1. After beating a female relative (usually a sister or a wife), especially if that happens for what is considered a “trivial” reason, the male relative apologizes to her, offers her tea or a cold drink, and often gives her some money to compensate for the pain he caused her.

2. The notion of privacy has not been sufficiently addressed in the literature on the Middle East. Aside from the dichotomy between outside (public) and inside (private) and its relation to Islam, little attention has been devoted to the meaning of privacy and how family members, and not only women, construct and negotiate notions of privacy.

3. The word khas means among other things “private” or “personal,” while ‘aam means “general” or “public.” These two words, however, do not have the same connotations implied in the Greek distinction between the polis or the public domain and the private domain of the family. Among certain social groups, the Arabic word khususia is increasingly acquiring a meaning that is similar to the English word privacy. But this meaning is still far from being universal and is absent in al-Zawiya al-Hamra.

4. As mentioned in chapter 2, the distribution of the housing units proceeded on the basis of the number of rooms that the family used to occupy in Bulaq. It was only when more than one nuclear family shared the same unit that each was given a separate apartment. Some families managed to acquire more than one unit by bringing a relative from the countryside. Abu ‘Abdo, for example, brought his mother-in-law from Upper Egypt when he heard about the plan to relocate them. He then appealed to the local authorities and managed to get an extra one-room apartment because his family was large and his mother-in-law was staying with them.

5. Various studies suggest that segregation is class based. While rich families can afford, as Tucker (1993) argued, to keep women at home, economic needs frustrate the attempts of the poor to keep women secluded.

6. This has been reported in projects in other countries. See, for example, Shami (1996) for a discussion of an upgrading project in Jordan.

7. In some cases, young women secretly go out with a boyfriend or a Wancé to some of these local attractions, especially the zoo and el-Qanatir.

8. Khimar is a garment that is considered the “true Islamic dress.” It covers the upper part of the body, including the hair, the neck, the shoulders, the breasts, and the back.

9. Similarly, Halla's male siblings immediately blame her work when she refuses to serve them food late at night or to iron their clothes.

10. The same tendency was reported in other public housing projects in the United States and England (see Jacobs 1961).

11. It is important to note that these hopes remain more an ideal than a reality. Not many mothers have the time and power to keep track of their children's movements, especially those who have only male children.

12. Due to this fact, my data on the coffeehouse are based mainly on accounts of young men and their parents.

13. These coffee shops (qahawi) are better called tea shops because few drink coffee while most drink tea.

14. Few married men can afford to go to the coffee shop because they work most of the day, often in two jobs.

15. A notable recent exception is Deborah Kapchan's wonderful study (1996) of women and the market in Morocco.

16. This is one of the main reasons why women avoid wearing golden necklaces, which are easy to snatch, and choose bracelets instead.