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“What if she doesn’t want to marry him?” I questioned. This confused my mother, “Why would she take him to court then? What else would she want from him?” She replied as if she was asking, “Why don’t you pass the falafel to your brother?” or “Are you dressed for school yet?” This law, much like the majority of Egyptian laws, was set by Islamic precedents. And we weren’t even Muslim. We, like our neighbor, were Coptic Christians—less than 10 percent of the Egyptian population. None of this fazed my mother. She didn’t fight the backwards ideologies, and my neighbor didn’t fight her rapist in court.What’s the point? In Egypt, a woman was only as good as her hymen. So, naturally, eight-year-old me wondered what it would be like to marry my own rapist. I first weaved romantic fantasies about him. Maybe he really loved me, so he forced himself on me so we could spend the rest of our lives together? Maybe he was really lonely and this was his only ticket to companionship? Maybe we would be happy? After my demented justifications I spun around Middle Eastern Prince Charming, I ultimately decided to kill my phantom rapist with a poisoned onion.By 1999, the Egyptian cabinet voted to repeal the law on rape, which completely exempted a rapist from punishment if he married his victim, after increased pressure from women’s rights groups. Although I’m told this is a bullshit formality. Actually, I’m told sexual assault trials in Egypt are a bullshit formality. Less than a year ago the Egyptian military detained female protestors in Tahrir Square for “Virginity Tests” and then threatened them with prostitution charges. Senior officials initially defended these “tests” and the military’s actions. They later apologized, but no member of the military was ever tried for sexual assault.
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“About?”
“Parliament is discussing a bill that would allow a man to have one final farewell with his wife after she dies,” she told me.
“What does that mean?” I asked her.
“He would be allowed to lay down with her one last time,” she explained. I’m 27 years old but I’m unmarried, so my mother often tangos with me around the word “sex.”
“I still don’t understand.”
“A man would be able to engage in his [pause] marital right up to six hours after his wife dies,” she explained, this time with the same tone I imagine she would use to describe the end of the world.On Wednesday, Egyptian media reported that the Egyptian parliament will introduce the “farewell intercourse law” so a man could have sex with his dead wife up to six hours after her passing. Last year, Zamzami Abdul Bari, a Moroccan cleric, sparked debate about the issue, arguing that a marriage was still valid after death. Egypt’s National Council for Women is already campaigning against the change. Some Egyptian citizens are outraged.But in the Middle East, religion rules all. Religion justifies all. I imagine this Moroccan cleric read in the Koran about the Prophet Muhammad lying with a woman in her coffin, interpreted the passage literally, and proposed this law. All of the issues surrounding modern-day Egypt become secondary while the government promotes necrophilia vis-à-vis a religious justification. With problems like poverty, overpopulation, illiteracy, failing health care, and not to mention the, uh, social revolution, the Egyptian parliament should absolutely spend its time on a post-mortem sexy-time piece of legislation.
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