Egypt's Revolution... Heba's hope for future change

As an Egyptian disability activist, Heba Hagras speaks about growing up in the Middle East and her hopes for disabled people in her country following February's revolution

In the Middle East parents have expectations. When you are older they want you to become a doctor or a banker. Then the mother wants your girlfriend to be prettier than anybody else. You are always a frustration to your parents, so if you are disabled you could say it’s an extreme clash. It comes and shocks everybody.

I was born in Cairo in 1959 and grew up in El-Manial, a bustling district on an island in the Nile. When I was nine-years-old I developed rheumatoid arthritis and though for a few years I managed to walk, by the age of 14 I was a wheelchair-user.

Soon I had to leave my school, which was in a downtown neighbourhood of Cairo called Garden City. I used to have attacks of arthritis during my time there, and to keep up with my work was impossible. But the move acted as an incentive. The American University of Cairo (AUC) was close to our family home in the centre of the city, and I felt that if my two brothers, Hisham and Mohammad, were going to benefit from the education denied to me, then I would try and have an education at the AUC.

I started a business administration course there and graduated at the top of my class in 1982.

I never experienced any negative feelings towards me because of my disability. I had a very open-minded family, but now I hear stories about other families and I want to try and convince parents not to let go of their kids. You want to tell them that their kid can be excellent.

Great Britain and Europe developed earlier than my country. If you look at the period of time when Great Britain and Europe were at the same stage as Egypt then you will find the same levels of non-acceptance and shame as we have here.

The difference is that you changed sooner than we did – but we’re following and the situation is improving.

I did a PhD studying disability at the University of Leeds, and discrimination also exists in Britain. If there was no discrimination in the West, why would there be a disability movement? What would they complain about? The discrimination is there, but it’s more polite and looks better.

In Egypt when I’m invited to a party, some people look at you and you can tell they are thinking, “what’s this person doing here? We came to enjoy ourselves but she’ll make us go sad”.

But I’m a fighter by nature. I was this way before I got rheumatoid arthritis. I’ve had lots of challenges in my life that were worse than disability. My disability was conquered at an early period with the help of my parents.

During the Mubarak regime we made some gains. Not a lot, but some. Mubarak’s wife Suzanne was convinced that disability was something which should be addressed. She founded the Integrated Care Society, a non-profit organisation for providing social care to able and disabled schoolchildren. Through this, disabled children were integrated into schools, services were established and we were getting new ideas through her into the government.

But it was slow and not good enough. We’re talking about a total of 80 million people in the country. 10 per cent of those are disabled, and the service provision for those 8 million disabled people maybe reaches about 20 per cent. The rest have nothing.

Things like access for disabled people are improving, but it’s not organised and doesn’t have a linear progress. Maybe there’s something here and something there.

For example, there is a huge government building in Tahrir Square called the Mogamma. One day I was passing by and I found ramps on the pavement to let me up. I thought, “wow, we’re a civilised country!”. Then one day a year or two later they were renovating the pavement and they took the ramps away. Nothing is strategically-planned.

In work you will find people who will employ you – but only on paper. They say, “OK, we will give you work but you can stay at home and take your salary”.

We have had this problem since 1975, when a law was passed saying that if you have 50 or more employees in your company then five per cent must be disabled.

In 1989 I became an activist after somebody asked me to take part in their TV programme about disability.

After the 2007 UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, I was one of the people who helped draft a new law aimed at helping Egypt’s disabled community.

It includes a new definition of disability and new employment rules with more opportunities for disabled people and better rights for employers.

The law was in the final stages of the parliamentary process when the revolution happened, and now everything has stopped.

But we’re expecting a new fresh start. We want to revise the legislation, because before the revolution it had been changed by ministers and some things had been cut. We want to put it to parliament in a new form. We are 10 per cent of Egypt’s citizens and we have demands.

If this is a fresh start and we can go forward, then we can make a big leap in everything.

• Heba Hagras was talking to Alastair Beach