Suddenly,
His looks were transformed.
Even his clothes changed.
His hand held a spear.
His thoughts wandered,
Bordering on delirium.
Stupefied, he broke into the officer’s office,
Has time gone backwards?
Was he now a Roman soldier?
He had been guarding the prisoner Shadya
Whose crime was
A quarter of a century ago,
Her father messed with religions.
Shuttling between Christianity and Islam.
Shadya was but a child then.
Now she is a woman, he told the officer.
No longer Shadya,
She is Dimiana.
And Diocletian is back in full glory
Diocletian has ordered her persecuted.
She should renounce her Christianity.
She should renounce Christianity.
Why does she persist: “I am Christian”?
Diocletian hates that.
Should I take her life by the sword?
By the spear?
Or should I go home?
What day is it today?
Do I go home on horseback?
On camelback?
O is there no end to this confusion?
Who could give me back my uniform?
My self?
Does history repeat itself,
As in Grandma’s tales?
Shadya Nagy al-Sissy is the 36-year-old Coptic peasant woman who was last October handed a three-year prison sentence—which she is now serving—because she has been all her life Christian even though her father had for a brief period secretly converted to Islam thirty years ago then reverted back to Christianity. Shadya was then a child and knew nothing of these goings-on but, based on Islamic sharia or legal code, she and her siblings should have acquired the father’s Muslim religion and never quit it, otherwise they would have been punishable by death. Shadya’s father died a Christian, had a Christian funeral service, and was buried in the Christians’ cemetery.
The story remained unknown till the police arrested one Ramadan Hassan Hussein in 1996 on charges of forgery. His confessions included the story that, years earlier, he had helped the Muslim convert Nagy Ibrahim al-Sissy from the small east-Delta town of Mit-Ghamr acquire Christian ID papers when he reverted to his original Christianity. The police accordingly arrested Sissy and he was handed a prison sentence. When his wife and two daughters, Shadya and Bahiya, visited him in prison, they were detained, accused of forgery. They were later released, but a criminal court sentenced them in absentia in 2000 to three years in prison each. Shadya was accused of forging her identity and marriage certificate to live and marry as a Christian. Shadya has no ID; she is illiterate. She was caught last August, three days before her son’s wedding. Her lawyer, Ramsis Raouf al-Naggar, said the arrest was illegal since both the case and charges against her were dropped by prescription. The other sister Bahiya went into hiding.
When faced with the prison sentence, Shadya was stupefied and kept on muttering: “But I am Christian. I am Christian.”
Egyptians Against Religious Discrimination (EARD) have launched a campaign to collect signatures to a declaration calling for the release of Shadya. They cast doubts on all the legal proceedings involved in her trial and, in what they described as the major issue, declared her ordeal a case of flagrant injustice that has turned her peaceful life into a live nightmare.
The EARD declaration called for the immediate release of Shadya, for a retrial while revising all the procedures and taking to account all the officials involved, and for a revision of all laws and regulations which conflict with the Constitutional and humanitarian right to freedom of belief.
Reported by Nader Shukry