I just came online to blog about something and discovered this had arrived a long time ago and I didn’t see it, so will start with this:

Hi all, I am too in the same situation as Maria. I met a lovely egyptian man on the last day of my holiday in sharm in April. We met on a boat trip to tiran Island (divemaster) and met later that evening and spent a number of hours together and I went back to his flat. I did not have sex with him which he did ask for but said he respected me because I didn’t. He has been in contact every day since. I returned in August for 6 days on my own and we rented an apartment in Delta Sharm. He paid for all the food and taxis and nearly half of the rent of the apartment but when I gave him the rental money back he did accept. Myself, my daughter and my friend were supposed to go back on the 20th August for two weeks but he asked me to change it as being Ramadan we could not be together, so I changed the holiday to sep 24th. Late on the 3rd Sep he sent me a message telling me that he had to travel home as his uncle is very sick in hospital. Up to now I would receive 4 or 5 messages daily from him and he would ask me to call him at least twice a week but since he has gone home I receive only two messages really early in the morning ie 5 or 6 am and late at night. He tells me his phone is on silent as he doesn’t want to disturb his uncle who might die in the next few days but that he will have an operation on Friday. I am now thinking that he is spending time with another woman and making a fool of me but how can I prove it. This man has asked me to marry him and have children with him, told me he has told his family all about me. He has asked me and my daughter to move to egypt to be with him as soon as I can. How do I find out if I am being used. At the moment I am feeling very very hurt and stupid. Any response would be appreciated.

As this was quite a while ago, perhaps the writer will get back in touch and let us know what happened.

I’m not sure there’s much point at the moment in offering any advice as the situation must have moved on/finished. The only issue I would raise is that if he is Muslim, then asking her to come after Ramadan is a plausible ‘excuse’. It definitely does not mean he is seeing someone else, as a lot of people who are not ‘religious’ during the rest of the year, try to be ‘good’ during this month – rather like Christians ‘giving something up for Lent’ when they are not churchgoers.

I have been involved with an Egyptian man for the last 15 months. I have gone to Egypt twice. The first time for 1 week to meet him, then 3 months later for another 7 days to meet his family, as we have been getting very serious and want to be married. He didn’t tell me until i already had been talking to him for 5 months that he is already married to an american woman for 2 years. She scammed him unto getting married to try and keep herself out of trouble when she came back to the states. She was caught scamming people all over the U.S. on the internet and taking their money. Nevertheless, because i saw how difficult life is their I understand how badly people need money, so when i get paid i would send him 50.00 to 100.00. I did not mind this at all. But the last 2 weeks he began asking me for more money to help him divorce her to get over here to be with me. When i told him that i would not get or send that kind of money, he proceeded to tell me that he would not talk to me anymore until he had it in his hand. My question to you is have i been scammed by him or was this a true love connection. Now i have doubts, plz tell me what you think.

Additionally:

I also would like to add that I met him online and can you please tell  me what your thoughts are on this.   Also, I’m wondering if scammers will spend 15 months with you all the while knowing that you did not have very much money?

First I would like to say that I am sorry, this all sounds very difficult to be going through.

Ok, now to the nitty gritty.

The American Woman: I think this sounds incredibly suspect. I cannot imagine a situation in which an American woman would somehow get out of trouble by marrying an Egyptian man. Of all nationalities to marry if you are an American, Egyptian is (unfortunately) not going to get you far. Do you know her name? If she was caught, particularly if it was for online scamming, I’m sure that a deep Google search would bring something up.

Your money: this is an incredibly generous act on your part. Life is difficult for many over here and 50-100 (I’m guessing Euro or Pounds Sterling?) is a huge amount for the majority of the population, particularly to receive it for doing nothing. So, whether he has been scamming you or not, you have done something very nice here.

Money demand: this is, I fear, bad news. Regardless of whether the American woman story is true or not, whether he wants the money for a divorce or not, if this is someone who loves you truly, why on earth would they refuse to speak to you because you can’t afford something? Even if you can afford it, why should you pay for his divorce from another woman? I’m not sure where they got married (am assuming Egypt – if there is even a marriage), but it’s not unaffordable to obtain a divorce in Egypt anyway, unless he signed some kind of pre-nup, in which case, why should you pay that?  If his main motivation in this relationship was his love for you, wouldn’t refusing to talk to you be a strange thing to do? If his main motivation was some financial gain (which doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have feelings for you too), then this behaviour might make more sense.

Additionally, if he is wanting to come to the UK, money will not be the first thing he needs. A visa will be far more important and these days they are incredibly difficult to get.

Online: meeting someone online doesn’t mean they’re bad, of course. The problem is, if you meet someone, face to face from a culture that is very different to your own (and Egyptian culture is very different from UK/American culture), and who does not speak your language as a mother tongue, then it is incredibly difficult to judge their character. If you meet them online, it’s far, far harder. Also, spending a couple of weeks with someone does not give huge insight into their character: just think how different you are when you’re free from work stresses, lying by a pool, soaking up the sun, vs waking up grumpy on a cold winter morning full of the cold and having to go to work. A week or two isn’t long enough to see people at their worst.

Scamming time: the answer is yes. You think that you don’t have much money. I can assure you, that whatever money you have, is more than he has. This is proven by the fact that you can spare 50-100 per month and he takes it. It is also important to realise that Egyptian men are quite macho (by UK standards). I do not have one Egyptian male friend who would be comfortable taking money from me. Some have more money than me, some less, but they won’t let me even pay for a coffee unless I really fight and sometimes not even then – and these are people I’ve known for eight years.

This may not be very comfortable for you, but look at it from his point of view. You have been sending him money over the past X months. I don’t know when you started doing this, but let’s just say out of the 15 month relationship, you’ve sent it over the past 10 months and you sent him the minimum you stated, 50. I’m going to assume this is 50 Pounds Sterling. This means, that over the past 10 months, he’s received a minimum of 4500 Egyptian Pounds. Many Egyptians earn 1000 Egyptian Pounds a month as salary. So, in his terms, he’s received a lot of money. Is it worth him keeping in touch with you even though you don’t have much money? Yes, because to him you do.

What to do now? I guess it depends on what you want to do. If you really want to try and pursue a relationship with him you will probably need to be a bit careful. First of all, stopping the money, any money, would perhaps be a good thing. Technically, in Islam (I’m assuming he’s Muslim), when husband and wife both work, the money earned by the husband is for the family and the money earned by the wife is for HER! I’m not kidding. In reality many couples share the burden of bringing up their family together, but there is no obligation for the wife to do this. As you are not even married, there can be no real justification on his side for your supporting him. If he loves you, he will accept that you are not a bank and have no problem with that – EVER. If you are wanting to continue this relationship, it might be worth considering that this is a person for whom money is something to exchange with love and for that reason, it might be prudent to always keep your money entirely separate from him.

If you do not want to continue, then it’s easier: stop all contact. Don’t tell him you’re going to stop contact, just don’t get back in touch. I’m sure he’ll figure out what’s going on get back in touch telling you how much he loves you.  It’s up to you to figure out if you believe it.

There’s one more important thing to consider here: you. Think about yourself and what you’re worth. Clearly you are a kind and generous person, as you have been giving away money that you work hard for. I’m sure you’ve made mistakes, but you’re human. The question is: are you worth someone you can’t fully trust? Are you worth someone who refuses to talk to you until/unless you pay for his divorce to some other woman (who may or may not exist) and for a plane ticket for him? Would you tell a little girl that this is the sort of man she should look for as a life partner? You are no less worthy of someone who treats you well and with respect than a little girl is.

This story just arrived:

Hey Girls, just thought I’d let you know that I have been married to an Egyptian man for 7 years. I’ve blonde hair, blue eyes, am slender, etc. Well I just turned 35 and now considered ‘old’. He is 45 and came to me and asked me to send him a young girl from America about 20 years of age. He says I’m too old for him now and needs the young girl for sex but still wants to be married to me. Guess who is leaving Egypt without him?????

I don’t know the background to this, where/how the couple met, where they live(d) in Egypt etc. If you are the lady who sent it, perhaps you could fill us in if you have a moment.

I must just add my usual disclaimer here: not all Egyptian men behave like this. It is an unfortunate truth, however, that some do and for many Western women entering relationships with Egyptian men, the possibility of situations like this ocurring does not cross their mind. In the “West” men behave in ways which “Western” women do not like, but as our behaviour is to a great extent a product of our society’s norms ( its good, bad and ugly norms), “Western” bad behaviour is within our “Western” frame of reference. In fairness to Egyptian men, while many would like to have second wives, I’m not so sure that it’s the done thing to ask the first wife to source the second!

I have received a number of emails and comments with stories and questions about holiday romances with Egyptian men that continue after the holiday. I have decided to post some of these as a means of opening up the issue. I will continue to post, at my discretion, subsequent stories of relationships between foreign women and Egyptian men – good and bad – if I receive them.

This is not and will not become an arena to vent rude, racist or xenophobic sentiments.

Egyptian men do not spend their time planning how to scam foreign women on holiday. There is a minority, however, that exist and the point of publishing the stories of holiday romances is to show that there is a certain trend in the relationships that begin in resorts and tourist locations here. The normal outcome with these relationships is that the reputation of Egyptian men becomes tarnished internationally (it also tarnishes the reputation of foreign women within Egypt, but that’s another issue). Having spent a considerable amount of time here, I feel this situation is a real shame for both the man and the woman involved, and with regards the men, it is not indicative of the vast majority of Egyptian men I have met and have as friends in this country.

The hard fact is, however, that our Western culture with our liberal attitudes towards relationships is extremely different from the norm in Egypt. Additionally, we enjoy great economic freedoms, unimaginable to a large sector of Egyptian society. These two factors are flaunted in the face of almost every person who works in a tourist resorts here, some of whom decide that they want a piece of the pie. Egypt is not the only country where this happens, but this is where I live.

In the UK, the closest thing we have is the WAG (Wives and Girlfriends of footballers) wannabes. Usually these girls come from less wealthy backgrounds and hang out in the places (wealthy) footballers frequent. They may have to spend a little on clothes and entrance to the clubs etc these players go to, but in the end, if they ’snag’ one, the prize financially-speaking is rather great – it’s worth the initial expense and being rejected a number of times.

I can, of course, not verify any of the stories I am sent, and will make no attempt to do so. There are certain situations that are common, so if a story does not ring true, I will not post it. You are free to decide for yourself what you think.

I received this letter via a comment left on the site.

Dear Grouse…Please can you (and maybe others) give me your opinion on the following…..

So, what do you think?

It was a seemingly innocuous event: we parked the car.

We went to have dinner with some friends recently. The street was crammed full of cars, nothing unusual there, and we were happy to spot one parking space. Mr S carefully reversed into it.

We left the car, went to our friends entrance. As we got there, a bowab* from across the street said, “Someone’s coming.” I asked what he meant, and he repeated it. Then we were buzzed in and went to enjoy our evening.

About two hours later, the bowab from our friends’ building rang the doorbell and informed us that the man whose parking space we took had now come back and blocked us in.

We were a bit surprised – we hadn’t seen anything saying there was private parking. Mr S went to sort it out before dessert. We expected him to be a good 10 mins as he drove around looking for a new space. He was back in no time, with a piece of paper and looking shocked. ‘The man’ had apparently arrived home, found us in his unmarked ‘private’ parking space, parked his car in front of ours blocking not only us in, but the whole street. He’d left his handbrake on (not normal in Egypt where in exactly this situation cars are gently pushed aside), gone inside, printed off a poster, come back outside and put it on our windscreen.

The shock Mr S was in transferred around the table as we read the paper. Unprintable here, it had a giant fist with the middle finger sticking up and enough text to call us jack*ss and worse, for stealing his spot.

Thinking I could speak to the bowab of his building, or him, and soothe things over I went out. ‘The man’ had somehow made clear to the men on the street that he was going to bed and would not get out of bed to move the car. It was about 9.30 – 10pm.  I buzzed his apartment, but to no avail.

In the end Mr S, together with our host and another dinner companion, managed to get the car out (by a million-point turn and even lifting it at one point). Bravo I say.

I’ve been living in Cairo for seven years now, and it’s nine years since I first came here to study. I have never, ever experienced this before, nor heard of it happening. Cairo is starved of parking spaces, and in upmarket areas of Egypt where people claim pavements or special corners for parking there are either bollards or ‘private parking’ signs. Utterly devoid of either of these, or anything else for that matter, it’s not unreasonable for non-residents of the street not to know a space is ‘private’.

I have told some Egyptian friends about what happened and they were more shocked than we were at the time. Egyptians just don’t behave like this. It’s a parking space. It’s a small issue.

We could argue that ‘the man’ had a hard day at work. Perhaps a hard week. Perhaps a hard month. Fair enough, that’s not nice. But you know what, he’s driving a large 4×4, paid for by his company, his kids are at expensive private school, paid for by his company, he’s living in one of Egypt’s most expensive neighbourhoods, again, paid for by his company, he gets trips back to the States, yep, paid for by his company. How do I know this? I don’t for sure, but it’s a standard package for oil workers and the type of 4×4 together with the number plate are 99% of the time driven by American oil workers here.

It reminded me of why I used to cringe telling people that I’d moved to The Hood: it’s associated with the sort of person who has so much given to them (yes they’re working, but so are heart surgeons both here and back home, and they don’t get everything given to them) and doesn’t have the good grace to put it into some sort of context in which they feel lucky. Instead of taking on board some of the suffering around them, they concentrate on their own ’suffering’.

To think that someone ’stealing’ your unmarked parking space is such a big deal, when people just down the road are struggling to feed their children, where they eat meat once or twice a year – and that’s because someone is generous enough to give it to them – where labourers sit on the roadside every day, hoping someone will come along and hire them for a day’s back breaking work for meagre pay, where the majority of the population lives on less than $2 per day… To think a parking space is such a big deal when all this is just down the road, is utterly abhorrent.

It reminded me of the people I do not generally meet here. They tend to be American. They live in The Hood, their children attend a very privileged school (lucky them, really, it’s a great school), they spend the weekends at an expat social club only for Americans working in certain companies, they don’t even need to interact with Egyptians when shopping because they buy everything, even milk, and, I’ve been told, fruit and vegetables at the commissary, a special, high security US government run supermarket that flies everything in for the ’suffering’ American expats who are eligible to shop there. And last but not least, they complain about how hard life is in Egypt and in general about Egyptians.

Not all American expats are like that, not at all, but they do exist – and not just American, although the commissary is something no other government seems to find necessary for its nationals living in Egypt.

Anyway, I was so furious about the incident I thought about keying his car or letting the air out of his tyres. Until it hit me: the sort of life ‘the man’ must think he has in order to react so venomously to such a triviality is payback enough.

* Bowab literally means doorman. In reality he deals with taking care of the building and cars.

I recently received a comment on the Foreign women and orfi marriages in Egypt post. It was addressed as “Hi All” so I thought I’d post it here to maximise responses. To you all you lurkers, yes you, you know who you are (and I know you’re there!), this is a time to delurk and put in your 5 cents worth. You don’t even need to introduce yourselves!

“..I have just returned from Sharm el Sheikh where I met this wonderful Egyptian man…A ll we did was talk about everyday things a few days before I left. He was being ulta nice to me and I do believe he is genuine, as he didn’t seem the type to come on to girls, he was rather quiet – there was many girls around and he never seemed interested in any of them. I had only been there a few days when I first noticed him. You look and watch their actions etc., but all he did was work, work, work. During the last few days he was telling me I had the most beautiful eyes…on the night before we left, he was at our table all the time, so on leaving we said nice to meet you etc., gave him a good tip [and] said we may return in the autumn… The next day when he..finished work, he came to the pool where I was sitting and said he had to say one last goodbye. I gave him a hug and he had a tear in his eye. We exchanged mobile numbers and I never thought for one min he would text. I was at the airport and he should have been sleeping..he texts saying he had great time meeting me… to be honest I was flattered. Well 6 weeks have gone by and everyday night he texts me..now he wants me to go back. He will take 2 weeks off work and we will rent apartment, which he will pay for – he offered. He wants to cook listen to music and ???? I said I was worried about law in Egypt. He then [mentioned] a contract to stay together, which i believe is the orfi marraige. If I want to get that we will, if not we won’t, as it will be ok for us. Its up to me what I want. He says [I can] just put [the]paper in my bag and after [the] holiday if I still want him keep it for when I visit again..or put in the bin, but hopes i would keep it if we get one. He then says he wants me for life and one day we both stay in Egypt and go to Cairo for full contarct marraige if I want. I guess alot of people will think WAKE UP but he sounds so trusting and to be honest I do believe him. We now text when I wake in the morning, when he goes to bed at lunchtime, before he starts work and before I..go to sleep. Sometimes he calls around 4 in the morning because it’s quiet then… and this is everyday. Does anyone think I am getting taken for a mug?????? How can he know he wants me if nothing really happened when I was there?”

………

How can he know he wants me if nothing happened when we were there? Exactly. He doesn’t know your personality, not from when you were there. He doesn’t know how amazing you are, what makes you truly happy, or how horrible you are when you’re grumpy. You’re right.

Let’s look at what he does know.

He knows you have money. It doesn’t matter how much money you think you have or don’t have, at minimum you have enough money for a holiday abroad and enough to plan another holiday abroad. In Egypt that is something only the very rich can imagine doing. In Egypt, working as a waiter in Sharm is respectable, but imagine Bill Gates staying in a hotel in London and a waitress starts telling him she likes his eyes.  Shouldn’t he be just a little bit suspicious? Imagine she sends him texts for weeks and calls him sometimes. If you were Bill Gates’ friend, wouldn’t you be highly sceptical of the waitress’ intentions? If you were the waitress and you saw that the millionaire was flattered by your advances, wouldn’t you continue? I mean, what’s to lose?

He knows you have a foreign passport. As much as he probably loves Egypt, as much as he may (and you haven’t mentioned this, but as it’s a common story, I’m filling in this blank) say he does not want to leave Egypt, the truth is that working abroad will make him far more money than working in Egypt. Leaving Egypt is not so easy as other countries get tougher on immigrants, but if you get married and after some time, get the passport, suddenly hundreds of doors open.

He knows that you will sleep with him. Sorry, this isn’t exactly tasteful, but it’s something that cannot be overlooked. While it is totally accepted in our culture to have a ‘fling’ in Egypt it is absolutely and utterly not.  Not at all. No way. Sex before marriage is pretty impossible. It doesn’t mean people don’t want it though – we’re all human. Imagine the thought of two weeks of sex, in a country where having a phyisical relationship with a girlfriend means holding hands.

Something worries me slightly: you do not know this guy. Staying in a flat with someone you hardly know,  other than through phone calls, in a foreign country and culture, is a risk. Chances are the risk is minimal, but why put yourself in that position? And what would you do in the worst case scenario? Sharm is incredibly spread out and very difficult to get around without a car. If  you had to get to the airport or hospital in a hurry, how would you manage that? It’s not as simple as just dialling an emergency number, or calling a cab. If you’re not staying in a hotel in Sharm, life it really not as straightforward. The hotels are there to make things easy. Taxis wait around them and reception will organise pretty much anything you ask them to.

Think of it like this: would you want your best friend to go and stay with someone she hardly knew in a country where she doesn’t speak the language and get a contract/marriage she doesn’t fully understand?

The other thing that this guy knows is that you like attention and flattery. Really, who doesn’t?! It’s not a weakness, it’s totally normal, but just because someone pays you a lot of attention, does that mean that you should be considering marriage – either full or orfi?!

If you feel like having an adventure, by all means go back to Sharm, with a friend to look out for you and stay in a hotel. Don’t get any sort of contract, don’t stay with him. Don’t make it so easy for him: if it’s true love, he will understand why you don’t want to stay with him just yet.

…….

It would be fantastic if you lurkers would get in on this. In case it adds to anything, our commenter is 35 and the waiter is 24.

This post is not about Egyptian men. There are no generalisations made other than this: women are women, men are men and nationality does not determine ‘goodness’ (or ‘badness’). All comments are moderated and no rude, rasict or otherwise derogatory comments will be accepted.

Admittedly I’m in a grumpy mood today: I always am after a bad night’s sleep.

But, but BUT, I wasn’t last week when I went shopping and I was superbly pissed off then too.

I walked into La Senza at our local hypermarket/shopping centre. It was about 9.30am and there were seven guys in their twenties, two of whom were clearly behind the tills, the rest were just hanging out, chatting with the two female floor assistants. Of the guys there, four were clearly watching me as I perused the lingerie. One of the girls came to follow me around and smooth out anything I even breathed on.

I hate that. I don’t care if they do it when I’ve left the shop, but following me and straightening every, single hanger while I’m there, like I’m ruining their display of hanging garments, which is there so that people like me come and look and then, presumably, buy, drives me nuts. Team it with some sexually repressed spectators and, La Senza, there’s not a hope in hell of me getting out my credit card.

So, I left the shop last week without buying. Not before quick glance at the two guys who were still watching me, then the two cashiers, then the guys sitting around the changing rooms with the other floor assistant and saying, in Arabic, loud enough for them to hear, “So, this is where all the guys come to hang out?” and walking out.

Today I went in just to see if it was different. Instead of seven, there were five guys.

I just don’t get it. It’s lingerie. It’s a conservative society. Women are covered up to protect their modesty, and so as not to titillate men, but lingerie stores have men working the tills? I know that there are bra stalls in markets and women pick their bras in full view of everybody, not just the male stall holder, but this is (for Egypt) an upmarket, expensive store.

It’s not just La Senza. A few shops away is Women’s Secret. They have a female floor assistant with a man on the till. The same with Nike Woman. Is it that Egyptian women cannot count and so cannot be trusted with tills? Nope. Perhaps it’s the patriarchial society. I don’t know. I don’t CARE! I don’t want some guy folding my bras, checking out if I might need another size (what the hell does he know about how bras fit?!) by asking and taking a quick ‘glance’.

Egyptian women are smart. They are also really nice and friendly. I would have probably bought something in all three stores today had there not been men checking out what I was going to be wearing for Mr S (and him alone). Egyptian men are also smart, but there are plenty of other retail ‘experiences’ that talented men can work at, there is no reason for them to be pawing my panties!

Nope, this is not a post about how you have to be nice when you drive in Egypt (just for the record: you don’t, if you are, you’re probably not alive to read this now).

It’s a post about green car licence plates. Here in Egypt personnel from embassies, the UN and the high ranking Arab League staff have a green licence plate on their cars. As if that didn’t single them out quite enough, there is also a number denoting which embassy/organisation the car comes from, which proves useful for the concierge – it lets him know how deep to bow, before the car stops. Kidding – well, sort of. Devised in Nasser’s time, numero uno goes, of course, to Russia. Take that US and UK. You’re not number one. Egypt can have other friends too. Ha!

Right.

The benefit of a green plate is that you can do what you want on the roads. Yes, if you’ve seen Cairo traffic, you probably thought you could do that anyway. The difference is that you can talk on your phone without worry that you might get spotted and possibly thereafter get a fine. You can park wherever you want, without worry of getting clam-bed (clamped). You can drive the wrong way around a roundabout and nobody will bat an eyelid. Oh wait, that’s just normal. There’s not a chance that you’ll ever get your car damaged as it’s being towed off by authorities. Best of all, and this is truly useful, you can bypass the automobile pushing, shoving and shunting that happens at checkpoints at busy times and just whizz through (or mount the pavement and whizz around), without having to show a driving licence or passport.

Wait, does that mean you don’t actually have to be able to drive if you have green plates? Hmmm. That hadn’t occurred to me until now.

Despite all these liberties diplomatic immunity heralds, driving around in a metal box that says, “Hello everybody! Yes I’m foreign, yes I’m (comparatively) wealthy, yes I’m here officially and yes, I’m from country X.” isn’t necessarily all that great. Not that it makes them a target. No, no, no. It just means that they’ve got barely anything to discuss when it comes to making small talk with strangers.

It seems that when all this happens on our own turf, we get a little antsy. BLOGitse has an article about unpaid car fines from London embassy staff. Now, we all know that Egypt has a bureaucracy large enough to stuff governmental buses full of workers from Cairo to Mars, and it’s fairly obvious to anybody who has been to the mogama’a when it opens (8am in case you’re wondering) that not everybody at work is actually, umm, working. But let us not scoff. Is it not better to have an army of officiates who take a bit of time to have their ful sandwich and shay before they get down to an hour’s productivity, than an overstretched bevy of bureaucrats chasing fines on cars with diplomatic immunity?

I wrote a while ago about foreign women marrying Egyptian men. It led to a full inbox of questions. I thought I’d take it a step further and explain that there are two types of marriages in Egypt.

First is the ‘official’ marriage. This is where the bride is dressed up (usually in white) a large venue is booked, official photographs are taken, videographers are often present, and copious numbers of family, friends and colleagues gather, dressed up to the nines and celebrate as lavishly as the couple’s families’ budget allows. For Christians there is a church service beforehand and for Muslims the religious ceremony happens before the wedding party, sometimes months before, and will always involve at least the bride and groom’s close family members. This is because, for marriage to be fully sanctioned in Islam, it is essential that ’society’ knows about it. It is unheard of for a couple to disappear and come back together married.

The second type of marriage is called orfi marriage. This is a fully sanctioned Islamic practice. This wedding, however, does not involve the family, does not have a party and for, the most part, is done in secret. Within the religious culture there are explanations for its existence. In reality it has seedy connotations, (the equivalent of legalising prostitution), as well as romantic starry-eyed ones (students who want to get married but know their families would not agree). It is, however, regarded by NOBODY (the State included) as being an ‘official’ marriage.

The problem with orfi ‘marriages’ between Egyptian men and foreign women (perhaps the same goes the other way around too, I just haven’t heard of it) is that there is usually a huge gulf in understanding the concept of orfi ‘marriages’ between the two people. While the man/Muslim who has been brought up in a culture where he understands the difference from day one, and is used to the idea that the sanctity concept of the word ‘marriage’ applying only to the ‘official’ type, the woman/non-Muslim (or recent convert) often doesn’t fully understand this.

In reality, orfi ‘marriages’ are little more than a contract that allows the couple to live together and share hotel rooms together. They call each other husband and wife, but, and this is where the problems often come in for the foreign party: despite the husband/wife terms being used, there is absolutely no necessity for the underlying intention to be together ’til death us to part’.

The heartbreaking confusion that unfortunately seems to arise from this misunderstanding is common. Neither side is to blame – it’s just one of those cultural misunderstandings arising from cultural differences. It took me about five years of living here and watching how things work to get my head around the fact that when a man is calling someone his wife, it doesn’t necessarily mean she is his life partner if the marriage is orfi.

Perhaps most importantly, in an orfi ‘marriage’, there are no provisions for the wife if a divorce happens and fathers of children in orfi marriages have only recently been made to take some (limited) responsibility for them. The children, as I understand it, would not have a father’s name on their birth certificate. Orfi ‘divorces’ anyway rarely occur, a separation just takes place and both parties disappear into the ether in exactly the same way as they would had they been boyfriend/girlfriend in the West. In contrast, in the ‘official’ Islamic marriages, there are strict religious and social conventions that are followed before the marriage that set a framework for provisions in the case of divorce.

There are some common stories (involving foreigners) I’ve heard throughout my time here:

- A man from Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Kuwait ‘marries’ a new Western convert. The wedding cannot take place in his home country for some reason that sounds fine to Western ears, convert or not, but is in reality socially implausible (as there is no instance where he would have an ‘official’ marriage without large numbers of extended family present).

- Egyptian man and Western woman get ‘married’. She believes they are now husband and wife…

- Egyptian man and Western woman get ‘married’. She understands it’s a contract, however, after months of referring to her partner/boyfriend as her husband and being referred to as his wife, the connotations of those terms begin, somewhere deep inside, to arouse feelings of the type of security she associates with ‘full’ marriage. When it ends, she feels her ‘husband’ wasn’t taking it as seriously as her.

So, bottom line: orfi ‘marriages’ are not marriages in the Western/Christian concept. Orfi ‘marriage’ = contract to live together without the police interfering.

Perhaps most importantly, not all Egyptian men are love rats. Not by any means. Just as not all American, French, Japanese or Outer Mongolian men are (or aren’t). There are huge cultural differences between this culture and Western culture, with both having some amazing points and both having points I don’t like quite so much. When two people from such different cultural backgrounds come together, particularly when the female partner is from the West, there is a labyrinth of problems that arise purely from cultural differences. Linguistic problems often conspire to make it even harder and of course, there are the typical issues that arise when two characters meet.

Relationships between Egyptian men and Western women can and do work out, but they typically take an enormous amount of time, effort, understanding and patience by both parties. And ultimately, the chances of success are limited if one party does not fully understand the framework of their relationship’s basis.