Perilous
Times
As many as 50,000 homeless youth overrun Cairo
By Alice Fordham Special for USA TODAY
CAIRO — Muhammad says he is 9 years old. His skinny body looks
younger, and he walks like a boy twice his age as he strides along
the filthy streets of the Saida Zeinab district in central Cairo.
"I've never been to school," he says, pulling up his dirty yellow
shirt to blow his nose, revealing jeans with no zipper. "I'm on
the streets. Sometimes I sleep on the streets, because I have to
get money."
He begs, washes cars and, if he is like most street children here,
makes a living as a petty thief, according to aid organizations.
He is among thousands of poor and neglected children homeless in
the city, say aid organizations such as Save the Children.
Swaggering alongside him is Mahmoud, who says he is 14, and has
been on the streets six years since his father's beatings drove
him from home. Both he and Muhammad ask that their last names not
be published because they worry they will be grabbed by police and
placed in homes where they might be abused.
Always outside, they were vulnerable to getting caught up in the
sometimes-violent protests that ended in the overthrow of
President Hosni Mubarak.
"There were so many people," Mahmoud says. "I was fired on. There
were bullets that scratched me."
At least one homeless boy — Ismail Yassin, 16 — was killed in the
riots, and many were injured, according to hospitals. Many of the
street children interviewed said they were paid by the Cairo
police to throw stones and Molotov cocktails at protesters.
Even so, most hoped for change.
"I want a new president who can be kind with us, and feel the
suffering of the people," Mahmoud says.
Jane Gibreel, country director of Save the Children, says there
may be as many as 50,000 street children in Cairo. "It's
impossible to say for sure," she says. "They leave home because of
violence or neglect or because they don't have enough to eat. They
are often drawn from very poor areas."
Muhammad and Mahmoud walk past a police station that had been
torched and gutted in the riots. They say they had both been
detained and beaten by the police many times because their parents
never registered them and so they do not have Egyptian
identification cards.
Without identification, they cannot go to school, work or get
access to health care, and police can arrest them anytime.
Poverty soared in the last years of the Mubarak regime, as
inflation levels rose as high as 30% but salaries stayed the same.
Lines for subsidized bread became a common sight.
As belts tightened, fewer families could afford the $10 a year for
their children to attend school, or pay for notebooks and
uniforms. In the vast slums where hundreds of thousands of the
poorest live on the outskirts of Cairo, children help their
families by selling trinkets to drivers, or by begging and
stealing.
Save the Children supports three centers in Cairo, but Ahmed
Ibrahim, from the Egyptian Association for Social Development,
says it must be the new government that makes a difference to
these children.
"They need to enhance the care institutions, so that children can
be happy there, and not run away. This is a big problem," he says.
Boys who grow up to be young men on the streets often to turn to
drugs and have little future, advocates for the poor say.
A group of older boys and young men, some of whom had been smoking
hashish, stand around like a warning of Muhammad and Mahmoud's
future, which is likely to be one of gang violence and drug abuse.
Ahmed, 19, is among the group. He says people protested to get
better benefits from the state for themselves.
"I never saw them asking for houses for the poor people," he says.
His friend Karim, who doesn't know his age but who has been on the
streets 11 years, says Egypt was an unjust society.
"I can sing. I can draw. I can read and write," he says, ticking
off his talents. Neither boy wanted his last name used.
Karim sits down on a dirty bench in a trash-strewn bus shelter and
sings a lilting song: "A long time ago, there was comfort. There
were hearts that could feel with me. There was safety and
kindness, and their hands could sweep the tears from my eyes."
His voice is hoarse and sweet but not loud enough for anyone to
hear it over the hollering crowds and traffic. People walk briskly
by.
"They were very close to me, but our hearts are now alone with the
past. Where are we going, you and I?" he sings.