Alexandria's love promenade, police included

ALEXANDRIA: The miles along Alexandria's Mediterranean promenade has witnessed millions of love stories, successful and ill-fated, throughout the years. One only has to stroll by the sea for a few minutes to see the reality. At any given time, provided there is no storm, hundreds of young couples can be seen walking hand in hand or cuddling in the dark. The occasional older, married couple will be spotted, but most of those who frequent the area are young and unmarried.
If the sea could speak, it would tell tales of infinite trysts that took place only meters from its sometimes raging, sometimes calm, waters.
These young couples flee to the promenade to get away from the prying eyes of a society that is still harshly critical of premarital relationships. Girls who engage in premarital relationships outside the traditional family/engagement setting are branded as ill-mannered, disrespectful girls by both sexes, even when the relationship in question is not sexual. Familial restrictions are more lax when it comes to their sons’ relationships, but when it is time for marriage, such a girl is not fit to be his wife or the mother of his children.
Most of the promenade has a wave breaker formed by several layers of cement blocks arranged in a step ladder. The bottom level of blocks is a few meters below where the pedestrians sit. Anyone who bothers to look will see numerous couples cuddling or hugging, in almost total darkness, their faces to the sea. But even then, the prying eyes are watching them.
Elegant graffiti is written across much of the cement blocks, addressing all unmarried couples who dare to grace the sea. The sign “Do you not know that God is watching?” addresses both boy and girl. Girls alone are addressed with “With forbidden love, you ruin your image in the eyes of a man.” Boys are addressed with “Would you allow this for your sister?” or “Do you love her? Fear God and he will let you marry.” Another stone screams “Love is not shameful, but forbidden love is shameful!” A comedian of sorts, writes, “Sorry, no lovers are allowed to descend these rocks.”
People walking at street level pierce the lovers’ back with self righteous, accusatory stares. Older generations will say “What is wrong with the younger generation these days? Have morals ceased to exist?” The young will not sympathize either, saying “I can’t imagine how disrespectful those girls are. They’re disobeying all our customs and religious teachings”. Unlucky couples are subjected to verbal harassment by beggars, street peddlers or groups of young men. Many brand the girl a “prostitute.”
Judging by Egypt’s economic circumstances that make marriage a virtual dream for millions, many of these relationships are doomed. As if the heavy stigma of society and financial problems are not enough, the morality police do not miss a chance to humiliate these couples.
The morality police deal mainly with prostitution, but venture into other areas. Especially on public holidays, the city's promenade, Maamoura beach and the Montazah Palace gardens are crawling with plainclothes thugs employed by the police. There presence is not felt by anyone, since they don’t bother to venture where there are crowds. Rather, they sneak around in dark areas by the beach or between the trees in Montazah for an unsuspecting couple. Bikya Masr spoke to one of these couples, who insisted their names not be mentioned. They are university students from middle-class families.
The young man recalls “All we were doing was sitting under a tree. Lots of other couples were doing the same thing. All of a sudden, someone whispered in my ear ‘Your ID card’. We freaked out, but my girlfriend lied to him and said we didn’t have any ID. He quietly led us to a secluded area. He didn’t insult us or touch us, but took pleasure in mentally torturing us and blowing cigarette smoke in my face in slow motion. We begged him to let us go and he put on a lengthy show during which he pretended to want to let us go, but was afraid of his boss. He took me a few feet away from my girlfriend and spoke to me in a very low voice, all the while scaring me to death. He told me that they had already taken a truckload of offenders to the police station. He waited until I made a mention of money, upon which he accepted fifty pounds of blackmail and told us to stay in a well lit area after that. If we hadn’t had money that day, we would have been arrested and it would have been a major scandal. Thank God for corruption.”
The girl explains their plight. “We love each other, and want to spend the rest of our lives together. But we can’t get married anytime now and our parents will not agree to an engagement. If we were in America, we would just move in together and get married on our own. I envy the Americans and the West for the freedom they have to live their lives.”
This miserable encounter occurred two years ago and they are still together. Since then, they have refrained from walking in any place that may arouse suspicion. They still walk along the promenade; their favorite meeting place despite being members in one of Alexandria’s expensive country clubs. The scene the young man describes can be seen by those who look closely while strolling by the sea. A girl sitting by herself, a freaked out boy a few feet away, and one or two smug looking plainclothes informants.
Fortunately, this is by no means the fate of every couple looking for a romantic moment. Many have never encountered this problem and never will, but a combination of bad luck and chance won’t be evaded by all.
There is not much opposition to the activities of the morality police. Many say “there should be someone to teach those disrespectful youngsters a little discipline. Can’t they be respectable and wait till they are able to get married like decent people?”
Being able to get married, for some people, means men waiting until they are in their late thirties or forties, and women being forced to accept much older men as husbands for fear of becoming “spinsters.”
These young lovers’ reaction is not to stop seeing each other, but simply to search for safer places to be alone, like an empty apartment. If sexual relations get involved and their relationship does not work out, the girl must resort to lying and deceit to deceive her future husband into thinking she is a virgin. Such is the stigma of being Egyptian.
In the end, neither society’s restrictions nor the police have done anything except breeding a culture of lying, hypocrisy and double lives whereby innocent people are forced to say one thing in public and do another when no one is looking.
BM