Abstract
At the end of the summer of 1920, seven-year-old Egyptian ‘A’isha returned to her hometown of Dumyat to find her childhood turned upside down. While she and her family had been visiting relatives in the countryside, underwater demons had eaten her girlfriends back home. At least that is what ‘A’isha initially thought had happened to her playmates when she did not see them one afternoon at their usual meeting place on the bank of the Nile. ‘A’isha’s thinking was in line with Egyptian lore, which attributed much of the unknown to invisible good and bad spirits.1 Inquiring around the neighborhood, she discovered that the girls were in reality safe and sound, sitting in rows of chairs indoors, wearing uniforms and reading books. Excited to join them in their new endeavor, ‘A’isha ran home to ask permission from her father. He informed ‘A’isha that these girls had indeed been consumed by a demon: the new government-run school.
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Notes
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© 2015 Heidi Morrison
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Morrison, H. (2015). Introduction. In: Childhood and Colonial Modernity in Egypt. Palgrave Studies in the History of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137432780_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137432780_1
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