Some Guys Just Won’t Take No For an Answer

There she was, a small, shivering figure huddled against the side of a mountain of trash, trying to get warm. She wasn’t lost or alarmed or incoherent, because she’d done this before. In fact, she lived in the trash dump.

It’s true. A section of Cairo, Egypt called “Zabaleen” is populated by humans... and the garbage they produce. Where you or I would have a policeman or a weird yuppie couple that only come out at night as our neighbors, this girl shared living space with beer cans and mango pits and wrappers of McDonald’s sandwiches she could never afford, that many in Egypt could never afford.

Anyway, Naama, a 16-year-old runaway who was nonetheless meting out a living in this “trashy” neighborhood, was trying to get warm, snuggling with a pile of banana peels and torn sneakers. Out of nowhere comes a young man. Maybe he’s cold, too, but he shuns a cuddle with the banana peels and heads straight for Naama,

She tells him to get lost, but her assertiveness flags as his aggressiveness increases. It becomes clear that mere snuggling isn’t the way he means to get warm.

He beats her, and, while she’s successful in keeping herself from his attempted rape, the blows end up killing her.

Tragic, right? Too bad this is only the beginning of her story.

Because even after her body lay lifelessly in his arms, he decided that he was going to get what he had set out to get. So he proceeded to attack the late Naama... in the manner of a necrophiliac. Yes, he had sex with her corpse.

Unfortunately, her body wasn’t through being abused, because Naama (may God rest her soul) was then thrown into the street by the pervert that had defiled her dead body. As the perpetrator—a youth named Ahmed—had hoped, her lifeless form was run over by cars and buses.

I hope you’re not thinking that I’m going to make this into a “Christian Vs. Muslim” thing, because I’m not. It’s merely a case of a sick guy being able to fulfill his sick desires, and not get punished for it. Not because he was a MUSLIM, and therefore protected, but because SHE was a *Christian*.

If she had been a Muslim, this case would have been more known-about, and he would be getting a stiffer sentence. As it is, however, this article is the only English-language recounting of Naama’s story (And a few months after the fact, as it is.).

Then again, the Egyptian media, state run, never includes anything about these atrocities, so that the citizens of Egypt almost never hear about these cases that are, unfortunately, happening more and more as the months go by.

Talking of which, some crazy things have been going down in Alexandria and the Saiid, of late, and I’ll soon have the stories for you. As usual, I truly hate being the bearer of such bad news, but better upset and informed than blissfully ignorant. After all, ignorance never helped anyone save lives and change the world.

Sara Ghorab

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