EGYPT: Lust and a blue pill

Under the headline "Impulse to Lust," one can ponder old men, anxious grooms and the value of cufflinks. Diverse topics to be sure, but not when looked at through the enticing, blue prism that is Viagra. Gamal Nkrumah writes in the Al-Ahram Weekly about Egypt’s 10-year love affair with a pill that has “saved marriages and ruined others.”

Hag Ahmed, a 68-year-old Viagra devotee, gives the pills as presents to his closest associates. “My friends appreciate it far more than a tie or expensive cufflinks,” he says. Nervous grooms have come to rely on it, as well as young men looking to, shall we say, inflate their prowess. 

“There are perfectly healthy young men that want to experiment with Viagra to enhance their sexual abilities,” said pharmacist Manal El-Shazli. “Pornographic films have become readily available on satellite television channels and the Internet. An ever-increasing number of young men want to try everything they watch, and they believe that Viagra is their best friend; that is the ideal instrument to realize their dreams."

When it comes to sex and its accoutrements, the world, despite frictions between Islam and the West, is pretty much the same from Cairo to Los Angeles, a landscape of angst, joy, desire, wonderment and pharmaceuticals.

—Jeffrey Fleishman in Cairo

Photo credit: viagra-picture.org