“If you really want to know a people, you start by looking into their bedrooms.” These are the words of half-Welsh, half-Egyptian Arab sexuality expert Shereen Al-Feki. In Egypt, however, the term “bedroom” refers to any emotional problem that a couple is facing, since this is the area of a house that stands for privacy and is off-limits to the public. Consequently, any emotional, love or sexual problems need to be hidden and should not be played out in front of family and friends, let alone strangers. Any intimate talk is immediately labeled as “eib” (in English, “unorthodox” or “disgraceful”). However, despite all precautions, many bedrooms have a window onto them that opens every Sunday and Tuesday night from midnight till 2am, when Osama Mounir hits the airwaves with his programme “I, the stars and your love”. Mostly anonymous young people call up Mounir — a beacon of hope for average Egyptians — in order to tell him about their love lives and ask him for advice on air. “Callers will take advice in an anonymous manner from an outsider, because casual relationships are not socially accepted in Egypt,” psychiatry specialist Aya Moshtohry explains. “He has become a trusted voice for young people who want to get the opinion of someone who is not in direct connection with their problem,” she adds. In 2012, Mounir received the Best Male Radio Announcer award from Dear Guest magazine, which described him as “clearly born for voice work. He's both delightful and professional, with a soothing voice that his audience simply can't resist,” the magazine said. So who calls Mounir? As Mounir himself puts it, young men prefer to discuss their love lives and problems with their friends because they feel ashamed to be listening to such a programme in the first place. So girls are the main audience. From a psychological point of view, this goes back to the notion that girls are more emotional than boys, according to Moshtohry. “Girls feel much more intensely than boys and dedicate much more time thinking about their love problems,” she added. The programme has been running for over ten years now, and is considered to be an insight into the hidden, intimate underground of human relations in Egypt. “I remember that when me and my friends used to pull all-nighters for the thanaweyya amma [school-leaving exams], we used to turn on the radio to listen to Mounir's programme and have a laugh,” pharmacist Samar Mohamed said. Sometimes, the women calling the programme have low, husky voices and do not mind getting into details with Mounir. But why do we care about looking into other people's “bedrooms”? A recent study by the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Rochester in the US, published in the Journal of Psychosomatic Research, suggested that people who bottle up their emotions are 35 per cent more at risk of premature death. The reasons could vary according to the researchers, as the findings “reveal significant associations between higher levels of emotional suppression and mortality”. “We are a very conservative society, but at the same time a very emotional people. This leads to the bottling up of frustration, because young people — especially girls — are not able to test their emotions in a healthy, practical way,” Moshtohry commented. “In western countries, people are much more open-minded. When a relationship fails, there is barely any negative impact on the person — he/she learns from the experience and moves on. In Egypt, young girls often get complexes when a love-story does not work out.” Egypt as a whole has been undergoing turbulent times and has developed in different directions over the past three years, and this is also noticeable when talking about the problems that Mounir's callers complain about. Relationships failing because of financial problems have become much more frequent than before the 25 January Revolution, and red lines and taboos are more often crossed, to the extent that the director of the show has to filter phone calls before putting them on-air. Such taboos were present before the Revolution, but they have started to become much more visible now. In Middle Eastern society, young people can be guided by “external drives” — a psychological term that refers to external forces influencing the decision-making of individuals. “In Egypt, adults, society and traditions all have tremendous effects on our actions and thus we act according to the people around us,” Moshtohry added. What some might call a “cheesy” show is thus actually an essential opportunity to get advice that goes beyond prejudice and judgement. It has indeed become a bedroom window, and one open to the public, but it also lives up to the level of secrecy and mystery that a bedroom deserves.
