In Egypt, Marriages or Prostitution? : Law: Foreigners pay dowries to families in exchange for their daughters, who are later abandoned.

Two weeks after they met, the 17-year-old Egyptian girl and the wealthy Saudi businessman were married.

A month later, the husband returned to Saudi Arabia, leaving the young woman abandoned and pregnant. One more marriage that masked little more than the sale of a girl to a tourist had begun and ended.

In this business, activists say, young women are objects for the amusement of the wealthy, for lawyers who act as middlemen and for families who collect “dowries” to escape poverty.

The Ministry of Justice and the National Research Center recently released a study saying that out of every 200 marriages between Egyptian women and foreigners, only one results in a union that lasts more than a few months.

Marriage contracts are often struck between poor families and wealthy Arabs from the oil-rich Persian Gulf who flock to Egypt on holiday.

Many of the visitors want temporary companionship and are willing to offer dowries of up to $9,000.

According to Justice Ministry figures, about 500 of the roughly 1,500 marriages between Egyptians and foreigners in 1998 involved Saudis.

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In the case of the 17-year-old girl and the 33-year-old Saudi businessman, one of many investigated by lawyer Ihab Nagy of the National Center for Egyptian Women’s Rights, the suitor’s intentions were clear. He rented an apartment in Egypt for just three months. He paid a dowry of $2,500.

It is illegal for Egyptians under 18 to wed. So, Nagy says, a lawyer who acted as middleman suggested the teenager and the businessman perform what is known as an “urfy” marriage, a custom not recognized by the state.

In such a union, the couple sign a document in the office of a lawyer, and the marriage can be canceled simply by destroying the document.

“This kind of marriage doesn’t guarantee any kind of financial protection in the case of divorce, and women lose everything for the sake of nothing,” Nagy says.

The Justice Ministry recently sent to parliament a proposal that would require a foreign man more than 25 years older than his Egyptian bride to provide the woman with a $7,400 bank certificate of deposit in her name.

Such “financial guarantees will mean nothing,” warns lawyer Said Hassaballah, who says a man willing to pay thousands of dollars in dowry wouldn’t blink at the additional cost.

Activists say that instead of proposing new rules, the government should enforce laws already on the books, such as the 1976 law that makes it illegal for a foreign man to marry an Egyptian woman if the age difference is more than 25 years.

In addition, the government has yet to act on a 2-year-old promise to grant citizenship to children born of foreign fathers.

Children born to foreign fathers are not granted Egyptian citizenship and have no access to the free education and subsidized medical care available to citizens.