My husband and I had five children.
We used to live in a two-bedroom apartment. We lived a good life.
He gave me a good life, God rest his soul.
He built an apartment building and said he’d reserve an entire floor for us, instead of just one small apartment.
He owned the building with his cousin.
I took one of the apartments and worked on it from scratch.
The apartment remained all bare brick walls for four years and plastered and unpainted for two.
I eventually finished the apartment, installing plumbing, electricity—everything.

The days went by. Things started to turn sour between my husband and his cousin.
I was on my way back from the marketplace one day, and it was really hot.
It was June at the time.
My husband had left for work fifteen minutes earlier. He usually left at 6:00 pm and spent the night at his workplace.
I had bought all the groceries I needed for my cooking.
I filled a pot with water to boil meat in and set it on the stove.
I peeled the stems of the okra I had bought.
I was wearing a bright yellow house dress,
and I wasn’t, pardon me, wearing a bra.
I was home alone, and the weather was hot.
I was cleaning and peeling the vegetables when my brother-in-law walked in.
“Who turned on the water motor pump?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied, “Go ask your cousin. He owns this building too. He does his laundry here sometimes.”
My brother-in-law told one of the kids to go get him: “Tell Abu Rabee’ to turn the motor off.”
Abu Rabee’ came, yelling and cursing; he thought I had turned it on.
There were neighbors around, and I had this horrible habit of always asking after the neighbors, even if they didn’t return the favor.
“Why are you causing trouble, Abu Rabee’?” asked Umm Mahmoud, one of the neighbors. “She’s just gone upstairs with a basket of bread. I just saw her.”
Apparently, he was the one who wanted to pick a fight.
Abu Rabee’ then left me and went upstairs after my brother-in-law and I stayed downstairs.
“Give me something to cover my hair with,” I said to my sister-in-law.
She gave me a scarf and I wrapped it like this.
A woman came downstairs and told us that the men were fighting.
I began to tremble.
I went upstairs. She came with me.
Upstairs, I found my brother-in-law injured. He pushed past his cousin and ran.
I was just about to yell at Abu Rabee’ for picking fights with us all the time when the woman with me yelled, “You disgusting bitch, he’s dead!”
She grabbed me by the hair and dragged me down the stairs on my back.
“He’s not dead,” I said.
“He is,” she said.
My brother came: “What happened? What happened?”
“Abu Rabee’ is dead. Abu Rabee’ is dead,” I said.
“Don’t worry. Don’t worry,” he kept repeating.
My brother-in-law appeared, followed by my husband’s nephew, who began to shout: “Look what they’ve done! They’ve killed my uncle!”
“I didn’t do anything,” I said to my brother-in-law. “I was yelling at him for your sake. I didn’t do anything!”
“No, you both killed him,” my husband’s nephew exclaimed.
“That’s unfair! She had just gone up,” said the woman across from us.

The police showed up.
Before they took me away, two young men, somewhere between the ages of 18 and 20, took a look at Abu Rabee’: “He’s alive, Umm Issa. He’s alive. Give us something to staunch the blood with.”
I was sitting on the stairs. I couldn’t find anything they could use.
I unwrapped the scarf from around my head. “Take this,” I said.
They wrapped the scarf around the wound.
When the body was sent to the morgue, they asked who the scarf belonged to.
“It’s mine,” I said.
I didn’t tell them it was my sister-in-law’s . She had nothing to do with this.
“Tell us what happened.
I told them everything. I told them I hadn’t seen or done anything. I hadn’t even gone near him.
They didn’t find my fingerprints or my brother-in-law’s on the body.
They came and took me from my apartment. My children went downstairs with me.
They were scared. The officials told them to go back upstairs.
They stepped over the body on the stairs and went up to the apartment.
My two children were young. They spent the whole night crying and screaming.
They pushed living room chairs against the door because they were afraid.
The telephone line was dead, so I couldn’t reach them from the police station.
And my husband was spending the night at work.

They waited until the ambulance came and took the body.
Then, at 5:00 am, they went to their sister’s in Helwan, barefoot and penniless.
When the police came to take me away, my neighbor told them that my husband was involved in the case.
“My husband had just left for work when it happened. He left fifteen minutes before the fight, I said to the officer.
“Where does he work?”
“In Shubra.”
“Where in Shubra?”
“I don’t know, I swear to God.”
He cursed me: “How does a woman not know the address of her husband’s work?”
“I swear I don’t know,” I said.
My husband came back from work the following morning.
They told him what happened.
My husband ran after the woman who had gone up with me: “You know the truth! Tell them the truth! Umm Issa wouldn’t hurt a fly.”
“I swear Umm Issa didn’t do anything,” she said to him.
My brother-in-law’s family went behind our backs and bribed the woman with a kilo of sugar and tea so she wouldn’t give her testimony.
“They’ll lock you up and beat you if you go to the police station while your husband is away,” they said to her.
She didn’t go and refused to be a witness.

I was sentenced to 5 years and my brother-in-law received fifteen.
What do I do to the people who wronged me?
I didn’t kill him. I never even came near him.
And when it all comes down to it, we’re not even sure whether or not his death was an accident.
Apparently, when my brother-in-law was about to punch him, Abu Rabee’ had tripped and fell over his own weapon, accidentally killing himself.
Anyway, I was sentenced to 5 years, but only served 2 and a half of them.
I didn’t get into any trouble while I was there.

When I was released, I learned that they had sold my apartment for 30,000 LE.
I had sold 4 gold bracelets to finish furnishing that apartment. Things were cheap back then.
My family had said they had no need for the apartment because I was in jail.
They sold my apartment. Four bedrooms, a living room, a kitchen, and brand-new furniture. Sofas, 4 beds for the children, a fully-equipped kitchen—everything.
I had just had it painted. It wasn’t even a year old.
They sold my apartment.
My sister-in-law who lived downstairs was taken to live with her mother while her husband and I were in jail.
Her father was in Saudi Arabia. They stole all the furniture from her apartment, taking all the important things like the linen and the blender.
They cut the cord belonging to the fridge’s motor.

What did I do?
I lost my apartment; I lost my whole world.
What did I get? Nothing.
When I was released, I went to live at my father’s.
My father was good to me and everything, but it’s different having your own apartment. Your own place. Your own life. Your own food, be it good or bad. Privacy—no one knowing your business.
I don’t know what I did wrong. What did I get?
I got 5 years in jail. People talking about me, looking down at me.
“You could have just hurt him a little! Why did you have to kill him?” a woman in the street once asked me.
I heard them say things about me. Many things.
My body hurt from all the sadness I felt.

I thank God that it had happened to me at least and not anyone else.
Not my husband, children, father, or brother.
I just want my children to be okay. That’s all I want.
I swear to God, I swear on my children’s lives, I never went near him.
Never laid a finger on him.

My apartment had four bedrooms. It had plumbing, electricity, and tiles.
I had even tiled the kitchen ceiling and the bathroom.
Whenever my husband had suggested we buy something new for the apartment, I always told him that we should get the very best and most expensive products available because the place was ours.
Ours for life.
We had invested our blood and sweat into it. We had taken out loans. I had sold my gold bracelets.
I’m not as upset over the time I spent in jail as much as I am over the loss of my apartment.
My husband kept imploring me to be strong. It was his brother, after all, who had caused all this.
“Please, be strong.”
I was strong. Life went on. We forgot about the whole thing, and my husband went to heaven.
Before he passed away, he helped one of our sons get married. The other, engaged.
Last week, his siblings decided to sell their father’s house in the countryside and divide the money amongst them.
“Where’s my share?”
“Your husband died. You don’t get a share.”
Each of my sons was supposed to get an apartment.
The son who got married now lives in one and my other son was supposed to get the other one.
They want to take my son’s apartment from me. I don’t know what to do.
And I don’t have enough money to buy another one.
My eldest uncle and my father are going to talk to them next Tuesday, to see what’s going on.
I pray things work out.
I caught myself talking to him yesterday: “Why did you leave me? You made life easy. Where are you? You left this world behind.”
I now get scared when people fight.
I barely greet anyone anymore.
Whenever I’m asked where I disappear to, I just reply that everything’s fine.
I don’t like visiting anyone or having anyone over. I pray for this life to end.