Math, God, and a house to build: Yar’s promise

Yar comes from South Sudan, but she has never been there. Her life is in Cairo, where she grew up. She has no memories of her parents’ country—only a name and a direction, that distant place where one day, when she has the money, she would like to build a house.

For now, this is the reality: a big city, a family working every day in a café, and a school that she really likes. Her favorite subject is religion, because it talks about God. Then comes math. Then everything else.

Cairo, February 2026 – parish school in the Sakakini area supported by Pro Terra Sancta

The first thing that strikes you about Yar is her smile. It is not a polite smile of circumstance; it is the smile of someone accustomed to looking at the world without lowering her eyes. She is eleven years old, has very short hair, and a gaze that asks for nothing but says a lot. When you take her picture, she doesn’t turn away. She looks straight at you, with a surprising calmness, as if she were already measuring the distance between what she is and what she wants to become. She wears a dark sweatshirt, worn out but clean—that tidiness that poor families keep as a form of dignity, because it costs nothing and means everything.

When asked what she wants to be when she grows up, she answers without hesitation: a psychiatrist. It is not a vague answer. She already knows why. In her family, she sees people talking to themselves, and she understands where that weight comes from—the thoughts that give no peace, the ones that return every day just the same: what will we eat tomorrow, how do I pay for the children’s school, how do I buy clothes. It is the checklist of poverty, which she, at eleven years old, already knows how to read. She would like to do something, even something small, to make those people a little happier.

Her older sister wanted to study. There is no money, so she works as a maid. Yar says this without drama, just as a matter of fact. But it is right there, in that sentence, that everything becomes clear: education cannot be taken for granted. For many families like hers, it is a luxury that is brushed against and then let go, because there are other things to think about. There is food to buy, things to pay for, survival. The future is a thought that gets put off, until it becomes impossible to put off any longer.

For now, Yar studies. And she holds fast to her idea. She is not an isolated case. It is the story of thousands of children and teenagers living in the places where we work.

It is not enough to open the doors of a school. We must also help families keep them open. Behind every number, there is someone like Yar—a girl who already knows what she wants to be when she grows up, who looks at the goal without fear, and only needs someone not to slam the door in her face.