B005X0JS14 EBOK

by Feki, Shereen El

  Nonetheless, some young women in Cairo use dukhla baladi to their advantage. Among them are poor working women whose daily forays outside their communities, inevitably bringing them into contact with strangers, put their honor into question; others, whose families migrated to the big city, find themselves relative outsiders and unknown quantities to the families of their perspective husbands. For any woman whose personal history is in doubt, dukhla baladi is a form of exoneration, as well as a trade-off for a little more personal freedom, so long as she is prepared to demonstrate her virginity in so public a fashion.53 Indeed, research suggests that dukhla baladi is actually more common in poor neighborhoods of Cairo than it is in some rural areas, contrary to notions of the “modernizing” effect of the city. This is in part because the economic and social realities of urban life mean that families are unable to exercise the same vigilance over their daughters, and in part because many inhabitants of these neighborhoods, originally migrants from the countryside, find themselves clinging to rural traditions as the city’s powerful tide rushes in.54

  That dukhla of any description persists in Egypt is because family honor is still bound up with female virginity; it’s possible that as family ties unwind, or as personal freedoms come to be recognized in an emerging democratic order, this tight association might weaken, and that virginity will become a private affair, between husband and wife only, as it is among some couples I know. This day will be some time in coming, however. In the meantime, mothers still invest enormous mental energy in putting the fear of a ruptured hymen into their daughters, warning them off anything that might breach that all-important membrane, be it masturbation or the ubiquitous water hose, found in bathrooms across the Arab world for washing “down there,” according to Islamic custom.

  If such traditional methods fail in protecting a hymen, newer measures are available. Hymen repair is the stuff of overheated headlines across the Arab region, often taken as evidence of the moral decline of today’s youth. In Egypt it’s hard to get a firm grip on the number of such procedures: one doctor, working at a women’s hospital in a poorer quarter of Cairo, says she sees two cases a week. The quick-fix approach is a stitch across the vaginal opening, which, like the Chinese fake hymen, offers a fair imitation of resistance and bleeding on intercourse. The procedure costs around EGP 200 and lasts a couple of days; more elaborate interventions are said to run from EGP 700–2,000, the monthly income of a lower-middle-class family. There are other costs too: women gynecologists talk of male colleagues taking advantage of such patients, extorting sexual favors in exchange for keeping the operation secret.55

  Restoring virginity—or rather, the appearance of it—is not a uniquely modern concern. Egyptian folklore is full of stories of the quick-handed daya helping a “virgin” bride out of a tight spot with a bottle of red dye or a pigeon’s giblet stuffed with blood on the wedding night; the Encyclopedia of Pleasure, for example, offers many handy hints on the subject. In Egypt, hymen repair is not illegal, but it is widely considered shameful or indeed haram. In recent years, a lively debate has broken out among religious authorities in Egypt and the wider Arab world over the permissibility of the procedure. According to one school of thought, hymen repair is forbidden by Islam for a number of reasons, among them that it deceives husbands, opens the possibility of mistaken paternity (if the “repaired” bride has already conceived from a previous relation), unnecessarily reveals a woman’s private parts, and pushes her down the slippery slope of easy-to-conceal illicit sex.56

  However, other Islamic voices argue that hymen repair is permissible because a missing hymen is not, in itself, proof positive of adultery according to shari’a. Moreover, denying a woman access to hymen repair impairs her chances of marriage, which could lead her to channel her sexual energy into unlawful relations. Such authorities also argue satr al-’ird, the Islamic principle of protecting a woman’s honor from public speculation, so long as concealment does not cause wider social harm. Among them is Shaykh Ali Gomaa, who issued a controversial fatwa in 2007 permitting hymen repair in a wide range of circumstances beyond rape and other “accidental losses,” though he drew the line at “women known for promiscuity.”57

  Hymen repair puts some physicians in a quandary. Should they participate in what could be considered deception of the husband, or is it their obligation to help a woman who might otherwise find herself in extremely hot water if her previous experience is discovered? Are they complicit in a procedure that buttresses the patriarchy and the double standards around virginity, or are they giving women more personal freedom by helping them around these social restrictions? For some practitioners, the question is emotional, not intellectual. “A young woman has been led into error, or has made a mistake—to rebuild her life from scratch, I approve that she does it,” one Cairo gynecologist explained. “I can’t morally judge someone who comes to me. When I have ten women who appear for a consultation, I sympathize with at least nine of them. They’re suffering, and I am of a mind to help these girls.”58

  There are women’s rights advocates who argue that hymen repair surgery might put itself out of business by tearing right through the Arab world’s membrane fixation: if men can’t tell a real hymen from a reasonable facsimile, what is the point of dukhla? One day, perhaps. For now, though, stories of hymen repair are simply pumping up social anxiety: I know of Egyptian men who, in the face of tradition and whispering about their own prowess, will wait a couple of days after the wedding to consummate the union, having read that the effects of hymen repair will wear off by then and all will be revealed.

  Gynecologists across the Arab region receive plenty of anxious young women looking to get their hymens checked, some horrified to learn that what they thought were “incomplete” relations with boyfriends—that is, withdrawal before penetration—have, over time, in fact broken their membranes, or that their hymens were not as “elastic” (that is, bendable, rather than breakable) as they wishfully believed. But virginity testing can take other, more disturbing forms. Among them is the “virginity certificate”—a physician-signed testimonial that the virgin bride is the genuine article. Premarital examinations are common across the Arab region to test for sexually transmitted infections, such as HIV and hepatitis, and—because of the high rate of consanguineous marriage—some inherited disorders as well. In a number of countries, including several in the Gulf, such tests are legally mandated; while they raise a number of ethical issues (among them the right to privacy, and the freedom to marry, whatever the results), studies from across the region show they are widely supported by prospective newlyweds.59 In some cases, however, grooms and their families take tests one step further, asking for the bride to be certified as intact before consummation—or after, should she not bleed as expected. Such tests can be emotionally scarring and are certainly ethically charged, not just for the woman on the examining table but for the doctor asked to take a look.60 Virginity testing is also considered by some to be un-Islamic, yet another violation of the principle of satr al-’ird.

  Virginity testing can also be a tool of political control. In the wake of the Egyptian uprising, several female protesters were forcibly subjected to virginity tests authorized by the military. Officials argued that the tests were to prove that these unmarried women, who had been camping out in Tahrir Square, were not virgins, just in case they later brought charges against the army for sexual assault. The reality is that such tests are just another instrument in the torturer’s toolkit. Sex is a source of shame, which makes it a powerful tool of subjugation—be it the humiliation of male prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison or violence against female protesters in uprisings across the Arab region, packing a one-two punch of disgracing women and, by extension, their menfolk as well.61 In this particular case, the results of such testing could help to shore up prostitution charges, as well as serve as grounds for blackmail should unmarried women prove not to be virgins—all ways of discrediting protesters and discouraging any others who might be tempted
to follow their lead. One of the women tested decided to strike back and filed a lawsuit against the military, but she found herself up against the same old obstacles in achieving redress from Egypt’s post-Mubarak regime.62 Interestingly, it was forced testing under the microscope in this long-running legal battle, rather than the value of virginity itself, or why it should be relevant to what is essentially a political matter.

  There are, nonetheless, a small but rising number of voices that publicly question the fixation on female virginity and the blanket condemnation of premarital sex. Marwa Rakha is among them. “I am attacked a lot about my view on the subject of sex and sexual relations before marriage,” she wrote to one correspondent. “I am not against it, and I also see that it is a natural thing in the stages of knowing other people. Just as people know each other emotionally, mentally and they talk about their principles, their thoughts and their beliefs, so it is imperative that they get near sexually.”63 For her, this is not an issue of religion or morality but a question of personal freedom, particularly for women.

  BREAKING AWAY

  Key to realizing that freedom is negotiating independence within the family. It’s clear that young people in Egypt and across the Arab region are deeply attached to their families, even as these shrink from extended to nuclear units and members scatter across cities, countries, and continents, as my own family has. This umbilical cord is, in large part, financial. In Egypt, for example, the vast majority of unmarried people (and around 40 percent of married couples) under the age of thirty live with their families; given that unemployment is running in the double digits, this means many are tied to them economically as well.64

  All-in-the-family has practical implications for your love life: in most households, it’s almost inconceivable to bring home a date unless it’s of the edible variety, especially since only a small minority of youth in Egypt have their own bedrooms. A hotel is generally too expensive for most young people, and most will ask to see a marriage certificate as well, unless you can slip a suitable sum under the reception desk. If you want to get intimate, your best bet is to have a friend with his own apartment, or car, or it’s back to the corniche for some alfresco fumbling.

  This material dependence takes subtle forms. In a society that runs on wasta—connections—your family’s name and influence are important to getting on in life. This I know from personal experience: when my Western upbringing and can-do independence withered on contact with Egyptian bureaucracy, I had to call in my family to have a few words and promise a few favors to get things done.65 As my grandmother used to say, “The one who has a back [family support] will not be punched in the stomach.”

  But there is a deep emotional component to this connection as well. The Qur’an exhorts believers to honor their mothers and fathers: “We have commanded people to be good to their parents: their mothers carried them, with strain upon strain, and it takes two years to wean them. Give thanks to Me and to your parents—all will return to Me” is just one of many verses on the subject.66 This family connectedness is borne out by research across the Arab region, which shows the strength of young people’s sense of family identity and affiliation.67 How the uprising—and the experience of millions of young men and women out on the streets, night after night, defying political authority—will affect relations with parental authority is an interesting question. Hurriyya (freedom) has become the rallying cry of many a youngster talking back to parents on household chores or trying to extract a larger allowance. For older youth, however, this is a more complicated negotiation. Al Haq spoke for many I’ve met when she described the tightrope act between her personal freedom and her family. “Me and Mom are very close. She believes in what I am doing, and she admires me. But every single time I say something that’s not all that common in society, she is like, ‘What about the society? What about the family?’ ”

  Al Haq argued with her mother for days to be allowed to come to Tahrir Square from their town in the countryside north of Cairo. “I wanted so much to be there, to join my friends, and just to see what the hell they are doing with Egypt. In my generation, I never felt like I am in a home. So it was for me, the revolution, this feeling [of] belonging to a country. It was very beautiful, very strong; I was dying to feel this. Egypt is ours, not for Mubarak, not anyone’s Egypt except us.” Al Haq sneaked away, and although her mother was furious, she eventually relented. But there are limits to how far Al Haq is willing to push her newfound liberty. “I live my life freely and am not afraid of anyone. I just won’t tell Mom that I have a boyfriend and I am enjoying my life with him. Just because that will hurt her much and it will be very shocking for her. And I don’t want to lose people from my family.”

  In my experience, few young people see a link between their rebellion against the head of state and openly defying the heads of their families—at least not yet. But some are clearly making the connection. Tarek Salama is a journalist turned activist working on sexual rights—not exactly a popular subject in Egypt. “The first time in my life to go out and protest was on the twenty-fifth of January,” he said. “I used to believe protests were nothing and that they will lead us nowhere.” But the events of 2011 have changed his life, professionally and personally. “For me, as an activist, there are many decisions that I wouldn’t dare to take before the twenty-fifth of January, because of politics, because of society, because of my family situation,” he told me as we sipped coffee quite literally a stone’s throw from Tahrir Square, on a side street that was the scene of fierce clashes between young protesters and security forces. “For example, I don’t think, if it wasn’t for the twenty-fifth of January, I would be able to sit with you at this table and talk about sexuality. Because I would have been scared. Now I am not afraid of this fight.”

  Nor is it elders and betters anymore. “I used to be this kind of shy person, and respectful of old people,” Salama said, readjusting his chunky black-framed glasses. “But when I discovered we got rid of Mubarak—he was eightysomething—this somehow destroyed the old figure in my imagination. So somehow I became aggressive and sharp, even if the person is much older than me, when I find that all that they say is shit.” The uprising has left Salama both disillusioned and enlightened. “Most of the people who fucked us up through the revolution were older. Most of the people I took as idols and icons really let me down. When I found them collapsed, I discovered that this has nothing to do with the age, nothing to do with experience; it has to do with whether the person is true to him or herself, and that’s what matters to me.”

  For their part, I heard parents complain, time and again, before the uprising about their children’s lack of maturity. “I always used to say before, this generation has nothing to do but stay on their computers and play,” one father in his fifties, a former army general, lamented to me. The 2011 uprising, spearheaded by the country’s youth, changed that. He and his twentysomething daughter spent days in Tahrir Square, a bonding experience that altered his opinion. Many older Egyptians, my own relatives included, have been rattled by recent events and find change hard to accept. Not the general, though. “I was very wrong,” he told me, no easy thing for an Egyptian man, and father, to admit. “At the beginning I was very surprised by the demonstrators, the decency, the civilized way they presented their ideas. This generation has proved to me that they have plans for the future and they know how to work for it.”

  Subsequent events have taken some of the gloss off that admiration. Making way for young blood—be it in political or domestic decision-making—is a long-term process. Whether young people will be given a chance to take the lead, and have the wit to use it well, is another story. One test of this new entente cordiale will be how easy young people—particularly young women like Al Haq—find it to strike out on their own in the years to come. Al Haq’s mother now allows her to stay alone in the family flat in Cairo, for example, something that was out of the question before the revolt. But this freedom doesn’t come easy: leaving your parents’ pl
ace is less a rite of passage and more an ordeal by fire for the minority of unmarried people across the region who can afford it. “If you go to any shaykh and say, ‘There is this girl and she moved out,’ they will say, ‘Ah, bad girl!’ She would be, like, cursed and damned,” says Rakha.

  She should know. Life changed for Rakha when she started working in her early twenties. “When I earned my first salary, I realized having my own money makes me happy. And it gave me this little freedom that even if I want perfume or a dress, I don’t have to go to my mom and get her approval for what I’m going to be wearing,” she told me. “This is where the independence started. I’m not happy where there is a man; I’m happy when I do things for myself.”

  By her late twenties, Rakha had decided to get her own apartment. “My mom thought if I move out, I’m gonna fail and I’m gonna move back home. So she let me go, and she was shocked I survived,” she recalled. “When I was home, I didn’t do anything. I slept until eight [p.m.] and then I went out with my friends. Moving out, the house has to be clean. It’s a whole different thing. I was ready for it. Thing is, I didn’t want this package with a man. I needed to just do it on my own.”

  Such self-reliance is more of a black mark than a badge of honor for Egyptian women, in Rakha’s opinion. “For a man, there is usually a question mark: ‘Why did you leave your parents’?’ If a man replies, ‘Because I wanted to grow up, because I wanted to learn to be responsible,’ that’s perfectly fine in the society. But most men don’t want to move out; they want somebody to cook and clean for them. It’s the girls here who want their independence; they want to prove themselves apart from their socially accepted posts.” Rakha is all too familiar with this sort of thinking, which starts at home. Parents are worried about keeping up appearances, and daughters who fly the coop are accused of shirking filial responsibility. “I’m going to tell you my mom’s version of it,” says Rakha. “First of all, she feels I’m ungrateful. Like, instead of being with her, and supporting her, and comforting her, I moved out. My counterargument always was, ‘What if I got married? I would leave you.’ ‘But that’s because you’re married.’ So what—now I’m being punished for not being married?”