Cairo, at different

times, and by individuals of different social status, the Egyptian authorities responded

with the same indifference. This response disappointed the victimized Sudanese refugees

and encouraged their Egyptian victimizers. These are only two of many examples. It is

not unusual to see children running behind Sudanese individuals in the market or street

and calling them samara, bunga bunga, shakshuka, dayagtuna, and other terms, at which

adults just laugh, amused by their children's behavior. If the Sudanese people try to

respond to these remarks, the Egyptians nearby will surround them and attack them.

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To avoid such irritations and subsequent conflicts, in some cases individual

refugees pretend that they do not understand Arabic, and consequently do not know what

the Egyptians have said. They also pretend to be someone other than a Sudanese, since

the other sub-Saharan Africans, particularly West Africans, are more respected than

Sudanese people. The fact that Egyptians address Sudanese refugees with terms that

injure the Sudanese refugees' dignity is part of many Egyptian's attitude and behavior

during the interactions with Sudanese, whom they are culturally disposed to look down

upon. This cultural habitus is obvious in Egyptian cinema, theatre, and even TV shows

for children, where black people, and especially Sudanese people, are usually

transformed into objects of laughter. An Egyptian journalist, Attahawi (2006), has

seriously criticized this pattern of behavior, and called upon other Egyptians to boycott

such types of cinema because they implant racism in Egyptian society.21

Gang Violence

The Sudanese refugees in Cairo are not only exposed to the violence of Egyptian

authorities, and Egyptian individuals, they also experience the violence of Sudanese gang

members. Most of the members of Sudanese gangs came to Cairo when they were still

children, and their violence is a result of the way in which they grew up marked by the

absence of adult members of their families, who were away most of the day working to

support them. I spoke with a 26- year-old, Razzag, from Darfur and his 27- year-old

colleague, James, from Southern Sudan, each of whom was once victimized by Sudanese

21 Also see Powell (1995).

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gang members. The two young men are students of sociology in an Egyptian university

in Cairo, and they are very much concerned about the violence which the members of

Sudanese gangs inflict on other Sudanese refugees. Razzag and James agree on the fact

that the Sudanese youth gang formation is a byproduct of the problems faced by

Sudanese families in Egypt.

A documentary which the gang members shot about themselves argues that the

harassment, by young Egyptian men, is one of the major reasons that Sudanese young

men formed gangs to protect themselves. When some of the gang members showed the

documentary to the public at the American University in Cairo, Razzag and James were

among the individuals who watched it. They both say that, in the documentary, there is a

young Sudanese man whose face is seriously disfigured by a group of young Egyptian

men. He had been on his way home when he had an argument with a group of Egyptian

men who followed him to his residence in Arba'a wa Nus and lit gas on his face when he

was asleep.

Razzag and James told me that the gang members argued during their

documentary presentation that it was this particular event that forced them to form gangs

to protect themselves against young Egyptians. However, they had to shift their target to

Sudanese and other sub-Saharan Africans in Cairo because Egyptian authorities were

following them closely after they had attacked young Egyptian men several times. Hence,

Sudanese community members became their easy prey. The gang members also stated

that the conflicts between the members of the two main gangs (Out Laws and Lost Boys)

221 interviewed both Razzag and James on the phone from Calgary on May 2 and 12, 2008 respectively.

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are caused by young Sudanese women who switch lovers between the two rival gangs.

The formation of Sudanese youth gangs as a byproduct of the difficult situation Sudanese

refugees have experienced in Cairo, is similar to the formation of the black South African

youth gangs described by Ramphele (2000) as a byproduct of the apartheid system. In

the paragraphs below I recount in two separate cases how Razzag and James were both

victimized by Sudanese gang members.

Case One (Razzag and Muhy)

Around 10 pm, the night of wagfa, the final day of Ramadan, 26- year- old

Razzag and his 29- year- old roommate, Muhy, were walking in 'Afifi 'Iffat Street in Ain

Shams al-Sheirguya (Eastern Ain Shams) where they had gone to help their friend,

Yahya, fix the curtains of his apartment. They were going home in Ain Shams al-

Gharbya (Western Ain Shams), when Razzag suddenly felt somebody touching him on

the head. Surprised, he tried to turn towards his friend Muhy. Instead, he found a tall

young black man raising a cleaver right over his head, with another man of a similar age

doing the same to Muhy. The two men with cleavers asked them where they were living,

and Razzag and Muhy both said they were living in Ain Shams al-Gharbya. Each time,

Razzag and Muhy tried to look them in the face, the men told them to look down or else

they would land the cleavers on their heads. In a few seconds ten more young men

suddenly emerged from the dark corner of the street. Five stood by the man who had

threatened to kill Razzag, and the other five beside the one who had threatened to kill

Muhy. Each of the two men with cleavers ordered his men to search their victim's

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pockets. They took from Razzag his 352 pounds and cell phone, and 210 pounds and his

cell phone from Muhy. The gang members told their victims to go straight to Ain Shams

al-Gharbya where they were living and then disappeared.

Razzag and Muhy went to the Aaya Cafeteria, one of the most popular meeting

places for Sudanese refugees in Ain Shams, and recounted the incident to the Sudanese

men who were there playing cards, dominos, or watching TV. They were advised by

individuals in the cafeteria to report the incident to the police since their office and the

cafeteria were only separated by one block of buildings. Unfortunately, neither of the two

victims had a valid residence permit, and the policemen told them that they could not

help them since they were illegally staying in the country and the police did not have any

obligation to follow the perpetrators.

Case Two (James and Victor)

A university student, James, lived in Hadayeg al-Gubba, located about two or

three kilometers to the northwest of Sacred Heart Church. One of the functions of the

Sacred Heart Church, as mentioned earlier, is that it is a club where Sudanese refugees

meet and spend their spare time. James often went to Sacred Heart Church on Thursday

nights, because he did not have school on Friday. There he met Victor, a friend of his,

who was also from Southern Sudan and the two men would talk together.23

23 It is the official holiday of the week in Egypt.

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On one Thursday evening James went to Sakakini to spend some time with his

friend as usual. Victor generally came to the church before him and chatted with the

individuals who sell tea and display Sudanese goods outside in the southwestern corner.

The large space right in the front of the church gate is occupied almost every evening by

a large number, often more than 100, Sudanese young men, mostly from Southern Sudan

in their late teens and early twenties, who stand and chat for hours. Some of these young

men are gang members who come to look for individuals to victimize, while others are

just young men coming to spend time with each other or wait for their girlfriends to come

out of the church.

On that particular Thursday, James and Victor followed the same routine they did

every Thursday. Victor arrived early at the market place on the southwestern side of the

church and chatted with individuals who displayed Sudanese goods, while waiting for

James to arrive. James arrived about 20 minutes or a half hour after Victor. They bought

their tea as usual and went to converse at their stamp ground, about three or four meters

from Ahmed Said Street, that passes about 200 meters to the west of the church. The two

friends were fully engrossed in conversation when six young Sudanese men, in their late

teens and early twenties, rushed to them. James and Victor realized that they were gang

members and tried to escape from them, but the perpetrators were too close and three of

them jumped on James and the other three jumped on Victor. They caught them, threw

them on the ground, and searched them. James was robbed of his cellular phone and 46

Egyptian pounds, and Victor received a couple of more kicks because he had nothing

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valuable to rob. James said that he was injured on both of his knees because one of the

attackers tripped him up and he fell on his knees on the hard ground.

Most of the Sudanese gang members came to Egypt with their relatives when they

were children and some of them were born in Egypt. Many of them spent most of the

time alone while their parents were working. Observers such as Jane Edward (2007), and

I concur with them, argue that the formation of gangs is a result of the conditions in

which gang members grew up when they were children. They became a major security

risk for Sudanese refugees between 2005 and 2008 who had to stay home in some areas

of the city such as Ain Shams and Maadi as soon as it got dark in order to avoid gang

attacks.

Sudanese Refugees and Hope

Although violence has been a major problem the Sudanese forced migrants

encounter in Cairo, there are also many cases of hope that reenergize their communities.

The hardships and violence they experience are often buried by the moments of hope. For

Sudanese refugee communities, resettlement in a western country is a realization of

almost all the hopes which they nurture throughout their life in Egypt. Prayer meetings

and parties that are organized in the honor of friends and relatives who are about to leave

for resettlement help the remaining friends and relatives keep their hopes alive for

resettlement, and also for return and a prosperous life in Sudan. The main idea of the

speeches delivered and prayers invoked during these events is that people should stay

supportive and keep trying until as many of them as possible make it to western

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countries, where they will acquire new skills and knowledge, and make the money that

will qualify them to establish a prosperous society in Sudan. Hence, they consider Cairo

as a transit point and their presence in it temporary; and adopt all possible means of

leaving it to somewhere else better.

Other moments that boost Sudanese refugees' hopes, and counter-balance the

adversities experienced, are the wedding and circumcision celebrations during which

Sudanese traditions and music dominate. These events establish moments that take

individuals through memory to the pre-conflict "good days" in Sudan, and allow them to

dream about a post-conflict and post-refugee future in the Sudan. I have never met a

Sudanese who talked about going to stay in a resettlement country forever. However, for

many, these hopes remain in a misty world of "not-yet" (Bloch 1986; Miyazaki 2004),

because they are not resettled.24 Even for those who are resettled, many hopes continue in

the world of not-yet because hopes generate hopes, and moments of the fulfillment of

some of them generate new ones. Below, I discuss three cases which reflect the moments

of hope in the Sudanese communities.

Case One (Farewell Prayers for a Kuku Community Leader)

It was late in the afternoon on a Thursday of October 2003, when Nelson (my

Kuku friend from Southern Sudan) and I left the Falaki Campus of the American

University in Cairo and went to St. Andrew's (the second most popular church among

24 Miyazaki brows the concept of not-yet from the German Marxist philosopher, Bloch, who uses the concept to overcome the incongruity between the retrospective orientation of philosophy and the prospective orientation of hope.

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Sudanese refugees) to attend farewell prayers organized in Abatei and his family's honor

because they were soon leaving for Australia where they were to resettle. Abatei was

president of the Kuku community in Cairo and his departure entailed farewell prayers

that were organized for him, and the inauguration of the new president of the community.

We arrived at St. Andrew's about 5 pm and were among the first ten to arrive. After a

half hour the compound was full of people and the program went very well. I can divide

it into four sessions: the reception session, the prayer session, the speech session, and the

photo taking and chatting session.

The reception session took place outside the church. The people arrived, greeted

each other, and then chatted with individuals whom they knew. They chatted about jobs,

rents, and application processes, weddings, and so forth. Three community members

served soft drinks. The reception lasted for about a half hour and then we went to the

large prayer hall located on the right side through the main gate that opens on Is'af

subway station (Gamal Abdelnasser Station) entry.25

Inside, the hall was composed of two long lines of fixed tables and benches

divided by a corridor connecting the door and the stage. Each of the two lines consisted

of about 25 rows of tables and benches. Abatei and his family occupied part of the first

row on the right together with some community leaders, and other community dignitaries

occupied the first row on the left, while the rest of the people occupied the remaining

rows. We sang religious songs and prayed for about two hours both in Juba Arabic and

the Kuku language. The focus of the songs was on thanking Rabbana (God) for keeping

25 All the subway stations that are located in the center of Cairo are named after the three presidents who ruled the country since 1952 as well as several individuals who led Egyptians against colonial domination.

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us alive and healthy, and on invoking him to offer us good life in the near future. The

prayers partly focused on thanks to Rabbana, on Rabbana's special protection for Abatei

and his family whose departure we were celebrating, and for Sudanese refugees in Cairo,

and Sudanese everywhere. The prayers also called for the salaam (peace) which was not

yet achieved at the time and appealed to Rabbana to provide his right guidance to

Sudanese leaders both in the Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and National

Congress Party to realize salaam soon.

The prayers were led by a woman who completely neutralized the Sudanese

problem. It was as if Omar Al-Bashir's government in Khartoum, which openly

announced in the early 1990s that part of its mission was to kill two thirds of the

Sudanese population and leave one third to enjoy a prosperous life, was not responsible

for the plight of the Sudanese refugees, including the prayer leader herself and her Kuku

community. At the end of the event, I asked her why she neutralized the Islamists, but she

replied with a smile of confidence:

Rabbana baaraf ino humman galtaneen wa huwwa behasib li humman. Ana bass bikallumu Rabbana asan yahdeehim. Humman amalo battal feena lakin taabna da mumkin yantahi gareep wa assan kida ana bikallumu Rabbana innu yahdeehim wayamulu salaam. (God knows that they are wrong and it is he who will judge them. I am invoking God to provide them the right guidance. What they did to us is too bad but our suffering will soon disappear if God directs them to the right way that will help them bring peace to our country.)

In this excerpt as well as during the prayers, it is obvious that the prayer leader placed her

own agency and agency of her community members in an almost complete erasure,

leaving Rabbana (God) to act for her people since it was beyond their ability to bring

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peace immediately to their country. Miyazaki (2004: 97) would argue that she

momentarily placed her agency in "abeyance", while she strategically manipulated a

religious language to generate hope. The strategic manipulation of religious language

suits this particular moment (Herzfeld 1997) since the persons responsible for making

peace achievable were not in Egypt.

The third session was the speech session. The focus of most of the speeches was

the appreciation of what Abatei had done for his family and for his community. All three

individuals (a male community elder, the new president of the community, and a female

community elder) each delivered a speech repeating how hardworking Abatei was: he

had completed a master's degree at the American University in Cairo, worked as a

research assistant at the AUC, and as a teacher at St. Andrew's to support his family of

six, and diligently led his community. The speakers therefore wished him good luck in

his resettlement country and encouraged him to continue his hard work in Australia. They

also wished his successor, Duku, the best in the community leadership to fully fill

Abatei's shoes. They also wished that Abatei would never forget his community

members in Egypt and Sudan, and hoped that many other community members would

join him so that together they could help their community in Egypt and Sudan.

Most remarkable of all, however, was the song, which the female elder sang at the

end of her speech, during the closing of the speech session. Most of her speech was

advice to Abatei's wife and to the other women who would probably be resettled in

western countries. She assiduously voiced that most of the news they had been getting

about those resettled in western countries was that the females had rebelled against the

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traditional ethos, which led to conflicts between them and their husbands and ended in

many cases in divorce. She urged Abatei's wife to be a role model of an ideal southern

Sudanese woman when she arrived there so that the other women could follow her lead.

She spoke in the Kuku language, which was immediately interpreted into English and

Arabic by a community interpreter.

Her song, which she ended her speech with, was not interpreted, but its meaning

was clear and we all repeated it after her for almost twenty minutes. The meaning of the

song was that although the Kuku people were dispersed in different places of the world,

at the end they would all ultimately meet in Kajukaji (a Kuku area in Southern Sudan's

Equatoria Region). The principal message was that the Kuku people should not worry,

wherever they are, because at the end they will meet in Kajukaji alive or dead. The soul

of everyone, even of those who have died and whose bodies are buried in the diaspora,

will return to Kajukaji and be part of the Kuku community ancestors. Those who come

back alive to Kajukaji will actively contribute with their new knowledge, skills and

money to the economic and social development of Kajukaji. The role of ancestors is to

help those who are alive with proper guidance to better serve their community.

The song of Kajukaji as the Promised Land for the Kuku people was the end of

the sessions in the prayer hall, after which the assembly came out of the hall to allow it to

close its doors. Most people stayed for more than a half hour in the compound of the

church after they got out of the hall. Abatei and his family sat on chairs as community

members came to shake hands, and provide them with their best advice; some took

pictures with him and his family before they said goodbye and left. The speeches, the

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songs, and the pictures are not just objects of souvenirs for those who attended the event.

They are tools of encouragement and reminders for them that they and the community

mutually belong to each other. In other words, the community supports them anywhere

they go and they work for its prosperity anywhere they are. All of these things together

constitute a prospective momentum (Miyazaki 2004) for Kuku people's hope, leading

them to a prosperous future. This prospective momentum of hope is an open-ended

process that has become a method (Ibid: 120) that keeps Kuku as a community.

Case Two (Farewell Party of the Nuba Community)

Predicating on the Japanese anthropologist and cultural theorist Kasuga's (1999)

ethnographic studies in Fiji, Miyazaki (2004: 9) argues that "Fijians maintain their faith

in land as the ultimate source of everything good even when land continually fails to

fulfill this faith". Sudanese refugees in Cairo had a similar faith in resettlement. They

believed that all their dreams would become true simply by arriving in a western country.

For example, Mayo (respondent) said to me during a conversation which I had with him

on January 6,2004: "I just want to arrive in America or Europe. I know what to do after

that." As a result, the departure of some refugees to Australia, Canada, and the USA

constitutes hopeful moments for both departing refugees and their community members

who remain behind as I explain below.

It was Tuesday March 9,2004 when I attended the farewell party, which the

Attihad Abnaa Jibal al-Nuba (the Nuba Mountains' People's Union) organized for its

members. They were celebrating those people who had successfully gone through the

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long process that begins with the submission of cases for asylum, interviews for refugee

status determination, rejections, appeals, interviews after the submission of the appeals,

recognition, tawteen (decision either for local protection, or resettlement in a third

country), and screening interviews by the resettlement country's immigration authorities,

and finally the medical examination. The individuals who had gone through such a long

process, which is overwhelmed with obstacles, and surrounded by disappointments and

hope, deserved special treatment before they left for their resettlement countries because

they are the pride and hope of their community.

The Nuba Mountains' People's Union organized this farewell event in a big club

that belonged to the Egyptian military in Hai Assab'i. The club is a walled-up two storey

complex with a huge open (unroofed) and well-lit theatre at the back. The front, right,

and left spaces between the walls and the building are green lawns fenced by evenly cut

bushes. One of the two paved passages leads up to the doorsteps of the building and the

other passes between the building and the lawns on the right side to the theatre. Both

passages are bordered by painted triangle bricks planted in the ground and shaded by

flowers. The platform of the theatre is joined to the building. I arrived at about 10 pm, a

bit late. I got lost and wandered in the area for almost an hour. But it is Cairo, a city that

never sleeps, and the event continued until 4 am.

I was invited by Mr. Shareef, a leader of the Nuba Mountains' People's Union in

Egypt, now resettled in Kitchener (Ontario). I had visited Mr. Shareef in his apartment in

Ain Shams about two weeks earlier. He was one of the 17 individuals who the Nuba

community celebrated that day. The 17 were the principal applicants; I do not count their

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families because their family members were not distinguished from the hundreds of other

individuals who attended the event. The principal applicants were distinguished by

yellow and orange sashes with the Union's logo on them. The sashes are worn over the

right shoulder and the sentence "The Nuba Mountains' People's Union in the Arab

Republic of Egypt celebrates its members who have been resettled" was written on them.

Some of the departing individuals who were the union's executives were also awarded

appreciation certificates for their active role in the community.

A Nuba band was brought to sing traditional songs and perform dances. The five

female band members tied their heads with black and white turbans, wore yellow T-shirts

with the Union's logo printed on the front, black pants, white shoes, and yellow and blue

skirts of palm leaves covered their lower bodies between the waist and knees. The five

male members of the band also wore black pants, white shoes, the same T-shirts and

palm leave skirts like those of their female counterparts but of different colors (white T-

shirts and light blue skirts) and did not wear turbans. The band leader was dressed in a

suit and tie, like a diplomat. The band first danced several Nuba Mountain dances which

the audience enjoyed a lot while sitting. Their enjoyment was brought to a climax by

kirang and kambala, the most popular and widespread Nuba dances, in which a woman

and a man dance together while others sing and wait for their turn. In kirang in particular

the woman leaves the man about one or two feet behind and shakes the whole of her body

evenly while hitting the ground with her feet like a horse in a race. The man also hits the

ground in the same way, but with less body movement. As soon as the kirang session

started many of the Nuba celebrators went and lined up on the left side of the stage and

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took their chances in the dance with band members. They danced until we felt the ground

was shaking beneath our feet. I have never been to the Nuba mountains and I could only

say that that particular area of Hai Assab'i was transformed into Umbadda al-Dirwa (now

cynically divided into Mohandeseen and Mansura) in Omdurman (Khartoum) where, as a

neighbor of many Nuba residents, I used to attend events such as marriages, naming

ceremonies, and circumcisions whose kirang was their beating heart.

Most of the men who were being celebrated were fully dressed in suits, but the

rest of the celebrators and celebrated were also neatly dressed: men in pants and shirts,

and women in a variety of Sudanese dress codes. Most of the women covered their heads

with tarha (a rectangular piece of cloth worn on the head down to the shoulders but not

covering the face), or taub (a light garment loosely worn on top of the dress, covering the

head and ending on the shanks, but some women can leave the part of the taub which is

expected to cover the head to fall on the shoulders). All looked happy and when the event

was about to end many community members and friends had their photos taken with the

celebrated individuals and band members. Some of the pictures were taken by

individuals, but the community also brought two video cameras and two community

members who were specialists in the use of video cameras to film the whole event.

The events which the community organizes for its departing members constitute

special and everlasting moments that connect the departing and remaining members of

the community. These moments are never-endingly fixed in the form of videotapes and

photos and they are not just simple mementos but vibrant reminders that speak to

community members in their resettlement countries about their responsibilities towards

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these community members who have remained behind. Therefore, relatives, friends, and

fellow kinsmen and women who remain in Cairo consider the departing individuals as

ambassadors for their communities and ask them to reflect their good image abroad and

provide them with all possible types of support. Many individuals also give them copies

of their documents for consideration when an opportunity for resettlement, studies, or

visit arises; and others write documents explaining the problems their communities in

Cairo and Sudan are facing and ask them to present them to the authorities of

resettlement countries. As a result, the joy of individuals who resettle is shared by most

of those who know them.

Resettlement in a western country, as I have mentioned, is the ultimate objective

of most of the refugees in Cairo and is, on some occasions, planned for before they come

to Egypt. Fatlabia, for example, is a 53-year-old woman who had worked both for Pepsi

Cola and Sudan Airways in Sudan until she retired and spent part of her life in Saudi

Arabia. She was doing fine in Sudan, owning a well furnished house and a car, when her

21-year-old son, Jaaleel, who had come to Egypt and become a recognized refugee, told

her that he was going to resettle in a western country and that he wanted her to resettle

with him. Fatlabia sold the house and the car and came to Egypt. However, the UNHCR

did not add her to Jaaleel's file. She then applied for refugee status rather than returning

to Sudan and was waiting for the result when I interviewed her. In the same way,

Manyang, a 36-year-old Dinka man, sold his two houses and taxi in Khartoum and came

261 interviewed Fatlabia and Jaaleel in Mahasin's apartment in Tawfeeg on February 29,2004. Fatlabia says that she is from the Fatlab clan, whereas Jaaleel identifies himself as Jaali because his father is a Jaali. Jaaleel owned a Raxsha (motorbike) with which he transported passengers within Khartoum. He was engaged and his fiancee was in Sudan.

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with his wife and their five children to Cairo. His application for refugee status was

unsuccessful and he was a street vendor selling wallets, perfumes, and belts at Zahraa Ain

Shams microbus station. He told me that he came to Egypt with the objective of being

resettled in the US but things did not turn out the way he wanted. However, he planned to

find a sponsor in Australia and was trying to save money for the tickets.27

Like Fatlabia and Manyang, there are many individuals who got rid of their

properties in Sudan and came to Egypt with the objective of resettlement in a western

country. Although some of them were able to make it to western countries and others

failed, resettlement has remained the main objective of refugees. That is why Rahma in

the dialogue in Chapter Seven told me that he came with his parents to Egypt to go to the

US and Mahasin calmed down her daughters by telling them that their turn for

resettlement was coming anytime when there were individuals traveling and when the

daughters asked her why they were staying in Egypt while everybody was being resettled.

She had told the daughters when they were leaving Sudan for Egypt that Cairo was only

the transit point for their resettlement in Australia, Canada, or the USA.

Case Three (Circumcision ofZaghawa Boys)

It was on April 28,2004 when Mr. Haggar, Matar and their wives organized the

party for their sons (one Haggar's son and another Matar's son) who were circumcised

about a week before. The two men were my immediate neighbors; I lived on the third

floor and they were living on the second floor. Haggar also stayed in my apartment for

2 7 1 met Manyang a lmost every day and chatted wi th h im before I took the subway tra in to downtown or microbus to Zahraa Ain Shams.

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about a week or so before his wife and son arrived from Sudan. Matar and Haggar were

not only my neighbors, but also my friends, as we spent most evenings together and

Haggar worked with me in the leadership of the Darfur community association for more

than two years. Quite often their wives also prepared aseeda (porridge of Western Sudan

eaten with different types of sauce, and especially the sauce of sour yogurt or dried meat)

and fried or barbecued meat, which their husbands brought to my apartment or invited me

to their apartments and we ate together as the eating tradition in Darfur implies.28

The boys' parents rented a huge wedding hall, which seemed to be the only one in

the Ain Shams area. It is a single storey building whose ground floor includes a kitchen

and preparation room, whereas the upper floor is a reception and dance hall. The hall is

uniquely designed for wedding celebrations and therefore the words: "Alfi mabruk lil

'arusein (A thousand congratulations to both bride and groom)" and "Bism Allah, ma

shaa Allah (In the name of Allah who made it happen)" are written in brown in two white

circles on the wall to the left of the stage. The two circles are about a meter apart from

each other and the two inscriptions in them are clearly visible from all parts of the hall.

On top of the two circles are chains of artificial plants of violet flowers extending up to

the door. The front part of the hall floor is dressed on a red carpet leading to the door and

the rest of the floor is dressed in a light blue carpet.

Members of different Sudanese communities, mostly from Darfur, but also from

the Nuba Mountains, Central Sudan, including Khartoum, and Northern Sudan, from the

Sudanese Jalia, and three Egyptians attended the celebration. The children being

28 The tradition in Darfur implies that people eat together in the same dish because that is blessed by Allah.

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celebrated were dressed in black suits and red ties, and had their palms and fingers

decorated with henna, and knitted strings of red silk were tied in their left hands.29 The

celebrators were lavishly served drinks and food while sitting in small groups of friends

and relatives. Tapes of Sudanese singers were played while people were eating and

conversing, alternated by tapes of Egyptian singers in respect for a couple of Egyptians

who attended the event. At about 9 pm, a group of seven young Sudanese men carrying

musical instruments arrived and entertained the celebrators until about 3 am. Two singers

alternated the singing, while the other played a musical instrument with the other band

members. I had met the guitar player and one of the two singers, who was also a violin

player; I visited them twice earlier in their residence in Brageel. The guitar player was a

Nuba from Umbadda (Omdurman) and the singer a Misseiri from Abyaye (now the area

of conflict between Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army and National Congress

Party) but grew up in Port Sudan (Eastern Sudan) and is called Adorob (another name for

the Handandawa, a Beja tribe). The guitar player completed a bachelor's degree in

journalism in Sudan, and the singer was a policeman. The two men and the other five

members of their band had not known each other before; they met in Egypt where they

formed a band, entertaining in the Sudanese communities almost every Thursday night

when most community events took place.

As the apartment of the circumcised boys was immediately below mine, I visited

it almost every day during the first week of their circumcision, to see how they were

doing. Most of the time female relatives made them keep the full dareera (a red strip of

29 Each of these ornaments and decorations has a particular significance beyond beautification, but I do not know what they signify; they constitute an interesting topic for research.

262

silk with a golden metal of a crescent shape tied around the head in such a way that the

crescent appears right in the forehead), and a necklace of beads, which is also worn by

newly married couples during the wedding day. They also wore white jallabias

(Sudanese traditional garments). The relatives and family friends often came and visited

them and their children spent some time with the circumcised boys. In sum, the boys'

decorations and the general environment during the event were exactly the same as in

Sudan, as if the forced migration did not have any impact on the Sudanese refugee

migrant community. Circumcision and rituals that follow it are replications of a tradition

that has existed in Sudanese society for centuries and, like the gift-giving rituals for

Suvavou people (Miyazaki (2004), they constitute moments of hope which generate

further hope in communities, especially in parents' life. Circumcision is a rite of passage,

taking boys a step towards manhood which is expected to be followed by establishment

of a family.

Conclusion

In this chapter I have discussed the perpetrations of violence and the expressions

of hope in the Sudanese refugee community in Cairo. The violence that the Sudanese

refugees experience is structural violence embedded in the Egyptian culture, and is

inflicted on the Sudanese by Egyptian institutions, individual Egyptians, and members of

Sudanese youth gangs. It reflects the perception of the majority of Egyptians about

Sudanese people, and can be traced back to 1821, when the then-ruler of Egypt,

Mohamed Ali Pasha, invaded Sudan in the search for slaves and gold. Since then, the

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image of the Sudanese person has been represented as of inferior character (e.g.

prostitute, doorkeeper, servant, etc.) by dominant media institutions such as the theatre,

cinema and television. As a result, on many occasions, the violence against Sudanese

refugees was justified by Egyptian authorities- as the way to control and exclude them in

all fields of struggle for resources.30The weakness of individuals who have ruled Sudan

since 1956 in front of Egyptian leaders further encouraged Egyptians to call Egypt the

'older sister' of Sudan and the way they treated Sudanese indicates that Sudan is not only

the younger sister of Egypt, but an immature younger sister of Egypt, and Sudanese of all

walks of life are therefore inferior to Egyptians. Omar Al-Bashir's regime proved this

image of immaturity true when, in the 1990s, the Egyptian authorities invaded and

declared the Halayeb Triangle, in Eastern Sudan, a part of Egypt while Albashir's regime

continued to repeat that Halayeb was in secure hands and yet at the same time used all

possible military might against Sudanese citizens in Darfur, Eastern Sudan, the Nuba

Mountains, the Southern Blue Nile and Southern Sudan.

Despite the moments of exclusion, suppression, and control which they

experience from the Egyptian government, its citizens, and the Sudanese regime,

Sudanese refugees conduct their daily activities like members of any other communities:

they celebrate a variety of events such as weddings, circumcisions, and farewell prayers

and parties. They also have strategic short term and long term plans. Their short term

30 For example, we have seen in this chapter that Egyptian authorities attacked Sudanese refugees in December 2005 and killed many of them. One of the reasons they provided to justify this attack was that the refugees were drunk and had dangerous chest diseases and HIV/AIDS and that their immediate removal was required to protect the population of the area from their diseases. See Al-Ahram of December 31, 2005, Akhbar Elyoum of December 30,2005, and Alwafd of December 30, 2005 (main Egyptian newspapers).

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plans are for self-empowerment and for the support of their communities in Egypt; and

their long term plans aim at gaining skills in the countries where they are resettled and at

contributing to the development of their communities in Sudan. These ideas and

practices, which constitute a form of resistance against the status quo, are energized

during the events such as farewell prayers and parties that bring the community members

together. The elderly Kuku woman's song, "Kajukaji: The Promised Land," is evidence

that refugees are continuously struggling to transform their presence in exile into

opportunity. They are reminded to work for a prosperous return to homeland.

These events, which constitute the moments where they support each other and

stay hopeful for a better future, are also indicators of the renewal of the social pact

between communities and their members, sources of networks for refugees from different

backgrounds, and symbols for the affirmation of Sudanese national identity in exile

transforming parts of Cairo into Sudanese enclaves through music, dress-codes, dances,

food, language, and so on, and, above all, the presence of people. During these gatherings

people also exchange ideas and agree on future plans, providing each other with moral

and material support. Such gatherings are, again, buffer zones absorbing violent

experiences which individuals and groups face during struggles for opportunities in

different fields.

In sum, refugees are in continuous struggle trying to stabilize their own lives

despite the destabilizing factors surrounding them from most directions. The result is that

they are able to transform lack of opportunity into opportunity, chaos into order, and

desperation into hope by actively and creatively implementing culturally imagined life

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strategies (Lubkemann 2008: 17). The role of community associations is central in this

struggle, as they often plan for, finance, and lead most of the cultural, social, and political

events.

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CHAPTER NINE CONCLUSION

In Africa, the focus of host countries' authorities as well that that of researchers,

policymakers and aid agencies, has invariably been on camp refugees in rural areas, since

they are easily accessible, more visible and controllable. As I have pointed out earlier,

most of the African governments and aid agencies operating in their territories do not

allow refugees whom they recognize and help to work, thus transforming them into a

dependent category of people. They uniformly construct refugees as a burden and as a

category of people who lack cultural creativity (Malkki 1995; Lubkemann 2008). This

reduces refugees to the most basic level of humanity - to an almost childlike state. In

contrast to children, however, there is no sincere ethical concern towards the treatment of

refugees. Instead, host governments' and refugee aid organizations' behaviors towards

refugees are, in most cases, overwhelmed by hidden cruelty, hypocrisy, and/or

ethnocentrism. Most of what they say that they do for the sake of refugees simply masks

their own interests. For example, when East African countries and refugee aid agencies

from western countries insist that refugees should stay in camps, it is not for the

betterment of their lives. Instead it is to convince donors to contribute more funds and to

better control refugees (Harrell-Bond 1986; Karadawi 1999; Lomo 2006). Moreover,

ethnographic studies on refugee camps in Africa have proved that flinders often establish

administrative systems dominated by strangers from western countries who often

disregard refugees' skills and local agencies' ability in administering issues related to

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refugees' lives (Harrell-Bond 1986; Colson 2003). Colson further points this out,

arguing:

Like mining companies of the Zambian Copperbelt, agencies administering assistance to refugees or other displaced people prefer to bypass the local channels of the governance and establish new administrative structures answerable, if at all, to authorities in the capital or at some level of the international order. The consequences are a weakening of local government and a disrespect for its personnel. (Colson 2003: 6)

This behavior of donor countries, aid agencies, and, in many cases, host countries'

governments has created a reality in which refugees are from Africa and their saviors are

from somewhere else - particularly from the West. Such a situation can sometimes last

for several decades with devastating consequences (Bascom 1998). This situation can,

however, be challenged when on rare occasions refugees are given the opportunity of

growing their own crops and having unrestricted access to local markets and urban

centers (Kibreab 1993; Payne 1998). Having conducted empirical studies on camp

refugees in Somalia, Kibreab (1993), for example, concludes the refugee dependency

syndrome is a constructed myth, since refugees whom he studied were able to

commercially transform entire areas and breathe new life into villages and business

centers. The refugee dependency syndrome thus turns into a myth when refugees are

allowed to move freely in and out of their camps. Nonetheless, the image of rural camp

refugees is constructed in the majority of cases as people who stay in designated areas

and aided by foreigners from western countries. Yet these assumptions - however

erroneous they may be - do nothing to explain the nature of existence for urban refugees.

The two main questions that some observers on refugee studies in Eastern Africa have

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been trying to answer are: Are there urban refugees in the region? If they exist, what are

their experiences?

Research on urban refugees started in Sudan in the 1980s (Weaver 1985,1988;

Kok 1989) and, since that time, it has gradually expanded to neighboring countries. The

conclusion of these studies has been that in almost all East African countries refugees are

rejected as a category in urban centers, particularly in the capital cities. It is possible that

this rejection emanates from the fear of governments that the presence of refugees in

urban areas might cause scarcity in basic needs and consequently mobilize the host

population against the governments. Governments of the region are also afraid of the

refugees' presence in the city, because they think that some individuals among them

might be spying for the homeland governments, especially when most of the

governments in the region are dictatorships and are supporting each others' rebels. Egypt

is an exception in this regard, where refugees are allowed to stay in the city, but the

government strips them of all rights that might otherwise promote integration.

As a result of these policies, most of the studies on urban refugees in East Africa

and Egypt have focused on their survival strategies in one way or another (Weaver 1985,

1988; Kok 1989; Cooper 1992; Malkki 1995; Kibreab 1995,1996; Fabos 1999,2008;

Sommers 2001; A1 Sharmani 2003; Le Houerou 2004,2006; Grabska 2005, 2006;

Edward 2007). In major part, such studies look at the ingenuity of refugees rather than

constructing them as an ever-dependent, culturally stark, ahistorical category. While my

research also focuses on this population and tries to deconstruct these negative images

and understandings about African refugees, I depart from them in a number of crucial

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ways. For a start, I use participant observation, as well as focus groups and interviews.

Second, I have a different type of intersubjectivity with those that I study. Unlike most

researchers, I am from the refugee community itself. This brings benefits as well as

disadvantages in terms of understanding their positions as subjects. There is, as I have

argued, a particular kind of intersubjectivity between myself and my respondents.

Although there were very few or no cultural barriers between me and my informants, my

study was not completely free of eruption (breaking in) and interruption (breaking out)

moments which Rabinow (1977: 154) has discussed. Several times, I would ask a

question and the informant's answer would be: "But you already know it!" However, I

always responded back: "I want to hear it from your mouth", or "I barely remember it,

you can explain it to me." At the same time, I was just a refugee to most of the non-

Sudanese until I told them otherwise. For example, I went to the Canadian Embassy in

Cairo about six times for different purposes and each time I was told either it was not a

refugee day or to go to the refugee side. However, the director of St. Andrew's Church,

described in Chapter Three, who insisted I was the Government of Sudan's security agent

and threatened to call the police if he saw me again in his church's compound, was an

extreme case. Therefore, refugees treated me as their community member and outsiders

considered me as a refugee, but often I stepped out and looked at what the refugees did

and heard what they said from the anthropologist's perspective. In his or her turn, the

refugee objectified his/her cultural knowledge and interpreted it to me, but the boundaries

between us were not completely cross-cultural and I was several steps closer to the

refugee community than most other researchers. I have to confess that most of the issues

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documented in this dissertation were completely new to me: I only learned them through

my informants' objectification of their knowledge and its presentation to me.

I combine advocacy with more traditional methodological approaches such as

participant observation, focus group discussions, and individual interviews. The total

amount of time which I spent with Sudanese refugees in Cairo occurred over two periods

of approximately five years (April 1994- November 1997 and August 2003-June 2004),

sometimes as a community member, sometimes as a researcher, and sometimes both as a

researcher and community member observing aspects of their lives and participating in

daily activities. I helped them write cases for refugee status determination, accompanied

them to embassies of resettlement countries as an interpreter, attended meetings their

leaders held with UNHCR representatives, participated in farewell parties and prayers,

cultural festivals, weddings, boys' circumcision events, picnics, and funerals. I also spent

hours and hours talking to refugees waiting to be served in Caritas, or coming to study,

socialize, buy or sell things at All Saints Cathedral, St. Andrew's Church and Sacred

Heart Church (also known as the Church of Sudanese). I lived in both luxurious quarters

such as Maadi and slums such as Zaraa Ain Shams and slept on couches and old

mattresses similar to these which one of my respondents, Ahmed, describes in Chapter

Five. I also maintained weekly communications by phone, e-mail, and skype with

individual refugees until September 2011.

Moreover, whereas I research Sudanese refugees in Cairo in general, focusing on

overall socio-cultural characteristics, the focus of other researchers who have studied

them has typically been on selected groups within them. For example, Fabos (1999,

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2008) studied Nubians and arabized Nubians from Northern Sudan, Louerou's (2004,

2006) focus was on Dinka and Fur, Grabska (2005,2006) explored the ordeals of

refugees for whom refugee status is denied and their stay considered illegal in Egypt, and

Edward (2007) examined the experiences of Southern Sudanese women. Their findings

are thus rich in detail for those groups they study, but my research builds on their efforts

to include the larger Sudanese refugee community.

I also study refugees not only as people who are in a continuous process of

becoming while passing across various fields in their lives (Malkki 1995; A1 Sharmani

2003; Grabska 2006), but also as people who are constrained and enabled in particular

ways by structures, which set limits and guides on what they can achieve in particular

kinds of settings. As I show, the process of becoming can constrain in the sense that it

reproduces the past, or it can enable new ways of being in the process of encounter with

new objective structures. It is in these moments and situations, when faced with such a

challenge, that the routine cultural behaviors can change, enabling actors to cope with a

reality that is different from their past. With this perspective in mind, I investigated

Sudanese refugees' response to legal, social, economic, and cultural structures in Cairo

and Egyptians' attitude towards them. I show that while Sudanese refugees could choose

to internalize the problems created by negative perceptions of them by Egyptians, many

in fact adopt a culturally innovative approach of resource pooling. This creates a new

kind of strategy to combat power and disadvantage and creates a diaspora culture that

produces hope. I also show that far from accepting negative perceptions by Egyptian

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structures and institutions which disadvantage them, many refugees have learned to assert

themselves, leading to direct confrontations between them and the Egyptian authorities.

In this study, I have come to the conclusion that cultural knowledge and agency

function together at the same time. In this regard, cultural knowledge contributes to the

general context of activity and agency is responsible for individual actions within it. For

example, many Darfur male refugees became street vendors in Cairo because many of

them or their relatives had been involved in this kind of trade in Sudan. Most of the new

markets in Sudan, from Darfur to Port Sudan, were in fact established by Darfurians.

With that experience weighing in their cultural knowledge, Darfur men became street

vendors in Cairo, but individually used the agency to display particular items and employ

suitable strategies to sell them to customers. At the same time Darfur women, who used

to be industrious farmers and herders, had to depend on their male relatives in Cairo.

They lacked enough command of Egyptian Arabic to work as domestics, whereas many

southern Sudanese, who had been IDPs in Khartoum and had acquired Arabic and

worked as domestics there, also became domestics in Cairo since their male relatives'

cleaning jobs were economically less profitable than theirs. Northern Sudanese women,

who had been involved in beauty treatments at home, adopted female body waxing and

the art of henna in order to support their families, as male relatives' skills as government

employees in Sudan were less useful in Cairo.

Because of its methodological and analytical differences from the studies of other

scholars researching Sudanese refugees in Cairo, my study concludes that the similar

experiences which the refugees endured narrowed many gaps that had existed between

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them as members of different ethnic, cultural and regional groups. As a result of the new

feelings that developed among the refugees, the southern Sudanese who founded and led

organizations such as the Peace and Justice Committee and Change Makers' Association

contacted refugee community leaders from other parts of Sudan urging them to join their

organizations. They considered such organizations venues for all Sudanese refugees in

Cairo through which they could address their community problems in the city and work

for a Sudan where everybody is equally represented and respected regardless of their

cultural or regional backgrounds. This emergent identity is something that those who

studied Sudanese refugees overlooked.

My research also adds cultural aspects of difference to previous researchers'

efforts that mainly focused on the behavioral differences distinguishing northern

Sudanese from Egyptians (Fabos 1999: 36). It argues that the northern Sudanese of

Nubian and arabized-Nubian background are different from a cultural and ethnic

standpoint than Egyptians. In addition to their color (because most of them are darker-

skinned than Egyptians), northern Sudanese are distinguishable from Egyptians in terms

of dress-code, food, language, use of space, body decoration, their taste for music, and so

on. For example, members of older generations among northern Sudanese carry ethnic

scarifications on their cheeks (e.g. H, T, and 111), many of their women have taub (a

light cloth which urban Sudanese women loosely wrap their body in), and their men wear

the Sudanese garment known as jallabiya whose design is different from the one worn by

Egyptian men. Egyptian men also wear their turbans differently and their hats do not look

like Sudanese hats. Sudanese women also decorate their hands and feet with henna, a

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tradition which does not exist among Egyptian women, and so forth. As far as the taste

for music is concerned, Sudanese are closer to Eritreans, Ethiopians, and Somalis than to

Egyptians.

Although it touches on many aspects of Sudanese refugees' lives, my study has

many limitations. First, it does not give enough space to the European Union's fears

about the presence of sub-Saharan Africans in North Africa, many of whom plan to reach

its countries and how these fears catalyze racist policies and practices against them in

North Africa. The European Union's fears and the measures its countries have taken to

stop sub-Saharan African migrants' arrival in their territories reflect the other face of

globalization which is less discussed by many who have written about it. African

migrants' hopes and attempts to reach Europe demonstrate the fact that globalization is

also a selective, exploitive, and discriminatory process that leaves the doors of the global

north wide open to cheaper products and raw materials from the global south but

furiously pushes back its people, particularly if they are from Africa. Conversely, those

from the global north experience fewer barriers of entry to the global south, as do their

products. This process creates a false image of the global north as the earthly paradise in

the minds of people in the global south, many of whom risk their lives trying to reach it.

To those of them who make it to the global north, the imagined paradise is quickly

replaced by the bitter reality of its racist political and social structures (Carter 1997;

Angel-Ajani 2000). Although some work has been done on experiences of African

migrants in the European Union countries, more research is needed on the impact of the

European Union's fears on the presence of sub-Saharan African migrants in North Africa.

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Second, issues such as organ selling or harvesting, children's dilemmas (e.g.

incarceration in apartments, lack of education, etc.), and youth gangs are crucial, and

each of them deserves to be researched separately. Each of these topics is very delicate

and needs dedication of more time, especially organ selling/harvest.

Third, a well- balanced study should have included detailed interviews with

individuals from various Egyptian walks of life. But Sudanese refugees in Egypt were

among the sensitive topics that were widespread, and it was impossible to obtain a license

from the authorities to study them during President Mubarak's time. Interviewing

Egyptians for any study relating to Sudanese refugees, or even any category of the

Egyptian population, would have jeopardized all possibilities of conducting research in

the country. Consequently, many scholars who have studied refugees in Cairo have

conducted their research under the umbrella of tourism, and none of them could have

conducted detailed interviews with Egyptians on what they thought about the presence of

Sudanese refugees.

Finally, and most importantly, the circumstances in which I conducted my field

studies are almost completely different from the ones in which I finished writing it.

Sudan was one country at the time when I conducted my field work in 2004, but it is

divided into two countries with the south breaking away from the rest of it after a

referendum as I write this conclusion in 2011. This will indeed have an obvious impact

on how southern Sudanese who are still in Cairo see themselves and are seen by other

Sudanese refugees, and how the latter see themselves and are seen by southern Sudanese.

Yet, one thing that is certain about southern Sudanese refugees in Cairo is that many of

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them, who hope for resettlement and emotionally have prepared themselves accordingly,

do not want to repatriate immediately.1 Resettlement has become an important stage in

Sudanese refugees' lives in Cairo, with its own rites of passage. Therefore, it is as

significant as a boy's circumcision or marriage and marks a successful ending to

individuals' journeys as refugees. That is why most refugees hope to resettle first and

then return to Sudan from resettlement countries.

During my studies and fieldwork Egypt was controlled by Hosni Mubarak's iron

fist, but the young Egyptians' uprising of January-February 2011 completely dismantled

his security circles, forced him to step down, and called for regime change. These radical

changes to the Egyptian political scene will have an influence on the perceptions of

Egyptians and Sudanese refugees about each other. This is particularly the case when

Egyptians learn that most of the economic hardship in their country has been caused by

Mubarak's regime (whose family's net worth alone was estimated between 40 and 70

billion US dollars). However, the Egyptian market has unexpectedly responded to this

sudden political change and the prices of basic products have skyrocketed. For example,

prices of tomatoes, lentils, and rice have abruptly doubled from 3.50,1.75, and 2.25 to

6.50, 3.50 and 4.50 pounds respectively for one kilogram, and this applies to most other

basic food items such as bread, sugar, fava beans, onions, oil, and so forth, adding

pressure on refugees and the host population. Again, a monthly rent for a two bedroom

1 This became obvious on February 21, 2011 when the UNHCR office in Cairo opened its doors for refugees to receive some financial support as most of them stayed indoors without any income throughout the Egyptian uprising that lasted for almost three weeks (January 25- February 11, 2011). Muhieldin, one of the refugees present in the UNHCR compound on that day, told me that some of the refugees, most of whom were from Southern Sudan, protested, calling upon the UNHCR to resettle the refugees in western countries rather than compensating them.

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apartment in areas such as Ain Shams and Alfi Maskan jumped from 600 pounds in 2004

to 1500 pounds in 2011. These price hikes will indeed have new impacts on Sudanese

refugees' and Egyptian's lives and on their interactions with each other in different fields

of struggle in Cairo.

The perceptions of Sudanese refugees in Cairo are not only affected by political

turmoil in Egypt itself. In Libya, Gaddafi is now fighting a running battle for control of

many Libyan cities including Benghazi, Ajdabiya, Tobruk, and Darnah against angry

protesters calling for his downfall. Libyan rebels have claimed that Gaddafi has used

mercenaries from West African countries to defend his regimes, as some satellite

television stations, including Aljazeera and BBC News, have broadcast. Yet, the same

news sources and many others, including the Los Angeles Times and several Sudanese,

Egyptian, and international websites, have reported that rebels simply seized sub-Saharan

Africans, including Sudanese migrants, from their homes, killed some of them, and

tortured others.2 For example, David Zuchino reports in Los Angeles Times:

Across eastern Libya, rebel fighters and their supporters are detaining, intimidating and frequently beating African immigrants and black Libyans, accusing them of fighting as mercenaries on behalf of Kadafi, witnesses and human rights workers say.3

The Red Phoenix provides pictures of sub-Saharan Africans sitting on knees, with their

hands on their head, and armed Libyan rebel soldiers standing behind, with their guns

pointing at sub-Saharan Africans.

2 See Aljazeera English (February 28, 2011), Los Angeles Times (March 4, 2011), www.egvptsearch.com 16/4/2011, and www.theredphoenix.org 11/7/2011. 3 According to www.egvptsearch.com. at least one third of the Libyan population is black.

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The regime in Khartoum seized the news reports about sub-Saharan African

mercenaries defending Gaddafi's regime, as an opportunity to mislead Libyan rebels and

demonstrators to kill Darfurians in Libya and issued a statement through its Ministry of

Foreign Affairs that the snipers used by Gaddafi against Libyans are actually Darfurians.4

Furthermore, the discriminatory behavior of the Sudanese regime in this regard went as

far as selectively evacuating Sudanese from the other parts of Sudan in Libya and leaving

Darfurians, hoping that they would die during the Libyans' unrest against Colonel

Gaddafi's regime. So Darfurians in Libya have been put in a very risky situation by a

regime that is legally entitled to rescue them.5 The term murtazaga (mercenaries), which

was frequently repeated in reference to some black men fighting for Gaddafi's survival in

power, already made its way to the Egyptian street and some Egyptians already started

calling Sudanese in Cairo murtazaga.6

These Egyptian and Libyan uprisings are part of a series of protests which started

in Tunisia and forced its president, Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali, to flee Tunisia for Saudi

Arabia on January 14, 2011, and then gradually spread to other Arab League countries

including Algeria, Bahrain, Oman, and Yemen. These protests aim at drastic changes of

the political systems of these countries that are mostly ruled by monarchs or lifetime

dictators, in the hope that democratic systems will provide a window for freedoms,

4 See www.sudanile.com 23/2/2011. 5 Although a Darfiirian, Abuhimeid, with whom I had a long telephone conversation, on February 27, 2011, told me that he and most of the Darfurians he knew were safe staying indoors, Radiodabanga whose main focus is on Darfur, broadcast on February 28,2011 that Libyans had already killed three Darfurians and cut off the hands of another one. Also see www.radiodabanea.org. 6 However, two things which those who repeat the snipers are mercenaries brought from African countries missed are: First, a sizable number of Libyans are black and it is possible that many of them are supporting Gaddafi because he made them equal to other Libyans; and second, I do not think that mercenaries will be carrying the passports and other IDs from their countries of origin while on criminal duty. One would also wonder why these news agencies do not interview some of the captured mercenaries in Arabic.

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pluralism and human rights which, will consequently reshape their societies culturally

and economically. Despite the disastrous experiences through which the refugees have

gone during these uprisings, there is a hope that the uprisings will, therefore, also lead to

changes in political, economic, and cultural structures which will create a space for

integration of refugees in the region in the long run.

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POSTSCRIPT

It is September 2011 when I am writing this postscript. Egypt now is in many

ways different from the time when I conducted the fieldwork and wrote my dissertation.

The political system has changed and most individuals who ruled the country until

February 2011 are now in detention facing trials. The most prominent among them, of

course, is the former president Hosni Mubarak who ruled Egypt for thirty years (1981-

2011). He is now facing several charges, including the killing of protesters at Tahrir

Square in January-February 2011 and the embezzlement of several tens of billions of

dollars.

The Sudanese authorities quickly announced their support of the new government

in Egypt and not only distanced themselves from Hosni Mubarak's regime, but also

launched a fierce attack on it, arguing that Mubarak ordered Egyptian troops to occupy

the disputed Halaib triangle, hosted Sudanese opposition groups, and pushed the United

Nations Security Council (UNSC) to impose sanctions on Sudan, all of which took place

in the 1990s.1 Omar Al-Bashir visited Cairo in March 2011 to congratulate the new rulers

of Egypt, offered his regime's unlimited support to them, and invited them to visit

Khartoum. Al-Bashir also told the media that he ordered 5000 cows as a gift to Egypt

ahead of its Prime Minister's visit to Khartoum in April 2011 and declared the Halaib

1 See www.sudantribune.com. 26/3/2011. However, the Mubarak regime had often defended President Omar Al-Bashir against the arrest warrant which the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued against him for war crimes, crimes against humanity, and genocide committed in Darfiir. For example, in 2004, 2005 and 2006,1 remember that the then Sudanese Minister of Foreign Affairs and later Al-Bashir's Foreign Affairs advisor, Mustafa Osman Ismail, always complained about the situation in Palestine, Iraq and Lebanon while his Egyptian counterpart, Ahmed Aboul Gheit, looked for all possible ways to justify that the ICC charges against al Bashir and members of his regime were baseless.

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triangle that has been under Egypt's occupation since the early 1990s a symbol of

integration between the two countries.2 According to Omar Al-Bashir's Foreign Affairs

advisor, Mustafa Osman Ismail, his regime also invited Egypt to resettle 5 million

Egyptian farmers in Northern Sudan to cultivate 1.3 million acres with different types of

crops, including wheat and sunflower, that are necessary food crops for the Egyptian

population.3 The Sudanese ambassador to Egypt, Kamal Hassan Ali, again made it public

that the authorities in both countries decided to build highways to facilitate the movement

of goods between Egypt and Sudan; ".. .Egyptian trucks will soon be able to come to

Khartoum and Sudanese trucks will travel as far as Alexandria", he added.

Similarly, Omar Al-Bashir's regime immediately supported the Libyan rebels,

changed the name of the highest tower in Khartoum that was built by the Gaddafi regime

from Burj al Fatih to Burj Corinthia, and removed the Gaddafi flag from the tower and

replaced it with the rebel flag.4 The regime further delegated both the head of its

intelligence service, Mohamed Atta, and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ali Karti, to

Libya during the last week of August 2011. The two men met with the new Libyan

leadership, expressed their regime's support to it, and invited its members to visit

Khartoum in the same way as they invited the new Egyptian rulers. These visits were

followed by the visit of the Sudan's First Vice President, Ali Osman Taha, to Tripoli on

September 29,2011.5 During a press conference in Tripoli, Taha referred to Libyans and

2 http://allafrica.com/stories/nrintahle/201 IQ328Q707.html. 28/9/2011. 3 Check www.sudanile.com. 23/8/2011. 4 See www, sudantribune.com. 28/8/2011. Gaddafi had named the tower after his revolution, al Fatih. 5 www.sudantribune.com. 29/9/2011.

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Sudanese as brothers and called upon the Libyan interim government to become his

regime's strategic ally.

Correspondingly, many changes happened inside Sudan. Southern Sudan had a

referendum that led to its independence from the rest of the country in July 2011 and the

war restarted in Southern Kordofan and Southern Blue Nile in August and September

2011 respectively. The two regions were part of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement

(CPA) which Omar Al-Bashir's regime and the Sudan Peoples' Liberation

Movement/Army signed in January 2005. However, the regime systematically violated

many CPA principles. It massively rigged the elections, stifled all freedoms, and

continued its racist discourse of Arabism. For example, Al-Bashir repeated during a visit

to the eastern Sudanese city of Gadaref in December 2010 that Sudan has to be an Arab

country after the independence of Southern Sudan.6 The Vice President, Ali Osman Taha,

even went further to say, during a speech which he gave in a rally on Jully 30, 2011 at the

village of Hilaliya, that they would 'cleave with a sword' those who oppose their regime

and talk about cultural and religious pluralism of Sudan.7 Al-Bashir and Taha implicitly

meant that the non-Arab Sudanese have either to become Arabs or leave the country.

Referring to these pronouncements, a Sudanese historian, Ahmad Sikainga (2011), has

pointed that:8

The pronouncements of the regime's leading figures should be viewed as of the NCP's "manifesto" for the post-separation period. At the core of

6 For Al-Bashir's speech in Gadaref, see www.sudantribune.com. 28/12/2010. He knew beforehand that Southern Sudan would secede, as he had given that speech a few months before the referendum of Southern Sudan because his regime did nothing towards making the unity attractive. Nevertheless, the non-Arabs still constitute more than two thirds of the Sudanese population after the independence of Southern Sudan. 7 See Ahmad Sikainga (2011) at www.concernedafricanscholars.org. 11/3/2012. 8 Ibid.

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this manifesto is the establishment of a theocratic state, the imposition of the Arabic-Islamic form of identity, and the suppression of any form of dissent.

The independence of Southern Sudan has slashed Khartoum's share of oil by 75

percent ~ from 500000 to 125000 barrel a day — resulting in a sharp price hike of food

products such as meat, sugar, vegetables, and so forth.9 The population started

demonstrations against the price hikes in various cities in Central and Northern Sudan,

including Khartoum, as a result of the economic hardship. The demonstrations have

coincided, on the one hand, with the meetings of Darfur, Southern Kordofan and

Southern Blue Nile rebels to unify their armed struggles against the regime, and with

mutual calls of rebel and other opposition leaders to each other to join efforts to topple

the regime, on the other hand.10 Moreover, the regime has been experiencing isolation

internationally for the crimes its leaders committed in Darfur. All these issues together

constitute an ultimate pressure on the regime and consequently its leaders are

endeavoring to obtain the support of the interim governments of Egypt and Libya in any

way possible because that might supposedly help them stay in power. The Sudanese

authorities' main objective in having strong relationships with Egypt and Libya is to

close any access for Sudanese opposition forces to these countries and to intimidate

refugees who often demonstrate in Cairo calling for the downfall of the Sudanese regime

and trial of its leaders at The Hague. According to several refugees who spoke to Radio

Dabanga from Tripoli on October 4, 2011, the Sudanese regime brought security forces

9 For the reduction of Khartoum share of oil see http://af.reuters.com/article/sudanNews. 3/10/2011. 10 See httn://www.sudanile.com/2008-05-19-19-45-21 /33061 -2011 -10-01 -07-01-11 .html. 3/10/2011, for rebel and unarmed opposition leaders' rallies for unity to topple the regime.

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to Benghazi and Tripoli during the last week of September 2011. The forces started

gathering Sudanese refugees there and classifying them on a regional basis. Refugees

from the Northern and Central Sudan are released and those from Kordofan are taken to

several areas, including Salah Al-Din and al-Janzoor in Tripoli, to load trucks with

ammunitions and weapons, whereas Darfurians are taken in an unknown direction.11

The questions that arise immediately are what impacts have these dynamics had

on Sudanese refugees in Cairo? And how do they cope with them? To answer these

questions I followed daily news online on several television channels and websites and

had a series of conversations on skype with Muhieldin and Shukri who both live in Ain

1 *) Shams, in the northern part of Cairo. The online data and our conversations constitute a

main thesis that the change in political system in Egypt has resulted in a situation of

insecurity in Cairo, generated a serious economic hardship, and further increased the

victimization and marginalization of Sudanese refugees.

However, the available data confirm that one positive and obvious fruit of the

Egyptian revolution is the freedom of assembly and organizing demonstrations which

Egyptians and refugees alike seem be using a lot - possibly for both serious and not so

serious reasons. For example, Egyptians are often seen demonstrating at Tahrir Square

and refugees demonstrate in front of the UNHCR compound, the Arab League, and

11 www.radiodabanga.org. 4/10/2011. The refugees who spoke to Radio Dabanga have mentioned that the Libyan interim authorities closely cooperate with their Sudanese counterparts in intimidating refugees from Darfur. There is a possibility that the refugees who are taken to load trucks are mostly Baggara Arabs. The Sudanese authorities aim at training and consequently using them against the rebels in Southern Kordofan. 12 Shukri is a Fur man in his twenties. He was studying at a university in Khartoum, but had to leave the country because of the persecution by Al-Bashir's regime's secret police. He came to Cairo in early 2010 and was interviewed for refugee status determination during the last week of September 2011. Muhieldin has been my key informant since 2003.

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embassies of western countries.13 The objective of refugees' demonstrations in front of

the UNHCR office is resettlement in western countries; and they urge the international

community to do more in Sudan during the demonstrations in front of the Arab League

and western countries' embassies - they call for the western countries' and Arab

League's non-cooperation with the Sudanese regime and for considering Darfur, South

Kordofan, and Southern Blue Nile as no-fly zones.

Insecurity

Observing the insecurity in Cairo, Sarah Mikhail reported on April 6, 2011 that

Egypt's political turmoil hit night life in Cairo hard. I mentioned in Chapter Eight that

Cairo was a city that never slept as there were always people in the street and in the

market day and night, but the lack of security has now forced the city to sleep at night.

The insecurity is caused by the absence of police from the streets most of the time and the

complete dismantlement of the secret intelligence service whose members were unknown

to the public which made people afraid of almost everybody they did not know well to

the extent that they avoided mentioning anything trivial against the Mubarak regime until

they were sure that what they were going to say was going to remain private. Moreover,

thousands of prison inmates, many of whom committed serious crimes, were set free in

mysterious circumstances and police stations were set on fire and firearms stolen from

them. For example, Mikhail reports that "when the police deserted the streets and

13 See www.radiodabanga.org. 15/9/2011.

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thousands of prison inmates were set free in mysterious circumstances, residents locked

their doors."14 Another observer, Sherif Tarek, also reported on August 28, 2011:

.. .hundreds of thousands - some say millions - demonstrated peacefully in Tahrir Square, the police had all but disappeared from the streets having tried and failed to forcefully disperse protesters with tear gas and live rounds. That evening, countless police stations were set ablaze and a multitude of firearms stolen.15

January 28,2011 is the date on which Egyptians lost confidence in the police as the

protector of people and their properties. The police tried to use force to disperse the

demonstrators rather than watching them demonstrate peacefully. The demonstrators

were able to prevail and since then the police image has changed in the minds of many

Egyptians. As a result, many Egyptians in Cairo had to acquire arms and organize

residential patrol groups at night to protect themselves, their property, and their neighbors

from burglars and muggers. Muhieldin and Shukri told me that it is not uncommon to

hear shooting at night in Ain Shams where they live, and that most home and/or shop

owners have firearms because they feel that the police are no longer reliable. Shukri told

me that he saw several shop owners with pistols in their counter drawers and that when

he asked them why they responded: "Mafish hakooma - mafish aman (no government -

no security)." Sherif Tarek also reports:

To date [August 28,2001], security remains lacking, while the streets increasingly see unlicensed guns for sale and mob behaviour materializing. With the police short-staffed, many have resorted to self-reliance for self-defence.16

14 http://af.reuters.com/articlePnnf?articleId=AFLDE72P09420110406. 6/4/2011. 15 http://enelish.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/l/19666/Egvpt/ln-EgvDt.-revolution-and-rogue-Dolice-speH-street.aspx. 20/9/0211. 16 http:/7english.ahram.org.eg/NcwsContentP/1/19666/EgvDt/ln-£gvpt.-revolution-and-rogue-pol ice-spell-street.aspx. 20/9/0211.

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Most of these arms that Tarek says are in the street for sale are the ones stolen from

police stations. The arms are used for different purposes. Burglars and muggers buy them

to acquire material wealth. They use these guns for robbery, whereas other individuals

buy them to defend themselves, their property and their neighbors. Yet again, there are

individuals who use the guns for revenge. For example, Muhieldin also added that the

population of the part of Ain Shams where he lives is mostly Sa'ida — from Upper Egypt-

- and that some killings in the area are revenge killings.17 The term for revenge is taar

both in Egypt and Sudan and some revenge cases can last for several decades. The

vacuum in social order the revolution has generated encouraged many individuals to take

revenge in some distant murder cases.18

Many individuals are often killed as a result of the spread of firearms and easy

access to them. Muhieldin recounts two cases of killing in Ain Shams in which firearms

were used. The first case happened in August 2011 and the second in the last week of

September 2011. The first case is a revenge case in which a man was shot dead in front of

Muhieldin. The victim was walking in the street when the murderer drew a gun from one

of his pockets and shot him. Nobody followed the killer and the victim's relatives simply

took away the body. They know the family whose member killed their relative and will

probably seek revenge on their relative's murder later. In the second case, a 13-year-old

boy was playing with a gun near his younger brother in their apartment. He pulled the

17 Sa'ida is from Sa'id which means south in Egyptian Arabic (also Darfur and Kordofan Arabic). So Upper Egypt is called Sa'id because of its location and its people are referred to as Sa'ida (southerners). 18 Some people might think that revenge is carried out on a specific individual who committed murder or any other crime such as rape. However, in many parts of Egypt and Sudan, if the person who committed the crime is not available, revenge can be carried out on any of his/her relatives, or lineage or clan members.

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trigger, shooting two bullets, one of which killed his younger brother. They are

Muhieldin's neighbors. When Muhieldin asked the father if he wanted to report the

incident to the police, his reply was simply: "There is no government."

Mob violence is also another factor of insecurity. My study shows that mob

violence had existed in Egypt before the revolution, but it mostly took place during

quarrels that involved Egyptians and foreigners. However, mob violence after the

revolution has often been taking place among Egyptians. Sherif Tarek cited Professor

Hani Henry of the American University in Cairo who pointed out that "groupthink, poor

education and extremism" seem to be among the main factors of mob violence that

seriously affects some individuals.19 He also quotes Professor Mohamed Fekry of the Ain

Shams University who agrees with Professor Hani Henry that mob violence has been on

the rise in the aftermath of the Egyptian revolution.

Sectarian violence is also another problem in Egypt, as Muslim extremists have

often attacked the Egyptian Coptic community members. The worse of these attacks took

place on October 9,2011 when Muslim radical thugs attacked a group of protesters from

the Coptic community who were protesting in Cairo against a Muslim extremist's attack

on a Coptic church in Aswan a week earlier. The military intervened and fired live

rounds, resulting in the death of 19 Copts. The casualties were 26 dead and 200 wounded

from all parties.21 The BBC World News has further reported that the sheikh of Al-Azhar,

19 http://english.ahram.org.eg/NewsContentP/l/19666/Egvpt/In-Eevpt.-revolution-and-roguc-policc-spcll-strcct.aspx. 20/9/0211. 20

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-15241257, 11/10/2011. 21 littn://www.oresstv.ir/detail/203707.html 11/10/2011. 11/10/2011.

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Ahmed Al-Tayab, urged both Muslims and Copts to rather establish a religious dialogue

than attacking each other. However, it is unclear if his call has yielded positive fruits.

Economic Hardship

The Egyptian economy was hard hit since the very first week of the revolution

and its situation has not changed until I write this postscript in September 2011. Many

news services, including BBC World News, reported on February 4,2011 that the

revolution cost Egypt $310 million dollars every day.22 It is possible that the economy

continued dropping at the same rate for the 18 days of the uprising (January 25-February

12). However, the economic situation has not improved that much even after the uprising

ended because investors have needed to be reassured that it is safe to invest in the

country. This was made clear by Abdel-Moneim Said who argues:23

In short, investors clearly prefer to wait until Egypt passes through the transitional phase and the situation stabilizes, and until they know what kind of laws they will be operating under.

Said further explains that both Egyptian and foreign investors are reluctant to invest in

Egypt and that that reluctance will continue until the transitional phase is over. However,

up until now, Egyptians and foreigners alike do not have any clue about when the

transitional period will end. According to Jim Snyder, Mohamed El Baradei, the former

director of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a possible candidate for the

22 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-12365191 ?print=true. 16/9/2011. 23 http://weeklv.abram.org.eg/print/2011/1046/opl.htm 17/9/2011.

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Egyptian presidency, has referred to this situation as a "black hole" in which worried

Egyptians are buying guns to protect themselves.24

This situation of uncertainty has generated a price hike of various daily consumer

products. Table (2) below explains the prices of some products before and after the

revolution; these are among the products that largely constitute refugees' dietary system.

The prices are in Egyptian pounds, with $1 US equivalent to about 6 Egyptian pounds.

Table 2: Prices of Some Products before and after the Revolution

Product Price before Revolution

Price after Revolution

Comments

Locally grown fava beans

3.75 pounds a kilo

8 pounds a kilo Imported fava beans were 6 pounds a kilo before the revolution and are 9 pounds a kilo after the revolution

Lentils 3.75 pounds a kilo

8 pounds a kilo

Tomatoes 1.75 pounds a kilo

2.5 pounds a kilo

Onions 1.5 pounds a kilo 3 pounds a kilo Chicken 8 pounds a kilo 13.5 pounds a

kilo Sugar 2.5 pounds a kilo 5.5 pounds a kilo Wheat Flour 2.50 pounds a

kilo 4.5 pounds a kilo

Landladies/lords have also raised the rent in response to the insecurity and

economic hardship. Therefore, unfurnished two bedroom apartments were rented out to

Sudanese refugees for 500 pounds a month in Ain Shams before the revolution, but that

24 http://www.bloomherg.com/news/2011-05-22/egypt-is-disintet;ratinii-as-tourism-drop-eripples-eeonomv-elbaradei-savs.html. 3/6/2011.

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price has jumped to 650 pounds a month after the revolution. The rent of furnished two

bedroom apartments has jumped from 750 and 800 pounds before the revolution to 900

and 1000 pounds a month after it.

Other Impacts of Revolution on Sudanese Refugees

The insecurity has had serious consequences on Sudanese refugees' lives. Like

many Egyptians, Sudanese refugees are also targeted by burglars and muggers.

Muhieldin and Shukri told me that muggers often invaded Sudanese refugee apartments

and stripped refugees of their valuables. They also emphasized that a friend of theirs, who

finished visiting them in their apartment, was seriously beaten up and left reeling in his

blood. The incident took place in front of Muhieldin's and Shukri's building on May 12,

2011.

Muhieldin and Shukri both recount that most Darfur refugee men stopped

displaying goods on street corners and even in the market because they are afraid of

baltajjiya (muggers) and a few of them who still display goods do so in bigger groups to

scare the muggers. Muggers are not a new phenomenon in Egyptian markets as they used

to come to the market place and ask each street vendor to pay a couple of pounds as soon

as the market day started and Idris's case in Chapter Three explains it well.25 They had

even often alerted street vendors in case the municipal authorities sent police or security

men to confiscate goods of individuals who did not have a license. Several times I was

conversing with street vendors when baltajjiya came ahead of the municipal authorities'

25 Although Idris was seriously cut and could not recover his goods, the baltajjia would not have taken his goods had he given them the amount of money they asked.

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patrol to tell vendors to leave or at least hide their goods and they also came back and

told them when the patrol was over. However, before the revolution, the presence of

police and secret intelligence personnel made street vendor refugees feel confident that

baltajjiya would normally take the amount which was imposed on each stall per day and

walk away, but after the revolution they think that baltajjiya might decide to walk away

with everything and beat them up or even shoot them if they try to recover their goods.

Consequently, Muhieldin and Shukri further indicated that many Darfur refugee

men who had previously displayed goods in the market were forced to give up their

goods-displaying activities and are trying hard to secure housekeeping jobs. The two men

also told me that the new situation forced Darfur women, who were dependent on their

male relatives before the revolution, to compete with their southern Sudanese

counterparts in the housekeeping field. This means that housekeeping is the main domain

of employment left for Sudanese refugee women and men. Nevertheless, job

opportunities in the housekeeping domain have also dwindled as a result of insecurity.

Many rich foreigners who used to employ refugees as domestics returned to their

countries in January-February 2011 and have not come back yet to Cairo. Reporting on

July 22, 2011, Igor Kossov, for instance, says: "Since the revolution, however, many

O f t wealthy foreigners have left the country, leaving their Sudanese housekeepers jobless."

The almost continuous visits of the Sudanese authorities to Cairo, their invitations

to their Egyptian counterparts to visit Khartoum, and the propaganda about the

integration of the populations of the two countries made many Egyptians wrongly believe

26 See httD://womensenews.org/storv/immigration/l 10721/sudans-refuoee-single-moms-prefer-et>vpt-hoine?r>age-0.1. 21/9/2011.

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that the Sudanese authorities respect and love the Sudanese people in the same way they

love and respect Egyptians. Muhieldin and Shukri recount that some Egyptians often stop

Sudanese refugees and ask them why they do not stay in Sudan, whose authorities are so

gentle. Again, they ask refugees whether they were from the Southern Sudan or Darfur,

which refugees find problematic to answer in either case. The refugees who respond that

they are from the Southern Sudan are asked again why southern Sudanese voted for the

independence of Southern Sudan and that Egyptians will fight with Al-Bashir to bring the

Southern Sudan back to the rest of Sudan which will soon integrate with Egypt. The

refugees who answer that they are from Darfur are told that Egyptians will fight with Al-

Bashir and defeat Darfurians. According to Muhieldin and Shukri, some Egyptians again

think that Hosni Mubarak brought Sudanese refugees to Cairo and that his regime

protected them and covered their living expenses and that they have to leave Cairo since

Mubarak left power. However, Muhieldin and Shukri say that other individual Egyptians

often intervene and tell the ones causing problems to refugees: "Kida 'aibya wala, nihna

'andana masriyeen fi Sudan [That is shameful, man, we also have Egyptians living in

Sudan]."

Insecurity, economic hardship, and lack of jobs have forced some individual

refugees, especially from Central and Northern Sudan, to go back to Sudan. However,

many southern Sudanese have preferred to stay as refugees in Cairo, such as Darfurians,

despite the independence of Southern Sudan. Muhieldin and Shukri also say that some

refugees have left Cairo for the Egyptian border town of Salloum and have applied there

for refugee status. Many Sudanese and other Africans running away from Libya came to

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Salloum and stayed there as refugees. News spread among the refugees in Cairo that

refugees in Salloum are fed and sheltered, which has encouraged some refugees to travel

and apply for refugee status there. Another unfortunate piece of news that is known to

Darfurians in Calgary, and confirmed by Muhieldin and Shukri, is that some

opportunistic individuals frequently leave Khartoum and Central Sudan for Salloum,

where they apply as refugees coming from Libya, which will possibly complicate the

refugee status process for those coming from Libya.27

Many refugees who have remained in Cairo often protest in front of the UNHCR

office demanding more support, protection, and resettlement in a third country. Jon

Jensen reports on June 30,2011 that, during a refugee protest in front of the UNHCR

office in Cairo, a 38-year- old refugee woman from Darfur whom Jensen calls Nema

Mohamed set herself on fire and would have died if other refugees had not rescued her.

Nema told Jensen:28

I wanted to kill myself. I am suffering and felt there was no reason to continue living.... But I also wanted the UNHCR to realize how hopeless I feel. So if the solution was for me to die to teach them that lesson, then so be it.

Jensen further reports that Nema was pregnant and had six children at the time when she

set herself on fire. There are also the fears that the Sudanese regime unleashed its security

elements to spy on refugees in Cairo, which doubles their desperation.

However, I mentioned earlier that the Sudanese refugee problem is complex and

needs a genuine and multi-facetted solution in which the UNHCR and other refugee aid

27 Salloum is an Egyptian city located on Egypt's border with Libya. 28 http://webl.globalpost.com/print/5661324. 14/9/2011.

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organizations, refugees, the host countries' authorities and populations, the Sudanese

authorities and population, regional political organizations (e.g. IGAD, AU, EU, etc.), the

UN, and donor countries have to be seriously involved. I have touched on most issues

that constitute instant solutions in several parts of the dissertation. However, I believe

that any discussion on refugees should include the factors that produce them. As far as

Sudanese refugees are concerned, the main factor that has been producing them since

1955 is the corrupt and "racist" elite from the Danagla, Ja'alyeen, and Shaiguya tribes

whose members have been trying to impose Arabism on every Sudanese. Yet, the

population of these groups together only constitutes between two and four percent of the

Sudanese population. The problem has been wrongly addressed as between Southern

Sudan and Khartoum, Darfur and Khartoum, Eastern Sudan and Khartoum, Nuba

Mountains and Khartoum, or Southern Blue Nile and Khartoum. The wrong definition of

the problem has resulted in partial and instant solutions, but the conflict continues and the

people are displaced every day. Therefore, the problem will continue unless organizations

such as the African Union, the Arab League, the EU, and the UN; neighboring countries

such as such Egypt, Ethiopia, South Sudan and Chad; and China, the UK, and the US

force the triplet tribal elite to accept that Sudan's problem is one - Arabism—and to sit

down with people from all other Sudanese regions to put an end to this problem at a

venue of peace talks.29

29 The UK is responsible for the creation of the Sudanese state the way it is today, and China and the US are also directly involved in Sudan's problem. China is the main investor in Sudan's oil and supporter of the regime in every sense, and the US was among the major players in both Naivasha (2004-5) and Abuja (2006) peace talks that only brought partial and short-term solutions to the problem.

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ABBREVIATIONS AND ACRONYMS

AIDS Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome AU African Union AUC American University in Cairo BBC British Broadcasting Corporation CPA Comprehensive Peace Agreement EU European Union GOs Governmental Organizations HIV Human Immunodeficiency Virus HRW Human Rights Watch ICC International Criminal Court IDRC International Development Research Centre IDPs Internally Displaced Persons IGAD Intergovernmental Authority for Development IRC International Rescue Committee NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NCP National Congress Party NDP National Democratic Party NGOs Non-Governmental Organizations OAU Organization of African Unity SCDP Sudan Cultural Digest Project SFDA Sudanese Federal Democratic Alliance SHRO Sudanese Human Rights Organization SNDA Sudanese National Democratic Alliance SOAT Sudanese Organization Against Torture SPLM/A Sudan People's Liberation Movement/Army SUDIA Sudanese Development Initiative Abroad SWAN Sudanese Women Action Network UK United Kingdom UN United Nations UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees UNICEF United Nations Children's Fund US United States WFP World Food Program WHO World Health Organization

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GLOSSARY

'adaat adorob agnabi/aganib al-agnabi da al-Alwan al 'amal albango alfi mabruk al- gabeela al-hajjana al-ihala li al-saleh al- 'am

al-jalia al-Sudaniya al-junub al-murra wa al-hilwa alnisaa alshawar 'ai amalo 'ammi Arabi Juba araguie

'arusein aseeda

awlad baaraf bakhour timan

basha/beigh

battal behasib bikallumu bint/banat bism Allah biyut bunga bunga

butagat al-saffra

traditions a Beja tribesperson from Eastern Sudan foreigner/foreigners in Egyptian Arabic this foreigner in Egyptian Arabic colors work hashish congratulations a thousand times tribe camel or horse riding soldiers layoff for the common good-a policy adopted by Omar Al-Bashir's regime to get rid of actual and potential opponents to his regime the Sudanese diasporic community the South the bitter and sweet women streets they did my uncle Juba Arabic spoken in Southern Sudan arrack distilled from fermented and boiled palm dates bride and groom Sudanese fufu usually made of millet or sorghum flour boys to know twins' incense (literally); special Sudanese incense believed by many Sudanese as a protection from bad spirits and the evil eye Egyptian Arabic terms for Sir borrowed from Turkish bad to judge to tell girl/girls in the name of Allah houses derogatory term in reference to blacks from sub-Saharan Africa in Egypt yellow cards

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butagat al-zargaa dareera

dayagtuna dynamo fallahin fundug furas ga 'adeen gadar elahi galtaneen gareep ghalaba ghurba hanim halawa ibn al-Neel igama ikhwa al-Sudaniyeen jallabia jalia Jibal al-Nuba junubyeen kambala kanymuru

khilu rigl khumra

kirang kisra

magbool maharim

marissa marratein ma shaa Allah Masr

massareef

blue cards a red strip of silk with a golden metal of a crescent shape tied around the head in such a way that the crescent appears right in the forehead you brought us hardship energetic/dynamic person peasants hotel opportunities they stay Allah's decision they are wrong in Juba Arabic soon poor/powerless alienation Egyptian term for Mrs. borrowed from Turkish hair removal through waxing son of the Nile stay our Sudanese brothers traditional Sudanese garment for men diasporic community Nuba Mountains of Sudan southern Sudanese a Nuba dance in Sudan traditional Sudanese beer brewed from sesame seeds money paid to pick up the key to a rented place mixture of perfumes and pounded sandal wood

usually by married urban woman in Sudan a Nuba dance in Sudan a light type of bread made of millet or sorghum flour accepted/recognized refugee very close male and female relatives (e.g. sisters and brothers, father and daughters, and mother and sons) between whom sex is taboo beer from millet or sorghum flour twice/double that is Allah's good decision Egypt, it's also another term for Cairo among the Egyptians; for them Cairo is Egypt and Egypt is Cairo in most cases pocket money

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maysour alhal mazbahat Mohandeseen

mubeet

Muhafazat al-Gahira mumkin mundukuru

murtazaga

musa 'id/ musa 'ideen

Rabbana raxsha Sa 'id sa 'ida/sa 'idi salaam samsar/samasra

shabab shakshuka sharbot sit al beit taameen tahrir tarha tarkab al saab tassali tatreez taub

tawteen tawteen mahalli wagfa wala/ walad wunga

yahdeehim yantahi

well do to massacre a luxurious part of Cairo on the western bank of the Nile living-in at domestic work, a popular term among the Sudanese refugees in Cairo Cairo Province possible derogatory term for Sudanese Arab in Southern Sudan where most of the population is non-Arab mercenaries- a reference to western Sudanese who attacked Khartoum in 1976 assistant/ assistants; among Sudanese refugee communities and refugee related institutions in Cairo the term is signifier to individuals employed by UNHCR to help refugees with their cases our God motorbike used as a taxi in Omar Al-Bashir's Sudan Southern Egypt (Upper Egypt) upper Egyptians/upper Egyptian peace middleman/middlemen, in the Sudanese refugee community in Cairo these are individuals who find tenants for landlords young men promiscuous woman or prostitute mild alcoholic drink from palm dates landlady insurance liberation head scarf for Sudanese women take the hard option salted watermelon seeds crocheting light garment worn by Sudanese women on top of dress resettlement/settlement decision from UNHCR local settlement or being locally settled by UNHCR day preceding the Greater Bairam boy/boys derogatory term for sub-Saharan Africans in Cairo; it's another way of saying bunga bunga give them right guidance to finish or to stop

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yaskarun get drunk yawmiat daily contract jobs payable by amount of work done

per day yu 'akisun molest yuzahimunana compete with us Zahraa Ain Shams name of a residential area in Cairo zalabia dough of wheat flour fried in hot oil zar a spirit/illness whose treatment is associated with

particular types of rituals

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