Last night, Sarah called up and told me that the nurses had put some pressure on her to go down to the municipal courthouse to mitigate Sa’id’s sentence. Apparently, he gets three to seven years maximum for assaulting a foreigner– three to seven years in an Egyptian prison, which is a fate I wish on no one. Depictions of the treatment of prisoners (The Yacoubian Building, Heyna Maysara) can put one off to the excesses of Oriental “justice.” That in mind, Sarah and Katie have been having doubts. Three to seven years is a long, long time, and the man did get his guts rearranged twice.
That said, the officers of the court apparently wanted a confirmation of statement, so Sarah, Tom, and I piled into a taxi around 9 PM and headed to the Manshaya courthouse. It’s an old neo-classical remnant — lots of columns, cast-iron balstruades, galleries of arcades — that looks like a decaying bit of Paris that washed up on our little outcropping of Africa. Checkered marble floors in black and white, scratched and dirty; winged white marble staircases so scratched and old it looked as if the marble were tipping forward– the edges were so worn from a centuries’ scuffle of hard, formal shoes that they looked ready to break off at any moment. Garbage lined the corridors — dark, tar-coated passageways with chipping paint lit by a succession of naked light bulbs from the ceiling — and groups of people huddled in corners (leathery women in gaudy patterns, hairy-handed policemen in ragged white uniforms and cracked black leather boots, lawyers in threadbare soutanes), staring (I imagine) at three foreigners (and Sarah’s blazing red hair especially) marching down to the municipal offices of Bab al-Sharq, the district where the incident took place. Yet the way they punctuated the corridors (we climbed up a maze of stairs and turned down switchback corners) at the corners, it seemed like they had just finished whispering something secret, and had been discovered — that for a moment, we had intruded on something private that had taken place between whispers, and were unwelcome. Fingers pointed the way, and mumbled salaams.
A polished lawyer type with wiry glasses checked over sheafs of notebook paper, all written in an indecipherable hand. Nothing was typed on his desk. After initial confusion over the incidents in question (the lawyer thought Sarah was Katie) we narrated things as they happened; I say we because this was my first simultaneous translation — Sarah talking to me while I translated for the lawyer, Tom catching my back if I didn’t get something. The man seemed surprised that we were concerned about Sa’id, and wished to think over his sentence. He said it was up to us whether he went free or was put in prison for however long.
To my mind, this almost makes the situation even harder than it was. The purpose of an impartial justice system is to enforce the rules of a society, both so that no one is endangered and that no one is to blame; that is why vengeance — although it resembles justice and even possibly achieves equalization of the status quo — is not actual justice. And perhaps this is why the victim of any crime is not given an actual say in the punishment of the criminal. He or she remains apart, because then the burden of punishment falls on the victim. By his or her edict — his or her determination — the criminal is punished, and I wonder if anyone is so just (or at least honestly confident enough in their sense of justice) to measure out the smallest punishment for the smallest crime. Because then the burden falls on you as the cause of someone else’s despair — someone else’s pain. And pain is the reason you brought the criminal before Justice to begin with.
I know that the American justice system is flawed, but at least it avoids that.
Right now, I hate Egypt because it puts contradictory pressures on the girls involved; to my mind, they are quite just in letting the man lie where he is, and yet at the same time, quite just in letting him go. But both situations perpetuate two very different evils; by letting him go, it means going soft on crime — by not letting him go, you potentially ruin a man’s life.
The girls have four days to think it over.
I seriously welcome opinions on this subject.
[…] 3 to 7, and a Courthouse « SON OF A DUCK […]
….to the excesses of Oriental “justice.”
Oriental justice? Wow. Necolonialist much?
We’re sorry, Sahib. See we’re just evolving from chopping each other’s heads off with rusty curvy swords, so we’re only tiptoeing into the rules and applications of ‘Occidental’ justice.
Right. Now that this is out of the way, and regarding the topic at hand — wow. Sheer fucking madness. I feel terrible for what your friend has – and still is – enduring. In no just system is the victim required to make such a judgment.
How on earth did a lawyer – a lawyer for whom, the court? – come up with that? “up to you us whether he went free or was put in prison”?
A judicial system determines the appropriate punishment for various crimes. The judge’s role is to determine whether the person is indeed guilty – and where the punishment falls, within the range determined by the civil code.
The only responsibility you have as a victim is to decide whether you’ll press charges or not.
I have little legal advice to offer, but as a friend, I would only suggest that you mentally frame it in those terms. Press charges or not. It sounds a little less oppressive, a bit more ‘familiar’ perhaps – because that’s the actual involvement of the victim: to decide whether to begin the entire procedure or not.
Seek legal advice would be my second suggestion. Ask a lawyer what the extent of your responsibility is, and how much you influence you actually have on the entire legal process.
I wouldn’t want to be in Katie’s shoes. I wish her a speedy recovery, luck, and wisdom.
… determined by the *criminal* code, that is.
Dear Mo-ha-med,
Point taken on use of the word “oriental.” I meant it ironically, but perhaps my sense of sarcasm isn’t as evident as I believe it to be. For those who have watched Egyptian films such as The Yacoubian Building and Hayna Maysara, the treatment of prisoners is appalling — involving routine rape and torture of inmates as a matter of course by the officers in charge — and such depictions (by Egyptian directors, mind you) do nothing to dispel the stereotype of “recent” barbarism placed on postcolonial nations — they only confirm it. By calling it “oriental justice,” I am motioning to a deeper and still-present stereotype that, at present, my experience with Egyptian culture is confirming — at least in the justice system. I’ll try to be a little better about that in the future, though.
I’m sorry that remark came off as neocolonialist, but I do have more faith in the American legal system than in the Egyptian one — and I have no qualms about saying one is superior to the other. No one that has lived in Egypt would argue with me I think; officials are bribed as a matter of routine, and corruption is rampant. My point was not to allude to the goal of the “white man’s burden” — bringing enlightenment to the savage native (which your term, “sahib” connotes) — but rather to indicate my preference of country. I would have much rather have had this happen in America (if at all!); the process might be so much simpler.
We’re trying to work something out through the consulate on Kafr Abdou — more developments to post tonight — so that the decision is really lifted off the girls’ shoulders, but your advice is well-taken — and more reassuring than you think. Many thanks.
Best wishes,
MJN
Michael,
I am no fan of the Egyptian justice system. (though it’s not THAT bad). And I despise the local police like the plague. Well, all polices really – lousy encounters with your country’s, for one – but the Egyptian in particular. I fear absolute power in the hands of those not worthy of it.
Especially when it comes to foreigners. Looks like it hasn’t hit us that foreigners should abide by the same regulations that locals do… WRT foreigners, they’re either assumed as above the law, or to be fully ignorant of their rights.
Sad.
Re: “oriental”: I had no problem with your opinion – but with your choice of words. Had you put your inverted commas around it – rather than around ‘justice’ – or had you just used ‘Egyptian’, I’d have both seen the sarcasm – and probably agreed.
But you chose to frame it in ‘oriental’/occidental terms, for no apparent reason at the time.
(And you define yourself as “an orientalist” which, well, doesn’t help.)
Anyways. The entire thing is minor and I consider it over.
Good move seeing with the consulate. I’m guessing they would have access to egyptian legal advice.
Do keep us posted. Good luck.
m.
Oh, by the way Mo-ha-med, you’re an idiot. The judicial system is THAT bad. Have you ever even been to Egypt?
Please.
I find the most disgusting thing about this the fact that his sentence is apparently for “assaulting a foreigner.” So if your friends were Egyptian, it would have been okay?
Personally, I’d have few qualms about sending someone to jail for a few years for what he did, in terms of sexual harassment. It may seem like an overblown response, but sexual harassment in Egypt is so horrendous and widespread that I think you have to attack the tip of the iceberg when it’s in front of you.
I don’t think this guy getting the living daylights beat out of him is a good substitute for going to jail. That merely reinforces the standard of harassment, which basically holds that women should only *not* be harassed if there’s a man around to shame or beat up the harasser. Women are thought not to be able to defend themselves–not much they say will shame harassers (I’ve tried) and the threat of physical violence is low. Women can only rid themselves of harassment by appealing to the patriarchal structures in place–by walking with men instead of alone, by asking other men in their lives to talk to, yell at, or beat up their tormentors. The legal system, ideally, would provide the avenue through which women could pursue justice by themselves.
But this case shouldn’t have anything to do with whether or not the people being harassed are foreigners.
What does the guy do? Does he have a family? Perhaps meeting him would make it clearer? Is he genuinely remorseful?
I don’t know, what he did can no way be justified, its completely wrong, and too often it is overlooked and hence repeated. But aside from all your bickering over terminology and comparative justice systems, and the bigger picture.. Perhaps its a decision the lady needs to personally make in the context itself. You can’t create a system that isn’t there. Unfortunately, you can only make do with what you have at this moment in time, and to be quite frank, I don’t think sending him to jail for 5 or whatever years it was, is going to achieve the end goal that you would hope for in any other place. Contextualise it.
Just a point of advice to Sarah (above): Next time it happens make it big scene there and then- You don’t need to get physical. Yell at the guy, call him a wa7sh, call him anything. Shame him in public. Tried and tested, he will be sorry.
Oh and back to the lady in question – other official opinions on the matter would probably make it clearer too, no?
[…] my previous post on this subject, Sarah (not the one involved, but another one) mentioned outrage over the fact that this probably was an incident only because foreigners were involved; had the […]
Michael – has the consulate been of any advice? I hope so..
Barakat – I have had to deal with Egyptian courts. Have you? I’m quite sure you haven’t. But I will not reciprocate insults. I’m just a better man. You, just keep hiding behind your monitor, you’re obviously very good at it.
In response to the actual question WHAT SHOULD I DO.
I think the man has been duly punished by being beaten up twice by how many men and been humiliated in front of Katie and the staff also been sacked. I think thats enough.