“Every day we leave our house, not knowing what will happen,” says Girgis, an Egyptian Catholic from Helwan, a city south of the Egyptian capital of Cairo, who preferred not to use his real name.
“But this is the Christian way, to take things day by day,” he added.
Girgis describes his normal routine as commuting to work, coming home, going to church, perhaps visiting relatives, but avoiding for the most part significant interactions with society.
Many Christians increasingly tend toward such isolation, he explains, though as a man, he says, he can blend in and escape the worst.
For his wife Maria (also not her real name), things are much harder. Christian women in Egypt, especially in lower-class neighborhoods like the one in which she and her family live, stand out for not wearing a head covering, which sets them apart from the great majority of Muslim women.
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