Premier amour, drugs and the logistics of polygamy

In a very beaten-up taxi, we drove past the Cairo Citadel Aqueduct. The street was swarming with toktoks (rickshaws), and a power cut rendered the street pitch-black. The driver was rightfully livid.

-These useless kids are all drug addicts and criminals. Instead of getting a proper job, they drive their toktok like maniacs just to pay for whatever shit they are taking. God knows what kids take these days. Gone are the days of good old hashish and beer. خلصت خلاص أيام الحشيش و البيرة عيال اليومين دول بيضربو أي خرى كله عك وكيماوي

-I agree there really is a drug problem in Egypt, and it’s affecting all segments of society.

-Right you are Ostaza, right you are! Just last week I was at a wedding of important people, arms dealers, but they are childhood friends so of course, I had to show up. They are big people, notables. They had everything at the wedding, hashish, beer, chemical things, pills… I can’t stand any of that. I like green grapes. That’s my keif! They sat me down in front of a big plate of green grapes and I was as happy as can be. But I looked around me and I was ashamed. Old men were drinking and taking all sorts of things. There was even an eighty-year-old who was basically trying everything that was on offer. I was so disgusted by the sight of him, I vomited all the green grapes.

-I mean if he made it to eighty in the current state of things, he deserves to some kind of outlet, don’t you think? Also, what would you do if you caught your son smoking?

-What can I do ? I’ll let him do it, if I don’t, he will do it behind my back and get into worse drugs. But, but, but in our family, we know how to stop boys from doing these things. The moment my boys turn 18, I marry them off. It teaches them to be responsible and turns them into men.

-That’s very young!

-YOUNG? No of course it isn’t young. I got married at 16, my wife was 17 and we were underage, so we waited a year to declare it and she was pregnant by then. Now I’m on to my third wife.

- Three wives? how do you manage that?

-Well actually now I only have two, my first wife died.

- Do you have them in the same building?

-Same building ? OF COURSE NOT! Why would I do that! That’s a recipe for disaster. You know how women speculate. Women have an infinite imagination. Each one will think that the other is getting more gifts and attention than the other and they will make my life hell. No! no! no! They live in the same appartement, each has her own bedroom. When I come home, I expect them to get along perfectly well and to never fight. I have forbidden them from speaking to me about any problems they may have together.

-Well, that sounds pretty awful!

-Ostaza, many women want to get married just for fun and once you get into marrying several times it gets hard to stop. People need companionship. I run a foul cart in the morning. As you probably don’t know Ostaza, in popular neighbourhoods, women are the ones who buy breakfast at the foul cart and take it home. Well, I can tell, in the way a woman says hello to me, if she could potentially want to get married. That’s how I vett them. I talk to them, I take my time, and if all goes well, why not get married?

-What did your first wife say when you took on a second one?

-I never had a second wife while my first wife was alive.

-Would you have married a second and third wife if she were still alive?

-Absolutely not! She was my childhood love. We grew up on the same street. We were modelled from the same clay. With her, I didn’t lack for anything. But when she passed and I got remarried, I just found it so easy to keep on having wives. Once you get used to having several women, it’s hard to go back to just having one, especially if the only one for you is gone, no one can replace her in my heart.

-So how many children do you have?

-I have 7, but I made sure my third wife is sterile, I don’t want to open a bloody kindergarten. One can barely afford to breathe nowadays.

A not so recent depiction of the Cairo Citadel Acqueduct.