Why Marriage in Egypt Can Be a Real Drag

Cairo traffic police have launched a crackdown on joyriding wedding convoys they say add to the already considerable perils of the Egyptian capital’s streets.

 

 A police official told AFP Saturday that traffic agents had been posted at strategic spots across the city to catch offenders and strip them of their licenses.

 

“Over the past two days, 300 driving licenses have been confiscated and the judiciary will decide whether or not to apply permanent driving bans,” he said.

 

Interior Minister Habib al-Adly was quoted as saying in the top-selling state-owned daily Al-Ahram that such measures was required against the convoys “who disrupt the traffic and put citizens’ lives in danger”.

 

Many Cairenes celebrate weddings by hiring cars and motorbikes to tear around the capital’s streets in often ragged convoys, blaring horns and disrupting traffic.

 

Several of these convoys, which often involve hanging precariously from car windows, have ended in tragedy in a city of 17 million where the streets are notoriously dangerous and traffic law rarely enforced.

An Egyptian man discovered on his wedding day that his fiancee of three years was a man who had been concealing his identity behind a veil.

 

The 26-year-old groom-to-be, Tamer Shehata, was notified by a female guest attending his wedding that his would-be wife was a man in women’s clothing.

 

When Mr Shehata confronted his fiancee, he broke down and revealed that he was actually an 18-year-old man called Ahmed Abo Zeid.

 

Mr Abo Zeid confessed that he had tried several times to undergo a sex change but had failed to secure doctors’ approval.

 

Mr Abo Zeid, whose face was obscured to Mr Shehata by a niqab or burka (face veil) said he had intended to tell after they were married, and had hoped to convince Mr Shehata to consummate the marriage.