EGYPTIAN women are looking for more and more ingenious “anti-lecher weapons” to ward off bottom-pinchers and arm-strokers in Cairo’s buses and cinemas, the weekly Al-Ahram Hebdo has reported. Marwa, a 22-year-old student, told the paper she had to threaten to hit a man with one of her shoes before he stopped pressing himself against her in one of the crowded minibuses that hurtle through Egypt’s capital. Not even respectably veiled Muslim women or wives accompanied by their husbands can escape the groping of Egypt’s unknown hordes of lecherous men, the women are complaining. Hoda, a 35-year-old cleaning lady, confessed to carrying her secret weapon, a hairpin, in her veil. “I am ready for attack. Even before someone touches me, if I sense any danger, I’ll prick him,” she warned. Some resort to more traditional methods like Gihane, who admits to scratching any offender in the face, or Manal, who told Al-Ahram Hebdo how a man stroking her arm in the cinema shocked her so much she let out a scream which alerted her husband and ended in a fight. – AFP