Cairo youth break sex taboos

As part of a series about young people in the Middle East, the BBC News website explores relationships in Cairo where sex outside wedlock is taboo - but some say not uncommon.

Fatima and her boyfriend had been together for about two years when she discovered she was pregnant.

"I had to have an abortion. I didn't want to do it, but in this society I didn't have any choice," she says, now an outspoken 27 year-old.

"I hate it when I remember it, because it was a very, very bad experience." Her family know nothing of her ordeal.

Mido, 28, has had four serious girlfriends. He has had sex several times and feels no guilt, but would never tell his parents.

"I don't have the courage to shake their beliefs - especially my father's," he says.

Niveen, 24, has been seeing her boyfriend for four months. They plan to move in together without their parents finding out.

"Whenever you have a relationship here you have to take risks, and this is the risk I'm taking," she says.

Spending the night together is difficult as both live at home with their families. Even going to a hotel means checking into different rooms and sneaking between them.

Hidden lives

With their secret lifestyles, these three young people from Cairo's liberal, intellectual elite are pushing at the limits set by a society dominated by traditional views.

Even among educated urbanites, the concept of an unmarried mother simply does not exist. A bride's virginity is so highly prized that doctors charge up to 1000 Egyptian pounds (US$173) to reconstruct a young woman's hymen.

But there are perceptions that in general, at least in Cairo, sex before marriage is widespread and increasing as spiralling costs and high unemployment push marriage ages up.

On any summer evening along Cairo's 6th October Bridge, veiled figures nestle up to young men. The couples gaze down into the Nile, engaged in intimate conversation amid the blaring horns and traffic fumes.

Locals will tell you this is increasing as it becomes more socially acceptable, and that many of these couples are from Cairo's poorer areas.

But there is debate over whether this new openness about courtship is resulting in more premarital sex.

Gynaecologist Rima Khofash works among both rich and poor in Cairo and estimates that about 50% of young people have pre-marital sex.

"I think now there is a revolution in sex between young people - they do it haphazardly - often in short-term relationships."

Abortion is illegal in Egypt in all but a few cases. Approximately one woman a month comes to her clinic with complications resulting from a backstreet termination, she says.

Dr Khofash is certain that the number of abortions is increasing: "All gynaecologists know this, but we don't know how much it is increasing by."

'Not widespread'

But Dr Sahar Tawila of Cairo University, who co-ordinated one of the most comprehensive studies ever of young people in Egypt, believes the prevalence of sex before marriage has been dramatically overblown in the Egyptian media.

"It is not widespread. Sexual relationships do exist, but they should be put in proportion."

In the 2001 nationwide study, 21% of young men with higher education said they knew someone who had had pre-marital sex - and this dropped to 1.4% among the uneducated.

Dr Tawila says young people, particularly girls, are highly aware of the risks of pre-marital sex.

For example, Shaymaa, 20, is in love with Ashraf, her boyfriend of 18 months. But she refuses anything more intimate than holding hands.

If she has sex with him, she explains, she may end up being forced to marry him, which she is not yet sure she wants to do. "Virginity is your whole life," she says.

Ashraf, 26, says he has been pushing her towards intimacy: "I just have to stop at a point when I am sure she will refuse to sleep with me - that means she is a good girl."

Many more young women say they plan to stay virgins until they marry. Several point out that girls face more pressure to do so than boys.

"Boys I know have many girlfriends, even at the same time. One of my best friends told me he made love with his girlfriend and then said 'I won't ever marry her - she's not a virgin'," one 19-year-old female student said.

Illegal operation

This pressure drives the demand for hymen reconstruction operations, which can even involve stitching a small capsule of red fluid into the vagina to ensure wedding night "bleeding".

Gynaecologist Ahdy Wahid Rizk says that each week, two or three young women visit his central Cairo clinic to ask about hymen reconstruction, despite the fact that he has always refused to carry out the illegal operation.

But even so, those having premarital sex may well still be a small minority. For those who would like to, there are still many barriers.

Mona, 27, was with her boyfriend for two years: "We didn't have full sex. We didn't have a place to do it. If it was easier, yes, I think I would have liked to. But it's also our traditions that stopped me. I felt guilty about what we did."

And many others simply believe it is wrong, like Cairo University student Mohammed Esmat, 20: "I'm a Muslim and in Islam sex before marriage is forbidden, so I am against it."

Some names have been changed to protect the identities of interviewees.

Source: BBC