Your Egypt

[Monica]

Help is a phone call away

Cairo
By Summer Said

A free telephone hotline offering advice on family-related issues is receiving more than 150 calls a day from around the country and beyond.

The round-the-clock service, setup in Cairo in 2001, has become so successful, that the NGO behind it – the Egyptian Organization for Protecting Lawyers and Their Families – plans to expand the service to several other countries in the region within months.

The hotline, whose name is translated as ‘The Line to Fight the Troubles of Egyptian and Arab Families,’ puts limited income families in direct phone contact with sociologists, psychologists, and lawyers. Its chairman and veteran lawyer, Hisham Abbas, said that the organization will assist members of families with incomes of less than E£10,000 ($1,600) a year.

However, Abbas admits that he is unable to verify a caller’s income.

“There is no way that we can know if the caller has a limited income or not,” he said. “We just trust what they tell us.”

Nevertheless, Abbas does not regard the lack of verification as a big deal, as most Egyptians are suffering financially, he says.

“The average person in Egypt spends 37 percent of his income on food and 11 percent on rent, so I guess most people are entitled to this service,” he told the Middle East Times.

His organization receives a large number of calls from people in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Sudan, saying they are financially incapable of seeking help elsewhere, according to Abbas.

The hotline founders say that the key to its success is that callers do not need to reveal their identity.

“People talk more frankly when we don’t ask their real names,” said Sawsan Muhammad Al Sayed, a sociology specialist working with the hotline team. “This encourages more people to contact us.

“Yet, in some cases – like divorce or inheritance, which can only be resolved in court – we have to ask the caller to reveal their true identity,” Sayed said.

The organization will also provide a free lawyer.

Some 4,800 calls were received by the hotline in July – an average month.

The large number of calls has given the help team solid information to compile statistics and make credible research.

One key topic is the effect of urfi (unofficial and secret) marriage on women.

“Caller statistics show that nearly seven out of every 10 women who contact us after an Orfi marriage end up as drug addicts or prostitutes,” Sayed told the Middle East Times.

Young people often choose Orfi marriage to avoid waiting years until they can afford the high cost of marriage. Although they are generally frowned upon by conservative Egyptian society, Orfi marriages are legal but not officially registered, and are not financially binding on the man.

Sayed said that a 24-year-old female student who called for help said she had been through four Orfi marriages, without her family knowing.

Some 75 percent of the calls are from women, who the hotline team say are more open and frank when talking about their personal problems.

“Men find it much harder than women to speak openly about their problems, and often dodge the underlying causes,” said Taha Ali, psychologist with the hotline. “They usually tell us about problems at work, but avoid talking about their actual marital problems.”

None of the male callers had ever admitted to sexual impotence – a taboo that is deeply rooted in Arab societies, Ali adds.

“Yet, it is often easy for us to find out that a man’s impotence is mixed up with the crisis he faces,” Ali said. “So if possible we talk to the wife.”

Despite its reliance on phone communication, the organization also serves deaf people by regular mail, fax, or a visit to the organization’s main office for a personal consultation with a member of the team.

It also has a religious scholar on hand to give spiritual advice to people struggling with matters of faith.

Contact the organization at:

22 Al Nozha Street, Cairo.

Tel.: 588-9104, 685-5314

Fax: 685-5314