Western Media is very prevalent in Egyptian culture, especially for young, computer literate individuals. While I was teaching English courses in Alexandria, a large city on the Northern coast of Egypt, a common beginner-level topic was favourite movies. It turned out that Titanic had a lot of popularity in Egypt. Other favourites were older romantic movies, and current English-language comedies were also popular.

Although Egyptians consume a large amount of Western media, Cairo is the media hub of the entire Middle East. Egyptian Arabic is the most commonly understood dialect of Arabic in the Middle East thanks to the huge export of music, actors, and films coming from the Egyptian capitol. Maybe my students were naming English movie titles purely for my benefit, but despite the fact that Alexandria is only a few hours from Cairo by train, Egyptian movies were rarely discussed in my classes.

It is not uncommon for media from western countries to be censored, to better fit the values of the country. I recall watching a movie where the two main characters appeared to be great friends throughout the entire film, but liked to cuddle and play guitar together. I felt like something was missing, and when I looked the title up on the Internet, the original plotline had them together as lovers, not cuddling, music loving pals.

           While Media can be heavily censored, and public behaviour is normally conservative, there are still places in big cities like Cairo and Alexandria where the youth can indulge in more risqué behaviour. Take for instance feluccas, long, open topped boats that float down the Nile. These boats are captained by young men, and are common places to take an evening date. They play loud music, and dancing takes place, with anyone invited to join, though the dancing can be extremely sexual in nature. The most common form of dance is for two or more of the men (never the women, unless they are small children) to grind up against each other, spinning their hands, and doing a sort of sexual fighting dance. Children are often present on the boats, and happily imitate their elders. To someone like myself, used to western media being censored for small acts like kissing in films, this seemed very sexual and out of place in such a conservative country, especially with small children watching and imitating.

A past-time in Cairo: taking a felucca down the Nile. These small boats burst with loud beat-heavy music. Men entertain the riders by dancing with each other- often extremely sexual in nature, the dancing is copied by the younger children watching.

        The felucca seemed to be another sort of place entirely from the everyday streets of Egypt. It was a place to go and indulge in behaviour that would be entirely inappropriate elsewhere. 

Youths relaxing at sunset on the Alexandrian Corniche. 

         Other places where normative, expected behaviour varies exist beyond these boats on the Nile. In Alexandria, there is a large, very busy road the boarders most of the downtown center to the North, called the Corniche. It acts as a sort of divide: the activities to the south of the road are appropriate and traditional, carried out in the full view of the city. The activities to the North of the road bend the rules, with the cars driving quickly on one side, and the ocean on the other. The youth of Egypt treat this place as a sort of liminal area. When strolling down the Corniche, it is common to see young couples sitting very close together facing the water, and occasionally holding hands. There are still societal rules here though – kissing would be completely inappropriate. 

A couple relaxes on the beach in Al-Agami, a suburb of Alexandria. 

       The liminality that exists on the corniche extends to other waterfront areas as well. In the suburb that I lived in, Al-Agami, there was a large beach, divided into public and private sections. In the public sections, anyone was welcome to come and sit for free. They were frequented by families and groups of locals. Young boys who collected a few coins when you entered past the barrier between private and public watched the private sections of the beaches. They would provide chairs and umbrellas for a small fee. In the space of the private beach, it was more common to see Foreigners, and Egyptians who would be considered upper class, and able to afford the few extra coins it would cost to sit on a chair with an umbrella, rather than on the sand. Here it was acceptable for couples to act affectionately towards each other in the same way that it was on the corniche.

Liminal space in Egypt allows the citizens to indulge in behaviour that normally would not be acceptable, be it hand holding or dancing in a very sexual manner. These liminal locations let young Egyptians try out acts they see in Western media that would probably be frowned on by their elders.  

View of the sea from one of Alexandria's abundant cafes.