Wife of Ayman Mohamed Mehdi Issa says she will not give up hope despite being told by soldier he 'would not see sun again'
Ayman Mohamed Mehdi Issa graduated from al-Azhar University in 2001 with a bachelor's degree in journalism and media. Like many young men in Egypt, he struggled to find a good job. A decade after graduating, at 36, he was working at a small shop next to Cairo University, helping students make photocopies.
When the Egyptian uprising broke out that January, Issa was at home with his wife, Radia Atta, then 36, and their four young boys: Hussein, Omar, Gamal and Mohamed – at nine years old, the eldest.
In Ashment, a small village in the rural governorate of Beni Suef, some 60 miles (100km) south of Cairo, Issa's family barely felt the revolt. Remembering the events on a recent day in a sitting room in the family's modest house, surrounded by the boys and Issa's parents, Atta could not recall a single demonstration.
On 30 January, five days into the protests that would eventually topple Hosni Mubarak, Issa decided he could no longer wait to settle unpaid expenses he had left in Cairo. The two-hour journey to the capital by microbus was routine for Issa, who usually returned to Ashment several times a week.
"We told him not to go this day because of the revolution and the curfew but he insisted. He said: 'I will just settle some bills and will be back in the afternoon,'" Atta recalled.
She never saw him again.
At around 1pm, the family received a call from a judge who lived down the street. The judge, who had been driving to Cairo, said he had seen Issa among scores of civilians being detained by soldiers earlier that morning, during a military curfew, at a checkpoint on the desert highway to Cairo. He told Atta he couldn't have helped him. They were taking "any person without charge or interrogation", she said.
Atta set off to find Issa. As she approached the checkpoint, she saw clothes strewn along the highway for dozens of metres. People "from all walks of life" were laid out on the ground, their hands and feet tied, as soldiers frisked others.
"The scene of the people tied was so terrible that I was scared to go and check if my husband was among them," Atta said.
Soldiers at the checkpoint told Atta that everyone detained that morning had been sent to Haram police station in Giza, on the capital's west side, which was occupied by the military after the withdrawal of Egypt's police. When Atta arrived at the police station, she saw soldiers frisking and beating detainees as they stepped out of vans.
An officer checked the station's cells for Issa, but he was gone. They handed Atta his passport and a document that said he had been charged with "rioting" against the army. Many papers on the officer's desk listed the same charge against other civilians, Atta said.
"Ayman's nature is that he never accepts any sort of humiliation, his dignity is very important and he is very nervous when it comes to humiliation," she recalled. She said Issa had been arrested in 2007 by state security officers and held for three days after getting into a fight with a soldier. According to Atta, a low-ranking soldier at the checkpoint told her that Issa had argued with an officer. Another told her that her husband "will not see the sun again".
Ten days later, Atta received permission from military prosecutors to visit Issa at Hykestep, a sprawling military complex with a prison in the desert north-east of Cairo, incongruously placed across the highway from a water amusement park. She has kept the stamped paper, with the prosecutors' assent for weekly visits written in red ink.
She was frisked and led into the prison courtyard. A call went out over the loudspeaker: "Ayman Mohamed Mehdi Issa, visit." She waited for half an hour. Her husband never appeared.
Atta still lives with Issa's family and their children. Mohamed, his 66-year-old father, says he wants to see his son again before he dies. They pass around a ripped red folder embossed with the words "Happy Wedding"; inside is a picture of Ayman in black pants and a black jacket, posed with his hand on his chin.
"My sons are always asking about their father, and I always say he is in the army," she said. "I will never lose hope that he will be back. I am sure he is alive."