The Heat of the Desert

 

 

Megan had always dreamed of visiting Egypt, of seeing the great antiquities and the vast expanse of desert. As a student of the period she had been fascinated with the architecture, art and culture of the time when the pharaohs ruled.

When she was nineteen she had been able to make a quick tour with a group, and see the pyramids and the Valley of the Kings. But now, three years later, she had the opportunity to come alone and spend more time in immersing herself in the history of the ancient land.

Megan was now a teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania, working on her masters in Egyptian history. But she wasn't entirely oblivious to the modern cultural issues involved in a lone woman exploring Egypt.

For one, there was the unfortunate degree to which Hollywood's long portrayal of the 'blonde bombshell' had influenced rather unsophisticated views of blonde women in the Arab world. To most of the male gender in the Middle East the term 'sexy woman' was synonymous with 'whore'.  And in their society, a whore was someone who was available to any man, regardless of what she said or wanted.

Of course, compared to the restrictions on their own women, what they heard of western women made them apply that term to pretty much all of them. But they were in general agreement that blonde women were, of course, far more sluttish than the norm, even in the West.

Megan had been worn her blonde hair long since she was a little girl. Her nature was not such as to pay much attention to or make much consideration of her looks. Generally she ran a brush through her hair, threw on whatever was clean, and went to work, uncaring of what image she presented.

Megan was nearsighted, and in order to see the world much beyond the reach of her fingers with any degree of clarity, wore rather thick glasses. She chose those glasses for efficiency and comfort, not for any particular sense of fashion or looks. To her mind, if a person cared appearance, as opposed to what manner of person she was, then that person wasn't really worth knowing anyway.

Megan didn't care what people looked like. She cared how smart, how thoughtful, how caring and considerate and polite and amusing they were. She couldn't, for the life of her, understand why anyone wouldn't feel the same way, though of course, she was aware some shallow people did.

To that end, she chose glasses with efficiency in mind, which wound up being large round glasses with a black plastic frame. That such glasses would fail to enhance her lovely green eyes, or make her look sexy and attractive to those who encountered her was far from her mind when she selected them, nor had it occurred to her since.

Still, despite the fact she was nearly oblivious to any concern about her appearance, she did realize there were difficulties in being a blonde in Egypt, and in dressing in the way she habitually did, in jeans and khakis and sweatshirts. To that end, she dyed her hair brown before leaving and made sure to bring along dresses, light summer dresses, of course, due to the expected heat. She also made sure the dresses had reasonably conservative hems.

In other words, she did at least make an effort to appease local sensibilities, however silly she considered them to be. Unfortunately, she failed to take into consideration that a dress which was considered conservative in Pennsylvania could still be thought of as wicked and revealing to many of the male eyes which she would encounter in Cairo.

She wore a peach colored tie-died summer dress off the flight, knee length, with long belled sleeves. The hem, collar and lower part of the sleeves were pinkish, and the skirt was loose and light. However, the material was quite thin, with the sleeves being partially see through.

No one gave her any problems at the airport other than a rude man who brushed by and let his fingers trace their way across her bottom as he passed. The taxi driver ogled her for much of the ride, however, a scary ride, since the car lurched from one near-collision to the other as he kept his eyes glued on the rear view mirror.

She checked into the hotel, which was bright and modern, then donned a lovely pink, broad brimmed hat and went shopping in the nearby market.

At first she thought the way people were staring at her was simply because she was a western woman. She was the only one about that she could see, and the local women all seemed to be clad head to foot (literally) in blue and black robes, or jihabs, showing no hair, and often enough nothing beyond their eyes.

People, men, really, said things to her as she passed which sounded eager, and which she took to be a friendly greeting, so responded with a smile, and sometimes a wave. The market was a crowded place, with small shops, stalls, and carts selling all manner of local goods from crafts to food.

When the first hand landed on her bottom she quickly reached back to slap it away, glaring about her at the crowd before sniffing disdainfully and moving on, but the market was indeed busy, and there always seemed to be many men around and few women.

Her hat kept the sun off but also restricted her peripheral vision so that when another hand slapped her bottom and she whirled she could once again not tell who had done it. So she determined that the only option was to ignore such rudeness and carry on.

Within a few minutes, however, she was beginning to feel distinctly harassed. She was touched, slapped and groped several more times, by, she presumed, different men. And the shopkeepers stared at her far too intently, far too lasciviously. One actually had the temerity to offer up a carved camel she had been inspecting in exchange for sex!

She became aware there was actually a crowd of dozens of men following her. Her own experience over time was that she was safe in a crowd, but she began to realize that might not be true over here and finally began to get nervous.

This area, however, was a tourist site, and there were numerous police around. They broke up the crowd around her several times, but it always reformed as she moved along, and they were becoming more boisterous and rude, no longer putting much effort into hiding their attempts to touch her.