Transcript:

S: You’re safe. No one can touch you here. Not your father, or your aunt, or The Sultan himself for that matter. I’ll just ask you some questions and my associate here will transcribe. You’ll give me some answers that you gave me before. Be calm, you’re not in any trouble, and remember to focus on the women.

B: Ok.

[Sound of matches, lights up cigarette]

S: Let’s start.

Case number 43, AlLabban Public Prosecutor office, year 1921. Witness questioning by Public Prosecutor Soliman Bek Ezzat.

Can you tell us your name, young lady?

B: Badee’a, Sir.

S: Your full name?

B: Badee’a HassabAllah Sa’eed.

S: How old are you Badee’a?

B: 14 years old.

S: And do you know your home address?

B: Yes Sir. Number 38, ‘Alibek AlKabeer neighbourhood. My parents told me to memorize it in case I get lost.

S: Is that so? Tell me more about your parents then. Do you know what they do for a living?

B: My dad does some work every now and then. He loads and unloads cargo from boats that dock in the canal. My mother has a house with her sister.

S: What kind of house, Badee’a?

B: You know sir, a house. Women come wearing nice clothes. Men come drunk and smelly. My mother and her sister facilitate their time together. But they have a license I swear, because whenever my father is mad at my aunt he tells her “you’re such a whore that you have a license for it”.

S: Well honey, I’m afraid to tell you that your aunt’s license expired years ago when she was still young. But don’t worry we’re not here to talk about that. Tell me more about your father. Does he get mad often?

B: Yeah, he does. I’m afraid of him. I’m afraid of my aunt. I’m afraid of the rest of my family. Whenever they sit down and eat they give me a plain piece of bread, and when I ask for something to eat it with they hit me and swear at me. They tell me “go outside, daughter of the whore”. So I run away, scared, like a stray dog. I go outside, wander in the neighborhood, and play with the kids in the street. At night they lock me inside the house, and it’s very dark and lonelt. I get afraid and...and sometimes I pee myself. One time when they opened the door on me in the morning I was half out of the window, trying to escape. I was planning to go freighthopping, and take a train to Kafr ElZayat to my uncle and grandmother who live there. But I couldn’t.

I only like my mother in my whole family. She’s good. She loves me and gets me good things. My father hits me and threatens me with his wooden stick when I watch him eat the good food. My aunt is always drunk, and she hides money from my mother and doesn’t want to lend her money. One day I wanted to buy a headband to wear,  like all the other girls, but they didn’t want to buy it for me. My aunt even wanted to give me the headband of one of the women they killed, but I didn’t take it. I knew that someone might see me in the street and recognize the headband of one of the missing women. Then I would be in big trouble.

But my mother would always tell me to ignore them, that they were cheap. And she would tell me that when I wanted something new I should always come to her first.

S: Ok Badee’a. Tell me more about those women.

B: The first woman I know of was Khadra, she used to work with my mother and aunt at the house. I remember her because my father would always look at her and ask her why she wears a lot of golden jewelry. My mother would tell me later that those types of women transform all of the money they make into gold, and wear it wherever they go. Even when they’re on the job. They think it’s the only way they can safekeep their earnings. After she left my father would look at uncle AbdelAl, my aunt’s husband, and tells him how a disgrace it is that promiscuous women like her would get all that money and hard working men like them don’t have enough money even to get some Hashish. Hard working men who provide for a place for her to hold her business.

S: Let the record show that she’s talking about Khadra Mohamed ElLamy, victim number one, and Mohamed AbdelAl, defendant number four. Please continue, Badee’a.

B: I remember that day. We were at my aunt’s house. It was raining a lot and most streets were flooded, so there was no business. I remember I was picking stones from lentils with my mother and two other women that work for her. Khadra was there, and my aunt told her to go to our house because a customer was there looking for her. Khadra left, and minutes later my aunt asked my mother to accompany her to our house because her leg was hurting her. I remember my aunt giving my mother a strange look when my mother exclaimed. So she just stood up and accompanied her. I asked to go with them but my aunt cursed me and told me to keep doing what I’m doing. But minutes after they left, I followed.

When I reached our house I sneaked from the window of my room inside, the same way I used to do when they used to lock me up. I saw them in my parents’ room. Khadra, my parents, my aunt, her husband, and a friend of his.

S: This friend, is he Oraby Hassan?

B: Yes, sir. They had a lot of food and drinks as if they were celebrating something. But even though there were a lot of bottles, I could notice that Khadra was the only one drinking. The rest would only pretend to drink. After thirty minutes or so Khadra was very dizzy and laid on the ground. My mother and aunt left the room. Oraby and my father jumped on her. One holding her feet and one her hands. And...and uncle AbdelAl covered her mouth and nose with a wet handkerchief, and smothered her. There was no sound coming from her. She moved and shook for some time, then just stopped.

S: He smothered her? The medical examiner in his preliminary report says that the women were strangled from their necks. Was it only Khadra that was smothered?

B: No, sir. They always did that. Covered their mouths with wet handkerchiefs and smothered them to death.

S: Write a note for Dr. Sidney Smith. Continue Badee’a. What happened afterwards?

B:The room had a white tiling floor. They stripped her of all her jewelry, my aunt even came in and took her gown because she liked it. Then they removed the tiles genty, dug into the dirt underneath, left her there, and put back everything as if nothing happened.

S: At the time your aunt was still living in ElNagat neighborhood, right? She lived on a first floor apartment and you lived in a ground floor house?

B: Yes, sir. A week after Khadra, my aunt moved to another ground floor apartment. I guess it was easier for her that way.

S: Are you referring to the ground floor apartment in Macouris that she currently resides in?

B: Yes, yes. Did you search her apartment? I’ve seen them burying other bodies there at least twice. You should find them there, I’m sure. It was all her idea you know. My mother had nothing to do with it.

S: Yes we did search her apartment. But tell me, who was the next woman?

B: The next one I think was Nazla. Yes yes, it was definitely her. My mother sent me one day to her place. Nazla had borrowed from my mother a set of drinking glasses. She asked me to go tell her that my mother needs them back urgently. I went and accompanied Nazla back to our place. When we reached our place I found my father, my aunt, her husband, and their friend Oraby there waiting. They had with them a lot of food, the good kind of food. Grilled fish and sardines. And they had a lot of liquor as well. They invited Nazla to have dinner and drink with them. I had a couple of bites when my dad shouted at me to leave and go play. I didn’t really want to play. So I just stayed in front of our entrance playing in the dirt and waiting for them to finish dinner. An hour or so later, most of them left. My aunt left first, her husband AbdelAal, his friend Oraby, and my father then left heading for the cafe. I went back in immediately expecting to see my mother and Nazla. But I only found my mother. She was trying to clean the gown she was just wearing. She had peed herself. I assumed that they did to Nazla what they did to Khadra before.

S: Did your mother and aunt know all the women before they were murdered? Were all of them prostitutes that worked with them?

B: No. Just in the beginning. I think only the first three or four worked with them. After that my aunt would roam some of the markets, like the textile market in Zan’et ElSettat, the fish market in Anfoushy, or the Piazza in Mansheya. She would try to scout for some woman that’s shopping alone and that’s wearing valuable jewelry. She would approach her and get to know her. She would then lure her into her house or ours, signaling to someone else from the gang that would be close in the market. She would tell the women that she has better merchandise than whatever they were trying to buy at the market, at a cheaper price. Or sometimes, thos naive women trust her when she tells them to come rest at her place until what they just bought is ready. I know of 7 other cases of women like this. Plus, of course, the soldiers they lure into the house.

S: Soldiers? There were no men at all in the bodies that we found. We found 17 bodies all belonging to women scattered between your house and the two houses that your aunt lived in during the past two years.

B: No, there were four or five soldiers that I saw being lured into our house and never came out of it. The last one, the last woman, the Sudanese you were searching for…

S: You mean Fardous AbdAllah?

B: Yes that one. She came to our house with her boyfriend, a British soldier. Both of them didn’t come out of the house.

S: No honey. I think you’re mistaken. Corporal Golding, her boyfriend, was the one that reported her missing. He reported it to the police and said that he last saw her with your mother. Then a police officer came to your place and questioned your mother, when he noticed that she lit up a suspicious amount of incense. When he searched the place he smelled rot, that your mother was trying to cover up, which led to the floor of her bedroom where Fardous was. Corporal Golding was the one that reported it.

I know that you’ve seen too much. You’ve seen a lot of things that a grown up human should never see during their lifetime, let alone a teenager. I can imagine that things might be a bit confusing and the details can sometimes escape you. That’s why I want you to focus on the women in our conversations here.

B: Maybe.

S: I think that’s enough for today. Remember Badee’a, no one blames you for this. You’re only a scared little girl. You’re not in trouble, and now you’re safe from them. All of them.

B: Ok.

S: My colleague here will escort you back to the orphanage. Let’s pick this up tomorrow.

[Footsteps leaving room, door opens and closes]

[Lights up cigarette]

S: What do you think?

[On telephone]

I: You told me she wasn’t going to mention the soldiers.

S: Well, she isn’t anymore. I think I made that clear for her.

I: You don’t understand Soliman Bek. We can’t have anyone knowing about the soldiers this gang killed. Egypt is in a state of chaos, it’s been like that for the past 3 years. We’re this close to giving the country a constitution. We don’t need a gang of murderers to be hailed as national heroes for killing a bunch of British soldiers that were looking for a cheap shag. It doesn’t even matter if those soldiers were mostly Australian. In this country anyone with blonde hair and blue eyes is British. Make this go away.

S: Yes sir, Major Ingram. Don’t worry. The medical examiner had already listed all the bodies we found as women. We’re going to find a couple of unknown women that went missing in Alexandria and say that their families identified them to fill the gap.

I: And the girl?

S: She’s just a frightened little girl. She has a lot of valuable information to at least indict Sekina and the others. As for Raya, I think she’s the mastermind of all of this but the girl loves her mother. Worst case scenario we’ll get Raya for accessory to murder, best case Sekina will confess and flip on her.

I: Good.

[Phone hangs up]

Link To Footnotes and Commentary