DJ Emil Lange smoking shisha.
The other day, I got a phone call from my Danish DJ friend, Emil Lange. "I’m supposed to play an hour-long hip-hop set at some beach in Hurghada on the Egyptian coast," he told me. "Everyone’s going to be rich as fuck and covered in UV paint.”
The scenario didn’t quite fit the picture of post-revolution Egypt I'd formed in my mind. A hip-hop rave on the beach? Well-heeled girls and UV-painted playboys dancing until dawn? Aren’t they all too busy toppling dictators and getting smashed in the face with tear gas canisters? I caught a flight to check out the beach party for myself and see if there was more to present-day Egypt than the war-battered land of death the media have made it out to be.
We were told that a driver was going to pick us up from the airport, but after a long wait with no sign of anyone turning up we began to feel a little uneasy. Sherry, the event promoter, sent us a text to let us know that the driver may have written Emil’s name in what she referred to as “retard language”, but actually meant her own mother tongue, Arabic. Once we realised that we were looking for Arabic rather than Danish, we spotted our guy holding a sign bearing Emil’s name.
Roughly 20 minutes and just as many armed checkpoints later, we hit El Gouna, a beach resort touching the Red Sea and a perfect mix of gated community safety and Saint Tropez decadence. In short, it was a holiday town for the rich, built by the Sawiris family – Egypt's equivalent of the Hiltons, but with fewer sex tapes and nightclub cab rank upskirts.
We dropped our bags at the villa that the night's promoters had reserved for us and headed straight to the club for a drink. Remember those awful MTV shows where beautiful teenagers gyrated sexily and silently around a swimming pool? That was pretty much this club's vibe, only it was located in a country whose population is – according to our in-flight newspaper – 70 percent in favour of Sharia law. Which seemed a slightly confusing juxtaposition.
“Welcome to the Hamptons, baby!” one of our hosts exclaimed.
An Egyptian rich kid and his views on unemployment.
We spent the evening staring at people getting increasingly wasted while dancing to German house DJ Nhan Solo. At the end of the night, Emil and I were crammed into a Mercedes, along with seven other people and a driver who I'd previously watched down more than a few vodka-energy drink mixers.
“Is this legal?” I asked.
“You’re in Gouna – nobody cares. And even if they did, there are no cops,” he replied. He seemed to have a point; rolling past one of the local security guards, the guy seemed far more interested in his game of Temple Run than our micro Bombay Express passing him by.
It was around that point I slowly began to realise that we were little more than a three-hour drive from Tahrir Square, the base of the people’s revolution. The parallels between the uprising and the situation I was in were only accentuated by the fact that everyone was speaking English to each other. But then the Arabic language is supposedly kind of passé in these circles – much like Arabic food, apparently, judging by the New York-style hot dog stand where we'd bought dinner.
Just a few of the fleet of yachts.
The following day at the beach, Emil chatted with a man named Islam. He turned out to be a plastic surgeon. The best in the country, he claimed. When we asked him about his religion in relation to his work, he simply explained that it was in Allah’s design for women to have certain proportions. He wouldn’t operate on a lady just because she wanted a different look; that was immoral. But if her body wasn’t made in the exact ratio that Allah had meant for her, he would gladly help. Islam poured us a whole bunch of drinks and related stories about life in Gouna. Most of revolved around the central theme that he was a guy who “prayed hard and partied harder”.
“So, who owns these yachts?” I asked, peering out over the fully packed marina.
“All of us – we all own yachts,” he answered.
“Do you own one, too?"
“Well, I used to," he said. "It’s kind of a pain in the ass to own a yacht when you live in Cairo, you know?”
Islam, our friendly religious plastic surgeon.
It was around that time that DJ Emil began getting very nervous and very drunk.
“What should I play tonight? Do you think they’ll be into it?” He was shaking.
I had no idea what he should play. The only thing I knew they were into for certain was drinking cocktails and yachts.
Having had enough of the beachside boozing, we skipped Emil's soundcheck – which, for a DJ, basically involves pressing play a couple of times – and headed home. Emil maniacally flipped through his tracks – too hard, too slow, too new, too old – before settling on a set that he deemed fit for a sultan: a blend of modern rap and long forgotten R&B bangers. (Sultans are really into Waka Flocka and D'Angelo.)
Drunk people had the opportunity to buy yachts at the party.
Returning to the same beach at around 10PM, the place had been fenced off and there was a wall of that intestine-rupturing bass bouncing through the monstrous soundsystem. There was room for around 500 people within the VIP area, as well 33 VIP tables covered in booze and sponsors.
My personal favourite was the National Yachts booth. From what I gathered, you could walk straight up to the guy behind the booth and buy a yacht off him like it was the most normal thing in the world. Which, in a world where everyone owns yachts, I suppose it is.
Sheikh it like a Polaroid picture.
While Emil was on stage, I tipsily stumbled around among the pumped-up bros in pastel polo shirts and girls wearing outfits that would make my girlfriend’s Muslim family break down in sobs of despair – all this in a country where the Muslim Brotherhood are supposedly looking into shutting down the nightlife scene altogether.
However, as you might have guessed, religion really didn't play much of a role in this part of the country. The closest thing to a prayer I heard that weekend was Emil repeatedly yelling, “Dear God! I’d fucking love to be this rich!”
The writer and the Egyptian 50 Cent.
I got to talking to a security guard, a huge north African man who called himself "the Middle East’s 50 Cent". He explained how he was a devout follower of Islam and described how “all these rich girls” made him sick to the bone. How dare they flaunt their bodies like that? What would their fathers think? What would Allah think?
Then he whipped out his phone to show me a recording of him having sex with his girlfriend.
“One should never have a girlfriend for more than three days,” he said, before high-fiving me triumphantly.
Two is always better than one.
Emil had been warned not to play too hard; no dubstep, no trap, no moombahton and NOTHING without vocals – only hip-hop and R&B. But as I'd expected, his set got harder and harder as the night progressed. The second he dropped some Major Lazer tune, glowsticks started raining through the air and you could tell the mood was turning. Sherry the promoter came running up to the booth, visibly panicked.
“You can’t play this hard! People will start fighting. Egyptians love to fight!”
The girls were pretty and the boys were aggressive.
Opting out of a full-on riot, Emil decided to let Mayounah take over again. She popped some Swedish House Mafia in the CDJs and everything calmed down a notch. By then, it was almost time for us to finish up our drinks, grab our bags and get the first taxi to Hurghada Airport, leaving this odd Egyptian spring break behind us.
Listen to Emil Lange’s Egyptian mix here if you want to get into the wealthy Hurghada vibe.
More from Egypt:
Workers' Rights in Egypt Stalled Two Years After the Revolution
The April 6 Youth Movement Is Trying to Keep the Egyptian Revolution Alive