Dina Ezzat considers the effect of Valentine's Day on the flower trade At 10pm last Sunday, the queue in an elegant and expensive florist's in Giza all but blocked the way into the store. "Tomorrow," Mohamed El-Saidi, the manager, enlightened me, "is Valentine's day -- by far our busiest day of the year. Valentine's Day itself, yes," he elaborated, "but increasingly the day before as well..." The 20 or so clients to whom he was attending were mostly men in their 20s and 30s. They wore swish watches and brandished golden credit cards as they waited; very few would actually touch their purchase. Only Murad, a 32-year-old interior designer, expressed an interest in personally delivering the bouquet to his fiancée -- "by midnight tonight", he said. "She appreciates that." Most would have flowers delivered to their better halves at home or at work the next day; some had not even bothered to make an appearance at the florist's. "I'm here on behalf of my boss," said Wafaa, a secretary. "He sent me to pick a bouquet to be sent to his wife tomorrow." "Valentine's is now firmly established for many Egyptians," the florist went on. "Just as people buy kahk (Eid cookies) before and during the feast, so they buy flowers on Valentine's Day. Many still storm into the shop at the last minute and ask for a dozen roses," he added, "but more and more people are now planning ahead." How and when did Valentine's leap to such prominence in the lives of urban Egyptians? Few people seem to consider the question at all. Most florists agree that the tendency to celebrate Valentine's took off a little more than a decade ago. "It started in the early 1990s," Mustafa Sayed, assistant manager at one shop, pointed out, "but in the last five years people began to celebrate Valentine's on a much larger scale." Neither florists nor anyone else, however, could explain how the day became so popular, far more popular, in fact, than its home-grown equivalent -- the "day of love" instigated in 4 November 1977, by Mustafa Amin. Even more puzzling is the fact that many Egyptians have taken to expressing their love for parents, friends and even school teachers as well as significant others on Valentine's. Embracing Western traditions, prominent economist and political writer Galal Amin points out in his book Whatever Happened to the Egyptians, has been an integral aspect of the development of post-revolutionary society since the 1952 Revolution, often as a means to upward mobility. Westernisation, a recurrent motif in the social history of the last two centuries, "has always been an instrument of... social prominence". El-Saidi's clients on Sunday evening seemed prominent enough in this context, an adequate demonstration of Amin's theory, in fact -- perhaps the first clue to the mystery of the Valentine's takeover. In the 1990s, Sayed recalled, the vast majority of those who bought flowers for Valentine's looked typically rich, with expensive clothes and fancy cars. "One could tell they were Western-educated, well-travelled clients. Today," however, Valentine's is celebrated by a far greater cross-section of the population; it figures on television and the front pages of national newspapers. In the early 1990s no special preparations were made for Valentine's, Sayed recalls. "Now we order the flowers, mostly European red roses and tulips, about six months ahead, we buy heart- shaped vases, candles and accessories for decorating the bouquets about a month ahead, and then, on 7 February, a week before the day, we start to decorate the interior of the shop itself." Many florists reported that orders have increased from one year to the next: some have had to hire extra assistants in the last three years; others have taken to preparing special Valentine's catalogues as well as offering a made-to- taste bouquet service; others still are in the process of creating websites on which to take orders in 2006. Flower- and-chocolate arrangements are more and more popular -- with the result that florists are now collaborating not only with greeting cards but chocolate providers as well. Big business for the blossom trade, in short: florists admit the prices of French tulips or Dutch red roses rise by 100-500 per cent on Valentine's. And the same goes for local species: an Egyptian red rose that cost LE1 in January was worth LE2-3 by the start of February, one florist testified; by Sunday it was already selling for LE5. Likewise French tulips went from LE10 per flower last month to LE15 on 13 February. "Tomorrow," the florist asserted, "I think I will sell them for LE30 a rose." Nor are clients intimidated by high prices: the trend is turning flowers, traditionally the proverbial "symbolic gift", into a present as pricy as any other Valentine's offering. Wael Murad spent LE2,000 on an intricately engraved clay vase with two dozen red tulips in it; at least the vase, the most expensive part of the arrangement, will not wither away like its occupants. "It's true I could've invested in jewellery," Murad said, "but this bouquet will make my fiancée happier than a pair of earrings or a heart- shaped pendant, no matter how expensive they are. So I'm choosing flowers all the same." Few Valentine's shoppers can afford such extravagance, however, and fewer still have fiancées who prefer flowers to diamonds. Florists agree that the vast majority of those who buy flowers go for one to a dozen Egyptian red roses. Few set out to economise, though. "Even on Mother's Day, which is still a busier day than Valentine's," El-Saidi points out, "clients are confined to a budget. But those who choose flowers over any other gift are unlikely to be the kind of people who think about money. You can see the joy they feel while they buy them. But of course, when they go to a nice store and start looking around for something within their means, maybe then they realise they can only afford a single rose -- or an inexpensive potted plant. But even those who have money tend to be more generous on Valentine's." Some clients, El-Saidi added, will have bought jewellery before arriving at the store: they ask for a bouquet that will accommodate a small box in the middle. "So they combine both." In common with many florists, El-Saidi attributed the current boom in the flower trade, which had declined in the 1970s and 1980s, to a growing fascination with Valentine's -- at least in part. Valentine's comes as a life raft to many in this business, but the tale of the flower vendor in Egypt has not been a happy one on the whole. "I've been in the business for over 50 years," Mahmoud Othman, a senior assistant at a downtown florist's explained. "I started as a 10-year-old assistant unloading flowers into the shop every morning. "You see most of those shoe shops with ugly windows, they used to be florists'. In those days flowers were an essential part of the life of the average Egyptian, and they no longer are." However much an imported tradition might reinvigorate the flower business, Othman believes, it remains next to impossible to reinstate the average Cairene's flower-buying habits of 50 years ago. The contribution of Valentine's has turned flower buying into a seasonal pursuit -- better than nothing in profit-making terms, but a far cry from the florist's dream.
