Monday, July 2, 8pm: The Cup Final between Ahly and Zamalek. Cheering splashed from Downtown’s street corners and blended into one sound. The owners of scattered ahwas, local coffee shops, were calling out orders, already sensing the sweet taste of profits. Even Cairo’s omnipresent street vendors had abandoned their usual posts and collected around streetside TV sets to shout encouragement to their favorite players.

One place remained quiet. On 26 of July Street, five stories up, 20 people gathered around a television, Zamalek supporters in a small cluster on one side of the room, Ahly supporters, by far the bigger group, on the other side. The fans waved in chopping motions through the heavy smoke in the air, their excitement at every goal punctuated with a moan, a jump and rapid sign language.

Welcome to the only Deaf Club in Egypt.

On TV, Zamalek players were wreaking havoc on the nerves of Ahly in the first part of the game. In response, Zamalek supporters gestured to their opponents by putting their palms beside their ears — even for a person who is not familiar with sign language the gesture for ‘donkey’ was unmistakable. But in the second half of the game, Ahly overtook Zamalek in scoring and the donkey signs moved to the other side of the room.

When the game was over, and the cheering from downstairs faded, the chairs in the room were moved to face each other, backs to the wall. The television droned on, but no one paid any attention as the fans talked about the match, fingers and hands animatedly signing to each other. The only hearing people present were the doorman and a young boy.

Founded in the 1960s, the two-room club is one of a handful of facilities that cater to the estimated 90,950 hearing-impaired individuals living in Egypt. According to the latest figures released by the Central Authority for Public Mobilization and Statistics (CAPMAS), the deaf make up four percent out of a community of two million with disabilities — a total that last year propelled Egypt onto the World Health Organization’s list of countries with the highest disability rates.

John Perkins While Egyptian law requires companies to reserve five percent of their jobs for the trained disabled, meaningful work opportunities are nearly non-existent.

Often misunderstood, Egypt’s deaf are treated as outcasts. The Deaf Club was established in response to abusive treatment at neighborhood ahwas. Patrons would often make fun of the deaf’s communication attempts, the mockery sometimes escalating to physical fights. The deaf only want to enjoy typical coffeeshop activities, according to Sami Fouad, one of five supervisors at the facility. It’s one of the few places “where we all can sit together, play dominos, watch a TV and talk,” he signs through an interpreter.

Cairo, 1971: Ramadan Mohamed Ibrahim had just turned 15, with high school on the horizon and a lifetime of opportunities before him. One day, he joined the long rows to receive an injection, part of the major campaign by the health authorities to vaccinate against bilharzia. From the 1950s to the 1980s, hundreds of thousands of Egyptians received injections for this common and serious blood disease. The ‘old-fashioned’ needles, as doctors call them now, were not properly sterilized and disposable needles were only introduced in the 1990s.

“They just boiled the needle and stuck it in the next person, then boiled it again and it went into another and so forth,” Ibrahim recalls. “They did not care whether the needle was sterilized or not, boiling and shooting.”

In 2000, a study by University of Maryland Medical Center and USAID found that bilharzia campaign and its “old fashioned” needles were the major cause of Egypt’s high rate of Hepatitis C.

John Perkins Deaf students like Moatez,12, and Islam, 7, learn to ‘hear’ sound vibrations with special headphones at ESRD’s phonetics classroom.

Ibrahim escaped contracting Hepatitis C from a dirty needle but suffered instead from an overdose of the vaccine, which altered his life irrevocably.

“I woke up after a couple of hours the same day,” he says. “I looked at my parents who looked puzzled, as I hadn’t seem to respond to them as they had tried to wake me up.” The overdose caused an inflammation of his auditory nerves, resulting in rapid hearing loss.

Because he lost his hearing at a late age, Ibrahim was able to maintain his speech and can easily carry on a conversation by reading lips. But more than 35 years later, his tone still carries the confusion he felt the day he became deaf. “I did not hear an iota of what was going on around me, I could not understand, I stared blankly at the room, at the relatives who began to cry. I cried along with them.”

The overdose that caused Ibrahim’s hearing loss is far rarer than other causes of hearing loss common in Egypt. According to Dr. Hatem Anwar, a neurologist and lecturer at Cairo University’s Faculty of Medicine, researchers have found three common causes of deafness. One is meningitis, an inflammation of the membranes that cover and protect the spinal cord. Another is rubella, a preventable virus that, if suffered during first three months of pregnancy, can lead to congenital defects in the infant. The most common cause, however, is consanguine marriages. In rural areas and Upper Egypt, it is preferred to marry a first cousin, which increases the probability of inherited diseases that may cause deafness.

The problem is compounded by a lack of awareness and acceptance on the parts of the parents. This is particularly common in rural areas where disabled people are sometimes hidden by families who are all too aware that a deaf family member minimizes siblings’ chances for marriage.

John Perkins The KFC branch in Dokki is completely staffed by deaf individuals.

Ibrahim was forced to withdraw from regular classes and enroll in a school for students with special needs. “I accepted a special education, which put me back to studying at an intermediate level when I was supposed to attend secondary level,” he says. “They explained to me that I had to adapt myself to special education. I tended to preoccupy myself, to avoid the depression and painful thoughts.

“I thought, ‘special’ education sounds prestigious; it should be interesting. I was surprised to find that the material they were teaching was close to primary level. I spoke with the teacher, telling her I was more advanced, but she responded, ‘This is what you have to take. Sit and write.’ So, I did.”

According to CAPMAS, 70 percent of deaf women and 60 percent of deaf men are illiterate. In contrast, a recent UNICEF report puts the illiteracy rate among the Egypt’s hearing population at 41 percent for women and 17 percent for men. According to Ministry of Education figures published in Lesley Lababidi’s book Silent No More, there are 600,000 children with special needs of special education; only 15 percent of them actually receive education in regular schools. Deaf children who enroll in a regular school have to read teachers’ lips or find a classmate who will supply them with notes. The other alternative is to join the majority in special education, where the curriculum is two years behind the general curriculum.

Unable to return to a general high school because it was too “hard, there was nobody who would take care of me,” Ibrahim, like the majority of hearing-impaired individuals who choose to continue their education, graduated from a technical school. Today he works as the secretary of the Deaf Club, electrifying the air with his sharp wit.

Evelyn Farah is a sociologist with 25 years of experience dealing with disabled people. “Deaf people do hear, but in a different wavelength,” she begins, enthusiastically explaining one of her student’s decibel / frequency graphs. Two brothers, both wearing hearing aids, hesitantly enter the phonetics classroom at the Heliopolis headquarters of the Egyptian Society for the Rehabilitation for the Deaf (ESRD). Founded in 1954 as a governmental workhouse for girls, ESRD now provides training, vocational certification and other services for the deaf through its branches in Cairo, Beni Suef, Fayoum, El-Arish, Suez, Ismailia, Alexandria, Assiut and Luxor.

Farah immediately adopts her teacher persona, asking the young boys questions. They watch her lips, and then do their best to spell out their answers.

After the pop quiz, Farah demonstrates one the classroom’s nine SUVAG CT 10 amplifiers — headphones scattered around a U-shaped table. The amplifier is used to teach children how to feel sound vibrations. “The children ‘hear’ these vibrations, which penetrate the delicate skin around their ears,” Farah explains as the two boys curiously examine the camera of the photographer who had come along for the interview.

Early education is vital for deaf children, she continues. “Ideally, by the age of two they are enrolled at a phonetics rhythm center. If the training is started after eight years of age, the skin around the ear has become too thick for this specific treatment to be effective.”

Farah speaks to them through the microphone, which transmits the audible signal in low frequencies through the headphones — which are almost the size of the students’ heads — and the children listen for the vibrations.

When it comes to dealing with the deaf population, government services still lag behind private institutions. There are facilities available throughout the governorates, including poorer areas, but the quality of health care and education they provide for the deaf is limited, according to a report published by the Association for Health and Educational Development, a local NGO that focuses on health, environment and disability issues.

Government institutions struggle under the weight of budget cuts, particularly for education and social programs. Institutional policies lack a clear national strategy, and short-term projects are typically insufficiently funded. These problems, in addition to bureaucratic and administrative problems, tend to divorce the actual services offered from those with special needs.

Non-governmental institutions are typically more sensitive to the needs of the hearing-impaired but are also limited by resources and strategic vision. Private for-profit organizations are becoming increasingly available, but cannot address the scope of the population in need.

In the Kentucky Fried Chicken in Dokki, cashier Hoda Abdel Samia smiles, then pulls in her cheeks and fans an imaginary fire in her mouth: Do you want your sandwich spicy? Abdel Samia is lively, expressive and looks younger than her 30 years. She’s also deaf.

“In my past job I felt like an outsider, because I was the only deaf person, and I felt that it was a disadvantage,” Abdel Samia says in sign, “but here we are all deaf.”

Thirteen years ago, Abdel Samia left her sewing job in a textile shop in Al Hussein and through the recommendation of ESRD, where she had earned her rehabilitation certificate, she was hired to work at the first-ever Middle East KFC restaurant fully staffed by the deaf. After a month of training, Abdel Samia and 14 of her colleagues, stood behind the counter and their first taste of real interaction with hearing people.

“We have health insurance, bonuses, a comfortable place to work, and the money is enough for now,” Abdel Samia says. It was also at the restaurant that she met her future husband Nabil, a restaurant supervisor. The couple now has two daughters, aged six and four.

“This place is a special place that people should know about,” signs Nabil, who also used to work in a textile factory. “Before, the only thing I had to deal with was a bloodless steel mechanism, but here I deal with people.”

But the ending is not as happy as it sounds. “There is another side to this altruistic tale,” admits Ahmed Mounir Shouman, the director of ESRD. “In exchange for hiring the deaf employees, Americana Group, the owners of KFC in Egypt, had promised to donate around LE 500, 000 to the center. But the sum was never delivered.”

Instead, he claims, all they do is provide 250 KFC meals to the association every Ramadan as a symbolic donation. “I’ve been working in this position for over 10 years,” Shouman says. “I have seen and heard things that I have never encountered — even when I was serving in the army.”

Egypt Today made repeated attempts to contact Americana Group for comment, but none was provided.

Few deaf people work in the public sector; most are craftsman, working as carpenters, metal workers, or textile employees. Others are unemployed, since social stereotypes make finding jobs difficult. “In 2000, the rehabilitation office approved 177 rehabilitation certificates, but only 10 were employed,” Shouman reports.

This despite the fact that Labor Law No. 91 of 1982 creates legal recognition for disabled people in general, and the deaf in particular. According to the law, “Five percent of workers in factories and companies employing 50 workers or more should be of the trained disabled,” says Shouman.

But even those who manage to complete training are discriminated against in the workforce, as Marwan Mohammed is quick to point out. The 26-year-old graduated with a diploma in wood engineering and promptly applied for a job in a refrigerator factory. Mohammed’s enthusiasm and anticipation to be an engineer were soon crushed when the only job he was offered was as a servant / tea-maker. “But I am not a servant or some dust cleaner!” he signs furiously, occasionally throwing in a harsh smack of his hands to express his disappointment.

With no representative in parliament who can make their voices heard, the nation’s deaf community is forced to take on jobs on the outskirts of society. Given the limited assistance offered by the government and NGOs, the situation is unlikely to change anytime soon, not only in the workplace but at home, in school and on the streets.

Around the world, deaf DJs are smoothly spinning the top hits of the UK on BBC Radio, deaf Indian actors are lip-synching the musical scenes in Bollywood movies with perfect synchronization and other deaf citizens are contributing to society with the aid of technology and ‘hearing-ear’ guide dogs. But here in Egypt the gap still remains between our big, noisy world and their infinitely smaller, silent one. et