Laura: Alright, Sophia, quick quiz. When you think of 19th-century sexual freedom, where does your mind go? Paris, right? The city of lights, artists, can-can dancers. And for repression? Probably the Middle East. Sophia: Absolutely. That’s the stereotype, isn't it? The exotic, veiled, conservative East versus the liberated, bohemian West. Laura: Well, what if I told you that a century and a half ago, it was the complete opposite? The Europeans were seen as the prudes, and the Middle East, particularly Egypt, was the place you went for sexual adventure. Sophia: Hold on. You’re telling me the roles were completely reversed? My brain is having a hard time processing that. How is that even possible? Laura: It's this incredible historical whiplash that's at the heart of Shereen El Feki's book, Sex and the Citadel: Intimate Life in a Changing Arab World. It’s a work that was widely acclaimed for its bravery, but also seen as deeply provocative because it pulls back the curtain on this very topic. Sophia: I can imagine. So who is this author who wades into such sensitive territory? Laura: Shereen El Feki is the perfect person to tell this story. She’s not just a journalist who worked for outlets like The Economist; she also has a PhD in molecular immunology from Cambridge and a mixed Egyptian-Welsh heritage. This gives her this unique insider-outsider lens. Sophia: Wow, so she has both the scientific rigor to analyze and the cultural fluency to understand. That's a powerful combination. Laura: Exactly. And she uses that combination to make a bold claim, one she quotes from a Tunisian sociologist: "if you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms." She argues that sexuality is a mirror for everything else—politics, economics, and religion.

Laura: Let's start with that historical whiplash, because it sets the stage for everything. In the mid-1800s, you have two fascinating journeys happening at almost the same time, but in opposite directions. Sophia: Okay, I’m ready for this. Laura: First, you have the French writer Gustave Flaubert. He travels to Egypt in 1849. He’s supposed to be on a government mission, but his letters and diaries reveal his real interest. He is absolutely blown away by the sexual openness he finds. He visits brothels, he writes in detail about his encounters with a famous Egyptian courtesan named Kuchuk Hanem, and he notes how casual and accepted same-sex encounters are. For him, Egypt is a place of uninhibited sexual license. Sophia: That completely shatters the modern image. So he’s the Westerner finding freedom in the East. Who is going the other way? Laura: At almost the same time, an Egyptian imam named Rifa'a al-Tahtawi travels to Paris. He’s there to learn, to observe. And he is utterly scandalized by what he sees. Sophia: Let me guess, by the French decadence? Laura: By their prudishness! He’s critical of relations between men and women, sure, but he’s particularly struck by what he perceives as the French aversion to homosexuality, which was a common and often openly celebrated part of life and literature back in Egypt. He essentially sees Paris as sexually uptight. Sophia: Wait, so the Egyptian cleric was shocked by French conservatism? My brain is officially short-circuiting. What on earth happened between then and now to flip the script so completely? Laura: El Feki argues that a few major forces created what she calls "The Citadel." Think of a fortress. Colonialism played a huge part. The West started portraying the Arab world as decadent and immoral, and in response, a defensive crouch developed. Then came the rise of more rigid, fundamentalist interpretations of Islam, which reacted against perceived Western corruption. Sophia: So it was a cultural backlash. A doubling-down on tradition as a form of identity. Laura: Precisely. And the walls of this Citadel went up. Inside the fortress, there is only one legitimate place for sex: marriage. Outside of it, there is supposed to be nothing. A total public silence. Sophia: But that can’t be the reality. People are still people. Laura: And that’s the core tension of the entire book. It creates a massive gap between public appearance and private reality. El Feki quotes one Egyptian gynecologist who puts it perfectly: "In the Arab world, sex is the opposite of sport. Everyone talks about football, but hardly anyone plays it. But sex—everyone is doing it, but nobody wants to talk about it." Sophia: That is such a brilliant and telling quote. It’s a culture of "don't ask, don't tell," but applied to the most fundamental human experience. Laura: It leads to this strange duality where, on the one hand, you have intense social pressure to be pious and chaste, and on the other, a thriving, hidden world of everything else. And the only way to officially participate is to get into that fortress of marriage.

Sophia: Okay, that makes sense. But if marriage is this all-important fortress, the only legitimate gate to a full adult life, what happens when people can't even afford the entry fee? Laura: You’ve just hit on the second major crisis point in the book. It’s not just a social citadel; it’s an economic one. And the cost of entry is astronomical. This was driven home during the 2011 Egyptian revolution. Amidst all the calls for political freedom in Tahrir Square, one young man held up a placard that read: "GO, MUBARAK, I WANT TO GET MARRIED." Sophia: Wow. In the middle of a historic uprising, his most pressing demand is personal. It’s not just about democracy; it's about being able to afford a life. Laura: Exactly. For many young Egyptians, the political and economic frustrations are one and the same. You need a job to get an apartment. You need an apartment to get married. The groom is expected to provide a fully furnished home, plus a dowry and expensive jewelry. The costs are crippling, and it means people are getting married much later, if at all. Sophia: It sounds less like a wedding and more like a massive, life-altering financial transaction that most people can't afford. Laura: It is. And this economic pressure creates immense strain, especially within the marriages that do happen. El Feki tells the story of a woman she calls Azza, who is a perfect example of this modern conflict. Azza is a professional woman in Cairo, works for a foreign firm, and earns more than her husband, who has a stagnant government job. Sophia: A situation familiar to many women in the West. How does that play out there? Laura: It creates a quiet crisis in their marriage. Azza confides in the author that their sex life is nearly non-existent. Her husband is suffering from erectile dysfunction, and she can't help but wonder if her success, her earning power, is emasculating him within a society that still expects the man to be the provider. He goes to a doctor, who gives him a clean bill of health. The problem is psychological. It's social. Sophia: That's just heartbreaking. Azza is doing everything 'right' by modern standards—she's educated, successful, supporting her family—but it's breaking her marriage apart within this traditional framework. She’s trapped. Laura: Completely. And then you have her cousin, Samar, who represents the other side of the coin. Samar is a stay-at-home mom. Her husband comes back from a business trip to Italy and starts criticizing her. He says she’s let herself go, that she’s not like the stylish Italian women, that she’s boring in bed. Sophia: Oh, that’s brutal. So she’s facing pressure from the outside world, from globalization, seeping into her most intimate life. Laura: Yes. And she’s desperate. She spends money they don't have on weight-loss clinics, but she has no idea how to be more "exciting" in bed. She says she only knows one position. There's no language, no education, no permission to even discuss these things. Sophia: So what are these women supposed to do? It feels like they’re caught in an impossible bind between tradition and a rapidly changing world. Are there any workarounds? Laura: There are. And they are often legally and religiously murky. People turn to things like 'urfi marriage, which is a "customary" contract. It’s basically a piece of paper signed by the couple, sometimes with witnesses, that gives their relationship a veneer of religious legitimacy so they can have sex without it being considered zina, or a sin. But it offers women almost no legal rights or protections. It's a compromise born of desperation.

Laura: And these desperate compromises are most common among the 100 million young people in the Arab world. El Feki describes them as a generation at war with itself, caught in this chasm between the world they see online and the world they’re expected to live in. Sophia: I can only imagine the tension. You have a smartphone in your hand with access to everything, but you're living under centuries-old social rules. Laura: The perfect illustration of this is another story from Tahrir Square. The author is talking to young revolutionaries. She meets a teenage student, Sally Al Haq, who is buzzing with excitement. Sally quotes the slogan from the 1968 Paris student uprisings: "It is forbidden to forbid!" She believes the political revolution must become a sexual revolution. Sophia: A true idealist. Laura: A moment later, she talks to another young activist, Amr El Wakeal. He's a medical student, also fighting for a new Egypt. When the author brings up the idea of personal and sexual freedom, he is aghast. He warns her, "Sex is a bad topic. For your safety, don’t speak here about this." He insists that Egyptians are conservative and religious, and that a sexual revolution is out of the question. Sophia: And they were standing in the same square, fighting for the same political cause. That’s a profound divide. It’s not liberals versus conservatives; it’s a conflict happening within the reform movement itself. Laura: It is. And it’s happening because this generation is navigating intimacy in a complete information vacuum. Sex education in Egyptian schools is a joke. It’s called "reproductive health," and teachers are often so embarrassed they just tell students to read the chapter at home. So where do kids turn? Sophia: The internet. Laura: Of course. They turn to Google, to social media, and very often, to pornography, which gives them a completely warped and often violent idea of what sex is. The misinformation is, as one expert in the book says, "tremendous." Sophia: That sounds like a public health disaster waiting to happen. Is anyone trying to fill that gap with real, helpful information? Laura: Yes, and this is one of the most hopeful parts of the book. El Feki visits a telephone helpline in Cairo called Shababna, which means "Our Youth." It’s run by an NGO and staffed by doctors. For twelve hours a day, six days a week, they answer anonymous calls and texts from young people all over the country about everything from menstruation to masturbation to STIs. Sophia: So there's this official, public silence, but then a literal, private lifeline for kids to get real answers? That's the whole book in a nutshell, isn't it? The Citadel with its imposing walls, and then these secret tunnels being dug underneath. Laura: That's a perfect way to put it. It's a quiet, grassroots effort to provide what the state and the family won't. But it also highlights the risks. While the internet offers connection, it also brings dangers like online harassment, which is a massive problem, and the immense pressure on young women to maintain their virginity, leading to a market for things like hymen-repair surgery. Sophia: It’s a minefield. They are pioneers on a new frontier, but with no map and a lot of hidden dangers.

Laura: Exactly. And when you pull back and look at all three of these forces together, you see the full picture El Feki is painting. You have this ancient, imposing Citadel of Marriage, defining all the rules. Then you have the modern economy laying siege to that fortress, making it almost impossible for people to get inside. Sophia: And finally, you have this massive, digital-native generation of young people who are basically ignoring the walls and tunneling underneath them with smartphones and secret contracts, creating their own rules as they go. Laura: That’s it. The book’s real power, I think, is that it shows that the push for change isn't some "Western import" to be feared. It's an internal, often painful, negotiation happening within families, between couples, and inside the minds of young people every single day. The revolution isn't just happening in the public square; it's happening in the bedroom. Sophia: It makes you realize that a political revolution is one thing, but the revolution in how we love, marry, and connect is slower, messier, and maybe even more fundamental. It’s not about grand declarations, but about millions of private, courageous conversations. Laura: And that’s the hope she ends on. Not a sudden sexual revolution, but a gradual "sexual reevaluation," where people finally have the freedom and the education to look at their lives and decide for themselves what they want to be. Sophia: It really makes you think about the unspoken rules in our own cultures. What are the 'citadels' we live with, the things we don't talk about but that shape our most intimate lives? We'd love to hear your thoughts on this. Laura: This is Aibrary, signing off.