INTRODUCTION

What is it?
Six pairs of dark eyes stared at me or rather, at the small purple rod in my hand.
Its a vibrator, I answered, in English, racking my brain 1 for the right Arabic word.
A thing that makes fast movements came to mind, but as that could equally apply
to a hand mixer2, I decided to stick with my mother tongue to minimize what I could
sense was rising confusion in the room.
One of the women, curled up3 on a divan beside me, began to unpin her hijan, a
cascade of black hair falling down her back as she carefully put her headscarf to one
side. What does it do? she asked.
Well, it vibrates. I added, taking a sip of mint tea and biting into a piece of syrupy
baklava to buy myself some time4 before the inevitable rejoinder5.
But why?
How I came to be demonstrating sex toys to a coffee morning of Cairo housewives is a
long story. I have spent the past five years traveling across the Arab region asking
people about sex: what they do, what they dont, what they think and why. Depending
on your perspective, this might sound like a dream job or a highly dubious occupation.
For me, it is something else altogether: sex is the lens through which I investigate the
past and present of a part of the world about which so much is written and still so little
is understood.
Now, I grant you, sex might seem an odd choice, given the spectacle of popular revolt
playing out6 across the Arab world since the beginning of this decade, which has taken
with it some of the regions most entrenched regimes in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and
Yemen for starters and is shaking up the rest. Some observers, however, have gone
so far as to argue that it was youthful sexual energy that fueled the protests in the
first place. Im not so sure. While Ive often heard Egyptians say their fellow
countrymen spend 99.9 percent of their time thinking about sex, in the heady days of
early 2011, making love appeared, for once, to be the last thing on peoples minds.

1 TO RACK (OR WRACK) ONES BRAINS (OR BRAIN): MAKE A GREAT EFFORT TO THINK OF
OR REMEMBER SOMETHING ( IVE BEEN RACKING MY BRAIN TRYING TO RECALL WHERE WE
PUT THE KEY)

2 HAND MIXER: FRULLATORE A MANO

3TO CURL UP: TO CURVE THE BODY AND DRAW UP LEGS, TO SIT OR LIE WITH THE BODY
CURVED AND THE LEGS TUCKED UP( SHE CURLED UP IN BED WITH A GOOD NOVEL). IT ALSO
MEANS, TO FELL EXTREMELY EMBARASSED, REVULSION, OR SOME OTHER STRONG FEELING
(WHEN I REALIZED MY MISTAKES I JUST WANTED TO CURL UP AND DISAPPEAR)

4 TO BUY TIME: TO DO SOMETHING IN ORDER TO BE ALLOWED MORE TIME; TO

EXTEND A PERIOD OF TIME NEEDED TO OBTAIN A GOAL OR TO PAY A DEBT OR AQUIRE
SOMETHING
5 REJOINDER: A REPLY OR RESPONSE TO A QUESTION OR REMARK ; REPLICA

Yet I dont believe it was entirely out of sight. Sexual attitudes and behaviors are
intimately bound up in7 religion, tradition, culture, politics, and economics. They are
part and parcel of sexuality that is, the act and all that goes with it, including gender
roles and identity, sexual orientation, pleasure, intimacy, eroticism, and reproduction.
As such, sexuality is a mirror of the conditions that led to these uprisings, and it will be
a measure of the progress of hard-won reforms in the years to come. In his reflection
on the history of the West, the French philosopher Michel Foucault described sexuality
as an especially dense transfer point for relations of power: between men and
women, young people and old people, parents and offspring, teachers and students,
priests and laity, an administration and a population. The same is true in the Arab
world: if you really want to know a people, start by looking inside their bedrooms.
Had it not been for the events of September 11, 2011, I might never have opened that
door. I was working at The Economist when the world turned. Having trained as an
immunologist before becoming a journalist, I was on the health and science beat 8, far
removed from the great political debates of the day. From these sidelines 9, I had a
chance to sit back 10and watch my colleagues grapple with the complexities of the
Arab region. I saw their confidence in Anglo-American might and exuberance in the
early afterglow of the war in Iraq gradually turn to doubt, then bewilderment 11. Why
werent Iraqis rushing to embrace this new world order? Why did they rarely follow the
6 TO PLAY OUT: WHEN A SITUATION PLAYS OUT, IT HAPPENS AND EVOLVES ( THE
DEBATE WILL PLAY OUT IN THE MEDIA OVER THE NEXT WEEK OR TWO); TO PLAY STH.
OUT: TO PRETEND THAT AN IMAGINARY SITUATION OR EVENT IS REALLY HAPPENING
( IN THE PSYCHOTHERAPY GROUP, PATIENTS WERE FREE TO PLAY OUT THEIR
FANTASIES); TO PLAY ITSELF OUT: IF A SITUATION PLAYS ITSELF OUT, IT DEVELOPS
UNTIL NOTHING MORE CAN HAPPEN AND IT IS NO LONGER VERY IMPORTANT ( WE
WERE FORCED TO STAND BACK AND LET THE CRISIS PLAY ITSELF OUT)
7 TO BIND SOMETHING OR SOMEONE UP (IN /WITH SOMETHING): TO TIE
SOMEON OR SOMETHING UP IN SOMETHING ( THEY BOUND THE BOOKS UP IN
LEATHER STRAPS)
8 BEAT: (INFORMAL) A PERSONS AREA OF INTEREST
9 ON / FROM THE SIDELINES: OBSERVING RATHER THAN TAKING PART, OUT OF THE
ACTION
10 TO SIT BACK: (PHRASAL VERB WITH SIT) 1 COMFORTABLE , METTERSI COMODOTO SIT COMFORTABLY WITH YOUR BACK AGAINST THE BACK OF A CHAIR; 2(INFORMAL) WAITING, ADAGIARSI, RIMANERE INATTIVO- TO WAIT FOR SOMETHING TO
HAPPEN WITHOUT MAKING ANY EFFORT TO DO ANYTHING YOURSELF ( YOU CANT
JUST SIT BACK AND WAIT FOR JOB OFFERS TO COME TO YOU)
11 BEWILDERMENT (bwldrmnt): (UNCOUNTABLE) CONFUSION RESULTING FROM
FAILURE TO UNDERSTAND, TO LOOK/STARE IN BEWILDERMENT, CONFUSIONE,
DISORIENTAMENTO

playbook 12written in Washington and London? Why did they behave in ways so
contrary to Western expectations? In short, what makes them tick?

12 PLAYBOOK: A BOOK CONTAINING THE SCRIPTS OF ONE OR MORE DRAMATIC PLAYS