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Culture: I Was a Teenage Egyptian

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Interview by Andrew Stelzer and co-facilitated by Jessica Noel
Editor’s Note: This is part one of a two-part series.

Iliana Venz is a 17 year-old from Resistancia, Argentina who was a year advanced in school. Carla Arguello graduated high school in Bogota last year, but decided she was not ready for college yet. Both young women had a dream to study overseas, and through the American Friends in Service program, they each are spending a year attending school and living with a family in Egypt. Iliana is living in Alexandria, and Carla is living in Cairo. They had both heard a lot of rumors and seen a lot on television about how women are treated in the Arab world prior to going to Egypt. But as it turned out, what they experienced was quite different from their expectations.

With their year abroad almost over, Latinitas wanted to get their impressions of life in a Muslim country. In part one of this two part series, we start our conversation talking about marriage, and the differences between a wedding Iliana attended in Egypt and what she is accustomed to in Argentina. At the Egyptian wedding, women, including the bride, were not allowed to dance…

Iliana Venz: What I found most amazing is that in the mosque, in the office in the Mosque, the girl is not answering for herself. The dad is answering for her. You know, she is sitting behind, and they are making the wedding vows without her.

Andrew Stelzer: Instead of saying “I do,” the father is saying, “She does.”?

IV: She’s not in there….and now, at this time, she’s present. But before (in years past) she didn’t used to be present, she was in another room.

AS: So did you ask anyone about the bride who couldn’t dance? Did you get to ask her, “How do you feel about that?”

IV: Actually, there’s a really good friend of mine, and I asked her, “What if you dance at a wedding?” And she told me, “First my brother and my dad would not allow this. And second, if they would, I wouldn’t want to do it, because all the men are staring at me, and I don’t think that’s good for me.” She’s like, “I saw the faces of the men when a girl dances, they are like dogs.” Like they want to throw themselves over her.

AS: Do you think that would happen?

IV: No. Not here.

Carla Arguello: She’s just intimidated. The wedding I was at, everyone was dancing.

AS: Men and women separate, or right next to each other?

CA: Well, as you’ve seen here, everybody dances like this (Demonstrates dance. Shakes fists without moving the rest of her body.) That’s why you don’t see any salsa or merengue dancing. They can’t dance together. It was really nice for me because in the wedding, it’s the first time they (the bride and groom) get to touch each other in public, and they kiss. But it’s really like a formal kiss, a really innocent kiss.

AS: But they can touch hands right?

CA: Yeah sure, but you notice, it’s the first time in public she’s doing it.

AS: Do you get the impression that a lot of Egyptian girls that are married aren’t happy?

IV: No. I have the impression that the marriage here is like an appointment--they had to do it. In a certain a period of time in your life you have to do this. And maybe they like the man they are marrying. But it’s like an appointment, it’s not something like they want to do, like they wish to do it and they are committed to this person because they love this person. No, they have to marry. And I think now, the man likes the woman and the woman likes the man, so they say “Okay, I will marry you.” But they don’t really love each other because they don’t have a way to know each other. So I really don’t know. My host mom, she told me she was in love with my host dad before they were married. They were kind of friends, they were never alone of course, but they were going out in groups and stuff.

AS: How old are your host sisters?

IV: One is 19 and the other is 15. The one that is 15 is living with me, she goes to high school.

AS: And she’s younger than you, so she has a lot more rules.

IV: Yes. It’s like she goes out once a month, and she goes out to a cafe with her friends, and my host mother is even there. And she goes back home, and the rest of the time she studies or goes to private lessons, and that’s her life.

AS: And does she tell you that she wishes it was different?

IV: Yeah, kind of. I was talking to her, and she said that she wishes she had more freedom because I was telling them that I don’t have a religion, but I do believe in God. Not because somebody’s telling me, but because I want to. So she told me that she would like to have the same choice—to have the freedom to do things and to choose what to do and what not to do. She’s happy being a Muslim, she wants to be a Muslim and she wants to follow the rules, but she doesn’t like somebody imposing them on her.

AS: Do you guys have the same rules (to Carla)?

CA: Yeah. I think I have the most Westernized family in the whole group (of exchange students). My host dad, even though he is Muslim, he doesn’t follow many of the traditions. He drinks, he doesn’t pray, and we call him “The Australian crocodile hunter” because he's always wearing a hat like that. I adore my host dad here. He has lived in Italy. He has lived in England. So, for example, he doesn’t want my host mom to use a veil. He always gives them (mother and sister) a lot of freedom, but with some Western type restrictions,--you’re not supposed to do certain things, but nothing unusual. I have the same rules here as in Colombia. I even have more freedom here than in Colombia in terms of time because Cairo is a very safe city, compared to Bogota where I live. So in the summer, I can be outside some days, if it’s the weekend, up to one in the morning. In Bogota, I have to be back home by 10.

Jessica Noel: And what do you do when you go out here?

IV: Go to malls…

CA: Yeah, typical things: malls, clubs, or cafes. Egyptians wake up very late so their day finishes very late, too.

AS: You chose to come to Egypt, you must have thought it was going to be very restrictive, No?

IV: I don’t know. Many of the things I thought would happen, or it was going to be like, are not like that. Like they are less conservative. And most of the things I thought would be more open, they are not—they are really closed.

Part two in this series will focus on gender equality and the difficulties the young women encountered at school.

October 2007