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.
Books sample available for review:
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.
2- Marriage in Egypt:
- People usually live with their parents until they die, or get married.
- Hitting 30 years as a Bachelor/Bachelorette is usually considered “Social Suicide”, as members of your age group build their own Friends/Family Units’-mix that you can rarely interact with or relate to.
- For female members of the society, curfews may be applied by their parents or husbands, regardless of their age.
- Unlike other cultures, you don’t get to be in a relationship because you “Like” your partner, you have to love that partner first, or just lie about it.
- Public display of affection is penalized by both the laws and members of the society, but anything can be done privately.
- “No sex before marriage” is a traditional custom, reinforced by religious values; however, the rule is being broken by an increased number of individuals over the years.
- Marriage costs a fortune relative to your own social class, and that of the person you’d be marrying (usually the same as yours).
- In Egypt, marriage is not only a relationship between a couple of individuals, their whole families get to “marry” each other.
- Parents on both sides of the marriage shall assess the reputation of the other family, their descent, social class, average income, education… before agreeing to a marriage.
- An official proposal usually involves a potential groom and his parents paying a potential bride’s parents visit at home.
- “Saloon Marriages” refers to the process in which the older relatives or parents of a potential bride/groom start searching for potential life partners, getting the potential couple(s) introduced whenever applicable, and ending up with a marriage.
- “Cousins’ marriages” is a traditionally popular custom in Egypt, but has been losing its popularity in the past few decades. A person marrying the daughter of his father’s brother was the most common case, to maintain the family’s name, legacy, assets… and some other reasons.
- Another norm with a decreasing popularity over the past few decades, involves a huge age difference between a husband and a wife. It was generally accepted for a man to marry a woman 10-20 years younger than him.
- Traditional judgments in modern Egypt:
Man
|
Woman
|
|
Single after 30
|
Either too busy chasing
women and sleeping around, or a despiteful person that no woman would like to
spend the rest of her life with
|
Either has a bad
reputation, which led men not to take her seriously, or she’s an ugly
undesired member of the society
|
Sexual Affairs
|
A womanizer… which
doesn’t necessarily harm his image
|
A Loose Woman
|
Homosexual
|
Would occasionally be
beaten on the street
|
Would be sexually
harassed… just like heterosexuals
|
Cost of marriage
|
Gold accessories for
the bride+ an Apartment+ Electronics in the apartment+ Wedding expenses…
usually provided for by the Father of the groom.
|
Furnishing the
apartment except for electronics+ Engagement expenses… usually provided for
by the father of the bride.
|
Divorced
|
Could be a womanizer, a
despiteful person, or sexually incompetent
|
Bad reputation
|
3- Egyptian Revolution of 2011:
A series of protests with a few participants across governorates of Egypt started on January 25th, 2011. Numbers of demonstrators kept increasing, until it reached a peak on January 28th, clashes with the police forces all over the nation have led to their sudden absence. People had to gather and protect their own neighborhoods, while others remained at Tahrir Square in Cairo and other squares across Egypt protesting against Mohamed Hosny Mubarak’s regime.
On February 11th 2011, the former president
Mubarak was overthrown, or “delegated his authorities to the Supreme Council of
Armed Forces”. The Supreme Council was in charge until June 30th
2012, when the newly elected president Mohamed Morsy took office, who was also
overthrown after a year of presidency, on June 30th 2013.
Plenty of documentaries, reports, articles, and academic
papers have covered the events of January 25th 2011, and June 30th
2013, analyzing the conflicts and offering opinions in regard to their impact
on Egypt’s future. Despite the importance of the transitional year and a half between
the overthrown presidents, it’s currently forgotten or usually left out of
discussion. “The Bachelors of Egypt” is set in Egypt 2011, post the Jan 25th
revolution in an attempt to capture the essence of such a pivotal time in a
nation’s history, reflecting on how macro elements of a society may have a
significant influence on each of the characters’ micro-moments and life
choices.
4- The main topics covered within the incidents and dialogues of “The Bachelors of Egypt”:
1. The foundation of morality
2. The myth of income stability
3. Optimism, realism, or how your mindset may influence the universe?
4. Gender pay gap in Egypt and all over the world
5. Charity loans versus grants
6. Globalization’s impact on Egypt
7. Feminism and women empowerment
8. The Cost of marriage
9. When families are “marrying” other families
10. What can be called a revolution?
11. A place where Employment is the only professional virtue
12. Perception of homosexuality in the Egyptian society
13. How much “Hypocrisy” is too much hypocrisy?
14. Are we all tyrants waiting for our chances?
15. Curfews and other regulations for women in Egypt
16. Education system in Egypt
17. Unemployment as an effect of some issues, and as a cause of many other syndromes
18. The value and dangers of truth telling
19. Corporate life, what you may expect as a “competent employee”
20. What happened when Egypt was ruled by the Supreme Council of Armed Forces, reviving a dissolving piece of history
21. Loyalty, friendship, and other values
22. When corporate decisions are handled by sexually aroused/sexually deprived male professionals
23. A rising interest “To know” faced by a general lack of facts and studies
24. Teamwork in the Egyptian culture
25. Dating, romance, and pickup lines in a “Conservative Society”
26. Unity among Muslims and Christians within the Egyptian Society
27. The global myth of elections
28. When Corporate life turns into Corporate slavery
29. Seeking economic stability versus pursuing the goals of a “Revolution”
30. We’re Conservative… but not that conservative
A few other general/specific topics are briefly included
between the lines of the story, without providing the model answers for what’s
right. The pages display conflicting opinions of some human beings along with
their strengths and flaws… Angels and devils are excluded.
Details of each character’s personality, social habits, life
preferences, and level of influence aren’t described at the beginning; they’re
rather kept for the reader to discover with every new chapter.
5- The Bachelors of Egypt book chapters:
Chapter 1: The Game Plan
Chapter 2: The Price of Dignity
Chapter 3: It’s Showtime
Chapter 4: A Healthy Bank Statement
Chapter 5: The Unpredictable
Chapter 6: Who’s In the Room?
Chapter 7: Feeling “Special”
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