Josephine and Nermeen by Adel Maguidy
Parallel Story #5
Josephine & Nermeen Maher
South Sudan & Egypt
This parallel story was put forward by Charisma arts foundation for development (Egypt) for Movement
Raised in Sudan, Josephine has faced constant turmoil in her life, from her mother’s abduction to being forced into marriage by her brother. While her escape to Egypt has given her some solace, she still faces harassment, loneliness and isolation in her new home. Nermeen, born and raised in Egypt was forced to emigrate to Emirates to find work with her family in the early 2000s. Despite never feeling fully at home there, Nermeen has stayed to give her children a better life, even if that means her own loneliness at times.
Josephine’s story is first. To skip to Nermeen’s story click here.
Josephine’s Story
TW; violence, abduction.
Originally from south Sudan and raised in a good family, Josephine lost her father when she was young and so in the eyes of her community she was considered an orphan. Her elder brother was then considered the male in charge. She went to college in south Sudan and studied engineering and graduated with lots of hope for a bright future as an engineer, but these dreams collapsed as the conflict in the country escalated; troops were fighting each other and killing with no mercy anyone who didn’t belong to their side, women and children included.
At one point, her mother was captured and for days Josephine fasted and kept praying day and night until a miracle happened and the lord saved her mother. ‘They killed the other women who were with my mother without saying a word, and when it was my mother's turn, they said something and she answered in their language, so she was spared.’ The nightmare for Josephine didn’t end there. One day, a suitor came to Josephine who wanted to marry her, but she refused. However, being an orphan, her elder brother had a lot of control over her and gave this man his word and was going to force her too marry him. Her brother took from this man 50 cows, but then, due to the war, her brother went missing, along with his wife, and the cows were stolen.
The situation was extremely bad in Sudan, people were killed in the streets and Josephine lost many loved ones, so her family decided to flee to Cairo, Egypt. Her sister went first and then Josephine and her mum followed. As soon as she arrived she went to the UN to register herself. To support her family financially and to be able to provide rental and food, she agreed to work as a servant to clean houses.
Integration wasn’t always easy; Josephine experienced things like kids throwing stones at her saying she was black, harassment and bulling in the streets of the poor area where she and some of the Sudanese community went to live in Cairo, but of her experience she said, ‘it’s ok, they didn’t learn how to accept the different ones, I forgave them as Jesus forgave me, and people are not always the same, some were very nice and respectful.’ What helped her was joining the Sudanese community in church where they would have Sunday together, eating, praying, and helping each other to get jobs and so on.
Josephine’s nightmare continued as the man who had wanted to marry her in Sudan followed her to Egypt, demanding the price of his cows, or her hand in marriage. He threatened to kill her should she refuse, and to prove he was serious in hurting her, he beat her up and broke her knee so badly that she was unable to continue her employment as a cleaner.
The arrival of Covid-19 made everything more difficult, particularly when Josephine contracted the virus herself and had to recover alone, whilst hiding from this man in a new flat where she is living with some other people. It was about this time too that she found a throat tumor that has to be operated on to see how serious it is. When asked if she is afraid of the health condition, she replied, ‘I am sure God is taking care of me, why should I be afraid?’ Her main concern is the man attacking her again… and figuring out from where can she get him this fortune of money. She can hardly find food to feed herself now that she can’t work.
Talking about her family, Josephine mentioned her married sister who has kids, but she didn’t go into much detail because she is afraid of exposing her sister and nieces/nephews to violence from this man. Her mother had to return to Sudan to look for her missing brother’s kids. She is hopeful that one day they will return to Cairo.
Portrait by Hala Awad
Nermeen’s Story
Nermeen Maher was one of two children born into her family. Her family was from an educated background so they were keen to send her to good education, English schools in the prestigious area where she was living in Maadi. Following this she went to a Fine Arts College and graduated as an Interior engineer. It was while she was at college that her mother got very sick, and after being hospitalized for months she died. Nermeen was devastated by this loss.
A year later, Nermeen met her husband and she was married when she was 26. They were both engineers who had stable jobs at the time. Some years later however, her husband lost his job. They kept looking for jobs, but while all doors were closed in Egypt, they received three offers from Emirates. Nermeen was very attached to her area, community and church in Maadi. To leave her only brother and elderly father, her stable job, her friends and her community to travel to a strange country was a difficult decision but with a three-year old daughter, they made the decision to go looking for a better living in about 2003.
Their original plan was to stay in Emirates for a year or two, until they improved their financial status, however after the birth of her second daughter, Nermeen had to start looking for a job there herself. The demands of having a household and running a family was expensive, and the only way to go was to have both parents working.
Nermeen found a very good job as an interior designer, and despite the fact she had to take care of the house work, her husband and daughters, and the projects at work that she was assigned to, she continued to be promoted as the years went by. Then to their astonishment one day, the company her husband worked with closed and he lost his job. The rules of the gulf countries include that you have to have a work permit to stay in the country, and either Nermeen or her husband should have a permanent job visa permit to add the other party and the children to it, or the whole family will be separated. According to Nermeen, very few jobs in Emirates allow for a women to add her husband and children to her visa and health care. Luckily for her, one of these jobs was engineering, so after lot of paper work, she managed to add her family to her visa while her husband kept looking for a job. Eventually he decided to open his own small business in Emirates. They studied their options, started lots of paperwork, and things were starting to improve however lots of taxes and country regulations led to him closing this small business shortly after it had begun. He decided to return to Egypt to open his project in his own country.
It wasn’t easy for Nermeen to stay in Emirates without him, and through this period of instability and isolation, her father passed away which broke her heart again. She travelled to Egypt for a few days and continued mourning while working and taking care of her daughters, all the while supporting her husband and wondering what their next step would be.
Nermeen and her husband
In 2015 while he was in Egypt for a visit to try to establish his own business, Nermeen’s husband’s heart stopped beating, and he passed away quietly. This was the biggest shock and heartbreak of her life, as well as the biggest obstacle. How could she continue in a foreign country completely alone? On the other hand, if she went back to Egypt she would lose her stable job. As well as that, Egypt had a very different education system for the girls. After a lot of reflection, Nermeen decided to continue sacrificing for her daughters by remaining in Emirates.
Nermeen faced lots of obstacles when she first emigrated and it took her years to integrate and even with that, she never felt 100% at home in Emirates. In the beginning, every year she travelled home to Egypt to spend 2/3 months taking a breath with her old friends and her family. She wanted her girls to always be well connected with her family, so she used to take her annual leave in Egypt. Although Emirates is an Arabic speaking country, the language was extremely different, even for her as a well-educated bilingual person. Arabic and English slang was very different in both countries so it took her a long time to even understand what people were speaking about. When they first emigrated they lived in Dubai, which was populated with many different nationalities, each with a different tongue and way of speaking. When they moved to Abu Dhabi, however, they found it more family-oriented, there were less nationalities and after a while she started to engage in activities with the Egyptian church in Abu Dhabi which helped her find fellow Egyptians. This helped her and her family feel like a part of a bigger entity in the beginning, and again after her husband passed away when they came to her side so that she wouldn’t feel so alone there.
Nowadays Nermeen is still living in Emirates for her two daughters who are being well educated there. She is dedicated to raising them, and has become project manager in her work in the interior engineering field. She is also serving in the church and volunteering in youth groups, trying to kill the deadly loneliness feeling by also joining support groups in the church for widowed women. Her favourite time of the year is the month she takes as a holiday to bring her daughters to Egypt to be well connected with the family. She hopes to move ‘home’ eventually.
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