I have a brother who owns a parking lot.
A car that belonged to a doctor was stolen from it.
He employed a boy with him who needed a job.
He had been working with him for 10 days and things were going well.
The doctor gave him the keys to her car because they always park her car for her.
The boy took the car and left.

The car was stolen and police officers kept frequenting our place.
My brother went to the police station and gave him a description of the boy and a copy of his ID.
The detectives went to his house and took his mother, sister and his sister’s husband.
But they let them go because it turned out that the boy had left home.

I woke up to find him knocking on my door at 3 am,
“Something happened and I’m scared to stay at home. If they take me away, I’ll never come out. They’ll definitely frame me.”
He can’t read or write. His mental capabilities are a bit limited.
I was worried about him. I didn’t tell my husband.
“Is your brother staying over?” my husband asked.
“Yeah, he’s having some problems with his wife so he’s staying here,” I said.
I couldn’t tell him what was really going on. I didn’t want him to worry.
He was being kind to my brother.

“Do you have the boy’s number?” I asked.
“Yes.”
“Give it to me.”
“Who visited you?”
“There’s a police officer who keeps coming to my house asking for the money and I have nothing to do with it. “
“If I don’t give him the money, he’ll keep showing up until he takes me away.”

You know what I did?
I got the officer’s name and went to the police station to meet the Chief of Detectives.
“My brother hasn’t done anything for 8 years ever since he got it.”
“That car is the first thing he gets robbed of. You asked to see him before and he came to see you.”
I called my brother to come down to the police station but he refused.
The officer then called him, “Don’t worry. Come down to the station and you’ll leave with your sister.”
He came down to the station and told the officer, “I swear to you, sir, I don’t know where the boy is.”
“The boy needed a job and I needed someone to help me out in the parking lot.”
“I’ll keep calling the boy until he turns on his mobile.”
“I won’t bring him to Helwan. I’ll lure him to Matariyya Zaytoun. I’ll catch him.”

“Your sister will catch him for you,” the officer told him.
He kept making jokes like, “Why don’t you have her work in the parking lot with you?”
“If I weren’t a married woman, I would’ve helped him out in the parking lot. There’s no shame in that,” I said.

I eventually found out the boy’s location.
He turned on his mobile and his location said that he was in an alley near us.
The alley was in Sidi Metwally. It was close to me.
I asked my friends who lived there how to get to that alley and they took me there.
“There’s a boy I’m looking for. I have to find him”
“What did he do?”
“He was harassing over the phone and he did some bad things.”
I spotted some covered cars in the alley while they were looking for him.
“Do you know the car’s plate number?” I asked my brother.
“Yes.”
“Check these cars. The car has got to be here since this is his spot.”
He checked the cars in the alley and found a covered car with the same plate number.
We called the police station and the police came and took away the car.
Turned out that boy had a criminal record that my brother knew nothing about.
But it passed, thank God.

I was elated. I was worried about my brother.
I was happy for his two daughters.
The look of fear on his face was heartbreaking.
Fear is a terrible thing.

No one visited him when he was in jail for 3 years. It was a difficult time for him.
He had to go through that struggle. He had to grow up and stop depending on us being there for him.
We had to stop visiting him.
That’s why he was afraid when he got out.
He was afraid of incarceration. He was afraid of the hardship.
No one’s free to follow him around from one prison to another.
All of his siblings are busy with their own children now.
Their children come first.