Seeds of Wrath

2

Two and two make I don’t know

‘What do two and two make?’ Rania, the teacher, asks the group as she picks up a piece of chalk and writes the numbers on the board. When she makes the downward stroke and turns the corner for the right-angle, the chalk screeches on the dark green surface.

They’re all lined up in the classroom like organ pipes; the little ones at the front, the big ones behind. In between are the ones who have never really been sure of their place. The tables and chairs have obviously been brought together piecemeal from all over. The room is light and clean. In spite of the heat outside the working temperature is bearable. On the wall are children’s paintings, number charts in Arabic and posters about the charity.

A few of the children groan loudly about the dreadful noise, some have covered their ears while others eagerly lean forward, each with a hand enthusiastically raised, the index finger pointing excitedly to show they know the answer.

‘I know! I know!’ some call out, almost begging to be allowed to shine for the sheer logic of their calculation.

Rania had used a different technique with the chalk to shape the second number. Now she stands in front of the class. She’s wearing a white summer dress and smiling gently. Her gestures for the children to be quiet have only a very gradual effect. ‘Habir!’ she eventually calls out.

All those with arms raised now lower them immediately as a matter of course. It’s quiet. Unusually quiet for a gang of schoolchildren of this age. One girl holds her hands against both sides of her face while her elbows press hard into the table.

‘What do you think?’ Rania is asking again. ‘If I’ve got two apples. Then I get two more, how many have I got altogether?’

Little Habir maintains an embarrassed silence and shifts uncomfortably on her seat. She’s squirming. She buries her face. It’s quite clear she doesn’t know the answer.

‘Come on now, Habir. You knew the answer last week. What did we learn? Can you remember?’

The girl, probably around ten or eleven, is looking even more intimidated. Then her expression hardens and she stares straight ahead as if to protest against being led further into showing her ignorance.

A little boy from the row in front turns to Habir, presses his thumb as firmly as he can into his own palm and shows her the remaining four fingers.

‘Mahmoud! You know what the rules are. Tell me how many apples there are if every one of you has the number of apples I want to hear Habir say.’

The boy turns away immediately and starts counting up on his fingers. It’s gone even quieter.

Meanwhile Rania has gone over to young Habir’s table. She puts down two pieces of chalk. Then two more.

First the girl looks up at her with huge, frightened eyes. Slowly she turns her gaze to the small, white sticks on the table in front of her. She agonises, closes her eyes, leans back and stares straight ahead again.

‘They‘re not apples,’ a mystery voice enlightens them all from the back.

‘Habir! Two and two are…’ Rania tries patiently to help and places all four pieces of chalk on the table at the same time. She crouches down to put herself at the same level as the girl’s desk.

‘I don’t know,’ the child says with a sob in her voice and cradles her face in her arms with the shame of it all. She starts to cry. Not even the gentlest of words can console her.

There were touching moments aplenty that day. But the impact of witnessing this girl’s despair at not being able to do simple addition went beyond all other emotions. Later on, when she was skipping around at break with the other girls, she was shouting out the answer the whole time. ‘Four! Four! Four! I know the answer! Four!’

Perhaps she’d been nervous. Maybe my being there had unsettled her. And yet once Rania had explained to me that little Habir had only been attending school regularly for a couple of weeks and that she suffered from severe learning difficulties, I thought it highly likely she’d still struggle if asked to imagine three plus three bananas instead of two plus two apples.

I was in Manshiet Nasser, a settlement in Cairo roughly halfway between the centre and the Al Azhar University, situated at the foot of the Muqattam range of hills. More than six hundred thousand Egyptians live here. The majority of the homes and hovels had been thrown up illegally over several decades. And still hundreds upon hundreds of people went on moving in, people who hadn’t managed to make a go of things elsewhere in the city, people who had no choice other than to live in these wrecks of largely unfinished buildings.

Informally, as the city council likes to describe it, the Zabbaleen, or rubbish collectors, have also settled here. Nobody knows their exact number. Estimates suggest sixty thousand. With their donkey-carts piled high or their mini pickups, mostly clapped out, they’re immediately known to everybody as an indispensable part of the Cairo street scene. Thousands of families, mostly Coptic Christians, work not only as supplementary rubbish collectors but many more specialise in marshalling and recycling a huge range of materials.

The moment you drive into the area you can’t miss the mountains of plastic bottles, cans, old textiles or cardboard. Dozens of huge, white refuse sacks made out of jute are stacked alongside one another. Collections of metal, glass and food waste lay next to them. Scrapped electricals, pieces of cable and wood. The more expensive the raw materials, the more men there are hanging around to guard them. Instructions are being barked out. Voices shout for order. Tons of this rubbish is stored in derelict clinker buildings. It extends from one corner to the next and from street to street. The stink of rubbish, decay and decomposition is almost overpowering. Countless cats and their pups are on the prowl. Pigs are being kept in a roughly built pen in a backyard. A swarm of carts and trucks trundle back and forth, loaded to the gunnels with the overnight pickings from every nook and cranny in the city.

Further east is the huge cave church of St Sama’an, the largest Coptic church in the Middle East. On high days and holidays it is packed and more than ten thousand faithful pray within these impressive architectural surroundings. I had arranged to meet her halfway there. She was on time, as she politely but firmly made it clear on the phone to me while I sat in a taxi waiting for the dispersal of a traffic jam caused by a small delivery truck.

The smells emanating from every pore of this district were now well-nigh intolerable and my ears were being subjected to an unbearable level of noise. Children and youngsters darted here and there, climbed up on the waste tips or gave the men a hand. Weighty sacks were emptied or filled, then dropped moments later onto a loading area. Enormous container trucks waited to receive recycling materials. A bulldozer and a digger made endless deliveries. If something fell to the ground then it had to be retrieved come what may. Then at last. I was on the way out of this stench and roar. I could see her some way off. She was flagging down a taxi. She got in. Her freshness and energy did not really sit well with this environment, I thought as we greeted one another. I still had no idea just how extraordinary this day was going to turn out.

Rania isn’t her real name. When we’d arranged this meeting, she’d made it extremely clear that neither her identity nor any photos were to be published. She explained her fear of what she described as unpleasantness from the authorities because sooner or later I was going to ask her about the conditions which marked out the whole dilemma facing school policy in Egypt. This is where anonymity is a useful self-preservation tool. The system and those upholding it did not welcome any critical voices.

Rania was a teacher from another district. She was in her late twenties, married with two children. She came here once a week, to one of those poor districts of Cairo that is Manshiet Nasser, to the Rubbish Collectors’ slums, to do voluntary work with five other teachers at the school run by the organisation, Stephen’s Children.

The building extends over two floors and does have windows and doors, one feature alone which sets it apart from the numerous ruined buildings in the neighbourhood. Donations and extemporised art shows have made its existence possible. The welfare people call this sort of place a communication centre, a place where help of all types is available. The charity runs ninety centres like this across the whole city.

Maggie Gorban, the figure central to the leadership of Stephen’s Children, and Cairo’s Mother Theresa, as she is referred to with as much reverence as admiration, has meanwhile become known far beyond the borders of Egypt. The sixty-five year old former computer science academic has been nominated several times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She has involved herself in social flash-points between Christianity and Islam and speaks on behalf of the slum dwellers with a particular focus on the Copts, and yet also for those with no declared faith. However extraordinary this merciful soul and mother to all street children was, however appealing the prospect of perhaps meeting her the same day if her time and work permitted her to do so was, it was actually to meet another woman that I had come here. That woman was now sitting next to me and struggling to put into words the full scale of a catastrophe.

It was the main break of the day. Maths was done, reading and writing were next on the agenda. I was watching little Habir’s playfulness. Her tears had dried. She was skipping about quite happily. She ran past us several times and proudly called out that she knew what two and two made.

‘I could have wept with her,’ Rania suddenly burst out, took a deep breath and looked at the carefree child whose future was, as she added without emotion, sealed at birth.

For a moment I didn’t know what to say.

‘Sometimes I think it’s better to stay in ignorance. If you’re happy, that is.’

Again there was nothing to say in response.

‘Well then. Whatever.’ After a short silence, she began to offload her feelings. She gave me a quick overview of the basic features of the Egyptian school system and sketched out how the ideal school-life would conclude with the start of a course of study at university or, after the appropriate professional training, the start of a professional career. From her own sphere of work she had, in addition, an insight into the work of a commission which had recently formulated some proposals for reform of part of the education system.

That was how I knew her. Nonconformist and determined. Prior to my visit to this school I had met her on two previous occasions and seen at first hand how fond her pupils were of her. Superiors and peers alike attested to her professional and personal competence with such intensity that these repeated hymns of praise became so powerful that you could be forgiven for feeling quite disconcerted by them at first.

I’d first met Rania at a barbeque given by a mutual acquaintance. It wasn’t long before all the kids were round her, like bees round a honeypot, while she played and fooled about with them as if she’d known them for years. I love to see people with a passion for their work. In Rania’s case this devotion was infectious. She came across as entirely genuine and earned real respect in return. ‘No’ meant ‘no’, a warning came first and then the explanation. Teachers who radiate charisma like this, who never use their greater knowledge to make excessive demands on others, who support each individual as much as possible in the class, have every right to be in school. In my time I have met plenty of trained educators who would have done better to stay away, both for their own good and those of others.

After the maths class the children had put together a shopping list for the supermarket. Those who couldn’t write ‘banana’ had drawn one instead. This went on for just under an hour. Aunt Maggie was stuck in a traffic jam. Due to an array of other appointments she’d cancelled her visit today. This meant the kids had the benefit of a longer break because the visit from on high would have occurred during their lesson time. Rania was convinced her pupils’ concentration was fading. Just a quick look at their written efforts on good nutrition had shown her that much.

We were sitting on a wall in the shade of a tumbledown house and looking across at the little educational establishment which brought so much. The charitable organisation had converted the front rooms into two teaching rooms. Beyond that was little more than nothingness, I thought to myself.

Because the street children were not allowed to sleep or eat here, there was something magical about this place Rania told me, something all those who came here tried to protect as they would precious treasure, most of all the children themselves. During the previous winter, when it was getting unbearably cold for the slum-dwellers in their miserable shacks towards the centre of this district, the kids themselves had set up their own night-watch to guard their tables and chairs. Otherwise it’d all have been snapped up for firewood. Perhaps the spell of this energetic desire to fight for knowledge came from the children’s will to do something for themselves and their own futures, in spite of all the odds. But it was probably because nobody had shown them once in their life how to value anything which did not bring in money.

But still she battled with herself and seemed unsure how to teach them about things you can’t see. It was only later at home, as I listened to the recordings I’d made of our conversation in order to get them down on paper, that I realised how her passion was tearing her apart.

While the little ones are going mad at play, testing to destruction the ball Rania had suggested I bring as a gift, the teenaged members of the class are busy keeping themselves apart from one another. Two boys are trying hard to get a borrowed frisbee to spin properly. The only three girls in the class are watching. They keep leaning close to one another to whisper and giggle in an engagingly daft way. Omar, a thirteen year old lad, who had been remarkably quiet during the lesson, is sitting to one side and reading a German story book he’d grandly presented me with the moment I had arrived.

‘He can’t read at all,’ Rania said, seeing me looking at him.

‘Can he at least say something?’

‘Guten Morgen! Ich bin zwölf Jahre alt.’

‘Not bad! How about if I teach him he’s a year older?’

‘What use is that to him?’

Rania was right and I start thinking of a sensible answer. What she’s doing is much better for him, enabling him to do sums, to read and write in his own language. Every scrap of his attention is needed.

‘He’s got another story book from Finland and one from France.’ Then she goes on to explain. ‘They’re donations. And when I tell them they’re allowed to do whatever they really enjoy for half an hour, he goes for one of those books.’

‘So he enjoys reading books he can’t make head or tail of?’

‘No, he probably wants to show that he’s keen to learn more than we can give him here.’

‘I see,’ I reply, never once having been in a situation like that myself.

Rania smiles as I eventually cotton on to her little joke and then wonder what she would do if it were true.

‘Once, his parents came here during break while he was playing with the others. They immediately took him home, saying he’d better get to work if he wasn’t learning anything.’

I pause for a moment, as surprised as I am touched. We both remain silent for a while and watch her pupils running with boundless enthusiasm after the ball or the constantly wobbly plastic disc. They want to learn everything, even how to play.

‘They come and go,’ Rania eventually continues. ‘A lot are here for six months, others for a couple of weeks. It’s nearly always the same. The parents come along and say their children have now already learned the basics.’

‘For what?’

‘For life. What else?’

‘They mean more for their life,’ I comment. ‘And what about those who could get into a good school?’

‘Many make the leap. Most don’t. But we fight for all of them.’ Rania looks full of thought. ‘Education in our country is a question of money more than anything else. If you’re born in Egypt and your family can’t find enough money to fund you, then you’re excluded from any useful education. And so you’re excluded from the community. And that’s regardless of your intelligence or your natural talents. There’s simply nothing for you in Egyptian society because nobody makes it possible for you to get in. The street children in slums like this really are the ones that nobody cares about.’

‘Why?’ I ask, cautiously, and struggle to find the appropriate words to say more because I can see Rania’s own words have really moved her. ‘What do you think? Why is education such a difficult thing in Egypt?’

Rania gives a shout of laughter before obviously marshalling her thoughts as any professional would. ‘The Egyptians have too many children. Year after year. Or should we say the poor Egyptians do. And this level of need brings huge problems. On top of that, we’ve made a lot of mistakes in the past and are still suffering from these now. Then there were reforms. Then the reforms were reformed. Secondary level was reformed but not primary. Then parts of the primary system were re-organised but others not properly aligned. Around only one third of children get a kindergarten place. There was, and still is, incessant reorganisation of some individual departments. But not of the whole system. And, of course, every reform costs money. A deciding factor is how much we can spend on our schools each year. If the state says it has to invest the money elsewhere then, as a rule, we are usually the ones who get nothing, or very little. And that’s how it’s always been.’ As she looked at me I saw something noble, almost prophetic in her face. ‘For example, we now know that under Mubarak, contrary to all promises made, millions of dollars were used for purposes other than those originally intended. That was money from abroad, from charities. It was intended purely for our schools.’

I am aware that Rania is deliberately using the first person plural here. While I’m musing on how much she sees herself as part of the system, she suddenly gets off the wall and starts pacing up and down in front of me.

‘We simply have problems that are too numerous and too big. Again. In our country education is first and foremost about money. Wealthy Egyptians can afford the international schools. They mostly offer a highly regarded education on a par with other countries. Only the elite can pay for this, or should I say only those who consider themselves to be elite.’

‘So, you mean the private schools, based in larger cities,’ I say and attempt to find the words to help rein in her increasingly agitated mood.

But there’s no stopping Rania now. ‘That’s right. British, American, German and more. There are two hundred schools like this. And when you think that on average around a thousand children go to each of these schools, so about two hundred thousand altogether, you’ll see how the majority are really up against it. More than twenty million Egyptian children and young people go to the state schools. And every day there are more. More and more. D’you see?’

I’m seeing here a woman so engaged with her cause it’s as if she’s been called before the President to tell him at first hand, free of all restrictions, what she thinks of the Egyptian education system.

Even more involved now, she’s striding back and forth as if giving a lecture, moving from left to right, then back again, gesticulating furiously. She then stops to emphasise a key point and disregards completely the kids who, quite bemused, are watching her unusual behaviour and following the speech.

‘Let’s take the Egyptian teachers. They’re mostly poorly paid and badly trained. They all earn the same amount regardless of their ability or commitment. That’s not great for anyone. The good ones teach privately and, in doing so, are letting down the state schools as well as the children they teach. This means there are divisions again. Once again money is guaranteeing a better education and thus better opportunities. Then there’s this. No matter how much money the government has in its budget for education, it’s never enough. Every year, for example, eighty five per cent of the state coffers alone goes on salaries. And that brings us to another big problem. The conditions and the equipment in schools themselves. Many buildings need repairs, many are so dilapidated that people must be afraid of moving around inside them. And sometimes I don’t have even a stick of chalk to write on the board with.’

Little Habir is standing in front of us in amazement and looks at Rania, her eyes wide.

Rania has made clear her concerns and views, all of which have become an furious irade, and now stops abruptly. ‘It’s good, Habir! Go off and play again, won’t you?’

‘When my Dad talks like that my Mum always ends up getting a beating,’ the child said. Her eyes raised all her fears, those she’s knowing from home.

When Rania translated that for me, I had a moment of horror. As I watch the girl skipping away I think to myself, she’s only got a couple more years. Then her father would marry her off to get her out of the house so she doesn’t cost him money any longer, so that she has children, so that she can support the entire family. For a future like this she really does not need any qualifications.

‘Sorry!’ Rania continued after a suitable silence about the girl’s wretched situation. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes I get out of my cradle.’

I can’t help it. I burst out laughing and this confuses her, quite understandably, then recover myself and explain that the idiom she’s searching for about losing one’s composure is about a pram and not a cradle.

‘Whatever,’ says Rania. She has now regained her poise, that presence which is so easily sparked into anger if talk turns to the injustice and inequalities inherent in the official education policy. Now she starts talking about the everyday occurrences at school when there are up to fifty children sitting in her classes. And that’s if they are all fit and well. When she asks me directly if I can imagine what that’s like, I simply nod in agreement. It’s only when I think about it afterwards, while she’s teaching, that I really see the scale of what she was fighting this morning. Only then does some trace of understanding start to work its way into my consciousness.

Fifty ten year-olds, fifty bundles of savagery with no education. Penned in. Fifty moods, fifty types of chaos. Fifty times, fifty rebukes. Fifty existences as decreed by the state. Fifty fights for survival. Fifty wife-beating fathers, fifty beaten wives staying strong. Fifty opportunities in morning class. Fifty lost childhoods thereafter. Fifty talents, fifty cases of hopelessness. Fifty cases of ignorance, fifty cases of frugal living. Fifty innocents. Fifty non-complainers. I hope. I hope at least one of these children will make it.

‘Cautious estimates suggest that around a third of Egypt’s population can neither read nor write. Many believe the proportion to be far higher. And more than half are women and girls.’

‘Say again?’

‘There are more than thirty million people in Egypt who are illiterate. And more than half are women and girls,’ Rania repeats, as emotional as she is insistent, looking at me with such severity it was as if I’d trotted out for the fifth time the grandmother’s funeral excuse for not doing my homework.

‘Sorry!’ My mind was wandering a bit. ‘But yes, I’ve read about this issue. There’s a suspicion that whoever came up with these figures was expected to come up with precisely those.’

‘Yes,’ she agrees. ‘And the overseas organisations say it will only increase. That the Egyptian government is closing its eyes to the true scale of it. Overseas organisations also say that the policy on schools in this country is a disaster of education policy itself. Both now and for the next generations.’ Rania appraises me with an even more determined look. ‘I saw an interview with our President a couple of weeks ago. He thinks the country’s well on the way. That there have to be underlying assumptions. That we can’t solve all the problems all at the same time.’

I’m asking myself if I have misheard again, as her piercing gaze hardens and makes me wish the ground could swallow me up immediately.

‘Do you see? It’s overseas organisations that say this. Our own people remain silent. Including most teachers, by the way. And why are they silent? Why are they all silent? Because they are ashamed by it. Egypt, oh so proud Egypt, is ashamed. And there‘s nobody here to do anything to change things.’

Just as I want to assure her that she’s here and really doing something, that her level of engagement is deeply impressive and that success is always a question of degree, she excuses herself and claps her hands. I watch her cautioning the children not to move any further away from the building because the ball, which had turned out to be the best possible toy to bring, had rolled across the road.

Rania sits down beside me again on the wall. ‘All in all I call it the downward spiral of brainwashing the population. The slomotion of desaster. Because anyone who has not attended school, who has no awareness of it, puts little value on his children having a good education. Parents who fail to send their children to school for a month at a time have to pay a fine. Usually. Ten Egyptian pounds. It’s obvious they’d rather send their children out to work. But in reality even this is rarely charged or paid up. Soon they’re supposed to be paying a thousand pounds according to the school superintendent’s office. Do you know what’ll happen then?’

‘We’d need another reform,’ is my pithy reply, as I try to imagine the chaos if all the children in the land were suddenly sat on the school bench.

‘The whole system, the whole country is in a permanent state of reform,’ Rania states with an admirable objectivity. ‘If everyone has A Levels or vocational training then there won’t be enough work to go round. Where are the offices and factories they’d be employed by? Where’s the work? There are times when I think that that’s the real reason.’

‘You mean that’s why the school system is being consciously neglected? Because the authorities know the majority won’t be able to do anything with an education?’

‘That’s exactly what I do mean. What’s the point of good marks if there’s nothing to do with them afterwards? While schooling in our country is wasted time, while schooling isn’t worthwhile, our miserable situation won’t change.’

‘You’re talking about control by the state, about a method. You’re talking about the self-interest of the state,’ I say, probing now for more.

Rania agrees only silently at first, turning to me after a few moments with a look that clearly spells out her full understanding of the situation. ‘That’s definitely the case. That’s the system. If you already know you have no answers, then you’re better doing nothing than asking the right questions. If our society were better educated then more questions would be asked and people would be more critical. And in doing this they become a danger to those who rule over them. Questions will be answered. People with greater knowledge will, sooner or later, protest against things which they’ve never thought about before.’

‘That’s always been the case,’ I say after we’ve both said nothing for a while. We permitted ourselves this silent bonding with confidence because the full impact of the most important reason for this lamentable schooling policy in Egypt had become crystal clear.

‘Always is far too long,’ adds Rania and shakes herself out of the burden of her knowledge. ‘I’m sorry. We can certainly talk about this later or another time, but now…’ She points at her watch and starts to call the kids together; energetic and enthusiastic, she claps her hands.

It’s almost as if our conversation has reminded her of the enormous task before her when she comes to this place. That talking does not help. That she should not waste any more time. That too much time has already gone by. I agree and ask to come back to it at the reading class a bit later because the recording I’ve made of our conversation needs a couple of written annotations.

As I watch her getting the children to assemble, I hear the call of the muezzin in the distance. I’d have liked to ask her for her views on the influence of religion on the country’s education methods. Before my visit I’d read that many officials running the system were of the Muslim faith. I’d heard about RS and Citizenship teaching which went beyond the merely beneficial. To be a real global citizen, it’s never too soon to give attention to a dialogue between faith and knowledge. I dismiss the ideas constantly put forward about whether it’s better to learn English than to study the Koran, whether, and if so, how, parents can be brought into school. I’m noting down my first comments when, all of a sudden, Habir’s standing there in front of me.

She looks up at me rather doubtfully. Her demeanour is diffident. Obviously, I think to myself, she wants to say something but doesn’t quite know how.

Doesn’t know indeed! Just as I’m about to help by asking her whether she still knows how many apples she’s got if she already has two and gets two more, she holds out her small hand towards me, puts on the sweetest of smiles and flutters her eyelashes at me. „Mister, Mister! Inta quais!’