The first time I heard a bidet mentioned in the US – or at least what it’s used for – was at the start of an off-Broadway play I saw in 2015 called Threesome. An Egyptian-American couple are in bed waiting for a white man they’ve invited to join them for the tryst of the title. He bounds on to the stage after using the bathroom, and the couple yell at him, “Go back and wash your ass!”
Like that couple, and Threesome’s playwright, Yussef El Guindi, I’m Egyptian. In Egypt, bathrooms in every home, as well as those in public buildings, are fitted with some kind of contraption for washing after using the toilet: a bidet, a standalone low oval basin next to the toilet that one straddles – or, more popularly, a shattaf, a fixture in the toilet itself through which water streams out. Sometimes, the shattaf is a small showerhead attached to the wall next to the toilet. I’ve recently learned that its name in English is a bum gun. It’s my favourite kind of shattaf, because you can control the water pressure.
But in Egypt, bidet or shattaf, everyone washes their ass.
And now, washing after you use the toilet might finally take off in the US thanks to the New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and his wife, Rama Duwaji, who recently moved into their official residence, Gracie Mansion, where they plan to install bidets. So you see, it’s not just Egypt where we wash after using the toilet. Zohran is of Indian descent.
The word “bidet” comes from a French term for a small horse, hence the straddling. In Arabic, “shattaf” comes from the word to clean. Variations of both can be found in many parts of Europe, the Middle East, east Asia and some South American countries. I am currently visiting my sister and her family in California, where every toilet in the house has been installed with a shattaf – bought from online stores. “Zohran and Rama are going to make bidets cool! Finally!” I have told everyone I know.
The couple straddle many firsts between them, besides just bidets. Mamdani, 34, is New York City’s youngest mayor since 1892, its first Muslim mayor and its first south Asian mayor, as well as its first born on the African continent. Duwaji, a 28-year-old Syrian-American artist, is New York City’s youngest first lady, and both its first gen Z and first Muslim first lady. How he eats, what she wears and what they say – or don’t – is parsed, scrutinised and often idolised by supporters. And demonised by opponents – such as the White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, who has called Mamdani a communist as if it were an insult. I can imagine a typically rabid take from Leavitt accusing Mamdani of imposing “Islamist” culture on US bathroom habits, or vice-president JD Vance whining that only “soy boys” wash after using the toilet. I won’t care – I love that they’re making clean asses cool.
I was seven when my family moved to London from Cairo in 1975. Perhaps the biggest culture shock for us was that toilets had neither a bidet nor a shattaf. We were horrified that anyone would use the toilet and not wash afterwards. At home, we learned to use a watering can that we kept by the side of the toilet. Wettened toilet paper became a poor substitute for the shattaf for my brother and me at school, and at work for my parents. If this TMI is too uncomfortable, good. Not being able to wash after using the toilet was a greater discomfort, believe me. When we moved from the UK to Saudi Arabia in 1982, it came with another set of culture shocks – but at least all the bathrooms had either a bidet or shattaf.
There was a moment during the toilet paper shortage of the Covid-19 lockdown when I thought, “This is it! People will finally understand how absolutely necessary a bidet is.” Even though sales did indeed increase, the US remains stubbornly shattaf-free.
So here I am. Not inviting you to a threesome, but I am demanding, pleading, urging you: wash your ass! Install that bidet, bum gun or shattaf. You’ll thank me later.
Then perhaps I’ll consider a tryst.
Mona Eltahawy writes the FEMINIST GIANT newsletter. She is the author of The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, and Headscarves and Hymens: Why the Middle East Needs a Sexual Revolution
