Revolting, not revolution

The Egyptian film Cairo 678 just premiered in Spain. It's about sexual harassment of women in Egypt. The title refers to a particular bus line, but it's much the same in all public transport - so it's actually a good thing that the government has put all-women cars in the subway. It also goes on in the street, when the occasion is propitious, for example after religious festivals or soccer matches.

In the film, the three women who go together to avoid sexual harassment are pleased that the national team has lost a soccer match. It seems that the depression of loss, or the excitement of victory, dampen or inflame the average fan's urge to touch women's asses.

I went to see the film with a much younger friend. We both remembered the harassment we used to suffer, even as small girls. "It's backwardness," we said, and in Spain it faded as the country advanced.

In the case of Egypt it's backwardness, plus a religion that allows sex only in matrimony, and thus predisposes to early marriage. And social conditions, too. Who, in Egypt, can afford to marry at 18 - which, I think, stunts your personal development anyway, even if you can afford it?

Above all, in the Egyptian case it occurs because Egypt, like the whole region, is a patriarchal society, where the male has all the prerogatives and the woman nothing that does not depend on him (as husband, father, brother, policeman, judge, president). She is treated like chattel, owing to immemorial usage. This is why harassment of women goes on with total impunity. Look at a crowd of men here, and it is hard to say if any of them have not, at some moment in their lives, molested a woman in a public place. I doubt it.

It is as if they were exercising an ancestral right, or at least, as if they just couldn't help alleviating the urge. The women are to blame, those diabolical temptresses with tits & ass (and who knows what else - the ignorance about the female body is awe-inspiring) who impertinently occupy space in public vehicles. The poor things are a sorry sight, with 'kerchief and the scowl that tends to result from a frustrated male touching your behind.

But no one talks of this. Except when charges are filed by a woman who has been raped, which is at the origin of Cairo 678. There was a huge scandal, but things go on just the same. Foreign women who live here say they are groped every day, especially if they are blonde.

And now I will tell you my latest experience. Don't worry - I'm now over 60, and at my age all they do is stick their hand in their own pocket, to check that their joystick is still there. It has to do with an Egyptian man, my friend D., who I see a lot of when I come to the land of the Nile. As soon as I arrived he told me he had had to sell his car - "my dear little car" - because he can't maintain it, and needed money. Things are in a slump here since the revolution scared the tourists away.

A few days later I mentioned the film, and asked D. if he had seen it. "No, but I know what it's about. There was a great fuss. This is a real problem. Since we have been without a car, my wife has to put up with it every day when she takes a bus." He said this sadly, with an air of resignation.

In this dawn of the much-touted revolution, what would really be revolutionary would be to do something about this revolting, intolerable matter. What's the good of throwing off a tyrant, if you don't throw off the tyrant, and consenter, that you have inside?