The limits on new church construction have led many congregations to convert residential buildings into places of worship. In 2016, President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi’s government issued the country’s first law spelling out the rules for building a church. Critics argued the law did nothing to ease previous restrictions.
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Just a day before the fire, on Saturday, the entire family had been together for their weekly family gathering, steps away from the church.
“It was a very beautiful day, as if they were saying goodbye,” said Michael Ayad, who is married to Nermin, one of Magda’s two surviving children. Also present was the fiancé of Magda’s youngest daughter, Mirna, 22, a university student. The two were meant to have been married this year.
Days later, Mina, Magda’s son, was receiving hundreds of mourners at the same home where his family had been happy days before. Dozens of neighbors and relatives came to remember the dead, many speaking through tears.
A neighbor of 40 years who identified herself as Um Azza, recalled how Magda Habeib was among the first to try to settle disputes between neighbors no matter their religion, even marital problems.
“Everyone in the street is in debt to her for her generosity,” she said, fighting back tears.
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Magda’s husband had died a decade ago, but the 61-year-old continued to live in the same apartment the family had inhabited for 30 years. Her two younger children Mina and Mirna, lived with her. Her two married daughters, Nermin and Irine, lived in the same neighborhood. Irine’s husband had died last year of a heart attack, leaving her a single mother to three young children. Irine and her children stayed the night on Saturday, to go to church with her mother the next morning.
“Tante Magda used to say, Irine and the kids are my purpose for the rest of my life,” Ayad recalled, using the French equivalent of aunt. “They went to Abu Sefein to die together.”
This article originally appeared here.
