Then she found letters he had written home from Egypt to his wife and six children, and something in their tone captivated her.
But in Egypt, even the best urban plans have tended to go awry.
Iman, who considers herself to be among the empowered women in Egypt, believes that when the temporary government was put together, it "brought to parliament a few individuals whose beliefs belong to the medieval century".
The women of Egypt are holding their breath.
If the new government does not push the agenda for women's rights, it will have undermined the hopes of those who fought and died for a better Egypt.
Khaled al-Attiya, who has been trying to mediate an end to the political turmoil in Egypt, returned on Wednesday after several days in Cairo and complained he had not been able to meet all the parties he had been promised to see.
Libya's boat builders are frustrated because the onset of civil war cut deliveries of timber from Egypt.
So some smugglers are routing their charges further south, to Egypt, and the beaches of Alexandria and Damietta, or else flying them to Algiers and Tripoli for onward shipment through the central Mediterranean.
"He kept saying 'al-Jazeera, al-Jazeera', and then he said: 'We have to arrest her,'" Marroushi said, in a story that strikes a chord with anyone reporting in Egypt.
One of the four jailed al-Jazeera journalists in Egypt no longer has full use of his arm after being denied proper medical treatment in prison for a shoulder injury suffered before he entered custody.
The three journalists were arrested in their hotel rooms on 29 December and accused of spreading misinformation about Egypt and aiding terrorists – charges they describe as absurd.
