VIRTUAL Desire
SLEEPLESS IN CYBERSPACE
ONLINE DATING IN EGYPT
Remember the Information Superhighway? That was what we thought the internet would be like,
back in the 1990s. These days the World Wide Web is more like an old city of winding souks and secret
alleyways. You can find anything there, including a one night stand, a girlfirend or a wife. And Egyptians
love it. Online dating in the region is enjoying a 10-year-long boom. eniGma’s James Purtill logs on to
find out what all the fuss is about . . .
I
am not lonesome. But for the last
two weeks I have been looking for
love online. Kind of. I have been
trawling naseeb.com, dateinegypt.com
and arablounge.com - websites like
Manhattan skyscrapers through
which anonymous men and women
stare out. I have been chasing down
online daters and lassoing them into
interviews they try to escape. And I have endured many quizzical looks from the office webmaster. I have set up dating accounts under false
names and email addresses and photos. I have
asked each of my friends whether they know
anyone who is doing online dating. It’s for a
story, I assure the friend quickly, duplicitously,
not wanting to be known as the lonely guy who
goes online for love.
Online dating is estimated to be worth U.S.
$3.5 billion worldwide and, perhaps surprising-
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ly, about a third of Egyptian internet users surveyed by a 2010 BBC World Service global poll
thought the internet was a good place to find
a boyfriend or girlfriend. Young, low-educated
males were the most fervent.
Girls and boys date online for different reasons,
a study of American University in Cairo students
has found. Boys generally do it because of a lack
of self-confidence, while girls do it because it
is frowned on for them to form a relationship
with a boy, but they want to anyway. It’s like a
big open secret.
But the study was done way back in 2003. That
is, in the Time Before Facebook. If similar research were done today, one problem would
be distinguishing when a user is angling for a
date, and when they’re just friending. The buzz
these days is around websites like letsclique.net,
which access a users’ online network of friends
to recommend potential dates. Hang on, finding
dates through friends; isn’t that so 1990s? Funnily enough, yes it is.
The genesis story of online dating could go
something like this: In the beginning there
was the word, which was written on paper and
sent across the seas, usually with a nice photo.
Sometimes it was called courting, sometimes
matchmaking. In the early 1990s the word was
digitised. Then photos too. Then things started
moving really, really fast. By the new millennium words and photos were being traded in
programs like Yahoo Messenger, MSN Messenger and ICQ.
Then dating websites followed. They started
out general and all-embracing, like match.com,
then as they multiplied exponentially they became more specialised and boutique. Looking
to meet a fellow Vietnamese? Try VietVibe.com.
A woman from Haiti? Haitidating.com. Want a
mixed race romance? Go to Blackandwhitedates.
com. Fetish? E-fetishdating.com.
Now we’re priming for another jump. We could
go either two ways. Or both.
The dating websites most popular with Egyptians tend to have one of two distinct identities
– one is about no-strings-attached dating and
the other looks a lot like old-school matchmaking. You could say internet dating itself has
a wife and a mistress; a husband and a boytoy; depending on what you want, it can be
the dutiful agent of marriage, or the impish
trickster that tears it all down again.
“Two generations ago people were married by exchanging pictures,” says Naila
Hamdy, an American University
in Cairo assistant professor of
Mass Communications. “Once
upon a time you would meet
your love at the canal side, now
you meet them through the internet café.”
He met his current girlfriend, a Romanian
Christian living in Iran, six years ago in a Yahoo online forum on religion. They remained
friends until last year when they started going
out, but have not yet met. He admits that he
finds the traditional social and financial obligations of Egyptian dating and marriage “exhausting”. But he also thinks internet relationships
can be more honest, frank, and supportive than
the orthodox kind.
“People talking on the internet don’t hide their
hotel. We are introduced through a mutual
friend and go for tea. Ibrahim has been going
out for one year with a Latvian girl living in London who he met on wayndating.com.
“We have not yet met” he tells me, adjusting
the cuffs of his pinstriped suit jacket. “She will
come to Egypt in 2013.”
Zizou wears a silver engagement ring he bought
for his American fiancée the day she left Egypt
to return to the States. That was a year ago
now. They chat online every day.
“If she says she loves me,
then she really loves me. No
one is pushing her online”
And it works in reverse too, she
says. “A lot of young Egyptian
men have emigrated unmarried
and are looking for a young likeminded wife from back home.
It doesn’t have to be dating in
the Western context. It can be a
novel way to find a spouse.”
Hamdy sees online dating as
slipping neatly into a traditional
role: contrary to all that 1990s
Silicon Valley rhetoric, the internet has not become a global
village of anarchy and pornography. It can be a pretty conservative place: to register on Mawada.
com I must swear by Allah that I
am here in good faith to find a
marriage partner, and “not for
dating, friendships, (or) fun
marriage”. The sites’ user profiles do not include photos.
Mawada.com is an extreme example of the ‘walled garden’
approach to internet sites, in
which users are free to play
within strict parameters. Waiting on the far side of the wall are open chatrooms like MSN Messenger, or chatroulette.
com. There are also thornier, wicked kinds of
gardens, like the notorious ashleymadison.com,
which promotes marriage infidelity (“Life is
Short. Have an Affair.”), or dime-a-dozen generic dating sites like datemefree.org.
Ahmed is one of the three Egyptian men who
agreed to speak to me about their online dating
experienc. He is a 37-year-old self-employed
architect. Dialing into the original ‘3-tel’ service
way back in 1992, he was among the very first internet users in Egypt. The country was relatively
closed at that time – it had just three television
channels – but the internet was unrestricted. He
found the international discussion of taboo subjects like religion, sex and politics invigorating.
I make the obvious observation that all
this online relationship building seems
like a lot of trouble. And it could all come
to nothing. Surely there are easier ways to
date? Ibrahim and Zizou are two eligible
young men. They party. They
apparently meet lots of girls
and foreigners through work.
They describe themselves as
good Muslims: they pray every
day and have abstained from
sex before marriage. Neither
is online for a one night stand,
and each is dismissive of the
specialised dating websites. “I
think it’s fake,” says Zizou. “I
would not trust these people.
Everyone is lonely on these
websites.”
But still.
“If she says she loves me, then
she really loves me,” says Zizou.
“No one is pushing her online.
What she says is very true.”
Ibrahim leans forward. “Some
guys do not trust relationships
on the internet,” he says, confidentially. “They say it’s just
to get a visa to travel outside
of Egypt. That’s not true. But I
don’t care anyway. I just want to
be with her.”
I wonder whether some of the attraction of online dating actually
dervives from its hardships and
deprivations. Absence makes the
A profile set up on dateinegypt.com
for this article proved popular
heart grow fonder, and all that.
And this has no use-by date. This
suspended state of delicious anintentions,” he tells me, hunched against the ticipation may last until the actual date. And that
cold in a woolen winter coat and smoking a can be a long time away.
shisha. “Online it’s very hard to hide intentions
from each other. Your mind is very focused on Ahmed, the architect I met earlier, tells how
the text. In real life our eyes occupy all the at- he once made friends online with a mysterious
Greek woman who offered to fly him to a Roman
tention of the mind. ”
hotel, all expenses paid, on the condition they
Once, Ahmed says, he printed and framed a sleep together. A good Muslim, Ahmed refused.
photo his girlfriend had sent and then mailed They stayed friends and a year later he suggested
it to her as a birthday present. “She liked it.” they meet while he was stopping in Greece en
But it turned out the photo was of her friend. “I route to Bulgaria. All went according to plan,
began to get worried. I asked her for her height until she was refused access into the transfer
and weight. Finally she went on webcam,” he lounge. They resigned themselves to talking to
each other from separate info-desk telephones
says. “Oh my God. She was very beautiful.”
on either side of the security barrier, much like
Zizou and Ibrahim are in their mid 20s and each they had always been doing. That was 10 years
work in customer service – Zizou for a mobile ago. They have never met. “She’s married with
phone company, Ibrahim for a nearby luxury kids now,” he says. “We stay in touch.”
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