Ahmed, aged 18, lives with his elder brother in a ninth-floor flat in north-east Cairo. The whole family used to live in the flat, but their father thought it was too cramped and bought another flat, two floors lower down in the same building. Ahmed’s parents now live there with the two youngest children — the twins Eman and Mustafa.
Although the boys live alone in the flat, it is still their mother who does most of the cleaning (although that’s a secret). However, Ahmed has now cleaned the room himself after heavy pressure from his mother. He and his brother spend most of their time down in their parents’ flat.
“We eat and relax there. There are always people down there with my mother and father. This evening we’re watching football, and the boys next door are coming over. Otherwise I meet my friends at the club, where we play football or just hang out together.”
For two weeks this summer, Ahmed has to get up at seven o’clock every morning to train for military service, which he will have to do after leaving university. On the training course, Ahmed attends lectures about the military and is learning to stand sentry and march.
“It’s tough standing in the sun, in the desert, for a long time. But I think it’s good that we get exercise and learn things about our home country.”
At university, where Ahmed is successfully studying at the Faculty of Science, he has a girlfriend. She lives not in Cairo but in Port Said, but they meet when she travels in to the university during the week, and they talk on the telephone when she is at home at the weekend. Their parents know they are dating and Ahmed usually also chats on the phone with his girlfriend’s mother and brother. After university, Ahmed wants to go to Australia or the USA to take his master’s degree. But after that he wants to work in Egypt, preferably as a professor.
“I want to give something back to my country, since my country has given me a lot. The man I admire most is Ahmed Zuwali, who returned to Egypt after getting the Nobel Prize. He’s now going to open a research centre in Cairo.
“I’m not interested in working in politics like my father. I hate desk jobs, and want to do research and travel instead. I love physics.”
Ahmed is not uninterested in politics. He is very disturbed by what he has heard of the crimes against Muslims in Palestine, Kosovo, Chechnya and Bosnia. All over the university, there are posters about Kosovo on the walls and Ahmed often discusses the subject with his fellow students.
“It’s hard to see brothers being slaughtered all over the world. I don’t know what I can do. It makes me feel sad. Look at the conflict in Timor, for example. Now Timor has become a separate country. Do they hate Muslims? I want peace and no more killing.”
ERIKA GUNNARSSON
Translated by Clare James, Språkverkstan AB
