It all started in 2005.
My husband hadn’t got a raise yet and I had 5 children.
We were tight on money because my husband wasn’t making enough.
I thought I should find another source of income to take care of my children’s expenses.
“I’ll invest your money for you, and you’ll get an additional 75 LE for every 1000 LE you put in,” said the woman whom I joined the money lending group with.
I was happy with the money I was getting.
It was considered a big sum of money back then.

Two months in, she told me that for every person that joins from my side, my share will increase.
I started convincing people to join.
I trusted her because we were friends from school, and we were neighbors.
I collected 300 thousand in two months from my cousins and relatives and gave them to her.
We trusted each other.
But now I can’t even trust my own self.
I didn’t give anyone receipts.
Two months later, one of the women told me that she needed the money back.
That’s when things started going downhill.
“Give me so-and-so’s money,” I told her.
“No, I haven’t done anything with them yet,” she said.

She was over at my place that day and my husband heard us talking.
“Didn’t I tell you not to give her anyone’s money?” he said to me.
He was angry.
She tore up the notebook that had the invoices of the money I gave her.
She ran away when my husband got a knife from the kitchen and tried to stab her with it.
The children and I gathered the shreds of paper and tried to glue them back together.

I was wearing a dress that day and my hair was down.
I’ll never forget the moment when my husband told me,
“Leave the house like that. Don’t cover up with an abaya or put on slippers.”
“How could she go out like that?!” my younger son told him.
“Leave with her if you have a problem with that,” he said.

I went to my father’s house after filing the report.
The people I owed money came over. We all lived in the same neighborhood.
My husband went to my mother and kept saying, “Your daughter ruined my life.”
I had a nervous breakdown. I couldn’t take it.
I’ll never forget those days.
People started going to my mother’s house. They were worried.
Thank God it didn’t go on much longer. She could’ve asked for more money and I would’ve given it to her.
I would’ve gotten a longer sentence and my life would’ve been more miserable.

The people came over at night and told me,
“Write us receipts with the money we gave you. You’re the one we’ve been dealing with. We don’t know that woman. She’s a crook.”
We held an unofficial meeting and my sister’s sons were standing guard with metal chains.
My husband then arrived and I gave them their receipts.
Later they’d occasionally send a police officer over to scare me.
“Tell me who you have a problem with. I’ve got your back. We know you’re a good person,” he’d say.

This was the first major problem my family had to go through.
All I cared about was protecting my children.
I used to receive threats on the phone saying that they’d harm my children.
I couldn’t sleep.
I tried to visit my friend at her house.
She’d hang up on me whenever she heard my voice on the phone.
“I’m in El-Obour. Come meet me there,” she told me several times.
I went to visit her but she was nowhere to be found.
I stood for hours in the street during Ramadan while people were breaking their fast.
She was misleading me.
I looked for her everywhere.

I got high blood pressure and diabetes because of this whole thing.
People only care about the money.
I cut ties with everyone around me.
No one supported me.
They gave me hell.
“Don’t go there, she’s fooling you,” my mother would say.
“I don’t want to go to jail,” I’d tell her

My husband would go pray the dawn prayer in the mosque then come bang on my mother’s door where I was staying.
“Open up! You’re in there sleeping while we can’t get a wink of sleep! GET UP!” he’d shout.
“You’ve ruined my life,” he’d tell me as he cried.
I was lost. I couldn’t eat or sleep.
“How could you give them receipts with your name on them? Have you lost your mind?” my lawyer said.
“We could’ve solved this without making it official. We could’ve given them some money every month.”
“You shouldn’t have given them receipts.”
“Let’s go to the police station and file a report against your friend so we could get you off the hook.”
I wanted to cling to any bit of hope.

I did not come out of the police station.
This happened in March. All these events unfolded in just one month.
My friend completely disappeared.
No one had mercy on me.
I used to be terrified of police trucks whenever they’d pass by me.
“I don’t want to pass by it,” I’d tell my husband.
I hated them.
I rode in them for 10 years.
They sent me to the evening court where my nieces waited for me.
They were screaming and shouting so the officer told them,
“I’m sending her to Al-Qanater Prison.”
I went there and my mom passed away one month later.

Prison is the hardest ordeal you could ever face.
I kept screaming hysterically as soon as I entered.
I kept screaming for an hour.
They tried to drag me off the floor, but I kept throwing myself on the ground.
The officers dragged me through the hallway.
“What are you in for?” they asked.
“I didn’t do anything! I didn’t take anything!” I said.
“She’s the one that took everything. Why is this happening to me! My life is over!”

As soon as I entered the holding cell I fell asleep.
Prison is terrifying. I was afraid.
There was a nice woman whose name I forgot who gave me food and told me,
“When are you going to wake up?”
I hadn’t slept for a month and a half.
I would go back to sleep as soon I’d wake up and find that I’m still in prison.

I went to prison on the 5th of March, and he sent me the divorce papers on the 21st of March.
He was dealing with a lot of difficulties with the people outside, and so were my children.
I couldn’t believe it when the officer told me about the divorce papers.
I didn’t speak to anyone for an entire month.
I was incapable of expressing myself. I couldn’t describe what I was going through.
No one but my sister visited me.
That’s when I had just started to get accustomed to the environment in there.
I had just been moved from the holding cell to the investigation room.
The woman that gave me the galabiyya wanted me to pay for it.
Every new inmate is given a white galabiyya.
They expect you to pay them back when your family sends you money.
I found out about that a while later.
A woman told me to give my home number to the guard and she’d call my husband for me.
She called him and he was devastated.
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“We can’t visit her because we don’t want people to judge us. I’ll take care of the children and her sister will visit her.”
A person with so much trouble in their life will never catch a break.
I could hear my daughter calling out, “Mama!” for a month.

I wanted to find work in there so I could afford food.
I got my food from the food-delivery guy before he distributed it.
That’s when I realized that I needed to find work.
I washed my clothes with bits of soap I’d find here and there.
I got zucchini from the vegetables vendor who would stop by our prison after the men’s prison.
He came at 7 o’clock.
I would beg the guard to let me take a couple of zucchinis from him.
I would then wait for whoever’s making food to finish so that I could fry them.

“Why don’t you write letters for the inmates whose husbands are in prison?” a woman once suggested to me.
I would write them letters after sweeping the garden.
That was until the guard told me that I needed to stop sending them because something had happened.

“I want to work so I could afford to buy food and medicine,” I told Mr. Mansour.
“You can start working in the hallway until you get the hang of it,” he said.
I’d work all day and go back to my cell at night.

Our cell was one of the great ones.
It had tiled floors, cold and hot water, and we cleaned it four times a day.
It was difficult at first when we had to clean it every morning in winter, but I got used to it.
The first salary I got was 127 pounds from the workshop.
I was ecstatic that day.

I started frequenting the library and I learned to crochet and I bought all the yarn I needed.
I made a doll and I sold it for 6 packs of cigarettes.
Those 6 packs were like a fortune to me.
I got lentils and other things I needed.
The most important thing was that I didn’t ask favors from anybody.
Asking people for help was humiliating, and I didn’t want to be humiliated.

I had a nervous breakdown when I heard my sentence.
I kept screaming in court until I was sent back to prison.
I got a terrible sentence for every receipt I wrote.
No one stood by me.
Even my lawyer abandoned me.
They wouldn’t let my sister give me my father’s pension.
But she managed to give me his social welfare pension.

I couldn’t believe it when I was released.
They didn’t even put me under probation because I was only in for unpaid receipts.
I was sent to the police station where I stayed for 5 days, and I haven’t stepped foot in a police station ever since.
I was happy that I kept wandering around in the streets.
I drank two big cups of cold juice, then I went to my sister’s house.
She gave me a very hard time.
She started treating me badly after I used up all my money.
They didn’t want me to go near my children.
“I told the children that you got out so you could see them,” my ex-husband said.
My sister would hide food from me and didn’t want me to see my children.
“Your children know you’re out now,” she said.
“My husband wants the apartment so you have to leave. You know where your children are now. Go to them. We don’t want you here.”

I contacted a nursing home and worked as a cook there.
I made food for 48 people.
I had been living there for a month when my daughter visited me.
“We’ll take care of you. We can’t let anything bad happen to you.”
“I’ll take you back once you’re exonerated,” my ex-husband said.

I’m going to submit an exoneration request for my children’s sake.
I don’t want to go back to my husband.
All he could say whenever I needed his help was, “Figure it out yourself.”
My children and I had it rough.