Free Sex and the Citadel by Shereen El Feki Page A

industrialization in the nineteenth century and founded a dynasty that lasted until the revolution of 1952. Beyond the mosque’s vast domes and soaring minarets is a terrace with commanding views. On a clear day—admittedly rare, what with Cairo’s pollution—you can see right across the city: straight down, along the twisting alleys of Khan al-Khalili, the souk that was once the trading heart of the city, to gleaming skyscrapers in the north, its twenty-first-century successors; across the Nile, to pyramids in the distance, ringed by luxury housing compounds with names like Dreamland and Beverly Hills; to a glance over the shoulder at a tumbledown, off-the-grid ‘ashwa’iyya , Cairo’s answer to the favela. From the Citadel, you begin to appreciate how difficult it is to ever really know a culture at its most intimate: so many people, so much diversity, such a tumultuous time. No wonder the great writers of Arabic erotica called on God’s blessing before embarking on their labors.
    When it comes to sexuality, the Arab world can seem like a citadel, an impregnable fortress whose outer face repels any perceived assault on the bastion of heterosexual marriage and family. But the reality, as I have found through my travels, is that there are plenty of openings—not just innovators who are working for change on a larger political, social, and cultural canvas but ordinary people trying to find happiness in the miniature of their own lives. Not once, in all my travels, was I ever rebuffed when I broached questions of sex; in fact, the poorer and less educated the people, the more open I found them to a frank, and often very funny, exchange of views.
    This was especially true of wives, who were generally more articulate on these matters than their husbands, partly because of their greater ease at talking with someone of the same sex and partly because of the heavier burden they carry; when among female friends, they were happy to let their hair down, in all respects. People opened up to me in remarkable ways, even men I knew would never bring up such issues with their wives or sisters, mothers or daughters. Such candor came, in part, I think, from a relief in finding someone from a place where sex was something that could bediscussed without judgment or censure but who also had a grounding in their own culture. I was both an insider and an outsider, which could have been the worst but turned out to be the best of both worlds.
    This willingness to talk, and to listen, to those who don’t necessarily share your point of view will be crucial for Egypt moving forward. The drive to conformity and consensus is a feature of authoritarian regimes; democracy needs a respect for disagreement and competition. The uprising, and subsequent political developments, have accentuated a split in Egyptian society—between a minority who espouse liberalism and a majority who adhere to conservative values. Such differences were steamrolled under the old regime, but are springing up in the new landscape. How these groups manage to coexist will be a huge challenge for Egypt’s emerging political, social, economic, and cultural order.
    When they had little political clout, Islamic conservatives frequently seized on sex as an easy way to attack the regime; less often did they criticize the immorality of torture, economic injustice, or corruption. It is to be hoped that new political powers, of all stripes, will devote more time to fixing these and other fundamental failings of the past sixty years than to arresting men who have sex with men, or banning movies and censoring the Internet, or repealing laws that empower women, the cornerstone of social change. Realistically, though, sex will continue to raise its tantalizing head in running battles between liberals and conservatives in the years to come.
    How Egypt comes to terms with the sexual issues discussed in this book has implications beyond its borders. Although its society has been