Well done Noha :)))

BBC coverage here


An Egyptian man has been jailed for three years with hard labour for sexual harassment of a woman in the street.

Now for the Reason

I have a new toy, it’s an Arabic newspaper called “El Dostor”, which I think means “The Constitution”. Anyway, it’s new because I have never read an Arabic paper before. Anyway, anyway, in today’s edition Wednesday 16th May they have dedicated a whole page to the sexual harassment issue, there are 3 separate articles written by one person (I think), named Ehab Abd El Hamid.

Now for the stats: (bear with me while I translate)

22% of Egyptian women are sexually harassed everyday, sometimes more than once a day
30-40% of the sexual harassment cases are of the “dangerous” kind (physical harassment or a man flashing his private parts)
28% of women over 40 get sexually harassed (not sure why over 40 is an issue, but there you go)
28% of the offenders are men over 40 (does this mean they are harassing the 28% of women over 40?)
60% of Egyptian women were sexually harassed as children
Only 2% of victims actually bother informing the authorities (and we all know why)

The writer states that he got the above stats from the Egyptian Center for Women’s Rights study.

Cont..in next post

Now for the Reason 2

Now for the Scary Bit:

“Dr Fadia Abu Shehba, Professor of Criminal Law at The National Centre for Criminal & Sociological Research, states that 20,000 cases of rape take place each year, i.e. 2 rapes every hour, and that 90% of the offenders are unemployed.”

“The Ministry of Interior states that 52,000 cases of sexual harassment and rape took place in 2006.”

And like the writer says, these numbers are just a fraction of reality. We all know what happened over Eid.

Now for the Law:
Basically even though there are laws against harassment, a guy can get anything from paying a measly LE30 fine to life imprisonment, nobody takes them seriously, not even the poo-lice, who have been known to partake of this national pastime themselves with great pleasure. Or ignore it when it’s happening right before their eyes, the Eid incident again.

Now for the Optimist:
I still say we can do something about this, we can create some sort of movement, we can get a new law passed, like the one they have in Dubai, where a guy who harasses on the street gets jailed and they put his picture in the paper to shame him. Forget that, I would be happy with just the jail part, even if it’s just a single night in a cell. The poo-lice will do the shaming part I’m sure. Who’s willing?

Sexual Harassment Delivery

Of course I have my own sexual harassment story to tell, it happened in the pre-car period of my Cairo life. Which by the way has provided me with much needed protection, even though it only takes about 5 mins of driving for me to completely lose it, at least I don’t have to deal with about 90% of the harassment that I did pre-car.

One night as I was walking to the hairdressers a pubescent creature on a bike came up behind me very quietly, grabbed my boob quite casually and pedaled away as fast as his grimy little legs would go. I was so shell shocked I had no idea what the hell I should do, apart from scream profanities at him as loud as I could, in the hope that someone with an ounce of decency would intervene and maybe knock him off his bike (which looking back is what I should’ve done). Nobody even batted an eyelid.

To cut a long story short, I jumped in a taxi and attempted to find him before breaking down and wiping my tears away with tissues offered to me by the nice taxi driver man. A couple of hours later, after getting my hair done (what?), Hori and I went on a manhunt for a cretin wearing a red football t-shirt with the number 10 and some foreign players name on the back, the only description I had to go by. It must have been red t-shirt night.

As always, cont in next post...

Sexual Harassment Delivery 2

A couple of weeks later, this time in broad daylight I was walking home, and some lad again on a bike, started following me, I wasn’t about to let that boob incident happen to me a second time, so I waited till we were face to face, and I asked him “Fee 7aga?” (Is there something I can do for you?) and his reply was “Aiywa, ayez ado something I can’t really repeat on this blog.” (Yes, I would like to put something where the sun does not shine).

So I challenged him to do it, a sort of come on then if you think you’re man enough, he was taken aback by this but kept circling me with his bike anyway, not quite sure what to do next, and this didn’t make his small talk any more polite.. so I made like I was going to run after him, and I was wearing my trainers this time and had every intention of knocking him to the ground and kicking the kaka out of him. So he rode off.

Now there is a reason for this random rant, and seeing as blogger doesn’t usually let me write anything longer than a paragraph, I will continue in za nekxt wan.