Soon, without explanation, the police began taking everyone’s bags. Doaa didn’t trust the officer when he said that everything would be returned, and she felt as if a piece of her identity was being taken from her. Around midmorning, when the sun was getting hotter, Doaa grew impatient and went to look for her duffel bag. An officer instructed her to go back to where she was sitting and said he would find it for her. A few minutes later he returned, claiming that he couldn’t find it.
Doaa didn’t believe him. “Please, it’s important to me that I have my things. I don’t mind looking myself,” she said, rising to confront him. She was tiny against the big-shouldered man. The officer softened and sent three of his men with Doaa to look for her bag. She led them to the place where she had seen the luggage taken and saw only scattered pieces of clothing on the ground. When she spotted her cargo pants crumpled up and trampled on, Doaa returned to the officer and stood before him. “You took my luggage!”
Looking down at her, he said, “How dare you accuse us of stealing!”
But Doaa didn’t back down. That bag had held everything that she had. “It was stolen. The things in there are important to me.” But it was no use. Everyone’s luggage was gone. She thought of her treasured tiny jewelry chest from Syria and her Quran. Of what value were those things to these officers? She was grateful that she and Bassem had at least kept their passports and their money concealed under their clothes, but some of the others who had their passports and cash stashed in their bags had lost everything.
After an excruciating wait under the desert sun, the group was asked to stand together for a photograph. Then the women and children were directed to climb into the back of an open-top army truck, which took them up to the main road. Doaa was seated in the back next to a woman who said her name was Hoda, who was about four months pregnant. Doaa couldn’t imagine making the difficult journey pregnant and said as much to Hoda. “We have no future,” Hoda said, her hand resting on her belly. “I’m leaving for the future of the child.”
Although there was room in the back of the truck, the men, about fifty of them, including Bassem, were forced as punishment to walk, handcuffed, in the midday heat, for miles up to the main road. When they were finally allowed to board the truck, Bassem came and sat next to Doaa. “Are you okay?” he asked, taking her hand. His lips were dry and cracked. “I didn’t realize it was going to be this hard.”
The truck started up again and the guards drove them to the Birimbal detention center in the swampy, rural town of Matubus on the outskirts of Alexandria. Doaa and Bassem were separated there, and Doaa had to wait in a line with the other women to have her mug shot taken and to sign a document confessing that she had attempted to leave Egypt illegally. An officer from the national security department asked her questions about the smugglers. What were their names? What did they look like? How much did you pay? Where did you leave from? She answered as best she could, replying that one was called Abu Mohammed.
“Seems to me they are all called Abu Mohammed,” the officer joked. Another officer looked at her in concern and said kindly, “Don’t go with those smugglers. They’re no good.” She was told that she and Bassem were sentenced to ten days in prison for trying to leave the country illegally and was taken to a room that was already packed with women and children. Men were kept separately in another location. There was no running water and the toilet didn’t flush. The stench and the flies made Doaa feel nauseated and she couldn’t eat. Each inmate received a small mat to sleep on but no blanket, and there was nowhere to shower. Doaa had no change of clothes and no way to keep clean, which added to her misery.