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The Devil's Daughter and Cairo's Drug Empress · Crime Night

0:00
Speaker 1: So I want you to close your eyes for a
0:02
Speaker 1: second and just put yourself in a very specific moment
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Speaker 1: in time. It is exactly three point zero zero am.
0:08
Speaker 1: The year is nineteen ninety two. You are in Alarish,
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Speaker 1: which is this coastal city in north Sinai, and the
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Speaker 1: streets are completely dead. The only thing you can hear
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Speaker 1: is the sound of the wind coming off the Mediterranean Sea.
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Speaker 1: Inside this one modest house, everyone is asleep. It has
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Speaker 1: that heavy, thick, silent atmosphere that you only really feel
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Speaker 1: right before dawn.
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Speaker 2: Right and right in the center of all this silence
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Speaker 2: is an eleven year old boy named Islam. He is
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Speaker 2: just leaping next to his brothers. He feels completely safe
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Speaker 2: in the house he has known his entire life. But
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Speaker 2: I mean that safety is a total illusion, because in
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Speaker 2: about ten seconds, the front door of that house is
0:42
Speaker 2: going to be kicked in.
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Speaker 1: Yeah it is not a polite knock, it is a
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Speaker 1: full blown raid. Suddenly, the house is just overflowing with
0:49
Speaker 1: heavy police boots shouting, those bright tactical flashlights cutting right
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Speaker 1: through the dark. Imagine the sheer sensory.
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Speaker 3: Overload for a little kid waking up to that. Islam
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Speaker 3: is sitting up in bed, totally terrified. He's watching police
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Speaker 3: officers handcuff the man he calls his dad, then they
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Speaker 3: grab the woman he calls his mom. They are even
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Speaker 3: slapping handcuffs on his older brothers.
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Speaker 2: It's just a scene of absolute, pure chaos. But the
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Speaker 2: real trauma here, the thing that makes this story so unbelievable,
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Speaker 2: isn't just the raid itself. Usually when the police raid
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Speaker 2: a home, they're there to take a family member away, right,
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Speaker 2: But in this case, the commanding officer looks down at
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Speaker 2: this terrified eleven year old boy and drops a revelation
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Speaker 2: that completely shatters his reality.
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Speaker 1: He looks at him, right there in the middle of
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Speaker 1: this chaotic room and says, these people aren't your family.
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Speaker 1: That woman isn't your mother, that man isn't your father,
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Speaker 1: those boys aren't your brothers. And you are not who
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Speaker 1: you think you are.
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Speaker 2: I mean, in a single breath, Islam's entire identity is
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Speaker 2: just wiped clean. He wasn't being arrested, he was being recovered.
1:48
Speaker 2: Because the woman being drag away and handcuffs, a woman
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Speaker 2: the neighbors knew as just as simple, maybe slightly eccentric
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Speaker 2: housewife named Aziza, was actually one of the most prolific
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Speaker 2: kidnappers in the country's history. The press would later give
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Speaker 2: her a nickname that sounds like something straight out of
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Speaker 2: a dark myth. They called her the daughter of Eblis,
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Speaker 2: the daughter of the devil.
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Speaker 1: And that incredibly dark moment sets the stage for our
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Speaker 1: deep dive.
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Speaker 2: Today.
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Speaker 1: We are exploring two very different, very harrowing tales of
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Speaker 1: female criminality in Egypt. First, we have Aziza, a woman
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Speaker 1: driven by this twisted psychological void to literally steal lives.
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Speaker 1: And then on the complete opposite side of the spectrum,
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Speaker 1: we have Nabawea, who is known on the streets as Manah.
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Speaker 1: She was a woman driven by pure economic desperation to
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Speaker 1: build a drug empire that rivaled international cartels.
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Speaker 2: It is such a fascinating, if you know, deeply disturbing study.
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Speaker 2: In contrast, you have Aziza, whose crimes were so deeply personal,
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Speaker 2: they were pathological, and ultimately they destroyed everyone they touched.
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Speaker 2: And then you look at Manah, whose crimes were structural.
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Speaker 2: They were almost corporate in their efficiency and scale. Both
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Speaker 2: of these women broke the law in massive ways, but
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Speaker 2: their motivations and the legacies they left behind, they just
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Speaker 2: couldn't be more different.
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Speaker 1: Let's start with the immediate visceral horror of Aziza, because
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Speaker 1: looking through the historical records on her case, the thing
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Speaker 1: that really stands out to me isn't just the physical
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Speaker 1: act of kidnapping. It is the sheer, mind boggling duration
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Speaker 1: of her deception. This was not a crime of opportunity
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Speaker 1: where she saw a kid wandering and just grabbed him.
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Speaker 1: This was a calculated, long con Oh.
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Speaker 2: Absolutely, it was a campaign. To really understand Azisa, you
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Speaker 2: have to look at the sociology of her environment at
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Speaker 2: that time, ysterile. She was unable to conceive a child,
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Speaker 2: and in rural and semi urban Egypt. Back then, and
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Speaker 2: specifically within the very traditional dynamic of her husband's family,
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Speaker 2: infertility wasn't just viewed as a medical condition. It was
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Speaker 2: seen as a failure, a profound personal failure. It made
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Speaker 2: her a constant target for mockery.
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Speaker 1: Yeah, the account say she was relentlessly ridiculed by her
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Speaker 1: in laws. It feels like that intense pressure cooker environment
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Speaker 1: is exactly what fractured her psyche.
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Speaker 2: It definitely pushed her toward this really toxic dual motivation.
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Speaker 2: On one hand, she wanted revenge against everyone who mocked her,
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Speaker 2: and on the other she developed this desperate, pathological need
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Speaker 2: to prove that she could quote unquote produce children. She
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Speaker 2: didn't just want the experience of raising a baby, She
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Speaker 2: craved the social status of being a mother.
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Speaker 1: And the lengths she went to to get that status.
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Speaker 1: I mean, I was going over the details of her
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Speaker 1: fake pregnancy performance, and it is terrifyingly disciplined. She didn't
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Speaker 1: just shove a pillow under her dress one day. She
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Speaker 1: used these elaborate layers of cloth and cotton padding, and
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Speaker 1: she would actually graduate the size of the padding month
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Speaker 1: by month to simulate realistic fetal growth.
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Speaker 2: That is the exact detail that gives me chills. It
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Speaker 2: shows an incredibly high level of premeditation. She wasn't just
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Speaker 2: fooling stranger. She was putting on a daily performance for
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Speaker 2: her neighbors, her in laws, and honestly, to some degree,
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Speaker 2: even her husband. She would simulate morning sickness, she would
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Speaker 2: fake the fatigue, the physical waddle of a heavily pregnant woman.
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Speaker 2: She fully committed to the bit for the entire forty.
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Speaker 1: Weeks, and then when she hits that fake ninth month,
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Speaker 1: the hunt begins. She doesn't look for victims in her
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Speaker 1: own neighborhood, which is smart from a criminal perspective. She travels,
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Speaker 1: She goes to Alexandria, she goes out to other governorates,
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Speaker 1: and she uses authority as her main weapon.
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Speaker 2: Right because she understood human psychology. She knew that people
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Speaker 2: inherently trust institutions. So she would dress the part and
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Speaker 2: pose as a government worker, maybe someone from the health
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Speaker 2: ministry or social insurance. She would specifically target poor, exhausted,
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Speaker 2: distracted mothers in crowded markets, or she'd lurk near hospital nurseries.
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Speaker 1: She would just walk right up to them exactly.
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Speaker 2: She'd offer to help them fill out paperwork, or she'd
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Speaker 2: kindly offer to hold the baby for a second while
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Speaker 2: the mother dug into her purse for some change, And
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Speaker 2: the second the mother looked away, she would just vanish
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Speaker 2: into the crowd.
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Speaker 1: And she takes a train back home, walks through her
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Speaker 1: front door, and starts screaming in simulated labor, which is
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Speaker 1: just another insane layer of this performance art. She fakes
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Speaker 1: the birth and then presents the stolen infant to her
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Speaker 1: husband and her neighbors as her own flesh and blood.
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Speaker 1: But here is the part that really complicates the whole
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Speaker 1: crazy woman narrative for me. The husband. He wasn't just
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Speaker 1: some clueless bystander in all of this, was he.
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Speaker 2: Not at all? Yeah, this is exactly where the idea
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Speaker 2: that she was just a delusional, solitary actor completely falls apart.
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Speaker 2: This was a criminal partnership because the husband was a
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Speaker 2: skilled forger. His specific role was to paper over all
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Speaker 2: the cracks in her reality. He created flawless fake birth
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Speaker 2: certificates for these stolen children, which is huge. It is
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Speaker 2: crucial because having those documents is what allowed these boys
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Speaker 2: to enroll in school, to see doctors, and to live
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Speaker 2: completely normal lives on the surface. They built this bizarre
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Speaker 2: domestic house of cards purely on top of stolen identities.
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Speaker 1: So jump forward to that raid in nineteen ninety two.
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Speaker 1: The police kick the door in and they find three
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Speaker 1: boys living in the house, Hisham, Mohammed, and Islam. The
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Speaker 1: investigation was actually pretty incredible. They managed to trace Hisham
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Speaker 1: back to a family in Alexandria and Mohammed back to
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Speaker 1: a market in Alarish where his mother had lost him
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Speaker 1: years prior. Those two boys got their happy ending, or
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Speaker 1: at least the closest thing you can get to one
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Speaker 1: after surviving a trauma like that, they were reunited with
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Speaker 1: their biological families.
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Speaker 2: But then you have Islam. Islam is the tragic anomaly
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Speaker 2: here because under interrogation, Aziza eventually confessed to taking the
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Speaker 2: other two. She gave up the locations, the details, but
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Speaker 2: when the detectives pressed her about Islam, she just completely
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Speaker 2: shut down. She absolutely refused to say where or who
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Speaker 2: she took him from.
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Speaker 1: Why do you think she did that? Was it just
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Speaker 1: a final power play? Or do you think she actually
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Speaker 1: deluded herself so deeply that she believed Islam really belonged
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Speaker 1: to her.
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Speaker 2: I think it's a really toxic mix of both malice
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Speaker 2: and delusion. By withholding his true identity, she maintained this final,
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Speaker 2: unbreakable tether of control over him. So while Hisham and
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Speaker 2: Muhammad got to go home, Islam was essentially thrown to
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Speaker 2: the wolves. He was swallowed by the system. And this
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Speaker 2: brings up the absolute legal nightmare that he was forced into.
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Speaker 1: Right, because civil rights and legal identity in Egypt are
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Speaker 1: entirely tied to your lineage, You literally are your father's.
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Speaker 2: Name precisely without a proven patrilineal link. Legally speaking, you
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Speaker 2: are a ghost in the machine. You don't exist. So
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Speaker 2: Islam was taken from the only home he knew during
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Speaker 2: that raid and drops straight into an orphanage. Then the
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Speaker 2: director of his school actually fostered him for a little while.
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Speaker 2: Then he was passed to a teacher, and then eventually
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Speaker 2: he was sent right back to the orphanage. He was
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Speaker 2: a boy with absolutely no past and because of the laws,
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Speaker 2: basically no future.
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Speaker 1: But then just when things seem completely hopeless, we get
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Speaker 1: this twist. It feels like it is straight out of
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Speaker 1: a Hollywood drama, but it is just heartbreaking reality. Let's
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Speaker 1: talk about the Manufia Arc. About a year after the raid,
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Speaker 1: this tiny glimmer of hope appears.
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Speaker 2: Yeah, in either late ninety two or early ninety three,
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Speaker 2: a man named Goma Hassan from the Minufia Governorate comes forward.
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Speaker 2: He goes to the authorities and claims that Islam is
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Speaker 2: his son who had been kidnapped from Ashmount Hospital way
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Speaker 2: back in nineteen eighty four. The timeline perfectly matches, the
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Speaker 2: physical description is a match. So the state hands Islam
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Speaker 2: over to this new family.
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Speaker 1: And we are not talking about some short term foster placement. Here,
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Speaker 1: he lives with this family for twenty two years. He
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Speaker 1: grows up in their house, He works alongside them in
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Speaker 1: the family business. He calls the mom and dad every
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Speaker 1: single day. He goes by the name Islam Hassan. He
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Speaker 1: truly believes the nightmare is over.
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Speaker 2: He really did ye. But it all comes crashing down,
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Speaker 2: And it happens for the most cynical reason possible economics,
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Speaker 2: pure greed over inheritance. When Islam is a fully grown
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Speaker 2: adult in his mid thirties, he accidentally overhears a private
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Speaker 2: conversation between his parents. The woman he has called his
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Speaker 2: mother for over two decades is telling his father that
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Speaker 2: Islam should not be included in the division of the
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Speaker 2: inheritance because, and she says is outright, he isn't really
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Speaker 2: our son.
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Speaker 1: I cannot even fathom that level of betrayal, to live
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Speaker 1: an absolute lie for twenty two years, trusting these people implicitly.
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Speaker 2: It just highlights how incredibly fragile his sense of belonging
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Speaker 2: always was. The second real money was on the table,
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Speaker 2: he was instantly treated as an outsider again. So Islam,
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Speaker 2: completely devastated, demands a DNA test, and you know, science
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Speaker 2: doesn't lie. The test comes back definitively negative. These people
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Speaker 2: are not his biological parents. They knew it, or at
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Speaker 2: least suspected it, and they used him. So for the
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Speaker 2: second time in his life, his entire identity is violently erased.
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Speaker 2: He is cast out onto the street.
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Speaker 1: So now he is a grown man, and he is
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Speaker 1: right back to square one. He has nothing. And this
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Speaker 1: leads to what is really the final, incredibly cinematic confrontation
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Speaker 1: of this story, because Islam knows there is exactly one
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Speaker 1: person walking the earth who knows his real name, Aziza,
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Speaker 1: right And by.
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Speaker 2: This point, Aziza had already served her time. She did
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Speaker 2: seven years for the kidnappings and was released. She was
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Speaker 2: living quietly in Alexandria, just trying to fade into obscurity.
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Speaker 2: But Islam hunts her down. He's thirty six years old, now,
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Speaker 2: a grown man carrying a lifetime of trauma. He finds
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Speaker 2: her apartment building, goes up and confronts her. You can
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Speaker 2: only imagine the sheer tension in that room. He is
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Speaker 2: practically begging her, just tell me who I am, where
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Speaker 2: did you take me from?
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Speaker 1: And Aziza, the woman who kidnapped him, who raised him,
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Speaker 1: who single handedly ruined his entire life. What is her response?
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Speaker 2: She looks dead in the eye and absolutely refuses to
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Speaker 2: break character. She insists to his face that she is
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Speaker 2: his biological mother. She defies the DNA tests, she defies
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Speaker 2: the police record, she defies basic reality, and then, in
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Speaker 2: a moment that literally shocked everyone, she turns, walks over
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Speaker 2: the window and throws herself out.
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Speaker 1: She literally chose death over giving him the truth.
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Speaker 2: She took his secret with her right to the pavement.
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Speaker 2: She committed suicide right in front of him, and in
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Speaker 2: this incredibly cruel, tragic irony, the police arrive and Islam
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Speaker 2: is initially arrested for her murder. They walk in see
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Speaker 2: a furious man and a dead woman and assume he
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Speaker 2: pushed her.
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Speaker 1: I mean, to a detective walking into that room, it
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Speaker 1: certainly looked exactly like a revenge killing.
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Speaker 2: Thankfully, there were people on the street witnesses saw her
11:46
Speaker 2: jump of her own free will, so he was eventually
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Speaker 2: acquitted of the murder charge, but his legal innocence did
11:52
Speaker 2: not giving the one thing he desperately needed. Aziza died
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Speaker 2: without giving him a name, and the aftermath is just
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Speaker 2: bleak to this day, Islam has taken over fifty seven
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Speaker 2: separate DNA tests, meeting with families all across the country
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Speaker 2: who are still looking for their lost children. Every single
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Speaker 2: one of them has been negative.
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Speaker 1: He is still a ghost. It is such a heavy,
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Speaker 1: unresolved ending. But to really understand the scope of female
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Speaker 1: criminality in this era, we need to look at the
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Speaker 1: other side of the corn. We have talked about the
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Speaker 1: crime of psychological malice. Now let's pivot and talk about
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Speaker 1: the crime of pure survival. We are moving away from
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Speaker 1: the quiet, suffocating silence of that house and al Arish
12:29
Speaker 1: and stepping right into the absolute noise, grit, and chaos
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Speaker 1: of Albatna in the nineteen eighties.
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Speaker 2: Albatna is a completely legendary district in modern Egyptian history.
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Speaker 2: It was the undisputed drug capital of Cairo. Structurally, it
12:43
Speaker 2: was basically an urban fortress. It was this dense, dizzying
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Speaker 2: labyrinth of narrow alleyways that were perfectly designed by nature
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Speaker 2: for drug trafficking. Police cars literally could not fit down
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Speaker 2: the streets, which made it an absolute haven for the
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Speaker 2: illssit trade.
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Speaker 1: And in this incredibly dangerous, hyper violent, male dominated underworld,
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Speaker 1: a woman not only survives, she rises to the very top.
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Speaker 1: Not Boweya or is Ster Trees knew her Mana. Her
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Speaker 1: origin story is almost the exact and verse of diseases.
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Speaker 1: Aziza was a comfortable housewife who desperately wanted to be
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Speaker 1: a mother. Mon was a dedicated mother who was violently
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Speaker 1: forced into becoming a criminal.
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Speaker 2: Her trajectory is the classic breaking bad arc, but in
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Speaker 2: real life, she was actually the daughter of a small
13:26
Speaker 2: time drug dealer named Abdel Tawab, but she wanted absolutely
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Speaker 2: nothing to do with that life. Initially she was innocent.
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Speaker 2: She married a local printer, settled down and had four kids,
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Speaker 2: but then tragedy just leveled her life. Her husband died
13:38
Speaker 2: unexpectedly shortly after her father died. She was suddenly left
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Speaker 2: completely alone in a harsh city with four small mouths
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Speaker 2: to feed.
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Speaker 1: The historical account says she genuinely tried to do things
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Speaker 1: the honest way. At first, she was out there selling
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Speaker 1: fruit and vegetables in the local market just to scrape.
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Speaker 2: Buy she did. She tried playing by the rules, but
13:55
Speaker 2: the poverty was just crushing her family. And right around
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Speaker 2: this time the police had launch these massive sweeping crackdowns
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Speaker 2: on albet Nia, and they managed to clear out most
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Speaker 2: of the old guard drug lords. This created a massive
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Speaker 2: power vacuum in the district. A surviving dealer who had
14:11
Speaker 2: deep respect for her late father approached her and offered
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Speaker 2: her a job not selling tomatoes, selling hashish retail.
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Speaker 1: And this is exactly where we see her sheer raw
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Speaker 1: business acumen kick in. She didn't just accept her place
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Speaker 1: as a lowly street dealer. She looked at the market
14:27
Speaker 1: and entirely revolutionized the supply chain. She realized that the
14:30
Speaker 1: streets were flooded with really bad product hashish that was
14:33
Speaker 1: cut with hennah or cheap chemicals.
14:35
Speaker 2: Exactly, she applied a fundamental, brilliant business strategy, quality assurance.
14:40
Speaker 2: Her value proposition to the buyers was high purity with
14:43
Speaker 2: zero cutting agents offered at slightly lower prices. She decided
14:47
Speaker 2: to play the volume game, make less per sale, but
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Speaker 2: sell to everyone. And she was so successful that she
14:52
Speaker 2: moved her operations to a new stronghold, bab El Futa,
14:55
Speaker 2: which effectively expanded the geographical map of the Cairo drug trade.
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Speaker 1: I was app fascinated by the physical security infrastructure she built.
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Speaker 1: She created this network called the Nadargia. It translates to
15:07
Speaker 1: something like a human radar system.
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Speaker 2: That is the perfect way to describe it. It was brilliant.
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Speaker 2: She positioned these lookouts the Nadergia at every single entry
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Speaker 2: point and choke point of the district. If a stranger,
15:18
Speaker 2: or an undercover cop or a rival even looked at
15:21
Speaker 2: her ally the wrong way, a subtle signal went rapidly
15:24
Speaker 2: down the line. By the time the police actually pushed
15:27
Speaker 2: their way to her spot, the drugs were completely gone,
15:30
Speaker 2: hidden away, and she was just a woman sitting on
15:32
Speaker 2: a chair drinking tea.
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Speaker 1: And that untouchable infrastructure is what allowed her to graduate
15:37
Speaker 1: from a street dealer to the Empress. She wasn't just
15:39
Speaker 1: doing retail sales anymore. She became the ultimate wholesaler.
15:43
Speaker 2: She became the market maker for the entire country. The
15:46
Speaker 2: heavy hitters, the massive international drug dealers sailing in from
15:49
Speaker 2: Lebanon and Morocco, they couldn't just dump their product into
15:52
Speaker 2: the Egyptian market anymore. They literally had to go through Mana.
15:56
Speaker 2: She effectively became the FDA of the narcotic underworld. I
16:00
Speaker 2: would bring her samples, she would personally test them, and
16:02
Speaker 2: if she didn't approve the quality, that shipman did not
16:05
Speaker 2: enter the country. That is a level of immense, terrifying power.
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Speaker 1: The police obviously knew exactly who she was, her name
16:12
Speaker 1: was legendary, but they couldn't touch her. Her warehouses were
16:16
Speaker 1: totally secret, her personal home was always clean. She ran
16:19
Speaker 1: this illicit empire like a Fortune five hundred company, complete
16:23
Speaker 1: with strict appointment slots for her buyers.
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Speaker 2: So the authorities finally realized they were never going to
16:27
Speaker 2: out muscle her in the alleys. They had to doubt
16:29
Speaker 2: smart her, and to do that they had to play
16:32
Speaker 2: directly to her ego. They organized this incredibly elaborate sting operation.
16:37
Speaker 2: They sent an officer deep undercover, but not dressed as
16:40
Speaker 2: some desperate street junkie. He went in posing as a
16:44
Speaker 2: high level, extremely wealthy Lebanese drug lord.
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Speaker 1: He treated her like an absolute peer.
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Speaker 2: Exactly. He sat down with her and said, look, I
16:52
Speaker 2: have this math of new supply sitting offshore, but I
16:54
Speaker 2: know the rules. I cannot sell a single gram in
16:57
Speaker 2: Egypt without your blessing. I need them to personally test
17:01
Speaker 2: the product. It was the perfect trap because it didn't
17:04
Speaker 2: target her greed. It targeted her intense pride in her
17:07
Speaker 2: quality control.
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Speaker 1: So she agrees. She sets a meeting to test the sample,
17:12
Speaker 1: and the second she takes possession of it, they spring
17:14
Speaker 1: the trap.
17:14
Speaker 2: They swarm the place. She is caught red handed physically
17:18
Speaker 2: holding the narcotic sample, but even in that moment of defeat,
17:22
Speaker 2: her sheer defiance is incredible. As they are putting the
17:26
Speaker 2: cuffs on her, she looks the undercover officer up and
17:28
Speaker 2: down and challenges him right there, she says, you got
17:30
Speaker 2: me with this tiny sample, but you will never ever
17:33
Speaker 2: find my warehouses. The crazy thing is she was totally right.
17:36
Speaker 2: They tore the city apart and never found her stash.
17:39
Speaker 2: She was only ever officially charged for the tiny sample
17:41
Speaker 2: quantity she was holding.
17:42
Speaker 1: So she finally goes to prison, but her influence absolutely
17:45
Speaker 1: does not stop at the prison gates. The stories of
17:48
Speaker 1: her time inside the women's penitentiary are wild. She wasn't
17:51
Speaker 1: treated like an inmate, she was treated like a visiting celebrity.
17:54
Speaker 2: She immediately dominated and ran the entire prison social hierarchy.
17:58
Speaker 2: There's this very famous, very verified story involving a major
18:03
Speaker 2: Egyptian actress, Magda el Katib, who happened to be imprisoned
18:06
Speaker 2: at the exact same time. The other hardened inmates were
18:09
Speaker 2: brutally bullying and exhorting Magda. Mana saw this, stepped in
18:14
Speaker 2: and publicly placed the famous actress under her personal protection.
18:17
Speaker 2: After she gave the word no one even looked at
18:19
Speaker 2: Magnda the wrong way. She also befriended the famous dancer
18:22
Speaker 2: and actress Fifei Abdu, who was actually inside the prison
18:25
Speaker 2: filming a movie called The Killer. Mana held court inside
18:28
Speaker 2: those walls.
18:29
Speaker 1: But unlike Aziza, whose story ends in this horrific suicide
18:32
Speaker 1: and prominent silence, Mana actually has a very profound redemption arc.
18:36
Speaker 2: She did. She served her ten years, She did her
18:38
Speaker 2: time quietly, and when she finally walked out of those gates,
18:41
Speaker 2: she didn't go back to the game. She completely repented.
18:44
Speaker 2: She realized during that decade inside that the massive empire
18:47
Speaker 2: she built was ultimately just a cage. So she returned
18:51
Speaker 2: to her old neighborhood in al Batnya, but not as
18:54
Speaker 2: a fearsome drug lord. She returned as a community matriarch.
18:58
Speaker 2: She used whatever hidden well she had left to help
19:00
Speaker 2: the desperately poor. She paid for young girl's weddings. She
19:03
Speaker 2: quietly settled the debts of people about to go to jail.
19:06
Speaker 1: It is such a stark incredible difference in legacy. Manna
19:10
Speaker 1: died years later as a genuinely repentant figure. She was
19:14
Speaker 1: openly mourned by her community as a woman of the people,
19:17
Speaker 1: while Aziza died as an absolute villain, actively choosing to
19:20
Speaker 1: take the truth with her to a grave to punish
19:22
Speaker 1: an innocent man.
19:23
Speaker 2: It really boils down to the fundamental root of the
19:25
Speaker 2: crime itself. Aziza's crime was entirely parasitic. She stole actual
19:30
Speaker 2: human lives to feed her own internal psychological void. It
19:34
Speaker 2: was an act of pure destruction. Mana's crime, while obviously
19:38
Speaker 2: highly illegal and damaging to society at large, was locally symbiotic.
19:42
Speaker 2: She provided a product, she built an economy, she supported
19:45
Speaker 2: her family, and ultimately she fiercely protected her community. Her
19:48
Speaker 2: empire was born out of raw survival, not out of malice.
19:51
Speaker 1: And that stark contrast brings us right back to the
19:54
Speaker 1: one person who is still actively paying the ultimate price
19:57
Speaker 1: for all of this, Islam. We know exactly how Manna's
19:59
Speaker 1: story is, we know exactly how Azizu's story ended, but
20:02
Speaker 1: Islam is still trapped in limbo.
20:04
Speaker 2: That is the single thought that haunts me long after
20:07
Speaker 2: looking at these records. Islam is out there right now.
20:10
Speaker 2: He is a man in his forties. He has absolutely
20:13
Speaker 2: no medical history he can rely on to warn him
20:16
Speaker 2: of hereditary diseases. He has no ancestry. In the eyes
20:19
Speaker 2: of the sprawling Egyptian bureaucracy, he is an anomaly. He
20:23
Speaker 2: is biologically alone in the world, simply because one woman
20:27
Speaker 2: decided that her selfish need to appear normal to her
20:30
Speaker 2: in laws was more important than his fundamental right to exist.
20:34
Speaker 1: And it forces you to wonder. Islam only found out
20:36
Speaker 1: the horrifying truth about his life because of a freak
20:38
Speaker 1: accident a police rate at three am on a completely
20:41
Speaker 1: unrelated charge. If that raid had not happened that night,
20:44
Speaker 1: he would still be living that lie.
20:46
Speaker 2: Right now, which raises an incredibly terrifying question. How many
20:49
Speaker 2: others are out there? How many people are walking around
20:51
Speaker 2: right this very second living lives that aren't actually theirs,
20:54
Speaker 2: People who are calling complete strangers mom and dad, all
20:58
Speaker 2: because of a dark secret that someone's ex zessfullet took
21:00
Speaker 2: to the grave.
21:01
Speaker 1: We all just assume our identity is a fixed fact, right,
21:04
Speaker 1: We assume it is written in stone from birth. But
21:07
Speaker 1: Islam's story proves that identity is often just a story
21:11
Speaker 1: that we are told, and sometimes that story is a
21:13
Speaker 1: complete lie. That is a heavy chilling note to end on,
21:17
Speaker 1: but that is the reality of the deep dive today.
21:19
Speaker 2: Stay curious, question your basic assumptions, and we will see
21:22
Speaker 2: you next time.