Sex and the Citadel (13 page)

These women should know, since they are busy asking Zizi to do the same to others. “I earn a lot making
‘amal
. Sometimes they give me two hundred pounds [thirty-three dollars] for one,” she notes. Her most popular item is a
hijab
—which, in this case, means “amulet” to keep husbands faithful. It is an intimate affair: “I ask only for the underwear [of the husband] and other things. I read specific Qur’an verses depending on the women’s problems. Usually I read the Yusuf verse,
^†
especially for women complaining about their husbands. I tell them to put it [the
hijab
] under the pillow or under their mattress. They do that because they want their husbands to see them and listen to them only.”

Zizi picked up her skills from her mother, who in turn learned them from her own mother, when the family was living in a rural area south of Cairo. She says the
hijab
are effective, according to customer feedback, though she can’t speak from personal experience. “I never tried
‘amal
or
hijab
before because I had a love story with my husband. I am married for more than five years and knew him for two years before marriage. That is why I don’t need
‘amal
.”
She shares her philosophy with customers, free of charge. “I see that women who come to my shop are not happy to practice sex with their husbands because all of their lives they are raised that sex is haram and shame, which I do not believe. I say that women should show their husbands that they are interested in sex and happy to do it with them in order to decrease problems with their husbands.”

With that in mind, and back in Cairo after my travels, I met with Azza and her sisters. They were certainly curious about the assorted devices in the foreign aid package I had assembled, and there were gales of laughter as we went through the vibrators, massage oils, and other items. Three of the sisters were single, and although they were boldest in asking questions, there was no way Azza—who’s the eldest—was letting them take any of the stuff home for further research. The married sisters—Azza, Iman, and Wisam—were just as interested, though wary of how their husbands might respond to such innovation in the bedroom. Indeed, a couple of Azza’s other relatives, who had hoped to attend our gathering, were prevented by their husbands from leaving the house in the first place. Several times an hour, Azza had to break away to take calls on her mobile from anxious menfolk wondering what their women were up to. “I can’t believe it. He keeps asking, ‘What is she [Shereen] saying? What are you doing?’ ” Azza fumed after yet another call from her brother. “They go out every night and do I don’t know what. But the moment we have something to do for ourselves, they complain.”

MEN ON TOP

What men want is an interesting question. While there is a growing body of research on married women’s sexuality, husbands in the Arab region are more of a mystery when it comes to hard evidence on sexual attitudes and behaviors. This may seem a curious gap, given just how dominant men are in societies across the region; in Arabic, this masculine authority even has a name—
qawama
. But it is this very dominance that has, until recently, made married men
a sideshow when it comes to research on sexuality. This work has tended to focus on problems—violence, disease, exploitation—in populations at risk. Framed this way, married men—pillars of the patriarchy—don’t exactly fit the mold of a vulnerable group. The very word for masculinity
—rujuliyya
—is a relatively new coinage in Arabic, and it is only in the past few years that masculinity studies, looking at how men define themselves and are defined in society, has started to take root in the Arab region.
⁸³

The menfolk of Azza’s circle seem conflicted when it comes to sex—like so many of their countrymen, as emerging research shows. On the one hand, they are obviously keen to maintain their authority on the home front and see it as their manly role to lead their wives in intimate affairs. On the other hand, one or two of the husbands were quite clearly discouraged by their spouses’ sexual passivity—for its impact on her pleasure, as well as how it rebounds on their own. They described their struggles to talk through these issues with their wives—a communication gap that, on further probing, appeared to extend well beyond the bedroom. And yet, when a couple of the wives tried to close the distance by showing some sexual spark, their men found this disconcerting, some even describing it as shameful.

Aside from notions of female virtue, this lukewarm response has its origins in a long-standing male concern: impotence. In Egypt, this sexual anxiety starts for many men on their wedding nights, with the fear that they will be
markhi
, or limp. Studies from across the region show that upward of 40 percent of older men may be suffering from some degree of erectile dysfunction, with younger ones also feeling the pinch.
⁸⁴
There are a number of reasons that men are failing to make the grade in the bedroom. Some are physical, among them complications arising from diabetes or hypertension and smoking, all frequent among Egyptian men. The fear of impotence has even been pressed into the service of public health: recent warnings on Egyptian cigarette packs show a picture of an upright cigarette wilting, its ash about to fall like an avalanche, accompanied by a sobering prediction: “Smoking over a long time weakens marital relations.”

Other causes, some Egyptians believe, involve darker forces at play. There is a well-known phenomenon in Egypt called
rabt
, which makes men
marbut
. In English,
marbut
literally translates to “tied up,” but in Arabic it doesn’t mean “to be busy”; quite the contrary, in fact.
Rabt
renders a man unable to perform in bed because his brain is not sending the right signals to pump blood into the penis for an erection, so the thinking goes. While this might sound like a plausible hypothesis for a new erectile dysfunction drug, it’s the root cause of
rabt
that is a little more difficult to tackle in a test tube. According to local beliefs,
rabt
is caused by mischievous
jinn
, or spirits, summoned by someone with a grudge—a neglected first wife or ex-girlfriend, perhaps—that bewitch a man’s brain and put him out of action. (Women too can be affected by
rabt
, experiencing symptoms including a vice-like clamping of the legs preventing penetration, bleeding during intercourse, and, my favorite, missing-vagina syndrome, in which a husband cannot find his wife’s relevant parts.)
⁸⁵

While they were happy to talk about relieving
rabt
, the traditional healers I met were reluctant to go into details about how it is cast in the first place. “It’s called
suflii
,” Zizi told me, referring to a type of “low,” or black, magic that causes harm to others—as opposed to the white magic she was practicing. “It’s very dangerous. I do not do this kind of thing,” she said. Zizi hinted that if I were in need of such dark arts, I might try a Coptic priest instead. “It’s done in the churches, not only for Christians but also for Muslims,” she whispered. Zizi’s advice is shaped by an enduring prejudice among Egyptian Muslims that shady practices are the preserve of their Christian cousins. This is a reflection of ongoing tensions between the two faiths, which have historically lived in relative harmony but have in recent years come into bloody conflict. Generally speaking, these clashes are fueled by power and politics, but are very often ignited by some sex-related incident, be it the alleged rape of a Muslim girl by a Christian man (or vice versa) or the incendiary topic of intermarriage between the two faiths.

Suflii
aside, rather less mystical are findings from a handful of medical studies that show that most cases of honeymoon impotence
are due to psychological factors, the majority of those related to “performance anxiety.”
⁸⁶
That men should be suffering a sort of sexual stage fright is perfectly understandable. Matters surely have not been helped by the economic, political, and social pressures building up during the long, sluggish years of the Mubarak regime, which have put men on the defensive—against women, against the government, against each other. Men too are carrying plenty of societal expectations. One male friend, in his early twenties, neatly summed it up: “Being a man is a privilege, but it’s also a terrific pressure.” Moreover, given how little formal sex education young Egyptians receive, how little practical experience they bring to marriage, and how keen they are to prove their manhood, it is a wonder they manage to consummate these unions at all.
⁸⁷

Whatever the reason, the upshot is men with their tackle in a twist. Azza’s husband described how a discreet inquiry around the office revealed twenty of his colleagues with sexual difficulties, ranging from premature ejaculation to none at all. Some blamed it on the economy, others on pollution, but after much discussion they concluded it was a Western-Israeli plot. According to the office consensus, there are secret agents all over Cairo wearing special belts that emit some sort of spray or beam to neuter Egyptian men, thereby weakening the nation and reducing population growth. What’s protecting the agents themselves from such malign effects was not considered; perhaps they are women, or men kitted out in special Western-Zionist underpants to shield them from the blast?

It’s easy to scoff at such notions, and impotence is indeed the butt of a thousand jokes. But for Egyptian men, this is no laughing matter. In Egypt’s patriarchal culture, male self-worth is bound up in the ability to provide for women—materially, but sexually too, which for many men is a straightforward affair: erection, then ejaculation. Failure in this department can have serious domestic consequences: in shari’a, impotence is grounds for divorce. Many Egyptians believe that when it comes to virility, the grass is greener across the class divide. Some educated women I know speak wistfully of the potency of lower-class men, though they are talking
from stereotype, not personal experience. Yet poorer men generally think that the rich are better endowed in the virility stakes.

A case in point is Mustafa, a small, balding forty-year-old taxi driver in Cairo. “I like doing it,” he volunteered during a ride home late one evening. He raised his hands to imaginary reins and started making the sort of
tchk-tchk
noises riders do to get the horses going—which was almost endearing, but for the fact that we were in a car, not a calèche, and racing down the Nile Corniche at seventy kilometers an hour with his hands off the wheel.

It was clear that Mustafa was talking about sex, and he proceeded to elaborate on his habits: “Twice a day—once in the morning, once in the evening,” he said matter of factly. When I suggested that Egyptian men were struggling with impotence and needed Viagra, he was incensed. “No, no, I am natural, no Veeagra,” he shouted, knocking on the top of his metal-clad meter to give me a sense of just how nature had made him.

Viagra is available from almost any pharmacy for around EGP 10 a tablet, without a prescription, prices having fallen precipitously after the uprising; it is also possible to pick up local generic versions with such imaginative names as Virecta and Vigorama. Viagra was initially banned in Egypt in the late 1990s, but has become so much a part of the culture that it serves as an alternative currency in some circles. I know of one man who carries a pocketful of the real thing, picked up in America, for baksheesh; the pills are especially useful, he says, for bribing bureaucrats to finish paperwork on time. Whether the drop in price, as well as Egypt’s drive to root out corruption from the system in the wake of the uprising, will cut down on this gray—or rather, blue—trade remains to be seen. Quite aside from their transactional value, such drugs have also proved a popular wedding gift among male friends, even young ones.

Viagra-free Mustafa was, nonetheless, looking for a little help. “I want another wife. I want sex, three times, four times [a day, presumably]. If I had more money, good food, then yes.” To his mind, money helps relieve the worries, but diet is key: Egyptians are convinced that the more protein men eat, the greater their potency. I
was curious as to how his wife felt about all this. “Nothing, she can say nothing. No sex twice a day and I say, I will have
‘urfi
marriage,” he explained, then turned round to me in the backseat. “Would you like to sit up here?”

Mustafa’s faith in food is borne out by the freezer section at my local supermarket in Cairo. Come Thursday nights, the carts are lined up around the seafood, as middle-class, middle-aged couples snap up bags of frozen Malaysian prawns.
⁸⁸
Egypt imports several billion dollars’ worth of lobster and shrimp a year. I thought this was some passing crustacean craze until Azza explained to me that her husband insists on buying them every week in the belief that it will make him stronger in bed; no sign as yet, she said. Around the corner, a fast-food joint called Cook Door is selling “Viagra sandwiches,” whose active ingredients, such as they are, include crab-sticks and prawns. At Cook Door you can have your Viagra fried or, for the health conscious, grilled; I tried the latter and it was delicious, if not libidinous. This is only one of a number of “natural” remedies for sexual performance. Among the most popular is
gargiir
, or garden-variety arugula, which is the aphrodisiac of choice for poorer Egyptians outside the Viagra-popping, shrimp-scoffing classes. “If women knew the benefits of
gargiir
, they would plant it under their
siriir
[bed],” as the saying goes.

In twenty-first-century Cairo, and across the Arab region, people still turn to herbalists and perfumers for sexual problems and receive much the same remedies as they have for centuries. One of the busiest purveyors is the Egyptian House of Perfumes, with branches across Cairo, including one bustling outlet downtown. Its sign proudly advertises an inventory of a thousand and five varieties, and on first inspection, that doesn’t seem far off the mark. It’s a tiny shop, covered ceiling to floor in jars, drawers, boxes, and bags, stuffed with herbs, roots, and mysteriously colored liquids, and erupting onto the pavement in barrels, bowls, and sacks of grains and powders. A thousand different odors blend into a sensory hum, a stray note of sandalwood or cumin breaking away from the olfactory noise like a single voice rising above the din of the street outside.