Hana, a 44-year-old Egyptian mother of three, used to work doing odd jobs from home. One day, a friend asked her to guarantee a small loan she needed to buy a refrigerator, a stove and a TV for her granddaughter. She agreed without thinking too much about it. And at first, everything went smoothly as her friend kept up payments of $83 each month.
Eventually, however, her friend had financial problems. She could no longer repay the loan and ran away. The shop where she had bought all the appliances then sued Hana, as guarantor, for the remainder, which amounted to about $932. But because she could not afford to pay, she was arrested and sentenced to one year in prison. She spent four and a half months in Al Qanater women’s prison, north of Cairo.