SHE WAS leaving the bus when the driver touched her in a way a stranger shouldn't. "I screamed at him, 'You're an animal!'," says graduate business student Shaimaa Abdel Rahman Aref (28).
"I felt as if he was striking at my pride. I wish he had beaten me instead. It would have been much less humiliating, especially as I was veiled and not wearing anything that would arouse a man."
Aref took down the bus number and went to the police. But she found herself confronting a patriarchal society in which authorities are often indifferent to crimes against women and many families pressurise their daughters and sisters to forgo justice rather than invite scandal.
She says several police officers ridiculed her, and her parents scolded her for breaching the line between humility and honour. "They always put the blame on the girl," she says.
But women like Aref are beginning to challenge their abusers and force their nation to be more vigilant against sexual harassment. In a landmark case in October, a man was sentenced to three years of hard labour for reaching out his truck window and groping Noha Rushdi Saleh (27), a documentary filmmaker.
On one day last month, police arrested more than 300 teenagers on suspicion of harassing women across Cairo. More than 50 youths were arrested in a sweep this month.
A study by the Egyptian Centre for Women's Rights found that 83 per cent of Egyptian women and 98 per cent of foreign women in this country so dependent on western tourists experience public sexual harassment, including explicit comments, groping, men exposing themselves and assault.
Almost 97 per cent of Egyptian women and 87 per cent of foreigners do not alert police. But activists believe the extensive coverage of Saleh's case may inspire more to file complaints. "Two weeks after [Saleh's] verdict was handed down, four complaints were filed," says Nihad Abouel Qomsan, head of the women's rights centre. "In the past, we used to have no complaints over the course of a full year."
Decades ago, before the migration of villagers from the Nile delta and southern Egypt turned Cairo into a stifling metropolis of 17 million people, public sexual harassment was less prevalent. It was considered not only an affront to a woman but to her neighbourhood. Offenders were often beaten by bystanders; some had their heads shaved by police as a mark of shame.
But that tightknit era has largely disappeared, with sex on the internet, poverty in the alleys and a police force regarded by many as more concerned with protecting Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's regime than guarding the rights of citizens.
Mistrust of the government and a sense of powerlessness at home have caused disenchantment, especially for young men with limited opportunities. "It's the result of slums, poverty, unemployment, a permissive media and a state that has lost all its credibility," says judge Ahmed Mekki, vice-president of Egypt's highest appeals court. "Sexual harassment can be seen as an act of rebellion against society."
The rise in public sexual harassment also comes as Egypt has grown more pious. In the 1970s and 1980s, miniskirts and revealing tops were common in Cairo, but those styles began to vanish in the 1990s, when Islam took a deeper hold and hijabs and modesty became the fashion.
Egyptian women navigate an atmosphere mixed with sexual repression and religious devotion, where holy sayings such as "Inshallah" (God willing) drift alongside suggestive taunts.
Saleh refused to accept such treatment after her assailant reached out of his truck and groped her in June. The driver, Sherif Gomaa Gibrial, tried to escape, but Saleh jumped on the truck, which was then surrounded by neighbours. They grabbed Gibrial and told Saleh they would beat him and send him on his way. But the former law student wanted justice through the courts.
Saleh's lawyer, Ziad Eleimy, says: "The police tried to scare her from filing a complaint. They told her attacker: 'How could you have let her catch you? You should have run away.' They said: 'You'll scandalise your family if you file charges.' But her father supported her."
Eleimy and Mekki say the judicial system prosecutes harassment cases, but police reluctance to pursue the crimes often means charges are not processed. Human rights groups say Gibrial's sentence marked the first time a man had gone to jail for groping a woman in public.
"Now there is a legal deterrence, but we need a society that believes every woman has her own sanctity," says Eleimy. "There's a belief that men are better than women." - ( LA Times-Washington Postservice)