The sexual mores of Egyptian culture confine sex to marriage, but marriage in Egypt is an expensive enterprise.  For the upper middle class, it requires rings with diamonds — and many of them — a furnished apartment and lavish engagement and wedding parties to entertain the entire extended family.  Families with less money haggle over the prices of refrigerators and washing machines.  The expense and stress of what can be viewed only as a thinly veiled business deal between two families intent on solidifying their relationships means that marriage is often postponed until both parties are in their late 20s.

While furnished apartments and bathrooms with marble, not tile, may be the topics of discussion during these family negotiations, the consummation of an Egyptian marriage ultimately rests on the woman’s virginity. Since there’s no male virginity test, women bear the responsibility for upholding their culture’s sexual morals, and they pay a high price for it. In rural and poor communities, honor killings, like this recent one in Kuwait, are carried out by relatives in an attempt to preserve their families’ honor, and rid the family of both the shame and economic burden of having an unmarriageable female in the family).  Among the middle class and wealthy, losing your virginity before the wedding night entails a visit to a plastic surgeon to have your hymen reattached.  Unlike in the United States, single mothers aren’t a demographic, or the target of social services programs — they simply don’t exist.

Or, to be more accurate, they don’t exist publicly; or at least, they didn’t, until now. Hind el-Hinnaway, a 27-year-old Egyptian costume designer and single mother, has captured national attention and sparked what many hope will blow open discussion about women and sexuality in Egypt.  El-Hinnawy has filed a paternity suit against the famous television actor Ahmed el-Fishaway, demanding that he take responsibility for their child. The two met on the set of his television show and allegedly entered into a civil marriage — a contractual relationship that does not require a wedding, but permits a couple to cohabitate. She became pregnant, and chose to go ahead and have the child rather than have an abortion. When el-Fishaway chose to ignore her, she took him to court and is now suing him in a landmark paternity case — the first in Egypt to use DNA testing.

El-Hinnawy hopes the case will force Egyptians to examine the hypocrisy embedded in their society, which increasingly embraces a model of gender relations embedded in what many consider a dangerously conservative interpretation of Islam.

“I did the right thing: I didn’t hide, and eventually he will have to give the baby his name,” she said. “People prefer that a woman live a psychologically troubled life; that doesn’t matter as long as it doesn’t become a scandal.”

llouison