Secrets of Ancient Egypt

Wafaa cooked this up today. With three simple ingredients she is able to acheive what millions of women spend (no doubt) millions of dollars on. Just cook up some water, lemon juice and sugar, and say goodbye to razors and wax strips for ever! It set as hard as toffee.

I like Wafaa very much. This is good because some of what she tells me I find very challenging.

She was telling me the other night that it is only in the last 5-10 years that women in Egypt could travel overseas, or even apply for a passport, without their husband's permission. That, at least, has changed.

It is still the case, however, that a child born out of wedlock is considered illegitimate by the state, which means, literally, that it is considered 'illegal'. The child has no right, for example, to attend school. Apparently there is a vociferous debate at the moment over whether or not this law should change. Opponents of a change consider that giving rights to illegitimate children is likely to break down public morality; many more women would have children outside marriage, and public disapproval would make life very hard for the growing number of children who would result from the law change. This is the view that Wafaa shares in large part.

She, for her part, is shocked at the level of ignorance about the Middle East outside the region, particularly in the U.S.

Most Egyptians, she says, are poor, and the bulk are uneducated. Their lives are vey difficult and they find comfort and hope in the desperately attractive knowledge that in heaven one can eat all one wants.

In heaven you can eat chicken.

I'm certain she has a lot of other, more complex, explanations for the attraction terrorism has for people in that part of the world, but the attraction of heavenly chicken was one that she had heard her students discuss.

Believing in heaven is not, of course, something unique to the Egyptians or Muslims in general. An article in the Boston Globe today looked at who in America believes in heaven and hell. Curiously a lot more people of every religion believe in heaven than they do in hell. 77% of 'mainline Protestants' believe in heaven, but only 59% believe in hell. 80% of Catholics, and 95% of Mormons believe in heaven, but only 60% of Catholics and 59% of Mormons believe in hell.

Strangely, 12% of atheists believe in heaven, and 10% believe in hell. I guess they could be thinking about earthly heavens and hells?

Tomorrow we have lectures on religion. And, it is Rita's birthday. There is to be a party, of course!