Quote:
Originally Posted by Georgina
Having lived and travelled around Egypt for five years I have experienced a lot of attention and harrassment. I definately agree that what you wear makes a difference and your attitude. If you look scared and vulnerable I am sure someone will play on that. Ignore them and speak some words of Arabic and they should stop. However, a lot of women fall for Egyptian men and have fun or get married and suddenly these guys are living in nice apartments and driving nice cars so you can't blame their friends for wanting the same.
The worst cases of harrassment I have received in Egypt from men have actually been from European men! But the only time I have actually felt threatened and vulnerable was whilst being sexually harrassed by a young girl! I was visiting Aswan and staying at the New Cataract Hotel and decided to walk up the hill to search for the Nubian House restaurant. It was late afternoon and I didn't realise that the area was going to be so quiet and deserted. I thought the restaurant was close so continued walking. To start with a guy was walking down the hill towards me and stopped before we passed and stood by the side of the road holding himself. I completely ignored him and kept walking. For a while he followed me but I totally ignored him, didn't walk any faster or looked concerned and he stopped. Next I had a pack of desert dogs come running down the road barking at me. I ignored them and kept walking avoiding eye contact and everything was fine. Next I passed half a dead cow by the side of the road! I eventually got to the restaurant but they weren't serving food until much later. The view was definately worth the effort looking over the cataracts. I decided to chance walking back down the hill rather than wait for a taxi. When I got to a really quiet part a young girl dressed quite poorly and covered came running and shouting up the road behind me. She kept asking me for baksheesh and I said why and no. She then said baksheesh or Mohamed will come indicating he would do something with his fist towards my skirt. I ignored her so she started shouting for Mohamed. There was no-one around so I kept walking. She then started to touch me all over and starting breathing strange by sucking the air through her teeth and telling me I was beautiful. I kept telling her to p*ss off and started telling her she should not be doing this to tourists although she didn't understand me. I also spoke to her in Arabic. She then kept trying to pull up my skirt and I was really shouting back at her. For sure I would have given her baksheesh to stop this but was afraid to now get my purse out of my bag incase she snatched the whole lot including my credit cards. I kept pushing her away from me and trying to walk on. She then ran infront of me, lifted up her dress, pulled down her pants and exposed herself to me. I then shouted as loud as I could telling her to f*ck off, p*ss off until eventually she ran away.
Would I walk up this hill again? Yes, but I would probably have some money ready so that I could try and get out of this situation that way. And I would dress more appropriately and not in a skirt that revealed my lower legs.
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I am so sorry to read of Georginas experience, I think it still upsets her now. Its obvious she did nothing to encourage the persons strange behaviour.
My other experience was to be locked in a shop unknown to me as I browsed around.
What I would like to do is to learn some useful Arabic to help me get out of these situations and get an arabs view of how to avoid these situations ie should I look stern when I walk around a shop, or is there a suitable word I can use as soon as the flirting starts to make the offender stop his actions immediately. Please remember that I do dress very respectabily and sometimes wear headscarves.