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Published: December 21st 2006
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Well, it's done...I'm married! And wow, what a process you have to go through here in Egypt to get it done.
It all started last Monday, when my then fiance and I went to the Canadian Embassy to fill out an affadavit. Good thing he came with me, because it had to be done in English and Arabic. This seemingly simple form had a couple of misleading parts to it, but we filled it in as best we could. After handing it in to a rather rude Canadian lady at the counter, we went off to have lunch.
Today, we decided to pick up the affadavit (which takes about 2 days to process anyway), and see if we could at least get to the stage of getting the marriage contract drawn up. So, we picked up the affadavit (the same lady as the other day was there, but she seemed much friendlier today), and then we asked the Egyptian doorman about where to go next (the instructions from the Canadian embassy are not totally accurate). He told us, and off we went to Mohandissen to get the affadavit legalized.
We drove into Mohandissen and the taxi dropped us off at this strange place. There was a little shack-type building with windows and people (men's line and women's line) waiting at two of the windows. I called my friend Kala (also married to an Egyptian) if this was really the place, because it didn't look very official. She told me that this was the place. There was a little yelling when Ahmed was told he couldn't wait with me in line (I mean, I don't speak Arabic, so how will this get done???), but I got in line, and just gave the man the paper, and then it was passed to another man and I moved to another window, where I paid a mere 11 LE and then it was passed to a third window where I picked it up (it was stamped).
So, then we were off to the Ministry of Justice downtown. We climbed up to the 4th floor (elevator was too crowded), and were met with a crowd of people. We pushed our way through to an office and handed in the stamped affadavit to the man, who also took my passport and Ahmed's ID card. Then we were sent out again into the sea of people. We wondered why so many people were here to get married; why weren't they at a mosque or somewhere else? There were a few other foreign women like me there, too. After waiting for like 2 hours, we started to get worried; we found out that on Thursdays, the office closes at 1 pm! We paid off a couple people in the office, and eventually we got in to continue the process.
The next bit is a blur...we went to one office, where the man started to fill in the contract. Then we went to another room where we paid some money to get the contract drawn up. Then we went back to the man we saw when we first arrived where, much to our surprise, we would be signing the contract TODAY! Unfortunately, we had no witnesses as we weren't expecting this to happen today. I got upset because everyone Ahmed asked didn't want to sign as witnesses ("What kind of country is this? No one helps anyone else" I thought). Eventually, Ahmed found 2 men to sign for us, we both signed, and, well...we were married.
We have to pick up the contract in one week, and then we have what we need to travel together and to do whatever else we want. This is certainly not how I wanted my "wedding day" to be, but now I am Ahmed's wife and he is my husband, which I guess is all that matters in the end.
Bye for now!!!!!
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Reborn
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:)
Interesting blog :)