Hidden Faces In Cairo

Define "Hope" … for me it is when I see a baby laughing, or a guy standing for an old woman to sit in the bus, or when someone lift a paper from the floor to put it in a basket … you can see hope all around you in many forms based on your own vision, but what if you woke up one day and you didn't see these small little things around you that gives you hope?

I study journalism in the faculty of mass communication in Cairo University and as a part of a project I had to go with some of my journalism buddies to "Abu Atata" -it is located in "Bola2" a slum area 10 minutes on foot away from our university- to conduct a survey about readership of newspapers (which was found to be silly in my own point of view … you will get to know why later on, I promise)

We were super excited about going there and talking to these people who 'Constitutes the majority of the Egyptian society' … now I will skip the intro and go right to the point xD as if what was previously written isn't a long intro … many of the people we asked to answer our survey were actually illiterate. But many of them were surprising in a way or another and these are few persons that I want to present to you:

Lucky as I was, the first 2 persons I asked to fill my Questionnaire were Maba7es "policemen" they asked me who was I, what was I doing, and with which organization since we went there during the second phase of the latest parliament election, they thought we were promoting for a certain party or something, after I identified myself they agreed to help me and I wish if they didn't … they told me that doing such a questionnaire in here was such a waste of time, for many of the people living there are illiterate and the youth's main concern is drugs, there is no education and no healthcare. I wouldn't have believed them if i haven't seen 2 guys with my own eyes doing drugs.

And what made it worse was meeting "Roza", a16 years old boy in the third preparatory who CAN'T READ OR WRITE, he told me that they are over a 100 student in the class at his school –which is the only school in Abu Atata- and the teacher never explain anything properly, he doesn’t even care if anyone heard what he was saying, so Roza stopped attending school he only goes to the final exam and the teachers make them all succeed … And that's the next generation.

All the women that "I" met were illiterate and I focused on I because we were several girls xD perhaps they met some who could read and write.

There was a craftsman, we spoke for around 15 minutes while he was filling the questionnaire for me and when I was about to leave I was shocked that he was a graduate from the faculty of commerce, he told me while smiling "what?? You thought I wasn't educated".

Now forget about the craftsman and imagine a guy who likes to read about politics and his favorite section in the newspaper is the investigative reporting, his main source of news is the Internet, very elegant and decent AND he stands in a KIOSK, yes that's his job, and am telling you after talking to him that guy is very well educated –graduated from the faculty of commerce- and a very good speaker any girl would enjoy talking to him especially with the knowledge he possess but at the end of the day he is just a guy standing in a kiosk, that made me wonder about the man who stand in the kiosk in our street where I live, I never took a second from my time to get to know him.

I can talk for a whole hour about many people I met but I stressed on these people because they are the present and the future … the present which can't find their chances and the future which can't read or write, and I wonder what makes them go on in life, where do they see hope?