Matthias Rathmer - Seeds of Wrath

Mister, Mister! Nice kind mister! I’m really shocked. Habir’s begging from me. And she’s begging in language that gives away how experienced she is. She wants money. She has learnt that someone like me is bound to have cash on him. She has learnt that persistent leeching works if childlike charm is added to the mix. She has learnt that dignity can’t satisfy hunger. What possible importance could the answer to a simple addition sum be to her now?

‘I haven’t got any small change,’ I reply sternly in her own language, something which she initially ignores. Her begging turns more clinging, more demanding and, in the end, so unacceptably insistent that I respond exactly as I have been doing for a long time to approaches of this kind. ‘That’s enough. I don’t want any of this!’

For a moment her facial features register bitter disappointment. Little Habir then lowers her head as if trying to look coy, bestows upon me a reproachful look and walks away. She does it so as to show me that begging and pride are two fundamentally different matters. Then, after just a few steps, she’s skipping along as happily and light-heartedly as can be and, just before going back into the building, turns round and sticks her tongue out at me.

This country’s determination to beg for handouts is something which used to amaze me but now I’m gradually slipping into equanimity. In the end I’m smiling about her clever bit of play-acting and just hope she carries on wanting to pass through the doors of this little school in both directions.

After the first reading lesson, during which the children read out extracts from a fairy tale, I say my goodbyes. Omar asks me if I have learnt anything and whether I’ll be coming back. This makes the others laugh. Even little Habir shakes hands with me. Now she’s just as she was at the start of my visit. Shy, tiny, fragile, unknowing and innocent. As I try in vain to encourage her to give a little smile, I think to myself how for her the classroom is a world with little in common with her own reality. But I hope one day she’ll hold this in her memory as a positive experience of learning and she’ll see that knowledge will in no way harm her own children.

In the short break I join Rania in handing out the money the kids need to get hold of the food from the supermarket, the food which they’d all previously written about as good for them. As robustly as I had subdued the child’s begging, I make it clear that protests about putting learning into practice were not permitted.

Rania’s warm farewell is sincere, and we agree to meet again soon to talk through how the day had gone. Once outside, looking back at this unusual little building, I slip into a state of sadness because I know that a fairy tale will come true for very few of the rubbish collectors’ children. And who knows when or for how long.

A few days after my visit to the settlement full of rubbish, Rania got in touch. She spoke in her typical confident kind. First she told me all about how stressful the supermarket excursion had been. The kids had been so impatient they’d gone the following day, together with another female teacher, and there’d been quite a few tears. Because each child had taken a wire basket, there hadn’t been enough money to get everything on the list. Then, on top of that, there’d been jealousy about who had the most or the biggest products.

Anyway, the outing was sufficiently useful for a compromise to be reached. First of all, the next maths lesson gave the opportunity to look at how much money each one of them had. Next they all bought exactly the same goods. Pedagogically valuable, was Rania’s smug verdict, and a warning about the implications of undertaking such an exercise. All the children had suddenly become extremely hungry and worried about the ‘use by’ dates expiring, or wanted to get back as quickly as possible to surprise their families. Anyway. They all wanted to get home fast.

I found myself smiling several times, and Rania agreed, however unusual this type of teaching was here, that she’d really had fun making this foray from class into the real world. Moments later she was back to being the confident teacher. She offered to get me a summary of current data and information about the Egyptian education system. And she started to apologise for what she saw as her disorganised thinking and comments during our conversation while sitting on the wall. She said the numbers she’d referred to, with a few exceptions, were right but not absolutely accurate. A different list would refer to reforms which had been planned by the central education authority. For the future. Whenever that might be.

‘Rania! It’s all been said,’ I remarked when I had the chance to break in on her efforts at greater accuracy.

In contrast to her usual style of holding forth, she remained silent for an unusually long time before asking a question which only those who’d read her story could possibly answer. ‘But has it?’

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