Egypt's young and restless: through Islam and the Internet, a new generation seeks its fair share

Natural History, May, 2004 by Mary Knight

Women like Nermeen 'Abd al-Tawab, a vivacious twenty-eight-year-old at the University of Cairo's Faculty of Agriculture, exemplify another vibrant part of Egypt's young generation. Her specialization, agricultural research, is one of the few bright spots in Egyptian science, perhaps because 44 percent of Egyptian workers are employed in agriculture. She studies the fungal infection white rot in garlic. White rot has important economic consequences, because it often devastates the bulbs as the garlic goes to market. As part of her doctoral research, Nermeen is applying the tools of biotechnology to develop garlic that is resistant to the virus. Thus occupied, she is postponing marriage until she finds someone she loves and respects. Her family supports her plan completely.

Compared with urbanites, girls from rural areas are apt to find less family support for their education, particularly when one or both of their parents are illiterate. Rural parents encourage their daughters to marry at earlier ages, even if that means marrying a first cousin (usually not a girl's preference). But in Cairo education is a lifeline for many females, giving them hope and freedom no matter how humble (or how high) their origins. While they are in school, they don't have to compete for jobs that are unlikely to be offered to them anyway. And if they enjoy studies, they have the chance to learn more than any of their predecessors and to be respected for their achievements.

The social barriers to women in Egypt are by no means as stringent as they are in Muslim countries that impose a strict interpretation of Islamic law. Some Egyptian women even initiate divorce.

Mai Mostafa, a tall, slender thirty-two-year-old designer and artist, elaborated on the hazards of poor mate selection and divorce: "For every woman who lives in the East, marriage is very important. We've been brought up prepared to become wives later. We have a saying that the woman who dares to ask for a divorce helps the house collapse." Mai's father encouraged her to complete her education and to work for a few years, to become independent-minded and self-reliant. He did not exactly approve of her marriage partner, but assured her of his confidence in any choice she made. After the marriage failed, Mai was grateful that, again, her father supported her decision to get divorced.

In spite of the recognition of the need, attempts to establish world-class research and educational institutes in Egypt have foundered. Ahmed Zewail of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, the Egyptian-American who won the 1999 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, convinced the government to build a state-of-the-art university for science and technology. More than four years after the ground-breaking ceremony, however, his dream has yet to be realized.

For most young people, then, the only option is to leave the country, a choice that simply exacerbates the already pernicious brain drain. One student I met in Egypt two years ago, who received a grant to study in a computer sciences department at a U.S. university in the Midwest, assured me he would return to Egypt after completing his Ph.D. program. When I spoke with him more recently, he was equally fervent in his insistence that he has no plans to return. The reason? In the U.S. he can do research that builds on the latest developments and can produce work others will draw on. He'll stay in the loop, rather than outside it.