Hal Antha Muthazawwij...? (part I)
Salaam,
Marriage. That seems to be the hot topic. But to be honest, since iv been living with single brothers ranging from 18 - 27 years of age in the last few months, i shouldn't be too surprised that this Is the hot topic on everyone's minds, should I...?
Then we have the middle east - my location for the last few months (For Americans: Jordan and Egypt are in the middle east). The problem starts though when you combine Marriage and the Middle east.
There is a huuuge problem of epidemic standards which is occurring in the middle east - that is of people who want to get married but can't. A local brother told me that in Egypt alone there are over 5m women who are over 26 and not yet married. Similar problems are faced in other middle east countries. The reason? MONEY. It seems that for a guy to be able to get married in these parts (as with in other countries) he has to have a furnished flat for him and his wife to live in. Then there's the wedding itself which needs to be paid for, on top of that there's the dowry and so on. Since the average Egyptian guy earns 800 Egyptian pounds a month (80 English pounds) this is virtually impossible to do and thus we have the situation we're in.
The side affect might not be too bad though. It means that westerners (with their western passports) have become hot property and many guys who come to the middle east to learn Arabic, end up returning home with a wife. In Jordan this wasn't too bad (as Jordan is doing pretty well these days) but in Egypt its ridiculous. Just from the people i've met in the last two weeks, 4 of them have got married here, and a Lot of other students are thinking about it. And this seems to be with the approval of the Egyptians since they actively seek out westerners for their daughters to marry.
So the killer question is "Hal antha Muthazawwij?" - "Are you married?". Most brothers have been approached by one person or another and yesterday was my turn (I shant say which number this was...lol). It was a friend of my flatmates who's been living in Cairo for six years, who also has a Egyptian wife (he's from the US). He works in a posh English language school and when a lot of these families found out he was American, they started inviting him to their houses for food etc as they knew he would know single guys from the west. And so he asked me yesterday...
Marriage. That seems to be the hot topic. But to be honest, since iv been living with single brothers ranging from 18 - 27 years of age in the last few months, i shouldn't be too surprised that this Is the hot topic on everyone's minds, should I...?
Then we have the middle east - my location for the last few months (For Americans: Jordan and Egypt are in the middle east). The problem starts though when you combine Marriage and the Middle east.
There is a huuuge problem of epidemic standards which is occurring in the middle east - that is of people who want to get married but can't. A local brother told me that in Egypt alone there are over 5m women who are over 26 and not yet married. Similar problems are faced in other middle east countries. The reason? MONEY. It seems that for a guy to be able to get married in these parts (as with in other countries) he has to have a furnished flat for him and his wife to live in. Then there's the wedding itself which needs to be paid for, on top of that there's the dowry and so on. Since the average Egyptian guy earns 800 Egyptian pounds a month (80 English pounds) this is virtually impossible to do and thus we have the situation we're in.
The side affect might not be too bad though. It means that westerners (with their western passports) have become hot property and many guys who come to the middle east to learn Arabic, end up returning home with a wife. In Jordan this wasn't too bad (as Jordan is doing pretty well these days) but in Egypt its ridiculous. Just from the people i've met in the last two weeks, 4 of them have got married here, and a Lot of other students are thinking about it. And this seems to be with the approval of the Egyptians since they actively seek out westerners for their daughters to marry.
So the killer question is "Hal antha Muthazawwij?" - "Are you married?". Most brothers have been approached by one person or another and yesterday was my turn (I shant say which number this was...lol). It was a friend of my flatmates who's been living in Cairo for six years, who also has a Egyptian wife (he's from the US). He works in a posh English language school and when a lot of these families found out he was American, they started inviting him to their houses for food etc as they knew he would know single guys from the west. And so he asked me yesterday...
This entry is getting long so i'll split it up...
Salaam.
posted by Me at
9:45 PM
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