“I want to kiss your fingers”: the Egyptian tourism industry is prepared at pickup courses

The story of a Russian woman living in Egypt about closed paid courses of seduction, popular among men working in the tourism industry, caused a discussion in RuNet, which turned into unexpected “coming-outs”. From them we learned some details about the Egyptian pick-up school, although its presence is strongly recommended to be kept secret – both from local women and from tourists of both sexes.

According to a compatriot who dispelled the secrecy shrouding an Egyptian pick-up school, Egyptian men are taught to seduce foreign women in this institution. The approach is individual: there are some master classes for seducing Russian women, others for European women, third ones for American women, etc. The first such school arose in Cairo back in the late 70s of the last century, when, with the end of the Arab-Israeli conflict, Egypt began to try itself as a tourist power.

“And when the first tourists arrived, mostly Germans, Englishwomen and Italians, Egyptian men quickly realized that a lonely wealthy foreigner in their native resort is not only entertainment, but also the shortest way to increase their own well-being,” recalls an employee of one of the hotels in Hurghada, a veteran of the Egyptian tourism industry. – Financially, tourists helped many of our guys, but only the most charming managed to get a rich European woman as a wife. This is how the idea of ​​courses arose, where they would teach how to get to know a woman, how to develop an acquaintance and get something from it for yourself. Our guys did not know how to care at all due to Muslim customs, when the bride is wooed by her parents, and the groom sees her only at the wedding. It became something of a sport, every waiter dreamed of seducing a foreigner.

And according to our compatriot, in the library of Cairo University there is a manual for Egyptian men on seducing foreign women, written during the reign of Farouk I (King of Egypt and Sudan in 1936-52 – author). True, at that time seducers turned the heads of foreign guests not on the beaches, as now, but at balls, so part of the didactic material is devoted to the selection of an elegant costume that can charm a British or French woman.

In the wake of the exposure of Egyptian pickup courses on the Runet, one of the Russian wives of Hurghada, who married an Egyptian back in the mid-2000s, admitted that after the wedding she accidentally found a strange brochure in her husband’s house.

– Not even a brochure, but rather samizdat, reproduced on a photocopier in book format, – explains the compatriot. – At first it seemed to me that everything was in English, but I paid attention to this book only because a lady in a bathing suit is drawn on the cover, which is rather strange for a Muslim home library. I took a closer look – and I see that this is not English at all, the phrases are in Russian, only written in Latin. And next to the transcription, how to pronounce. And phrases anywhere: “I’m crazy about you”, “I dream about you”, “I’m dying without you” and all that. I looked where all this was printed, and there was some kind of school, I did not understand what it was.

The dumbfounded wife, having waited for her husband to come home from work, and he has been working in the same hotel for many years, interrogated her Muslim man with prejudice, as a result of which he confessed: yes, before meeting his wife, whom he really fell in love with, he took special courses on seduction of foreign women, along with all unmarried colleagues (only men and foreign women work in Egyptian hotels, and Sharia forbids such work for native Egyptians). True, the Russian wife did not manage to achieve special details. When asked what they taught there, besides the phrases printed in the brochure, the Egyptian faithful stoically repeated the same thing: they taught to be polite and gallant, because mostly simple village guys go to work in hotels, they are not trained in dealing with women. A local resident told about the same to another of our compatriots who shared his story with Runet: “When a stream of travelers from the former USSR poured onto the shores of the Red Sea, almost every oil trader, guide, lifeguard or bartender was given leaflets with a set of phrases in Russian that could conquer a woman’s heart. “Very beautiful”, “You are my queen”, “I love you”, “I want to kiss your fingers”.

But the Egyptian husband, who lives with his Russian wife in Russia, turned out to be more frank and shared that the Egyptian “pickup school” is actually something like hotel business courses, which were originally founded at the start of tourism to the Land of the Pyramids. European investors in Egyptian hotels to instill in local hires the basics of dealing with foreign guests:

– To be hired as waiters and other hotel staff, very simple, uneducated young people often came, who did not know either the English language or the elementary rules of European etiquette, – he explained. – Before starting work, foreign coaches taught them the most common phrases in the main languages ​​​​of the guests – English, German, Italian. As well as polite treatment and protocol of behavior of hotel employees. Gradually, the need for foreign teachers disappeared, senior comrades with experience began to train their recruits themselves. Well, with decades of tourism to us and from us, our youth has become more adapted to European manners and compulsory courses at hotels have been abolished. But in some places on the ground they were preserved on their own, they became something like closed men’s clubs, where workers in the tourism industry share their experience. And since the flirting of hotel staff with foreign guests has long been no secret to anyone, it is likely that life hacks on this sensitive topic are also exchanged at such meetings.