Two Day Magazine

“This time, he was a sweetheart,” admits Sarah. “He was laughing at my dumb jokes all night. And at one point I caught him staring at me. Then I found out how old he was which was a little bit of a shock. He was a full 10 years younger than I thought he was.”

“Yes,” agrees Ashraf, “I liked her since that night. I was surprised that an American could be so funny. And her laugh really stuck with me.”

From that night, the two were inseparable. Sarah was soon to leave for the US, so the two took a trip to Sinai.

That night, they slept in the same bed.

Society

“What bugs me the most is that people in Egypt don’t respect our relationship,” Sarah says. “It is not one that gets recognized in this society as a legitimate relationship. There always has to be something behind it like ‘he just wants a passport or a visa.’ The attitude is that an American woman and an Egyptian man cannot be in a real relationship.”

One day, Sarah and Ashraf went out for kosharee (an Egyptian trademark dish of macaroni, lentils, and garbanzo beans). The lovebirds realized the prices had been raised a few Egyptian pounds on this visit. Ashraf questioned the waiter.

“Don’t worry,” said the waiter to Ashraf, “we only rip off the tourists by serving smaller portions.”

Ashraf told Sarah what the waiter had said as they left. “Oh, hell no!” Sarah said as she spun her tourist butt back into the restaurant, headed straight for the kosharee-slinger. “How would you feel if you came to my country and I treated you like tourist shit?!”

The waiter turned to Ashraf and said in Arabic, “That was supposed to be between us Egyptian men! This American woman is going to leave you and you will be stuck here and then what will you do? We are both Egyptian, we must stick to our kind!”

Family & Religion

The branches of the family tree dangle over their relationship. "At first,” says Ashraf, “my parents said ‘she’s too much older than you and she’s not a Muslim.’ They said that ‘foreign women who are married to Arab men always end in divorce with the women receiving custody of the children.’”

“We spend so much time fighting the social and religious pressures that our relationship and communication get on very well,” Sarah adds. “It allows us to carve space for ourselves and become sort of like an “Us vs. Them” dynamic.  It helps us to appreciate our relationship and how much we really love each other. At times, we do feel threatened and take it personally, but at least we are experiencing this together.”

Regarding religion, Sarah noted, “It’s not that his or my beliefs are incompatible. But, I do feel pressure on me to adopt certain beliefs, that, if I don’t have them, he cannot be with me according to his religion. For example, in Islam, he cannot be with me if I’m not a Muslim, a Christian, or a Jew.” 

According to Sarah, Ashraf has clearly defined religious goals that he has to conform to, and, because she cannot and will not conform to them, their relationship has to conform to them. “It’s a lot of pressure,” Sarah adds, “but every couple has obstacles to overcome. This is just one of ours.”

Ashraf hugs Sarah and says that his relationship with her is the most real connection he has ever felt. “It’s so hard to find someone with all the amazing qualities that Sarah has. It’s almost too good to be true.”

Sarah critiques relationships in the US, alluding that they are mostly centered on money and social standing, career compatibility and having two and a half kids. With Ashraf, however, she feels that their American-Egyptian relationship is much more committed as they try and “make it work” in Cairo’s socio-cultural paradigm.

After gazing into Sarah’s eyes for a moment, Ashraf concludes that, “When you realize how little these things measure up to your relationship, you witness how perfectly you fit together.”