TITLE: Enlarge My Heart, Lord By RJ Shipman 11/15/06 |
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The first time I visited someone in a prison in Egypt was about six years ago. It all began with a dream that I thought was from God. In the dream, I was alone in a prison cell on my knees crying out to the Lord. It made me wonder what was going to happen to me, since the nature of our ministry in Egypt had to be kept underground for political reasons. A few weeks after that dream, my life changed suddenly and dramatically. My colleagues on the mission team were kicked out of the country. I was the only one left behind in Egypt. Shortly before that happened, I received a call from an older woman who attended my church. She asked me if I could help her by writing a letter to one of the Nigerian men in Khalifa Prison. She had not yet been able to answer his letter or to visit him on one of her bi-weekly trips to the prison due to the short time limits allowed to visitors. I told her I would do more than write the letter--I would go with her!
It gets dark early in the month of January in Cairo. We had to go to the prison at night because that's when visitors were allowed. Berys asked if I could help her carry some things to give to the prisoners who were, by the way, not real criminals. They had been imprisoned from many nations for problems with their visas. These men were housed in the same cells as Egyptian convicts who were in transit from one prison in Egypt to another.
I arrived at Berys’ address and began climbing the stairs six floors to her flat. How did she do it, I thought to myself, panting. At last I arrived at her door. When I knocked, and she came quickly to the door. There were bags and bags of heavy things to carry. I was wondering why she hadn’t asked two young, strong men to go along and help instead of me. We struggled down the six flights of stairs and out into the street with our precious cargo of life-sustaining commodities for the prisoners who, by the way, also totally outnumbered our ability to provide. I was already overwhelmed. At last we arrived on the noisy main street two blocks from her flat. It took us about 20 minutes to hail a microbus going to the area where the prison was located.
The microbus itself was actually a van with four rows of bench-type seats crammed in very close together beginning just inches behind the driver's seat and lined up to the rear. It was packed with people, with just two " positions " remaining. Somehow we managed to squeeze ourselves and all our precious cargo in those small spaces, piling bags high on our laps and onto anyone else willing to lend us a place to stack them. The ride cost 50 piasters, about 15 cents each.
The van was dirty, and so were some of the poor Egyptians who were riding inside. One man reeked of sweat and grease--the kind of grease used for cars or for some sort of heavy equipment. The black ooze was ground into his old winter jacket so deeply that I could no longer see the pile of the fabric. Under his fingernails was the residue of what had to have been several days’ work.
In another bench seat sat a middle-aged couple with a young baby who was crying--the kind of crying a toddler does when he is just worn out and ready to sleep but is fighting the surrendering of his will to stay alert. They look too old to have a child that small, I thought. I wondered how many others they had at home? They both looked like they were from poor families. Their clothes seemed to be the best they had. Everything they wore, though clean, was frayed around the edges.
This bus was clearly not a ride many foreigners had taken. This was evidenced on the faces of the Arab people in the bus. When we boarded, the conversations of the 14 people in that crowded microbus stopped completely. People stared at us, wondering about our nerve to invade a place where life was totally Egyptian.
Near the end of our ride, the smells of the city began to change dramatically even though the noises of honking cars, Middle Eastern twangy music and minaret loud speakers calling the Muslims to prayer remained constant throughout our thirty-minute ride of silence within the vehicle. We could smell the burning of the garbage village above us on the hill. How could people actually live amidst the garbage collected from this huge city, I wondered? I was thankful the grace of God saved me from such a life. We were almost there.
The dingy-looking driver was dirty and quite aggressive with the passengers as well as with every other vehicle on the over-crowded roads. He chain-smoked during the entire trip. When our ride ended about 30 minutes later, he announced our fair as double the price we knew it to be. Everyone else remained silent. Berys, herself from New Zealand, spoke to him in broken Arabic. Telling him she knew the correct amount for the fare, she paid him, and said, "Kafiyya!” which means, “That’s enough.”
Upon arrival at the microbus station near the prison, we again struggled to collect our possessions and exit the vehicle. My thoughts were on getting out of that crowded microbus and out from the stench of cigarette smoke and sweat which were probably clinging to my clothes by now. I was convicted by the sudden brightness on my friend’s face when she turned to the driver and smiling, said, “Shokran!” which means, “Thank you!”
Now it was pitch dark except for a few streetlights and the kerosene lanterns of vendors along the crowded street. I began to feel a fear grip me in the pit of my stomach. For the first time I was so very glad to have a companion with me, albeit a female. There were rows and rows of vans with people crowding into them in the dirt parking area of the station. Grimy drivers and their assistants, who were young, uneducated boys about 10-15 years old, walked up and down the rows shouting out the destinations of the various microbuses. There were no women without male escorts except us. There were no foreigners except us. Everyone saw us, too. Men made signs and said vulgar things, which thankfully I couldn’t understand. I stuck close to my companion, now pretty sure I would never come there again.
The station was filled with the smells of dust and urine. Crowds of local people were milling around, buying vegetables, walking, and fighting in the dirty streets. The prison was only about a ten-minute walk, but our load now seemed to be getting heavier with each passing minute. We opted to try to struggle over the rocks and holes and the dung of the donkeys that pulled the vegetable carts and see if we could get to the other side of the street. Once there we hailed a taxi. It was no trouble getting a driver to stop. After all, foreigners were always charged higher fares than local people. It did take three attempts to finally get a driver who would take us the short distance for double the fare a normal Egyptian would pay. Even then, the driver had at first declined our generous offer, but afterward stopped, backed up and changed his mind.
He took us to the front door of Khalifa Prison, which was a large, dingy compound on a narrow dirt street. There were about 70 people waiting outside the front door of the prison which also marked the edge of the street. The road was half-covered with sewer water. Problems with broken pipes and backed up sewers were common in that area and usually took months to get repaired because people were not able to pay the " baksheesh" required to get faster service. Judging by the stench, I would say the sewer water had been there a month at least. At the side of the road in front of the prison building was a short mud-and-brick wall which was about waist-high. As many people as could were sitting on the wall. Behind them was some poorly strung barbed wire, and in the midst of the barbed wire was all the garbage the people from the past month or more had thrown away while waiting their turn to go inside. We were the only foreigners.
You could have cut the atmosphere with a knife. Tension gripped those people, and they were almost hyper-aggressive. My friend asked several of them how long they had been waiting. Many had been there several hours. They took turns shouting and arguing with the four guards--young Egyptian soldiers whose only job was to guard the front door of the prison for 12 hours each day on their shift. Prison trucks from other places were bringing convicts who would be transferred to other prisons after a day or two. The whole place was like a pot of boiling anger just waiting to explode and unleash itself on any victims who might just be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The prisoners would climb out of the back of big blue prison trucks as three or four guards stood by to supervise. They were chained together two-by-two, each having to finagle the chains while carrying their bed rolls and whatever other earthly possessions they had been allowed to keep. The guards were screaming and swearing at the prisoners, pushing and kicking them to keep them going toward the prison building door--a distance of about ten paces total.
Some of the people in the crowd would call out, then scream and cry as they saw their loved ones shuffling by chained to strangers. Some of them shouted toward the windows two stories up, hoping somehow to connect with their family members. Prisoners would stand at those windows and shout down to the crowd asking for cigarettes and for money. They would relay messages in turn for bribes of this sort. The guards would do exactly the same. It cost us a fee of 2 LE for each guard to get them to even consider allowing as a spot near the door when and if the time came when visitors would be allowed to enter one at a time.
We could hear the noises of the prisoners housed in the overcrowded cells inside. While we waited in the street, Berys instructed me what to do and what not to do. She said all the guards both inside and outside would be very aggressive with us in order to show some sort of control in their otherwise out-of-control, government-owned lives. She instructed me to be firm, but also to smile and never show anger or give any indication of frustration or disgust. She informed me that when we did get inside, the two men we wanted to see (one would be allowed to see Berys; the other would see me) would be brought out of the cell to where we would wait in a reception area near the front desk. In the end, I agreed to just follow her lead and carry as many packages as I could.
We waited for hours, standing in the cold, dank space behind the hostile guards and in front of the explosive crowd in the street. Again and again we took turns begging the guards to let us in. One angry guard standing just inside the big door kept opening the square hatch in the door and yelling at Berys and me that we would never get past him unless we gave him 50 LE. Berys would smile sweetly at him and remind him we were bringing food from the church to many people inside and tell him that he was too good a man to keep us out. Her continual sweetness to that nasty guard was like a nail in my conscience. The pain in my gut of wanting retaliation with him was almost more than I could bear.
In order to keep my composure, I began trying to befriend those outside who seemed to have it much worse than me. I listened to the stories of several women whose husbands or sons were locked up with the transit prisoners and tried my best to converse with them in my broken Arabic. This at least helped calm my heart in the hostile and explosive atmosphere of this wretched place. I bought some bottled water from a vendor across the road and after having drunk myself, I gave it to those in the crowd who had been waiting the longest. It seemed to ease some of the tensions of those waiting. Many had been clearly agitated at our presence, imagining that we were rich foreigners who would surely pay a lot of money and get inside before those who had waited all day. Visiting with the people outside was a ministry in itself. I resolved in my heart to learn some encouraging scriptures in Arabic to speak to those waiting should I decide to ever come here again.
After standing for two hours outside with no place to sit and having used up all the Arabic words I possessed, I was ready to give up and haul all our perishable treasures back home. Berys would just look at me and say, "Not yet. We must get an. These men need the things we brought with us, and besides, you have to meet Simon.” Simon was one of the Nigerian prisoners. Though he was unknown to me, I had agreed to meet with him because Berys no longer had the time or strength to take on even one more needy prisoner in her ministry. So I agreed to wait, arms aching, feet sore and shoulders feeling as if they were coming loose from their sockets. Then it started raining.
Rain in Egypt is not like rain anywhere else I've ever lived. It usually rains two or three times a year--mostly in February. When rain does come, everyone disappears off the streets. Between the time rain itself is released from the clouds, goes through the atmosphere thick with desert dust from the mighty Sahara, then penetrates through layers of pollution and smog from a city with 16-18 million people—what ends up in the end looks like liquid mud. It is dirty enough to stain hair and clothes. It washed off the year-old layers of dust clinging to the few trees before it actually dirtied our jackets, hair, bags, etc. The one good thing was that the crowd thinned considerably after that, losing those who were disgruntled or just plain fed up with waiting.
At last, about 11:00 p.m. we pushed our way to the front of the line to go inside. After three hours of waiting and praying, we were allowed [for price of 5 LE each] to go inside in order to have a total of ten minutes with two prisoners.
Once inside, the sounds coming from the cramped quarters behind the walls were very distinct. There was no way to tell how many prisoners occupied each of the unseen cells. Guards were shouting and prisoners were having conversations in several different languages. The reception area was a narrow space on the concrete floor in front of an old yellow-painted wooden counter behind which sat three officers. They all wanted money, but we said, " No," with smiles on our faces. After all, we were inside now and the names of our guys were being called in the cells. I could hear it.
What I heard next puzzled me. I heard the guard shout out Simon's full name. Then in the next instant I heard someone crying so loud that I wondered what had happened to some poor bloke inside the cell. A moment later, the guard emerged with a short black man dressed in tattered shorts and a very thin, ragged T-shirt. The black man was crying and crying ... and smiling. I was in a panic state not knowing what to do or say. I was also thinking about the pressure of having only ten minutes at the most after my grueling three-hour wait.
I quickly introduced myself and began to tell Simon about waiting three hours outside with the nasty guards, the rain, the sewer problems, and the tension of the crowd outside. I didn't know what else to say. He cried the whole time, but kept insisting that he was listening. He was listening to me…as if I had anything to say. I couldn't help wondering if he had other clothes to keep him warm since the inside of the building was as cold as standing in a garage in the middle of winter. He said he didn't, but that there were many men in the cell, and they all helped to keep each other warm. It was nearly time to go outside again, so I gave him the bags of food and a letter I had written to him to encourage him and to say I would be praying for him. Simon was still crying.
Finally I turned my attention fully to Simon and asked him why he was crying. He replied, "Because this is the best day of my life. I'm so happy!" I was flabbergasted at that remark. I asked, "Why can you be so happy in a place like this?" He answered, "Because I’ve been praying for six months for a visitor, and God has sent me a visitor. Now I know He hasn't forgotten me." I was cut to the heart! I had spent most of our ten minutes together telling him about my inconveniences and the miseries of waiting to see him. In the last minute when I finally saw Simon, the Lord used his very few words like a hammer that broke the stone off my own heart.
As the guard was pulling my arm and dragging me toward the door, Simon shouted above all the commotion and even above his own tears, "I’ll write you a letter and tell you the whole story next time you come." With one guard pulling him back toward the cell and the other guard physically directing me toward the door, I heard Simon yell, "What day will you come?" I shouted back, "Tuesday."
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