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It’s difficult to get married these days in Egypt. It’s not that Egypt has Australia’s ‘man drought’. Nope. It’s hard cash that’s the problem.

Just as in the West the bride’s family traditionally pays for the wedding, in Egypt and elsewhere in the Middle East, there are traditions about who pays what. As couples don’t leave home until they get married, buying a place to live is key to tying the knot. Tradition dictates that the groom buys the home and white goods (picked by the bride) and the bride furnishes it - completely.

The problem is that house prices are so high that the majority of people cannot afford to buy. For those that would never be able to buy anyway, rents are also on the rise. This often results in children living at home until well into their mid-thirties when enough money has been saved to buy a small apartment.

There are a multitude of problems arising from this, not least, that with sex before marriage severely frowned upon/forbidden amongst both main religions here, unmarried twenty and thirty somethings’ lives just aren’t what adults would define as ‘normal’ in the West. It is even worse for the women, as they are often living with curfews right up until their marriage. I am not joking on this either: a friend of mine, unmarried and in her forties, who had previously lived and worked in Dubai, sans parents, had a 10pm/midnight (depending on circumstance) curfew imposed and upheld upon her return to Egypt.

There are so many ways in which our cultures are different that it can be hard to understand why on earth a 40 year old woman would accept a curfew. Parents are held in such high esteem in this part of the world, that openly disobeying them is an almighty disrespect.

Anyway, back to marriage. The issue about lack of affordable housing has been cashed in on over Ramadan with a TV show offering unmarried couples the opportunity to battle it out and win a two bedroom apartment. It’s been essential watching. Luckily for you, I’m not going to attach a youtube clip in Arabic, the good old BBC has helped me out and made a short report that you can watch here.