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