Egypt: Where You’re a Celebrity by Force

By Salma Ahmed

Managing English Editor

It’s the Middle of July and in between my regularly scheduled visits to the university and my constant Twitter rants, I managed to escape reality for a week and take a 10-hour bus ride to East Egypt. After spending the better half of my trip slipping in and out of consciousness, I was finally there.

Skip the madness of checking in and settling down and I was laying on the beach in my favorite swimsuit, with no intention of getting into the water. The beauty and serenity of the Red Sea had me hypnotized during my stay. I spent each of my waking hours in a daze on the beach, soaking in the sun and the clarity of mind. I made it my mission to reverse my night-preferring ways during my stay to ensure I could spend the optimum amount of time on the beach.

The peace and quiet did not last long as the closer to noon the time got the busier it got; still, that did not faze me much. What did faze me though is the three men, in their early 20’s, who spent their time weighing out their options before settling on a pair of young women.

Very slowly and strategically they approached their poor victims, two young women who appeared to be in their late 20’s. They then gazed over them and finally without any verbal communication (thanks to the language barrier) two of the men handed their friend a phone and stood next to the two women with their arms around their hips to have their pictures taken.

Awkward smiles were exchanged between the two women as they slowly walked away from the predatory interaction. The men’s actions could be justified by their fragile masculinity, where they need pictures standing next to attractive foreigners to post on their social media to ensure their title as macho men is preserved. What cannot be justified is when a father forced his 7-year-old child to pose next to a mother and her daughter from overseas for a picture.

What is this obsession we have with foreigners and why do we feel the need to objectify them to no more than pretty faces and appealing bodies? There is an abundance of these two things among Egyptians and yet no foreign man in his right mind would ever approach an Egyptian woman asking for a picture with her, as she would undoubtedly raise her voice at him for being a harasser. So they know it is wrong and that it is something unacceptable but on the beaches of Egypt they are doing it to those who dare not object in fear of being rude.

This experience only adds to the sea of ways Egyptians have yet to mature, but oh well what’s new.