Thread by @writingben

Life pro tip: When you get invited to a traditional Bedouin wedding in the Egyptian desert, YOU SAY YES.

Here's how it went down...

I was hanging around the Pyramids with a local dude named Sayid, who casually mentioned that his cousin was getting married on Friday.

I said I would definitely like to check that out.

Sayid seemed kinda surprised, but he said "Sure, let's do it!"

First spot we hit was the semi-legal liquor store.

Alcohol isn't entirely legal or illegal in Egypt... but it's generally "frowned upon" for locals to drink.

As Sayid explained to me, though, Bedouins live by their own rules.

About 10 million Bedouins live in Egypt today. They all claim descent from a single man, Ali bin Ali, who immigrated here from Libya about 800 years ago.

From childhood, all Bedouins are taught to recite their lineage, back over 10 or 12 generations.

In some areas, wealthy Bedouin families live in heavily armed, fortified compounds, where they enforce their own laws and life their own lifestyle — a breed apart from Egyptians, who call the Bedouins "Real Arabs," and give the powerful families a wide berth.

And part of that traditional Bedouin lifestyle is that these guys party HARD.

Although you can't really tell from this video, this entire room of men — many of them pillars of their communities — were several beers deep by this point.

(Meanwhile, the groom walks around the room and, by tradition, breaks off chunks of hashish from a brick in his pocket.)

At one point, my hosts asked me if I wanted to slip out of my foreign clothes and dress in Arab wedding formal-wear...

...to which I was like, "Um. Is that a serious question because SO OBVIOUSLY YES."

They even introduced me to the groom's father — who bankrolled all this — as "Ben the American, who came all this way to attend the wedding of the illustrious Gataan Family."

I was told I am "good people."

Meanwhile, everyone else was getting into more of the beer and hash, until — as is only appropriate at a wedding — everyone's drunk uncles were on the dance floor doing this:

But despite what you'd expect with this much testosterone, alcohol and familial pride packed into one room...

I didn't see a single fight — not even an argument — the entire night. I don't think I heard anyone say a single cross word.

The whole vibe was incredibly laid-back.

The only real downside to all this — and it's not a minor one — is that the room was 100% male. Women are not invited.

That fact made me angry, and it made me sad — if nothing else, because I can never invite any of my female friends to a Bedouin wedding :(

I mean, there's so much talent involved that it just seems illogical to exclude the entire female half of the society.

For example, instead of toasts, people write personalized poems, then sing them to the happy couple — even though the bride has to stay out of sight.

And it all culminates around 2am, when everyone (who's still capable of standing) rushes the dance floor and just jams out together.

And let me be clear when I say we closed that place DOWN.

By 3am, we were the last men standing. The caterers were rolling up rugs all over the room, and finally the groom's father himself came over and politely told us, "You don't have to go home, but you can't stay here."

A few hours later we were rolling back into Cairo, parting ways with back-slaps and cheek-kisses and invitations for next time.

Just a bunch of good ol' boys from the desert, stumbling home in the first light of dawn.