“I'M a stylish young woman from Cairo, aged 36. I'm well-educated, quite nice looking, with a fair complexion. I'm from a respectable family, with my own flat and a car. I'm looking for a man of no more than 45. He must be a tall, handsome, romantic non-smoker who really wants to get married”. To be perfectly honest, it's not me, but a lady in one of the many marriage ads published daily in certain Egyptian publications. It's normally the case of a woman looking for Mr Perfect or a man looking for Miss Perfect. The age of 30 is a demon for every unmarried female in Egypt and other Arab countries. When she reaches that age, it's a turning point in her life and the beginning of a series of endless concessions. Men who propose to these young women are often older men in their forties, whose marriage has been postponed for one reason or another and who dream of marrying a younger woman. When a girl gets older and the train begins to pull out of the station, she has to start thinking of marrying a man with his own problems, perhaps widowed or divorced and with children. According to a recent Central Agency for Public Mobilisation and Statistics (CAPMAS) report, 9 million Egyptians over the conventional marrying age of 35 are single. Surprisingly, the number of unmarried females is only 3.5 million, compared to 5.5 million unmarried males. Amother of two single young men, Soulafa Anis, says that the main reasons for this are unemployment, financial problems, skyrocketing prices and parental demands. "Then there are difficulties finding a flat and scraping together enough money for the wedding and the bare necessities for a life à deux,” she explains, adding that the glamorous models in video clips are also responsible for the delay on the male side. “The way these semi-naked girls dance have changed Oriental men in terms of what they want. Now most guys want to marry a girl with coloured eyes and blond hair, different from Egyptian girls," she adds. However, Soulafa's elder son, Ezzeddin, aged 23, told her that he wanted to marry a veiled respectable girl. He wants his mother to choose a good bride for him, while her other son, Omar, aged 21, is not thinking of marriage as he thinks that "girls these days are only interested in trivial things." Soulafa, who used to work as a matchmaker, says that family ties are not as strong as in the good old days, when matches were made within the family circle, with friends of parents introducing their eligible children or relatives to eligible suitors. "These days, a young man will ask his mother to propose to an unmarried girl on his behalf, simply because she's from a kind, respectable family. But his mother might refuse for some trivial reason like the girl is too short or something. So why is society so astonished about the high rate of the spinsterhood?" she wonders. As well as the above-mentioned ads, there are also matchmaking websites mainly targeting young Muslims living in the Middle East. If you enter one of these sites and register your name, you'll be amazed at the thousands of profiles, searchable by age, nationality and religion. As well as this information and details of physical appearance, some sites post photos of their clients. A browse through the profiles on different Web sites reveals a wide range of demographics: different ages, social classes, professions and educational levels, to name but a few. There are graduates of universities and people who have completed their PhDs, as well as engineers and physicians. Most are aged from their early twenties to 35, but there are also some as old as 50, still looking for a suitable spouse. He's from Saudi Arabia, aged 31, an engineer with an annual income of over US$25,000. He's already married with children. Now he wants to wed a young lady between 18 and 30, with blue or green eyes and brown hair. Not just that, he wants to marry her the mesiar way, a kind of marriage in which the wife agrees to forego some of her legitimate rights. He's Egyptian, aged 43 and divorced with two children. He wants to marry a woman aged between 28 and 60, but she must be British. He's also Egyptian, aged 35, and wants a marriage based on love, personal fulfilment and mutual understanding. "I'm a romantic young man, in search of old-fashioned romance. I hope I'll find a woman who understands me and fills me with love and warmth," he writes confidently. Meeting online is suitable for busy people who have little time for socialising and meeting potential mates. It's perfect for many Egyptians, who don't get a chance to interact much with the opposite sex in their professional or personal lives. One good thing about Net marriage services is that they allow you to choose the characteristics you want in a prospective spouse. But many men use the Web to find girlfriends, rather than potential spouses. Anyway, is it socially acceptable to go looking for a spouse on the Web? "Why not?" asks Fathiya Ahmed, aged 33 and unmarried. She thinks it's great that you can find the characteristics you want in a spouse from adverts in the papers or on the Internet. It certainly saves a lot of time. Cyber matchmaking, she says, also helps people break out of their own small circle of family and friends and search the entire world for the one, perfect partner. “You'll find all types of people, from the serious to the fun-loving. If you find what you're looking for, great; if not, there's no harm in looking,” she says. Essam Abdel Hamid, a 30-year-old physician, sees things differently. "When I read marriage ads in the papers, they make me laugh," he says. One day, he read a marriage ad about a woman who described herself as having a ‘slim body'. “It would be just like proposing to a mannequin in a clothes shop!” he says. "A man who looks for a bride like this is inclined to betray her. I myself refuse to parade my data in front of millions of people. I'm not cheap," says 27-year-old Reham Salah, who graduated from the Faculty of Science seven years ago and can't find a job. “The Internet is a playground for thieves and playboys, although there are also some respectable and decent men who are sincere about looking for a wife. And these sites do make some people happy. But how can I be sure I'd find someone suitable? God only knows,” she adds. "When there's a problem in our society, many solutions are mooted, some good, some bad," explains Azza Korayem, a professor of sociology at the National Centre for Sociological and Criminological Research, based in Cairo. She told the Egyptian Mail that some people only wanted to make money out of spinsters looking for marriage. “Newspaper ads and cyber matchmaking can't always be trusted. A suitor might look great on paper, but how can the girl know the information is true?” asks Korayem. “A young man will talk about the positive aspects of his personality, but not his flaws. He could also be dishonest about his character, appearance, education, even marital status. The same applies to young women too. “It is a kind of fraud,” she says, adding that men and women anxious to marry often don't really find out about the person they find in an ad or on the Internet. “This attitude only leads to an increase in the rate of divorce in the long run.” Prof. Korayem suggests that the non-Governmental organisations (NGOs) should help people find a soulmate, as such organisations want to help them. The motivation isn't money. "Young people should try and avoid anyone who wants to financially exploit them. Marriage is not a business deal, a matter of gain and loss.”
