The Bachelors of Egypt is a contemporary novel set in Egypt 2011, a narrative of a few bachelors’ lives in Modern Egypt, their hopes, fears, interactions and how they fit within the “Boxes” of the Egyptian society. Introducing a mix of love, fun, career progress, casual dating, vacation trips in a timeline of blood, anarchy, tyranny, economic instability, and consequent clashes post the Egyptian revolution of 2011.
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In this
article:
1- The Egyptian Society: - Helpful tips to understand the social structure.
1- The Egyptian Society: - Helpful tips to understand the social structure.
2- Marriage in Egypt: - Social and economic complications associated with marriage, along with marital trends over the years, and traditional social judgments.
3- The Egyptian Revolution of 2011:- reviving a dissolving piece of history.
4- The main topics covered within the incidents and dialogues of “The Bachelors of Egypt”.
5- The Bachelors of Egypt- Book chapters.
3- The Egyptian Revolution of 2011:- reviving a dissolving piece of history.
4- The main topics covered within the incidents and dialogues of “The Bachelors of Egypt”.
5- The Bachelors of Egypt- Book chapters.
1- The Egyptian Society:
- Black humor is the most popular form of communication among Egyptians, laughing out loud at the biggest of their problems.
- Football AKA Soccer is the most popular sport in Egypt, and the only life interest that beats the popularity of black humor.
- People living in Cairo don’t visit the pyramids every day, they don’t kneel before the Sphinx, they don’t ride camels, and rarely even realize the existence of these stuff.
- Egyptians wear jeans and shirts, work for corporates, have internet connections, and are influenced by consumerism, globalization, and inequality of wealth distribution… just like the rest of the world.
- A 90% Muslims, 10% Christians (mostly Orthodox) population, your religion gets officially documented when you’re born based on your family’s religion.
- Government’s policy toward religious freedom: your religion is all over your official documents, from birth certificate to national ID, only the two religions stated above are recognizable, and you’d better stick to your family’s religion, or you’d be compromising “National Unity”, “National Security”, and a bunch of other Nationalistic notions.
- A huge amount of males in the population are named “Mohamed” and “Ahmed”, usually called by their last names (Family’s or Father’s name), as both names have apparently lost their significance over the years.
- The most popular footballer in Egypt 2011 was “Mohamed Mohamed Mohamed Aboutrika”, commonly referred to as “Aboutrika”.
- Low cost of education; as public schools and universities are almost free of charge, however, you can’t complain much about the quality of “Free Education” within a developing country.
- An illiteracy rate of 23.7% as declared by the state’s statistics agency, which means a real rate anywhere around 30%.
- A poverty rate of 27.8% as declared by the same agency in 2015, you can only imagine the real figure nowadays.
- A general lack of belief in science, lack of scientific means to gather insights, on both the public and private sides of the country.
- Prostitution, drugs, weapons, and antiques trafficking are among the evergreen industries in Egypt.
- The black market is much greater in size and impact than the “white market”.
- If illegal products and services would all disappear one day, it’s highly likely that Egypt would face a severe economic crisis.
- All economic indicators are inaccurate, and often irrelevant, as the Egyptian economy consists of three main funnels, 1- Black market’s economy, which includes every illegal activity, 2- The Army’s economy, as the Egyptian Army is a main player in fields like FMCG, Oil and Gas, Construction Services… with “Classified” balance sheets that are not open to the public, and 3- The white market’s economy, as the main source of all economic indicators.
- Hash is the most popular drug in Egypt, followed by weed (which is usually cheap with a low level of quality), followed by several types of chemical pills.
- There are “Playstaion Shops” in Egypt, in which you can rent a Playstaion and pay based on an hourly rate.
- Playstation shops are the second most popular hangout places for Egyptian youth, after Coffee Shops… Both businesses are usually unregistered, illegal, and a part of the black market’s economy.
- “Blaming the victim” is among the most common syndromes in the Egyptian society. Why shall we bother ourselves with your problem when we can simply blame you for it?
- Citizens of Egypt can’t possibly be grouped under the umbrella of a single culture. With relatively huge distances, there are significant differences among Egyptian sub-cultures. For instance, people of Sinai (the huge piece of land next to the Gaza Strip) usually referred to as “Arabs of Sinai” have their own cultural aspects that are closest to the lifestyle of “Arabs” residing in the desert a thousand years ago. When the people of Nubia who reside in the south of Egypt, and north of Sudan have their own unique cultural heritage in terms of traditions, norms, values, clothing, songs, art… and even their own unwritten language, descending from an ancient Nubian state that used to be a rival of the pharaohs. Unlike Nubians, the Pharaohs have vanished with almost all of their cultural aspects; however, a few of their traditions have survived along with their pyramids, sphinx, temples and statues.
(Image source: CIA Factbook)
- “The Bachelors of Egypt” is primarily based on the interaction between residents of the capital, Cairo, who mostly belong to the middle class.
