Global Women's Voices: Share Personal Stories

Samia, Egypt

Submitted by: Elizabeth Arend

Samia, a 25 year old Sudanese woman, left her university education to escape violence in Khartoum, and arrived in Cairo in 2001.
Although her husband promised to take care of her and look after their future children, she soon found herself working long hours as a domestic servant while her husband remained unemployed at home.

He not only refused to help with household tasks, but also refused to support Samia in her first pregnancy and look after the child once he or she was born. He was frequently emotionally abusive, and sometimes forced her to have sex against her will. While Samia continued to work throughout her pregnancy and live in her employers’ home, her husband impregnated another woman in their neighborhood and brought her into their home.

Samia supported all three of them, her husband, the second woman and their child, until she was finally found the strength to leave her husband all together. Although she is a legal refugee in Cairo, Samia still had few relatives left in Cairo and missed her family in the Sudan. Without an adequate salary to support herself and a child in Cairo, and without any means to continue her education, Samia looked to the birth of her first child with an uncertain
future—desperately wanting to leave Cairo, but unable to return to the Sudan, she thought of raising the child on her own. “If it is a boy,” she cried, “I will hate this baby. It will only remind me of my husband.

Researcher Elizabeth Arend

updated: 7/2/2004