< Back to Voices
The Window Overlooking the Yard Behind the Villa
Janet McGiffin / 20 March 2008
On any given morning, a quiet crowd can be found bunched in the yard behind an old colonial villa in Garden City, Cairo. They are gazing up at a certain window. Seventy-five years ago maybe, this villa near the Nile housed a wealthy French, British, or Greek banker or investor who came to build canals, office buildings, or the railroad. They erected these huge villas and held cocktail parties on the broad verandas overlooking the river. Now this decaying yet dignified old home is the medical clinic of Caritas. This private non-governmental organization (NGO) is paid by the United Nations High Commissioner of Refugees (UNHCR) to provide medical care for refugees. The crowd is quiet and well-behaved—no problem for the ten Egyptian guards watching them—possibly because most of these people are sick.
Nearly all the women here on this Monday morning are wearing the brightly colored garments of sub-Sahara Africa. Bolts of cloth wrap them in loose folds and drape over their heads. Inside the folds, the women hold babies or small children. The women are tall, thin, dark-skinned, and have large eyes and calm faces. They are murmuring to each other and greeting newcomers.
In contrast are the women who are Iraqi. They stand out because their skin is white and because their heads are covered with the tight scarves of the Iraqi culture, a tube scarf covering hair, ears, and throat, topped by a scarf of contrasting color. This is secured with hatpins then tucked inside the collar of their coats. Egyptian woman also wear two scarves for fashionable contrast, but their scarves are brightly patterned and bounce freely in the breeze, rippling over the shoulders of their jackets. No Egyptian women wait here. Only refugees.
The Iraqi women are also marked by the expression on their faces. It’s a combination of shock, disbelief, and depression. They stare fixedly upward at the window, within the crowd but not of it. They are silent and they stand singly, here and there. There is a space around each Iraqi woman.
he window above their heads opens and a man leans out. The window is tall with two glass doors that open inwards. This window has also been fitted with a heavy wire screen with its own smaller window. The man can lean out without ducking his head.
The crowd moves gently toward the window. Their arms rise in unison. They are holding up Yellow or Blue Cards received from UNHCR across town. These Temporary or Permanent Residence Cards allow the bearers to remain in Egypt indefinitely and to come to Caritas when they are sick.
But first they must get an appointment. My Iraqi companion takes from her handbag the Yellow Card of her mother-in-law who is at home recovering from heart surgery. The eighty-one year old woman began having chest pains when they came to Cairo. An Egyptian doctor did "balloon" surgery which opened a nearly closed artery. The family paid heavily, with relatives sending money from Baghdad. But the follow-up heart medicine is also very expensive and Caritas can provide it cheaper. My companion is making an appointment in hopes of securing this subsidy.
The Egyptian guard standing nearby sees my companion hesitate with the Yellow Card in her hand. He gently takes the card and unfolds it to its full length. Then he demonstrates how to hold it stiffly in this position. Held thus, over the head, it will reach the man in the window if he leans way down. My friend moves forward. After a while the man in the window reaches down for her card. He disappears inside. An appointment is being made.
The yard behind the villa is hard-packed dirt. A car is parked in the center, forcing people to swarm around it to get under the window. So many people are jammed around this car that I notice it only when I move toward the open doorway of a one-car garage in the back of the yard. I am curious what is inside.
It is packed with old men sitting on long benches. They are wearing scarves or shawls draping their heads. More benches are piled against the back wall, unused because the car is parked where they would be placed.
On the wall are five large posters. The first informs people whose names begin with A-L that they can pick up their charity checks at the Alexandria Bank at a certain address between certain dates. The second and third say the same, with different letters and dates. The last two posters list hospitals and pharmacies where Caritas doctors refer patients.
I return to my companion, a woman in her fourties with an Engineering Degree and a long work history as an upper-level administrator. Her face now wears the same expression as the other Iraqi women. She mutters something about how there must be a more human way to issue appointments than making people stand around a parked car stretching upward to full height waving a Yellow Card. What she doesn’t say is how it makes her feel to be here, proclaiming to all observers that she is no longer a professional woman with a high salary and a car and house with garden, but an unemployed woman waiting out a war in a crowded apartment.
Inside the villa, there is little to remind one of medicine. I went there one afternoon to chat with a Caritas doctor. Her room has uneven wood-plank floors and double doors opening onto a long corridor. The ceiling is tall with a creaking overhead fan. The windows are shuttered. The doctor sits behind a metal desk facing two metal visitor chairs. Her exam table hides behind a flowered cloth screen. Her primary instrument of medical care is a pad of paper upon which she writes referrals or prescriptions.
The doctors and administrators of Caritas don’t like this system any better than the sick people waiting in the yard. Caritas Internationalis is a confederation of 162 Catholic relief, development and social service organisations working in over 200 countries and territories. Its administrators say that they aren’t funded to provide extensive medical services for war victims, that the UNHCR doesn’t give them sufficient money to be the medical and referral source for so many human beings with such terrible war-related illnesses. Caritas would prefer to do more, help more. This Caritas doctor tells me that tears come to her eyes when she must tell another woman wrapped in bright cloth that there isn’t money for surgery or rehabilitation for war wounds.
Walking back to our office, my companion and I detour through the lobby of the Four Seasons Hotel, a block from Caritas. The gorgeous display of exotic flowers doesn’t bother me. Even if the yearly cost of those flowers were donated to Caritas, it would be a drop in the bucket of their expenses. Another war in the Middle East has taken the place of the previous one and different refugees are making their way to the window overlooking the yard behind the dignified old villa in Garden City, Cairo.
