The life I wantBy Serene Assir, Cairo, 19 March 2008 Noura’s smile is expressive of the strength that is innate to her. “I might be getting married in a few weeks,” she says, giving way to the other girls’ loving teasing. “The prince on the white horse is coming for you!” giggled the other girls imbued with naughtiness. Sure, the street has toughened the girls up. But beneath the hard exterior there is softness and warmth that makes 20-year-old Noura irritated by her friends’ teasing. When it comes to her personal feelings, she prefers to speak in private. “I’m not upset, but I am sensitive to that. Maybe it’s because love is very important to me,” she admits. She recently met her potential husband at the Hope Village Society-run Young Street Mothers’ Centre supported by Ann Kathrin Linsenhoff- UNICEF Foundation and established in 2005. She is happy because he is willing to marry her even if she has borne a child, now 18 months old, with another man. But even if she does, her ties to the centre will never break. Social workers at the centre regularly visit girls who once made it their home, making sure that they are well and happy. “I think the boy is very good looking,” she blushes. Though she recalls how her mother used to beat her, Noura doesn’t remember why exactly she left home for the streets. Soon after she ran away, an old woman who was kind took her in for a few years. “But when I was 15, I decided to leave her too. I just wanted my freedom. I lived four years on the streets,” she says, explaining that she did a number of things in order to survive. “I sold handkerchiefs like many others, or I begged.” Like all the other girls at the centre, Noura faced violent abuse. “Once, I was kidnapped by two boys. They took me to a flat, and kept me there for a week, taking turns. I begged them to let me go, cried all the time, and shouted. Maybe nobody heard. But certainly, no one helped,” she says. But it was also during her time on the streets that she met her first love. “We married in secret and I lived in a room he rented. But he beat me, and that I couldn’t take,” she says. “I left him, and came here while I was pregnant, for protection. To start with, I refused to stay on any permanent basis. Now, I am happy to have found safety for us.” During her time here, the centre has found her work with a factory and at a hospital. “It made me proud to work and take responsibility for myself,” she said. Noura still has a long way to go, though, before she is fully recovered from the violence she has faced in her life. “Sometimes, when I get upset about something, I feel like hitting someone. So instead of taking out my anger on others, I hit my daughter. I know it’s bad,” she says, adding that staff at the centre is helping her take care of her daughter through the advice and support of psycho-social support provided in the shelter. “With time, I know I will live my life exactly as I would want. Maybe I just need a bit of time, that’s all,” Noura says.
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