Ilove the Cairo Metro’s womens compartment. Really, I do. Unlike my friend, the acclaimed (and very secular) documentary filmmaker Atiyat El-Abnoudy, I don’t think it’s a form of discrimination at all. If you’ve ever been harassed on Cairo’s streets, you know what it’s like to get even a little respite.

Back in my student days at the American University in Cairo more than, uhm, a decade ago, it was the perfect means of transportation, getting me to class on time every day. Sure, women snickered about my short skirts (they were the fashion then, you know) and my big hair (it’s still big), but I learned to stare right back at them.

But that was a long, long time ago, when the Metro — the Middle East and Africa’s first underground line — was still young. For years I held on to the memories of my salad days, the daily Metro ride being one of them. That is, until the recent demonstrations and the crazy Downtown traffic drove me to abandon my car and take to the Metro again to head in for an interview.

What I found out is that in many ways, the womens compartment is still very much the same. In others, however, it has changed drastically, having morphed into a community of its own: a society of (rather religious) sisters with their own approach to commerce, religion, togetherness and, of course, to outsiders.

Men have taken over the Metro. When the underground was still in its infancy, men complained about the mere existence of womens compartments, which usually include the first and sometimes second cars in any Metro train. Today, women refer to the rest of the Metro as the men’s compartments; it is rare to see a woman going into them on her own. Even wives accompanied by husbands and children often leave their men to go into the women’s carriages.

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This means that at any given time — even during the best hours of the day, the non-rush hours — things are still pretty tight inside the women’s carriages as nearly 50 percent of would-be travelers head for them.

“Rule number one of riding the women’s Metro: If you’re sitting down, you have to atone for your sins by taking school bags, shopping bags, and the occasional baby on your lap.”

Today, I am lucky to have found a seat, even though it’s not one of the singles — the comfortable fold-down ones next to the doors. Instead, I’m perched on one of the long benches, which should normally seat four. This never happens on a crowded ride, when it is normal for six or more to occupy the benches. On this ride, I’m sandwiched between two matronly ladies. Not being skinny myself, the situation is a little cramped at the moment. Still, I diligently take notes, although my right-hand neighbor is not very happy about my moving arm.

Soon, she is vindicated, as a secondary-school student asks me if I could hold her bag for her. Before I can answer, the bag is dumped on my lap, albeit with a thankful smile. Rule number one of riding the women’s Metro: If you’re sitting down, you have to atone for your sins by taking school bags, shopping bags and the occasional baby on your lap. My left-hand neighbor has a huge bag of freshly baked baladi bread between her legs. There must be 100 loaves or more in there.

They smell great, and I ask her if the loaves are for sale.

“Take one, ya okhti [my sister],” Omm Ahmed insists. Omm Ahmed works on Kasr El-Aini and lives in Dar El-Salam. The bread in Sayyida Zeinab, she tells me, is so much bigger, cleaner and cheaper than where she lives, so her neighbors, most of whom don’t work, ask her to buy for them every day on her way back from work.

Kim Piper

As I chat with Omm Ahmed, a horde of women board the metro at El-Malek El-Saleh.

“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!” one of them, a monaqqaba immediately starts shouting. For a second, I feel like an extra on the set of the latest religious Ramadan serial in a scene in which the Muslims have just conquered Jerusalem. The shouting continues: “Sisters of iman [faith], repeat after me the duaa el-rukoub [prayer for the riders]: Sobhana allazi sakhar lana hazah wa ma konna laho moqranein [Praise be to God, Who adapted this means of transportation for our use. We would not have been able to do so ourselves, and we will return to Him one day.]”

All the passengers on the Metro immediately start repeating the duaa, chanting in one loud voice. It’s a first for me, so I’m a bit too busy watching everybody to actually join them.

As several sets of eyes pointedly turn my way, I suddenly feel uncomfortable —and a little guilty for not having whispered the prayer.

“We’re all sisters,” Omm Ahmed announces, shooting the stink eye right back at those giving me the once over. Although she’s leaping to my defense, my being the only unveiled woman in the compartment has led her to believe I am Christian. For her, that’s the only conceivable explanation for my unusual ways.

Kim Piper Young boys are tolerated on the women’s car, but grown men are stared down until they retreat in embarrasment.

During recent renovations at her building, my friend El-Abnoudy’s elevator got something of a face-lift as the devout repairmen installed a device that would automatically play duaa el-rukoub in the carriage whenever someone pressed to choose a floor.

“I went crazy and asked [the building owner] to remove it,” she says. “I was not the only one in the building who did not like it, but I was the only one to speak out.”

“It has changed drastically, having morphed into a community of its own: a society of (rather religious) sisters with their own approach to commerce, religion, togetherness and, of course, outsiders.”

As a director, El-Abnoudy says she refuses to look at a place like the women’s compartment in the Metro as a possible film topic. “I try to show the positive in my films, and what I see on the Metro is sad,” she says. “I see tired, downtrodden women. I see veils everywhere. I smell the sweat because of all the covering-up in the sweltering heat. I hate traveling in the women’s compartment; people have lost hope in everything, and they turn to religion instead.”

Commuting from Tahrir to Shubra, I ride the newer, cleaner, Japanese-built second Metro line, which is the east-west counterpart to the older north-south line. A woman starts reciting the duaa, and all the women join her. I slowly inch towards her and introduce myself.

Kim Piper

“Assalam alaykum, ya okhti,” Zeinab says. As we start talking, Zeinab eventually explains that she works in Helwan and lives in Shubra; she crosses from one end of the nation’s capital to the other via Metro every day. On Thursdays, she goes to women-only religion lessons.

“The Sheikha told us that jihad [literally ‘holy war,’ but also meaning a personal struggle to be a better person —a better believer — every day] is every Muslim’s duty, and that each one of us can do her own jihad,” she says. “I read duaa el-rukoub every day, and she told me to read it out loud and to invite my sisters on the Metro to join me. This way I get thawab [divine reward] for saying it, and extra thawab for each one who says it along with me.”

Zeinab works in a small clothing workshop, which belongs to another sister in faith. “We make decent clothes, loose and long-sleeved, for the muhajjabat. We also make isdaal [a head-to-toe prayer outfit for women],” she explains. “Although I may be able to find work closer to home, I feel my work brings me closer to God. Maybe when I get married I may have to look for something else.”

Zeinab and I spy two empty seats and can now talk while sitting down. “Are you Muslim?” is her first question for me after we settle in, the carriage swaying lightly.

“What do you think?” I ask back.

Kim Piper Standing room only: With only one to two women’s cars per train, it’s usually crowded even during off-peak hours.

“Well, I think you are. But why aren’t you wearing the veil?” she asks. “You would look so much prettier if you did.”

I have nothing against the veil. My mother is veiled and so are some of my best friends, but they never ask me this question. I’ve just become part of Zeinab’s jihad.

El-Abnoudy’s neighbor took the veil recently, and the first thing she asked the director was, “So why don’t you wear the veil too? Don’t you think it’s time?”

“I told her, ‘I did not ask you why do you wear the veil, so why do you ask me why I don’t?’” El-Abnoudy says.

Today, Zeinab and the ladies who cry out the duaa and talk religion to Metro passengers are a common sight in the womens compartments, as are beggars and vendors. On my numerous trips on the Metro in the last month, I was pestered by vendors selling anything from hair scrunchies, safety pins, combs and chewing gum to foot pumices, prayer isdaal and shower curtains. And, of course, the little religious booklets on everything from dream analysis to the signs of doomsday.

But here’s a new one: lingerie — the skimpier and the gaudier, the better.

If you’ve ever window-shopped along the streets of Downtown Cairo, you’ll know what I mean. Veiled women, who wouldn’t even shake hands with a man, stand in front of lingerie boutiques, pointing at flimsy numbers that either glow in the dark or produce music on touch. Encouraged by such ‘religious’ books as How to Be a Slut for Your Husband, these women dutifully buy nighties that would make even Irma La Douce blush.

“I sell in the women’s compartment all the time. It is safer than being on the streets There are no men to harass you, and the women understand they are always interested in what I have to sell. Prices on the Metro are good.”

On a quieter-than-usual ride to Tahrir, I saw a group of women sitting down along one of the long benches, heatedly discussing prices with a vendor wearing the niqab and sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of them. The vendor was selling polyester bra and panty sets in the most unlikely of colors: bright pink, electric blue, yellow, sick-cat green, and some somber black. The going price is LE 15, although the ladies (veiled fortysomethings) were driving a hard bargain for LE 10.

One finally bought a set for LE 12.

After finishing her business dealings, the vendor walked off to find more customers. I approached her and showed interest in her goods. She would not give her name, but showed me her stuff after I pleaded enough. Her huge burlap sack included underwear, children’s pajamas and some isdaals.

“I sell in the women’s compartment all the time. It is safer than being on the streets,” she says. “There are no men to harass you, and the women understand. None of them would call the policemen on the platform; if they don’t want to buy, they just tell me to go away. I don’t annoy them. But they are always interested in what I have to sell. They know prices on the Metro are good.”

The vendor is not happy that the cops on the platform are “trying to make things difficult.”

“They come in sometimes and tell me to come off if they see me working,” she says. “What harm am I doing them? Don’t they know it is my rizq, my livelihood? I have children, and instead of begging I sell. It is the best way to make money. Even the Prophet (PBUH) worked as a trader.”

The lady selling lingerie is not aware of an ongoing media campaign against Metro vendors. Independent and opposition newspapers alike have of late written about the deteriorating conditions on the underground, especially in the womens compartment. Articles have appeared in the past two months complaining about the beggars, the dirt, the vendors and the conditions of the doors and fans.

As people who have been on the New York subway tell me, the Cairo Metro is quite clean, even though it’s full of shouting preachers, and the riders are, well, sometimes a little less concerned with hygiene than their counterparts in Manhattan. More importantly, the Cairo Metro continues to be the fastest way to bypass the city’s traffic, especially if you have children to pick up from school.

But the newspapers are right to complain about the doors. On one of my trips downtown, I was unlucky enough to ride in a compartment in which nothing worked. The fans, the lights (which was a problem when we got underground), even the doors were on the fritz. I was the only one panicking as the train stopped at station after station and no one was able to get into or out of this particular compartment, the second of two womens carriages on this train.

I was close to fainting when the woman sitting across from me told me that when it was time to get off, everybody would help. And right she was. As it was morning, most of the passengers were headed Downtown to work. Starting with the Saad Zaghloul station, several women stood at each door, forcing them open when the Metro stopped. I got off safely at the Sadat station, but had to sit down for a few minutes, I was shaking so much.

Lesson learned: Sisters help each other.

The next time you’re on the Metro, look around you for scenes like this: As a rushing woman is about to miss the train, all the women in the entryway force the door open, letting her in. Woe be to the driver who complains or closes the door on a woman’s leg, arm or even handbag. On one of my rides, a young woman at the Dar El-Salam station lost her shoe as the door closed while she was coming in. If you’ve ever taken the Helwan-El-Marg line, you must have seen what is like when hordes rush into the metro at Dar El-Salam, which is one of the most highly populated areas in Cairo.

Who could blame the poor driver? Every single woman in my compartment, for starters. Dozens of hands crashed against the door that separated his driver’s compartment from our carriage. Insults cut through the air. As he opened the connecting door, he got more than an earful about how inconsiderate, blind and stupid he was.

He could have called the police on the platform; he could have shouted back at them. Instead, he actually apologized: He was a helpless man amidst tens of screaming women. What else could he do?

This camaraderie is one of the few positive aspects about the women’s compartment. That day in Dar El-Salam, the Metro’s Cinderella was quickly handed a pair of flip-flops that seemed to materialize out of nowhere. How many people do you know travel with an extra pair of shib-shibs?

And if you are ever on the Metro and feel the urge to faint (an easy thing to do, trust me), tens of hands will revive you whether you like it or not. Perfume bottles will be conjured out of bags, cool water and candy will be thrust into your hands. Someone may even give you a half-eaten sandwich. Don’t take it the wrong way — they just like to help. On a ride from Dokki to Tahrir, a young lady asked me for perfume. Although I found the question a little strange, I gave her a little bottle I had tucked into my purse before asking her what she needed it for. Before I knew it, she was spraying it right into the face of a tired-looking yellow-faced woman, who looked about to throw up any minute.

This consideration does not extend to men. Last month, I took my children on a trip to the Science Exploration Center in Kobba. Not being very familiar with the area, I decided to give the kids an extra bonus: their first Metro ride.

They were greeted by an incident which must happen scores of times a day: a man mistakenly boarding the women’s compartment. The passengers, who were sleepily staring into nothing a minute ago, suddenly perked up, staring at him as if he was in the act of committing the most heinous of crimes.

The poor guy, aware that something was amiss, slowly looked around. His face sank as the magnitude of his faux pas dawned on him. Rather than endure the stares until the next station, he jumped off seconds before the doors closed. Thank God, nothing happened to him as he fled, the doors grabbing at his leg and bag.

“What was that all about?” my son asked.

“It’s because he’s a boy,” I replied without thinking.

We got off at the next station and took a taxi to Kobba.

“Mama, let’s take our car next time,” my son said. “I don’t think I like the Metro very much.”  et