Reading Radwa Farghali's Baghaa Al-Qasiraat (The Prostitution of Minors), published this month by Dar Al-Mahrousa, Mohamed Baraka bemoans the dearth of literature on sex A century after Freud, the notion of children having sexual impulses carries ironic resonance. Though no longer contested at the intellectual level, it is only ever cited by paedophiles eager to justify themselves; but where the fight against paedophilia has assumed public, arguably exaggerated form in the West -- any form of exchange between a child and an unrelated adult is viewed with suspicion -- back here the attitude is such the phenomenon is hardly ever mentioned. Not so surprising, perhaps, considering the extent to which sex remains taboo in "eastern" society, where sheer prudery is often confused with an ethical stance and systematic repression results in various forms of schizophrenia: witness, for example, the sexual-harassment discourse in relation to hijab. Cheering, then, to find a Master's dissertation in sociology tackling just such an issue published in book form. In fact Radwa Farghali's Baghaa Al-Qasiraat (The Prostitution of Minors, Cairo: Dar Al-Mahrousa, 2007) is so well written it has made the transition out of academia effortlessly. As a book -- and there is practically no difference between the dissertation manuscript and the book -- it is not only valuable and revealing but, perhaps most importantly for the layman, eminently readable. Presented in the framework of the somewhat wider topic of children and sex, the study begins with an extensive exposition of the questions at stake, touching on various topics of the utmost relevance to Egypt's present-day sexual problematic, and reaching back into the history of thought for inspiration. The author explores the etymology of the word prostitute, for example, revealing the connection between its Greek root and the tendency to ply the sex trade on the street as opposed to pleasure for money per se. (Naturally, the etymology of various Arabic terms and the differences between them are also discussed at length.) The author also delineates the economic, social and political conditions of baghaa' in a range of historical contexts. Spotlights on various points in Egyptian history at which the official position on the practise changed -- the significance of "pleasure taxes" for male and child prostitutes under the Mamelukes, for example -- are particularly praiseworthy. So is the author's treatment of the earliest organised brothels in the modern sense, which arrived, along with the print press and many other aspects of modernity, with Bonaparte's campaign of 1798, and were further legitimised with the introduction by the British of compulsory health checks licensing prostitutes to practise by way of preventing sexually transmitted diseases. Not until she has completed her in-depth review of the history of prostitution in Egypt from ancient times to the present does the author progress onto her narrower subject. In the process she also takes in Egyptian legislation prohibiting prostitution -- a result, as she contends, of the worldwide adoption of the principles of the French Revolution and the Declaration of Human Rights -- which, whether directly or through loopholes routinely exploited by lawyers, tends to punish the victims far more than the true beneficiaries of the practise, whether pimps or "clients", including paedophiles. But it is in her fieldwork -- undertaken mostly at the Juvenile Detention Institution in Ain Shams, with 13- to 17-year-old convicted prostitutes -- that Farghali comes into her own. In presenting her subjects -- recounting their life histories in detail, and drawing every relevant connection between their individual conditions and the wider context in which such conditions will be operating -- Farghali maintains an admirable balance between sympathy and objectivity. In the end she manages to be both informative and practical, though her work makes for devastating reading. For sheer non- judgmental detail, the cases of teenagers Hayat and Mona are impressive instances of that approach. Born to a 43-year-old mechanic -- described as "sturdily built and emotionally volatile", and his 36-year-old housewife -- a graduate of the commerce faculty, divorced with a girl from her previous marriage, Hayat was the eldest sibling in a large, dangerously unhappy family. The father was consistently violent, often absent, and paid no attention to his children's most basic needs, especially the girls; the mother struggled to make ends meet. Due to the father's culturally rooted misogyny -- his attitude could be summed up in the question, "A girl's future is marriage, what would she do with an education if even the boys who would support her, after earning, degrees, cannot find work?" -- it was Hayat who bore the brunt of economic deprivation: she was subject to long fits of weeping and bouts of violence, often self-harm. Before the age of 15 she had given up school to work at a clothing factory so she could help with the family expenses; the father had refused to cover her fees. Now the hours proved long, the work exhausting, and she was earning no more than LE15 a week. By the time she decided she would stop working at the factory behind her mother's back -- Hayat was aided and abetted by a slightly older girl -- she had lost her virginity to one of her workmates and, realising that she could bring her mother just as much if not more money by simply enjoying herself with other boys -- or, rather, older men, she and her friend eventually moved into an apartment of their own. Hayat had been scared when she broke the taboo on premarital sex, but her workmates soon reassured her that it was common practise. It was at the new apartment -- on the occasion of her friend's birthday: Hayat was barely 17 -- that the two girls decided to invite their "friends" for a party involving beer and marijuana. Together with the noise and the sex, this disgruntled the neighbours who alerted the police, and within weeks Hayat had ended up at the Institution. By which time she discovered she was pregnant. Apparently "repentant", at 17 Hayat is already single mother -- and her strongest impulse is to murder her father. Born in Tanta, Mona, by contast, had known neither father nor mother -- much. She had lived with her paternal aunt in Cairo since she was an infant, seeing her father -- a poor cobbler with heart trouble -- only a few times before he died while she was nine years old; and her mother, who quickly married herself to a much older landowner once she was widowed, only had time for the children she took with along with her to the new household. Mona developed severe antisocial tendencies and attempted suicide twice. Ironically it was during a visit back to Tanta that she decided to enrol in a literacy class at the age of 12, and there fell in love with a young man with whom she eloped to Kafr Al-Sheikh where they lived in a single room as husband and wife. She was soon pregnant, but her partner wouldn't marry her until she had an abortion -- which she did. Then they concluded a 'urfi (unregistered) marriage, but a month later he was gone and she couldn't find him anywhere. Back in Tanta, she moved in with a friend of hers who lived with a disabled grandmother, and together they learned to prostitute themselves with the poor on rooftops and empty lots, where they were frequently subject to abuse and where their clients often failed to pay them. It was on one such occasion that Mona was arrested, at the age of 14 -- an event she describes as her "release" from drudgery. Unlike Hayat, who would like to go home but only if her father wasn't there, Mona has nowhere to go and no one to talk to, so the Institution may not be such a bad idea. But it is well to remember -- and Farghali gives us plenty of reason to do so -- that it is the likes of Hayat and Mona, not their "partners" nor their parents, who are actually being punished. And the oldest among them is not yet 18.
