#MeToo - sexism and tourism

 Two little vignettes from my journal of Egypt.

An English couple in one of the temples, I think it was Karnak. The man gave his partner his mobile phone and went to stand in front of a colonnade view.

"Take the picture then."

"I don't know how your phone works."

"It's very simple. The yellow button."

"I can't see a yellow button."

"On the screen."

"I can't see it."

Angrily, he walked over, grabbed the phone, showed her, shoved it back in her hand, went back to pose in front of the colonnade.

She frowned and squinted, trying to see the screen in the bright sun. The phone clicked.

He came to look.

"Well that's bloody useless, isn't it? You should have used the zoom. Look, you can hardly see me at all. Use the bloody zoom."

Back he went. I wondered if the next photograph would satisfy. It didn't.

"Look, you've got one more try. Then we've got to get back on the bus."

"But I haven't even..."

Her words were already directed at his back. She clicked. He came back, grabbed the phone, started off towards the entrance.

I thought: for God's sake, let him go. Just let the bugger go. You're better off without him.

But she followed, and I could see the droop of her shoulders. Just how many years of this had she had to take?

***

"That one is the Red Chapel," she said, looking at the plan in the guidebook. "That is the white chapel of Senwosret, and ... yes, that one is Hatshepsut's."

"Ah," he said. "It's pretty."

"And then, if we go here," she pushed a fingertip along a line in the book, "we can see the Rameses temple, the one we missed earlier, it has Osiride statues and a barque shrine."

"OK," he said, "we have time for it all?"

"Yes, it's hardly two, we have all afternoon."

I was amazed.

A man and a woman, and the woman is reading the guidebook.

And the man is listening!

I have travelled in India, Africa, Europe, the US, South America, the Middle East. I have travelled off the beaten track and I have seen the big sights. And here was something I had never, ever, seen before.

(They were French, by the way. Vive l'égalité.)

***

In a week that's seen domestic violence and sexual harrassment hit the headlines in France, and a woman murdered in the UK, I couldn't help my thoughts turning to these two little episodes. I'd like to think they are the way of the past and the way of the new generation. I'd like to hope so.

But it's a fairly slender hope. 

I'll never forget that poor woman's slumped shoulders as she followed her partner towards the exit.