Sex and the Citadel (47 page)

Authors: Shereen El Feki

BOOK: Sex and the Citadel

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The world has turned since I set out, five years ago, to better understand the intimate lives of Egyptians, and in the process, better understand myself. My journey across the Arab region has certainly changed me. The overwhelming emotional generosity of Egyptians has worn down any reticence or reserve I once possessed, and I find myself a more impassioned, more open person for it. Having been brought up in a one-child household, far from my roots, I know now what it means to be part of an extended family, and the contentment this can bring, for all its constraints. I have far greater respect for my elders than I ever did growing up in a society that prizes youth above all. And I now have a better understanding of Islam, which has only served to increase my adherence to a faith that, I believe, gives me both freedom and direction in my life.

I also have not just affection and gratitude, but a deep admiration
for people across the region who welcomed me so warmly into their lives—not just the customary hospitality extended to strangers, but an acceptance as one of their own. It isn’t easy, on the face of it. There’s nothing remotely Arab about my appearance (I have the fair features of my Welsh mother and a figure that’s more arrow than Arabesque); my Arabic is far from perfect; and my upbringing is a world away from their own. But people were able to look beyond these differences, and we managed to connect through our shared sense of humor and an unexpected personal affinity. If they can make even
me
feel at home, then I am hopeful that societies in the region will find a way to accommodate diversity.

It takes a staggering lack of introspection to spend so much time probing other people’s personal lives and to not occasionally question one’s own. Until I met Azza, and Amany, and the many other women in this book, I never fully recognized the good fortune of my upbringing. My parents raised me to think I could do anything, be anything, and the men who later came into my life—friends, colleagues, mentors, and husband—have never treated me as anything less than equal, in all domains. My years in Egypt have given me a keen appreciation of the value of growing up in a liberal democracy, where I was taught a respect for diversity and a tolerance of others, however much their lives differed from my own.

I look forward to a day when these values are reflected not just in the politics of the Arab world, but in private lives as well. It took a revolt to shake up politics in Egypt, and even then, change is far from smooth and steady. I am skeptical of any seismic shift in sexual life. Sexual attitudes and behaviors anywhere in the world are tightly intertwined in myriad threads of past and present. Weaving a different tapestry needs a new pattern, and that will take decades to unfold. Change
is
coming to Egypt; not a sexual revolution, I think, but a sexual reevaluation, in which people will one day have the education, the inclination, and the freedom to take an unblinkered view of what they were, how they came to be what they are, and what they could be in the years to come. The confidence and creativity of Arab civilization was once reflected in its
sexual life. For the first time in a long time, we have a chance to see this again—not by gazing at our past, but by looking to our future.

With the sun setting over Cairo, I left the Citadel through a massive gateway and walked down its steep drive. As I climbed into a taxi, my driver asked me where we were heading. I told him the address but explained I didn’t know how to get there. “No problem,” he said. “We’ll find the way, God willing.” And with that, we slipped into the fast-flowing traffic and plunged into the city below.

Notes

Introduction

1
. See Bernard Lewis, a well-known historian of the Arab region, as quoted in Horovitz, “A Mass Expression of Outrage Against Injustice.”

2
. Foucault,
The History of Sexuality
, vol. 1,
The Will to Knowledge
, p. 103.

3
. Ibn Hazm,
The Ring of the Dove
, p. 17.

1. Shifting Positions

1
. For more on the scope of sexual rights, see World Health Organization,
Defining Sexual Health
; International Planned Parenthood Federation,
Sexual Rights
; and Miller,
Sexuality and Human Rights
.

2
. Ronald Inglehart, personal communication, 2012.

3
. Norris and Inglehart,
Islam and the West
, p. 2.

4
. For an entertaining history of European views of Arab sexuality, and vice versa, see Hopwood,
Sexual Encounters in the Middle East
.

5
. Steegmuller,
Gustave Flaubert
, p. 141.

6
. Ibid., p. 41.

7
. Ibid., p. 29.

8
. Ibid., p. 44.

9
. Ibid., p. 114.

10
. Flaubert,
Voyage en Égypte
, p. 285.

11
. Steegmuller,
Gustave Flaubert
, p. 38.

12
. Ibid., p. 12.

13
. Ibid., p. 84.

14
. Ibid., pp. 83–85.

15
. Said,
Orientalism
, p. 3.

16
. Al-Tahtawi,
An Imam in Paris
, p. 221.

17
. Ibid., p. 182.

18
. Ibid., p. 184.

19
. Ibid., pp. 181–82.

20
. Ibid., p. 182.

21
. Ibid., p. 181.

22
. For a fascinating account of early-nineteenth-century Egypt, including its sexual practices, see the chronicles of ‘Abd al-Rahman Jabarti, a famous Egyptian historian, in Jabarti, ‘
Aja’ib al-Athar
[Astonishing accounts].

23
. Examples of this line of anti-Islamic argument can be found at
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

24
. For an insightful history of the sexual revolution, including more detail
on the sexual and social climate of Wales in my mother’s day, see Weeks,
The World We Have Won
.

25
. Al-Munajjid,
Al-Hayat al-Jinsiyya ‘ind al-’Arab
[The sexual life of the Arabs], p. 10.

26
. Bouhdiba,
Sexuality in Islam
, pp. 247–48.

27
. Ibid., p. 231.

28
. Ibid., p. 248.

29
. For more on Arab intellectuals’ tussles with their collective sexual history, see Massad,
Desiring Arabs
.

30
. A detailed account of the parallel rise and fall of sexual openness in the Ottoman Empire, once overlord of the Arab region, is provided by Ze’evi, “Hiding Sexuality”; and Ze’evi,
Producing Desire
.

31
. Al-Khalidi,
Amrika min al-Dakhil bi-Minzar Sayyid Qutb
[America from the inside, from the viewpoint of Sayyid Qutb], p. 49.

32
. Ibid., p. 67.

33
. Ibid., p. 113.

34
. Calvert, “ ‘The World Is an Undutiful Boy,’ ” p. 97.

35
. Al-Khalidi,
Amrika min al-Dakhil bi-Minzar Sayyid Qutb
[America from the inside, from the viewpoint of Sayyid Qutb], p. 143.

36
. Dialmy,
Susyulujiyyat al-Jinsiyya al-’Arabiyya
[Sociology of Arab sexuality], p. 6.

37
. Reich, “The Sexual Misery of the Working Masses,” p. 98.

38
. Reich,
The Mass Psychology of Fascism
, p. 38.

39
. Ibid., p. 24.

40
. Ibid., p. 211.

41
. Bouhdiba,
Sexuality in Islam
, p. 248.

2. Desperate Housewives

1
. El-Mahdi and Marfleet, introduction to
Egypt: Moment of Change
, ed. El-Mahdi and Marfleet, p. 5; Marfleet, “State and Society,” p. 17.

2
. Handoussa,
Egypt Human Development Report 2010
, p. 245, UNESCO Institute for Statistics (
www.uis.unesco.org
). Many of the statistics about Egyptian women in this book are taken from a periodic, nationally representative survey of those who are or who have ever been married (known as “ever-married”) aged fifteen to forty-nine, indicated by El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
; as in this instance, p. 28.

3
. While Egypt’s penal code is largely based on Western statutes, laws on personal status such as marriage, divorce, and inheritance are derived from shari’a. For more on Egyptian laws regarding women and their relation to international legal conventions, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

4
. These results come from Pew Research Center surveys of more than twenty nations, which included Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Tunisia:
Most Muslims Want Democracy
, p. 22;
Men’s Lives Often Seen as Better
, p. 7.

5
. For more on who decides what in Egyptian households, see El-Zanaty and Way,
Egypt: Demographic and Health Survey 2008
, pp. 37–41; Bashier, “Knowing the Ropes: Autonomy in the Everyday Life of Egyptian Married Women.”

6
. Egyptian Cabinet, Information and Decision Support Center (hereafter
IDSC),
Istitla’ Ra’ii al-Muwatiniin hawla Makanat al-Mar’a
[Citizens’ opinion poll on the status of women].

7
. In the World Values Surveys conducted in the Arab region from 2000 to 2008, Egypt led the pack, closely followed by Algeria, Morocco, and Jordan, in rejecting the notion that “marriage is an outdated institution”; those polled in Saudi Arabia were only slightly less enthusiastic on marriage. See
www.worldvaluessurvey.org
.

8
. Qur’an 24:32.

9
. As mentioned by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, one of the great figures of Islamic thought and author of the premier Islamic marriage guide through the ages, the eleventh- to twelfth-century
Book of Etiquette in Marriage
(Farah,
Marriage and Sexuality in Islam: A Translation of al-Ghazali’s Book on the Etiquette of Marriage from the Ihya’
, p. 49).

10
. Many of the statistics on Egyptian youth in this book come from a 2009 national survey of ten- to twenty-nine-year-olds, as detailed in chapter 3. Results calculated directly from the data are indicated by Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
. Some of this data has been published already, as in this instance, in Sieverding and Elbadawy, “Marriage and Family Formation,” p. 125.

11
. Tradition aside, marrying a cousin makes economic sense; it reduces matrimonial costs by roughly a quarter and offers particular savings on housing, since around two-thirds of such couples set up house with their relatives (Singerman,
The Economic Imperatives of Marriage
, p. 23; Singerman, “Marriage and Divorce in Egypt”).

12
. Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
. For more on what young Egyptians are looking for in the perfect mate, see
www.sexandthecitadel.com
.

13
. Ibid.

14
. More than 90 percent of Egyptian men under the age of thirty claim to have the final say in spousal choice, but less than half of the poorest young women in Egypt have similar scope; their fathers enjoy considerable say in whom their daughters marry (Population Council and IDSC,
Survey of Young People in Egypt
).

15
. Osman et al.,
Ta’khkhur Sinn al-Zawaj
[Delay in the age of marriage], p. 3.

16
. The latest statistics on Egypt, including marriage and divorce, are available from the government’s Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics at
www.capmas.gov.eg
. For more on marriage in Egypt and across the Arab region, see Osman and Girgis, “Marriage Patterns in Egypt.”