An Egyptian woman living in our community has told how speaking out for women’s rights and questioning female circumcision led to a life of hell that has led to her losing her homeland forever. Chris Webber hears her story

THE day they kidnapped her six-year-old son was the day she stopped being strong. At least for a while. And it was the day this, proud, educated, once highly-successful Egyptian woman knew she had to leave the country she loves forever.

She cannot give her name because her oldest son still lives in Egypt and she fears for his life at the hands of a radical Muslim political group. Her brother was killed just last week, knocked over by a car. She has very good reason to believe the fanatics did it.

The woman, who we will call Mariam, is often in tears as we talk in the safe surroundings of a refugee support centre in the North-East. She speaks powerfully, her English sometimes broken, unable to grasp the exact words. She talks without a break for nearly four-and-half hours.

Mariam’s story begins as a 22-year-old, highly attractive young woman with a prized science degree. She had not married and didn’t want to, but had little choice.

She was lucky: a good man, a French teacher, asked to marry her. She liked the man but he lived far away in the countryside, a highly traditional place where women’s rights were not as strong as the city.

Mariam threw herself into her work as a secondary school biology teacher. Her home was open to students 24 hours a day. There were few lengths she wouldn’t go to in order to help her pupils, 350 of them every year.

But there was a problem. Some of the pupils’ parents couldn’t support them in their homework because they could not read or write. Mariam began teaching the students’ mothers for free.

It was the beginning of her trouble. “Some husbands get very angry for me. If their wives had education they could ask for their rights, sign their own legal papers.”

Mariam was undeterred.

She made such an impact she was asked to stand for the area’s council as the only woman. She said no, but her husband persuaded her join. Now she could help women in 12 villages, establishing women’s groups.

Again she was highly successful, so much so that she was asked to join a kind of female council run by the president’s wife. She was featured in many newspapers, magazines and on the television. At the same time, her husband’s business, exporting animal meal, was making her family, by now of five children, rich.

One day, on the president’s wife’s council, an order came to try to stop female circumcision. Mariam, with her knowledge of highly traditional attitudes in the country, spoke against. Education came first, she said. She was overruled.

Mindful of her duty she mentioned the policy to some women in her village. Within days her home was surrounded with people from across the village, protesting against her stance. She was frozen out of decision- making on the council. Her husband was defrauded in his business and the man who did it was not prosecuted. Her husband sold everything in order to refund his debtors.

Then came the day in 2007 her son was taken from school. Another mother gave him chocolate, told the boy his mother was in her house. He was kidnapped. Word soon came to Mariam: “Leave Egypt or you will never see your child again.”

The family agreed to give up everything, and their beloved son was returned. By now, the religious fanatics were demanding money – 5,000 Egyptian pounds they did not have. They were threatened with death.

They fled in 2009 but her husband was detained at the airport. “Go, go, go, think of our children,” he called at the airport as she left in tears. She did not see him again for five years. Later, her son, by now 18, returned to find his dad. He is still there.

Alone here in North-East, claiming asylum with four of her children and no husband, Mariam threw herself into charity work and supporting her children’s education. She has not been granted British citizenship but was eventually given leave to remain until 2018.

Her children had been traumatised. Would not eat. Could not speak English. But eventually her children began to excel in school. They won and still win school awards. The older boys, grade A students, will soon have degrees in engineering.

They faced anti-Muslim abuse here. Mariam has had her head scarf pulled off her head. Two of her children have been beaten up by 15 other boys, eggs thrown through the letter box, one man even put a ladder up to her bedroom and verbally abused her.

Then came a magic phone call. “My son had call after a call but he didn’t know the answer and wouldn’t reply,” she remembers. “Then one day he did. The voice said: ‘I am your dad.’ The house went crazy. It was like from a movie.”

Her husband’s family had bribed a prison official and escaped. He has now won permission to join his family.

But Mariam still lives every day in fear. “I am scared they will kill my son,” she says. “I have learned that if you have safety, you have everything.”