Anything for my son
Cairo, UNICEF Egypt Yasmine ran away from home when she was 12 years old. Her account of the reasons behind her flight is no different from that of thousands of other street children in Egypt. “My parents divorced, and starting from that point things became unbearable at home,” she says, speaking in a rough, boyish tone she picked up as a defence from the street’s intransigence. “I was beaten frequently by both my parents. I tried living with my mother for a while, then with my father. After going back and forth, I realised there was no hope for me if I continued living with either of them.” To start with, she was unaware of the fact that any children lived in the street at all. What she had heard of, however, were state-run institutions that purport to provide protection to children who otherwise lack safety in their own lives. “I lived in an institution for four years. Have you ever been to one? The closest I can imagine that comes to one is a prison. You get food, and a place to sleep and you can make friends,” she explained. “But if you do anything wrong then you will get beaten. And if you do something really wrong, the police get involved. Things get very violent in there.” It was at the institution that Yasmine became friends with two other girls, and the idea of living on the streets became plausible and even appealing to all of them. When Yasmine was 15, she fled the institution and made the street her home. It’s been a little over a year now since Yasmine has made the Young Street Mothers’ Centre supported by Ann Kathrin Linsenhoff –UNICEF Foundation her home. “I became pregnant from the boy I loved, but he was killed in a fight with some other boys,” she said with evident sadness in her expression. “Living in the street is like living in nature. Sure, you have freedom. But there was so much violence. When I was pregnant, I couldn’t take the exhaustion. I was falling asleep all the time,” she added. “In the street, you can’t just fall asleep. It’s not safe. That’s when I finally decided that it wasn’t enough to treat the shelter as a drop-in centre and to make it home for my son Seif and me.” After living rough for so long, it’s not been easy for Yasmine to settle in. “I feel a lot of love here, but at the same time we have duties such as washing the dishes, and this I cannot stand,” she laughs. But while Seif is not yet a year old, Yasmine is determined to give him a good life. In fact, it is her dream that he grow up to become a doctor. “I don’t want him to go through any of the pain or difficulties I went through. Being here will, God willing , help me do that. Here I can sleep at night, not worried that someone might do something to us while we rest.” Confident she has made the right decision, she is proud her son will gain the education she was deprived of, as well as the love and physical safety that her life lacked. “These are not small things,” she said, adding with an overwhelming humility drenched in sadness, that her only hope now is that Seif will love her, regardless of her troubled past. “All I really want is to look to the future. I believe that things can be better. That’s what I want to focus on,” Yasmine said.
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