El-Hawamdia, a poor agricultural area on the outskirts of the Egyptian capital Cairo, was once famous for its sugar factories. Now, however, the village, which is about 40 kilometres south of Cairo, is famous for its sellable women. "It's a marriage that doesn't conform with the law. It's also against the Islamic religion,” she told the gathering. Abul Qomsan, who has done enough research on the issue, met many of the girls who got married to wealthy Arabs. Some of them told her that they preferred to get married to rich Arabs rather to getting married to poor Egyptians. She quoted one of these girls as saying: “They buy us golden presents and give us money.” Some of these girls get married three times. Others get married more in their search for money. The experts who met in Cairo to discuss this phenomenon, which has been sweeping rural areas in Egypt for a long time now, cite poverty and joblessness for this rising trend. They called upon the Egyptian Government to take an action to punish parents who force their female children to get married against their will for the sake of money. "I don't know how the women of the nation accept for themselves to be commercialised like this?” asked Mohamed Shahat, an official from the Supreme Council for Islamic Affairs. "Women shouldn't get married before they're 18 years old,” he added. The marriage underworld in some of this country's rural areas is weird and the Government is UnawAre of its intricacies, experts say. They add that there is a price list for women in these areas. In this list, a virgin is always higher in price than a woman who got married once. A woman who got married once is also more expensive than the one who got married twice and so on, they say. Egypt's Chief Prosecutor has recently ordered the arrest of a man who married off his underage daughter to a wealthy Arab, by fabricating her birth certificate. This coincided with the launching of a new campaign by the Family and Population Ministry against the marriage of young Egyptian girls to wealthy tourists. The Ministry's staff have also made a survey of three areas in the 6th October Governorate near Cairo. The survey produced shocking results. It says that 74 per cent of girls in these three areas get married early in their lives for money. Another study has said that 11 per cent of girls in this country get married this way. It cites rampant illiteracy as one reason for this. "Poverty and illiteracy aren't an excuse for people to sell off their daughters," Abul Qomsan said. "We must warn people against this marriage,” she added.
