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I have seen such underwear on display in Alexandria that I have not seen anywhere else: see-through polyester lace, red satin, animal print in man-made fibres, diamond-studded push-up bras… in fluorescent shop windows, laid out on car bonnets at the market, hanging from awnings next to rails of black shapeless gowns.

And that is precisely my problem – the negligee and the veil; the tension between desire and control, and this tension is played out in the figure of the veiled woman.

Hijab in Arabic means, to cover, to screen, or to shelter; couvrir, filtrer, s’abriter

To Cover:
To hide the sexual potency of the female form, to shut the female body away and deny the sexual impulse between men and women in society? To control women so that men don’t have to control themselves? To restrain the male sexual (‘animal’) impulse, which threatens to destabilise the religious superiority of men, and their power and authority in ‘rational’ society?

Couvrir:
Cacher l’attraction sexuelle de la forme feminine, barricader le corps et nier l’impulsion sexuelle entre hommes et femmes au sein de la societe? Maitriser les femmes pour que les hommes ne soient pas obliges de se dominer? Moderer l’impulsion masculine (‘animale’) qui risque de destabiliser la superiorite religieuse des hommes, leur puissance et leur autorite dans une societe ‘rationnelle’?

To Screen:
To divide female identity and subsume sexuality in favour of an identity constructed of religious purity, chastity and cultural obedience? To moderate feminine power by partitioning the public and domestic lives of women?

Filtrer:
Fragmenter l’identite feminine et asujettir la sexualite en faveur d’une identite base sur la purete religeuse, la chastete et l’obeissance culturelle? Moderer le pouvoir feminin en fragmentant la vie publique et la vie privee des femmes?

To Shelter:
To protect women from the male gaze; to empower the individual woman beyond her construction as a sexual object and establish a more meaningful cultural / religious identity? To create a public shield for the private body and allow freedom of movement across physical and cultural space?

Abriter:
Proteger les femmes du regard masculin; donner puissance a la femme, en tant qu’individu, au-dela de sa construction comme objet sexuel, et etablir un identite culturelle/religieuse alternative? Creer un bouclier public pour le corps prive et autoriser la liberte de mouvement dans l’espace physique et culturel?

So does this mean that in fact women hold all the power? Is the veil simply a choice women make about clothing, about feeling comfortable, about fitting in? Perhaps – my problem is not with the veil itself, but the hypocrisy surrounding female sexuality in Egyptian society.

Female sexuality is present here, but it is rarely embodied by the women themselves. From the outside, women’s sexual identity seems to be nothing more than a play of signs around the phallus: the peep-show underwear; hijabs pinned in at the waist on plastic mannequins with erect nipples; lewd comments muttered to non-veiled women in the street and the odd grope from a boy in the crowd.

But the negligee on display hints at another possibility – sex. Whilst female sexual identity in Egypt might be repressed by social effects, young couples sit on benches by the sea, women sit with groups of men in cafes at night, a man walks down the street holding the gloved hand of his wife. In the Bibliotheca a group of young women in tight jeans work and flirt with male friends and there is something quietly triumphant in the way their colourful veils match their outfits and lipstick.

The paradox of the veil and the market underwear symbolises a stifled inversion and negative hypocrisy to me. I am not about to suggest that women should protest in the streets in their sexy underwear and wear the veil in bed, but a compromise between control and desire might help moderate the oppressive weight of masculinity in Egyptian society.

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