Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 1: The Coder

A sits by the fire in a Dahab restaurant. The youngest of five children, he’s 26, tall, cleanshaven, and plays PlayStation football with the devotion that an older generation of Egyptian men play backgammon. He speaks excellent English and is working on a range of other languages using a voice recognition app on his iPhone 4.

We’ve been talking about Saladin, always a good thing in this neck of the woods, and the conversation turns to life.

“Of course I was in Tahrir Square. But after the revolution, all of a sudden there was no money,” A says. “We weren’t paid for ten days, for fifteen days, and then it was wait a month for the money and take a 20% pay cut, so I left.”

“And came here?” I ask.

“No,” A laughs. “I sat in my father’s house for a month or so. Then I got up and came here.”

“Do you like it?” I ask. A studied computer science at university and was working as a Java programmer in Cairo. From my British perspective, the move to hospitality work seems like a step down.

His face lights up. “I love it. It’s so beautiful here: the desert, the mountains, the sea. I work long hours – 15, 16 hours a day – but it’s not real work. Talking to you now, I’m working…”

“Playing PlayStation with Z, you’re working…”

“Yeah,” he laughs. “One day I’m going to take a holiday, 12 days or so, and do all the things the tourists do here – quadbiking, diving, climb Mount Sinai…”

“You live in the guesthouse?” I ask.

“Yeah,” he says. “I have an apartment. A huge apartment. One room with a bathroom, but a big room, you know?”

“More space than at your sister’s house in Cairo,” I say. He laughs.

“So what do you think will happen in politics now?” I ask.

A takes a deep breath and looks at me. “I think you have to agree,” he says, cautiously. “That women and men are different. There are things that men are good for, and things that women are good for.”

I attempt a diplomatic response. “Well, most men are physically stronger than most women. So most men are definitely better than women at lifting things…”

A’s expression tells me that’s coming over a little rad-fem. “I’d also agree with you that most little boys and most little girls are different, and that those differences exist from birth,” I say. (There’s nothing like having a child to blow your undergraduate notions of sex and gender out of the window.)

He nods. “So you’d agree that women are more emotional than men?”

“Well,” I say. “I’d certainly agree that most women are more likely to cry than men. But most men are more likely to get angry and hit people than most women…”

A laughs. “True,” he says. “That’s an emotion too… But I think it’s better that the man does one thing and the woman does another. So the man goes to work, and the woman looks after the family. And if you talk to a Muslim woman, a religious Muslim woman, she will tell you the same.”

I try and explain my parents’ lifestyle, where my mother earned the bulk of the money and my father worked from home and took care of me and my brother. “And they’ve been married for over 40 years, happily,” I say. “That’s incredibly unusual in the West.”

“That’s like my sister,” A says. “She’s a teacher. She works all the time. And she has four kids. Bad kids. They don’t obey her. Because she works all day and she can’t be there for them, and when she comes in she’s too tired to spend time with them. Homework, maybe. But anything more? She’s just too tired. I feel so sorry for her. We need to change this.”

“But surely,” I say. “If you’re going to change that you need jobs. You need jobs that pay enough to keep a whole family, not just one person. You need a strong economy.”

“Yes,” he says. “In ten years time, we will fix the economy and make the jobs. And then we can begin.”

Z has made an AutoDance video of one of the cats on A’s iPhone. He shows it to A, who falls about laughing, and after a bit of banter Z returns to reading His Dark Materials.

“There is too much crime. Too much stealing. People are not living as they should do,” A says. “We need the old laws.”

I stare at my beer. “But you have breweries in Egypt,” I say. “So beer for the tourists, and no one else? Like in Dubai?”

“No, no,” A says. “We have Christians here too.”

It is worth observing that, over the broad span of human history, Islam has been much, much more tolerant of other religions than Christianity. There have been Coptic Christians in Egypt since time immemorial and there are other Christian minorities too.

“But it’s crime that is the problem,” A continues. “Alcohol is bad for you; it’s haram and I would never touch it. But it’s crime that is the problem.”

I look across the darkened waters of the Red Sea to the lights of Saudi Arabia in the distance. “You mean…?” I say, and I mime cutting a hand at the wrist.

“Yes,” A says. “Because that’s the law.”

“So how many wives can you have in Egypt?” I ask.

“In law, you can have four,” he says. “But just because the law says I can have four wives, I am not going to take four, you understand? Most men only want one wife.”

“So about divorce…” I say. “Can you just say ‘I divorce you’ three times and the marriage is over? Or do you need a legal court as well?”

“It’s not that simple,” A says. “Maybe I say it once. Then I have to go away, for 24 hours or longer, and if I come back, and I am still angry, and I say it again, we go to see an arbitrator. He talks to us, tries to make things better…”

“Ah!” I say. “Marriage counselling. We have this in some Muslim communities in the UK. The sharia courts.”

“Yes,” he says. “And only if we still cannot agree, after some months, then he divorces us.”

“So what if a woman wants a divorce?” I say. “She can’t say the words, right?”

“No,” A says. “She has to talk to her father, or her uncle, and he will talk to the husband for her.”

I digest this, and try and imagine my poor dad put in this position, a world where I was so utterly disempowered, a world where even a female government minister would have to go to a male relative to ask for a divorce on her behalf. “But what if she doesn’t get on with her father or her uncle?” I ask.

A, in his stripy hoodie, jeans and trainers, looks a little shocked. “Well,” he says. “Well, then she goes to court.”

“When you said ‘some Muslim communities’ in the UK, what did you mean?” A asks.

“I mean we have different types of Islam in the UK. Sunni, Shia, Sufi…”

“There is only one type of Islam,” says A.

“OH!” exclaims Z, who’s been absorbing more of this than I’d thought in between tending the fire, nurturing the kittens and reading Philip Pullman. “That’s like the Catholic church! They say they’re the only one…”

“Yeah,” I say. “But they only got to be the one true church by killing the people who disagreed with them. Can you remember what they’re called?”

“Yes!” says Z. “Heretics. Like the Cathars.”

“No,” says A. His eyes have darkened. “There is only one true Islam, Sunna. The others are not true Islam.”

I decide not to go there.

“So what about the army?” I ask.

After last year’s revolution removed the Western-backed, secular dictator, Hosni Mubarak, a military government took over control of Egypt. Elections have been held and the new People’s Assembly is writing a constitution, but the Cabinet is still composed of military appointees.

“The army is the country’s strength,” says A. “It holds the country together. When the country is ready it will step back.”

“You have a big army?” I ask.

“The biggest in the region,” A says, with pride.

“And when they step back, it will be an Islamic government?” I ask.

“Of course,” he says. “More than 70% of Egyptians voted for the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis.”

“So Egypt will be an Islamic state?” I ask.

“Yes,” he says.

“Do you believe in the caliphate?” I ask. “One great khalifa?”

“No, no,” he says. “Islamic Egypt. Islamic Syria. Islamic Libya. But separate countries, with their separate Islamic governments.”

“So what about birth control?” I ask, as the sheesha pipe goes round. We have been talking for some time now, and a couple of A’s colleagues are settled on the PlayStation.

“Birth control?” A asks.

“Contraception…” I explain what I mean.

“Oh!” he says.

“You know,” I say. “Your sister. Can she use birth control to choose how many kids she has? Or do women have all the kids that come?”

Because Islam prohibits cruelty to animals, but in a country where almost 20% of babies suffer low birthweight few have money to waste on vet’s bills, there are one hell of a lot of cats in Dahab. One of them is in heat, and a gaggle of motley tabbies are chasing the poor creature across the restaurant and under the tables. We look at it and laugh.

“Oh yes,” he says. “That is for the home, in private. Yes, we would have that.”

“A’s a nice guy,” says Z, as he gets into his pyjamas. “Very keen on a Muslim Brotherhood government, though.”

(A did not vote in the election, as he is not registered here, but would have voted for the Brotherhood had he done so.)

“Mm…” I say. “He is a nice guy.”

It’s past bedtime, so I leave things there.

The next day, I say: “You know, A believes in the Islamic punishments for criminals.”

Z looks horrified. “Like cutting people’s hands off?” he asks.

I nod. “Is he Wahhabi?” asks Z.

“No,” I say. “Sunni. He also thinks women should stay at home.”

“Mm,” says Z. “He is a nice guy, though.”

“Yes,” I say. “He is a nice guy.” As, indeed, he is.

I am pondering how it is that A and I can even manage a conversation when our worldviews are so mutually shocking, when I come across this in Steven Runciman’s classic History of the Crusades:

“[Saladin] was a devout Moslem. However kindly he felt towards his Christian friends, he knew that their souls were doomed to perdition. Yet he respected their ways and thought of them as fellow-men.”

I doubt very much that A respects my ways. But I am pretty sure he thinks of me as a fellow human being.

MORE:
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 2: The Bedouin Girl
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 3: The Future Soldier
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 4: The Guide
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 5: The Businessman
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 6: The Taxi Driver
Voices from Post-Revolutionary Egypt 7: The Working Mother