When sexuality is a formally censored topic on the stage, how can one represent this fundamental human desire? For centuries, Western playwrights have used sex in highly coded language so that it is simultaneously acceptable and titillating. But Nehad Gad, one of Egypt's most prominent writers in the late twentieth century, and the only Egyptian woman to have her plays translated into English for publication, devised her own method to mention that taboo subject. She filled her plays with the desire for commercial goods—an important topic in this increasingly materialistic country. But for her characters, men and women alike, the desire to acquire and exchange commercial items is also a means of expressing sexual desire.