NOT!
Hahahahahaahahahaha!
An interesting note -- both my best friend and I (one of my best friends - she and I had a great time dancing on the Pont des Arts with two bottles of terrible white wine this last summer) have moisturizer made from Dead Sea salts - hers from Israel, mine from Jordan. Ah, internationalism.
SO I have a little more than 11 hours before I get in a bus and go to the airport, on the way to London. And a little less than five days before I see my family! I could go on forever. I also could make a huge list of things I want to do while I'm home. Shop at King of Prussia. Go into a bookstore and spend ludicrous amounts of money and then lie in the middle of the floor breathing in the new-book smell. Pork and alcohol. In fact, there's an awful lot I want to eat. I want to run around screaming like a lunatic wearing something totally inappropriate.
Anyway, we'll see how much of that gets done. Obviously I have a lot of people to see and to call also. This is going to be an amazingly good two weeks.
Hooray. But I'm going to get wet and cold, so maybe I'll have to buy some new clothing (haha!).
Joy and love. I'll be around.
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
Saturday, October 22, 2005
On the Road Again
The last couple of days have reawakened my love of music. They've also gotten me completely and eternally addicted to soduku, the number game that was so popular last year and I never got into. Find it here if you're interested in wasting ten or eleven hours a day. At least I feel that I'm doing something mildly mental. The last couple of weeks have involved very little brain and a whole lot of vegetation, which is fine in that it passes the time quickly - but overall I don't think it's that useful. And then Tuesday I went to Dr. Sami's, and Wednesday I stood next to Ms. East-West as we tore a (cooked) sheep apart with our bare hands.
So now that I've proven myself obsessed with things completely unrelated to my purpose in being here, I am faced with the prospect of weaning myself away from all of these wonderful things. Luckily I think I can afford to wait until after break.
Which brings me to the fantastic news. BREAK ON WEDNESDAY!
I am going to the travel agent tonight to get my tickets and pay for them - or that's the idea anyway. I realize I don't really know where the agent is, and so I'm hoping that the driver knows (or else I'll call and ask them to give me directions). And I have a toe appointment. So today I have dubbed 'errand day'.
And THEN the real fun begins - I get to come back to my room and study for an Arabic test/quiz tomorrow. A practice midterm. HAahahahaha. Death in a hat. But at least it will show me how much I still have left to do - and I'm sure there's a lot. I feel fairly clear on the grammar, because it's all simplistic stuff, although obviously learning the terms in Arabic is a little tough. What's particularly weird is that not only do the terms have different names, the entire concept of the sentence is different. For example, when you conjugate the verbs you think of "katabtu" as "I wrote" - the verb, conjugated for first person singular. Then you learn, separately, that Arabic doesn't require explicit definition of the subject because it is implied in the verb. Thus, "katabtu" literally means "I wrote" - the complete thought. But in Arabic terminology, this is thought of differently. A subject is still required, but the "-tu" part of "katabtu" isn't considered a verb, per se. It's the pronoun. So "katabtu" rather than a verb, is a verb, "katab" and a pronoun "-tu". Or, not a pronoun, exactly....
Anyway, I don't understand it that well, obviously. But I'm working on it.
After I master the intricacies of Arabic grammar, my nxt step (and the harder one) is to prepare myself to competently discuss the Jahiliyyah period of Arabic history (being the period prior to Islam - jahil means "ignorant"). That's going to be the real challenge.
And on that note, I'm back to trying to motivate myself.
So now that I've proven myself obsessed with things completely unrelated to my purpose in being here, I am faced with the prospect of weaning myself away from all of these wonderful things. Luckily I think I can afford to wait until after break.
Which brings me to the fantastic news. BREAK ON WEDNESDAY!
I am going to the travel agent tonight to get my tickets and pay for them - or that's the idea anyway. I realize I don't really know where the agent is, and so I'm hoping that the driver knows (or else I'll call and ask them to give me directions). And I have a toe appointment. So today I have dubbed 'errand day'.
And THEN the real fun begins - I get to come back to my room and study for an Arabic test/quiz tomorrow. A practice midterm. HAahahahaha. Death in a hat. But at least it will show me how much I still have left to do - and I'm sure there's a lot. I feel fairly clear on the grammar, because it's all simplistic stuff, although obviously learning the terms in Arabic is a little tough. What's particularly weird is that not only do the terms have different names, the entire concept of the sentence is different. For example, when you conjugate the verbs you think of "katabtu" as "I wrote" - the verb, conjugated for first person singular. Then you learn, separately, that Arabic doesn't require explicit definition of the subject because it is implied in the verb. Thus, "katabtu" literally means "I wrote" - the complete thought. But in Arabic terminology, this is thought of differently. A subject is still required, but the "-tu" part of "katabtu" isn't considered a verb, per se. It's the pronoun. So "katabtu" rather than a verb, is a verb, "katab" and a pronoun "-tu". Or, not a pronoun, exactly....
Anyway, I don't understand it that well, obviously. But I'm working on it.
After I master the intricacies of Arabic grammar, my nxt step (and the harder one) is to prepare myself to competently discuss the Jahiliyyah period of Arabic history (being the period prior to Islam - jahil means "ignorant"). That's going to be the real challenge.
And on that note, I'm back to trying to motivate myself.
Thursday, October 20, 2005
When it rains, it pours
Wow. By yesterday night I was running completely on empty - and after only two days of mild activity. Who knew doing nothing for so long could make you so lazy. In fact, though I didn't notice it, Tuesday was the day I was supposed to meet with Ms. East-West for my fortnightly meeting to go over how I was doing. Since I'd been doing NOTHING for those two weeks, I somehow managed to convince myself that it had only been one week since my last meeting - so I was a no-show. Of course, I really DO have almost nothing to show for the last two weeks, except a gradual increase in comfort level and an even more gradual increase in Arabic skills. And my Iftar with the Easts. And the saga of my foot.
To make up for those two weeks of inactivity, the past two days have been crazy-busy. I'll start with Tuesday.
Ms. East-West invited me to go with her to the house of Dr. Sami Angawi, a well-known Hijazi architect who happens to live two doors down from her. She was bringing the American visitors anyway, to get a tour of the house, and thought of me because she figured I'd like to see the house (correct!) and she figured that I might be interested in sticking around for his weekly Tuesday-night meetings of thinkers who discuss issues related to Islam and the world (correct again!).
One of my friends tells me I get too irritated at things these days. That's probably true. But he also said, and I think this is also true, that it's because I see a lot of it all at once and everywhere I turn, and it becomes difficult to ignore it. But just think - if I can learn to accept all of these things, even their unacceptance, then I will really be able to be comfortable here.
That was a bit random. Back to Dr. Sami. He met us looking every inch the ancient Hijazi gentleman. I'm putting in a picture here off of the PBS website (he did an interview with them a while ago) of him and his house - you can't see either very well, but I think you can get at least a fair idea of what it looked like. Something directly out of Alf Layla wa Layla (the 1001 Nights). Yes, he has a courtyard surrounded by plants and balconies of different heights, with a giant pool in the center with a tile mosaic of a Persian rug on the bottom. The whole house looked like this, designed to capture whatever stray breezes the sea would provide and surround the inhabitants with green a beautiful things. Even in his office, he has a small round clear table with a tiny fountain and a fishpond under it. It was the most fabulous house I've ever seen and I now want one exactly like it.
And apparently he personally knew the workmen who created the tile and woodwork that decorates every corner of his house.
Anyway, his philosophy is a return to the ''balance'' that characterizes early Muslim life. He also made a very interesting distinction between 'tolerance' and 'acceptance', pointing out that toleration implies 'I don't like you, but I'll tolerate you', while acceptance actually implies what tolerance is generally taken to mean.
Getting to meet the guys from the States was great as well. They all seemed like really smart interesting people and I was sad I was a mere student and not allowed to follow them around all the time.
And then after seeing this magical house Ms. East-West went off with the others and left me to experience the Makiyyah, the gathering. I went to sit with the rest of the women, in the very back of the meeting place, in the dark. There were less than a dozen of us, to the maybe 30 or so men sitting in the front, in the light. We sat and chatting amongst ourselves, listening now and again to the Arabic discussions going on in the front. It turns out that the night I was there was in the memory of an Islamic thinker, Muhammad Allawi al-Maliki (I think), who had died about a year before and was a good friend of many of the men there, so much of what was discussed was what a wonderful man he was. I didn't miss much by meeting the women around me. And there were some fascinating women. One, who I intend to see as soon as possible, told me to call her Natalie. She is Saudi, born in the States, and thinks of the States as her second home. She seemed really interesting. I got introduced to her fiancé as well, which was a completely new experience. He seemed like a nice guy too.
And of course I was given a series of pamphlets on Islam "to help with my studies." It's really beginning to irritate me how everything I am given on Islam is the propaganda stuff designed to convert me. Either they don't understand what it means when I say "I've studied Islam" (and thus actually know something about it) or (and I think this is the most likely) they remain hopeful that if I just see the truth, I'll convert. I can't blame them for trying, but after being given pamphlet after pamphlet it's getting old. My favorite one to date is called "A Muslim Christian Dialogue" but by the end of the pamphlet the Christian has converted, so it's a Muslim-Muslim dialogue.
And speaking of conversion! Two Philipino men who were there with their employer and his wife stood up and spoke the Shahada right in front of everybody, officially converting to Islam. It was a surprise for their employer. The wife turned to me excitedly and told me that one day her driver (one of the men) had turned around and told her he didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God, he only believed he was a prophet. To which, the woman tells me, she responded "well, what are you waiting for? convert! I expect you to be fasting this Ramadan." and then forgot all about it. Well, Ramadan came around and one day the driver said "Ma'am, I'm fasting" and then they planned together how to surprise her husband with the news of their conversion. So they got up and gave the official shahada ("I witness that there is no God but God and that Muhammad is his messenger") making them official Muslims, right there in front of the very happy group.
I've met a bunch of new people, then, who seem more than willing to help me with my studies (really, not just to make me convert) and who seem willing to let me follow them about and learn things from them (Dr. Sami invited me to come over some other time with Ms. East-West). Also, at least one woman (Natalie) has offered to help me with my Arabic and be a friend! How exciting!
That's all for Tuesday night. I'm going to take a break to break my fast. Haha. More on Wednesday to follow.
To make up for those two weeks of inactivity, the past two days have been crazy-busy. I'll start with Tuesday.
Ms. East-West invited me to go with her to the house of Dr. Sami Angawi, a well-known Hijazi architect who happens to live two doors down from her. She was bringing the American visitors anyway, to get a tour of the house, and thought of me because she figured I'd like to see the house (correct!) and she figured that I might be interested in sticking around for his weekly Tuesday-night meetings of thinkers who discuss issues related to Islam and the world (correct again!).
One of my friends tells me I get too irritated at things these days. That's probably true. But he also said, and I think this is also true, that it's because I see a lot of it all at once and everywhere I turn, and it becomes difficult to ignore it. But just think - if I can learn to accept all of these things, even their unacceptance, then I will really be able to be comfortable here.
That was a bit random. Back to Dr. Sami. He met us looking every inch the ancient Hijazi gentleman. I'm putting in a picture here off of the PBS website (he did an interview with them a while ago) of him and his house - you can't see either very well, but I think you can get at least a fair idea of what it looked like. Something directly out of Alf Layla wa Layla (the 1001 Nights). Yes, he has a courtyard surrounded by plants and balconies of different heights, with a giant pool in the center with a tile mosaic of a Persian rug on the bottom. The whole house looked like this, designed to capture whatever stray breezes the sea would provide and surround the inhabitants with green a beautiful things. Even in his office, he has a small round clear table with a tiny fountain and a fishpond under it. It was the most fabulous house I've ever seen and I now want one exactly like it.And apparently he personally knew the workmen who created the tile and woodwork that decorates every corner of his house.
Anyway, his philosophy is a return to the ''balance'' that characterizes early Muslim life. He also made a very interesting distinction between 'tolerance' and 'acceptance', pointing out that toleration implies 'I don't like you, but I'll tolerate you', while acceptance actually implies what tolerance is generally taken to mean.
Getting to meet the guys from the States was great as well. They all seemed like really smart interesting people and I was sad I was a mere student and not allowed to follow them around all the time.
And then after seeing this magical house Ms. East-West went off with the others and left me to experience the Makiyyah, the gathering. I went to sit with the rest of the women, in the very back of the meeting place, in the dark. There were less than a dozen of us, to the maybe 30 or so men sitting in the front, in the light. We sat and chatting amongst ourselves, listening now and again to the Arabic discussions going on in the front. It turns out that the night I was there was in the memory of an Islamic thinker, Muhammad Allawi al-Maliki (I think), who had died about a year before and was a good friend of many of the men there, so much of what was discussed was what a wonderful man he was. I didn't miss much by meeting the women around me. And there were some fascinating women. One, who I intend to see as soon as possible, told me to call her Natalie. She is Saudi, born in the States, and thinks of the States as her second home. She seemed really interesting. I got introduced to her fiancé as well, which was a completely new experience. He seemed like a nice guy too.
And of course I was given a series of pamphlets on Islam "to help with my studies." It's really beginning to irritate me how everything I am given on Islam is the propaganda stuff designed to convert me. Either they don't understand what it means when I say "I've studied Islam" (and thus actually know something about it) or (and I think this is the most likely) they remain hopeful that if I just see the truth, I'll convert. I can't blame them for trying, but after being given pamphlet after pamphlet it's getting old. My favorite one to date is called "A Muslim Christian Dialogue" but by the end of the pamphlet the Christian has converted, so it's a Muslim-Muslim dialogue.
And speaking of conversion! Two Philipino men who were there with their employer and his wife stood up and spoke the Shahada right in front of everybody, officially converting to Islam. It was a surprise for their employer. The wife turned to me excitedly and told me that one day her driver (one of the men) had turned around and told her he didn't believe that Jesus was the son of God, he only believed he was a prophet. To which, the woman tells me, she responded "well, what are you waiting for? convert! I expect you to be fasting this Ramadan." and then forgot all about it. Well, Ramadan came around and one day the driver said "Ma'am, I'm fasting" and then they planned together how to surprise her husband with the news of their conversion. So they got up and gave the official shahada ("I witness that there is no God but God and that Muhammad is his messenger") making them official Muslims, right there in front of the very happy group.
I've met a bunch of new people, then, who seem more than willing to help me with my studies (really, not just to make me convert) and who seem willing to let me follow them about and learn things from them (Dr. Sami invited me to come over some other time with Ms. East-West). Also, at least one woman (Natalie) has offered to help me with my Arabic and be a friend! How exciting!
That's all for Tuesday night. I'm going to take a break to break my fast. Haha. More on Wednesday to follow.
Sunday, October 16, 2005
The Americans are coming! The Americans are coming!
We've been getting emails the last few days warning us that there may be men (gasp!) on campus this week. Now, being well-informed by a number of friendly administrators, I know that these are people here to do curriculum development for the business administration program Effat is trying to start up. So... Americans! Americans from a university! These are my kind of Americans!
Hopefully I will catch a glimpse of them. They are understandably hugely busy, and since this is their first visit here most of the time will be spent showing them Effat and Jeddah and generally being touristy. I am amused at myself for being so excited - these are people from the business world, not the fluffy liberal arts world, and they're admin, not students. But just the idea that there are Americans about warms my heart.
I've had a bit of a dilemma deciding what to do about the abaya issue. The reason all these emails have been circulated is that they want the girls to be prepared to cover up if the men come around. Do I fit into this category? I'm American, they're American, I can't imagine any of them will be surprised to see an American girl not fully covered. At the same time, I am an Effat student. So I've been wondering about this. I haven't worn my abaya to the two Western diplomats' talks, but that was mostly because I forgot. So today I carried around my abaya. I don't know if I'll do that tomorrow or not.
I understood almost all of my Arabic class today. ... well, that's kindof a lie. But I understood enough to know I wasn't missing anything terribly important. She was telling us what will be on the midterm exam. Oh, I can see studying in my future.
But not now! Now I translate a bunch of economic stuff from Arabic to English. I really enjoy this translation, although it's really hard. I'm getting a lot better, though.
I'm so happy today, for some reason. It might have to do with the fact that I took a 6 hour nap this afternoon. So much for sleeping tonight. ha ha. It also might have to do with the music. I LOVE the music.
On that wildly cheerful note, I am going to get down to business. I should have some more entertaining things to say by the end of the week, because I've been invited to a neat Islam meeting at the house of a famous architect by Ms. East-West. That should be extremely neat.
Hopefully I will catch a glimpse of them. They are understandably hugely busy, and since this is their first visit here most of the time will be spent showing them Effat and Jeddah and generally being touristy. I am amused at myself for being so excited - these are people from the business world, not the fluffy liberal arts world, and they're admin, not students. But just the idea that there are Americans about warms my heart.
I've had a bit of a dilemma deciding what to do about the abaya issue. The reason all these emails have been circulated is that they want the girls to be prepared to cover up if the men come around. Do I fit into this category? I'm American, they're American, I can't imagine any of them will be surprised to see an American girl not fully covered. At the same time, I am an Effat student. So I've been wondering about this. I haven't worn my abaya to the two Western diplomats' talks, but that was mostly because I forgot. So today I carried around my abaya. I don't know if I'll do that tomorrow or not.
I understood almost all of my Arabic class today. ... well, that's kindof a lie. But I understood enough to know I wasn't missing anything terribly important. She was telling us what will be on the midterm exam. Oh, I can see studying in my future.
But not now! Now I translate a bunch of economic stuff from Arabic to English. I really enjoy this translation, although it's really hard. I'm getting a lot better, though.
I'm so happy today, for some reason. It might have to do with the fact that I took a 6 hour nap this afternoon. So much for sleeping tonight. ha ha. It also might have to do with the music. I LOVE the music.
On that wildly cheerful note, I am going to get down to business. I should have some more entertaining things to say by the end of the week, because I've been invited to a neat Islam meeting at the house of a famous architect by Ms. East-West. That should be extremely neat.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
I Want My Mommy
I am 21. Granted, I don't make any money and I have very little actual real-life experience, but I feel that nonetheless I am adult-like in that I am qualified to make my own decisions and, given the necessity, could probably even come up with a reasonable living for myself. Okay, not REALLY reasonable, but, you get my point. I am mildly independent.
When I was 16 my mother was very paranoid. She has since improved dramatically although she still remains a little worried occasionally (but for good reason - I am in Saudi Arabia), but my friends still make comments about how paranoid my mother used to be. It's something of an urban legend at college. And the women who live here make my mother look like a crazed adrenaline-junkie who makes it a point to jump off of tall buildings sans bungie cord as often as possible. These women are nuts. I've taken to calling them the spider women, because they lurk downstairs in the dining hall waiting to quiz me about my eating habits, my sleeping habits, my mental health. As if it's any of their business. And on top of that they know my every move in and out of the college. Worse, they control my every move. Well, I can fix that last bit, because I can hire my own taxi drivers to take me around, and starting very soon I will do that. But otherwise I have to ask them for a car, and then they send a mushrafa with me to make sure I am well-guarded. And in the case of hospitals and whatnot where I'm not sure what the directions are, it seems safer to put up with the mushrafa in order to get the superior directions.
Well, today, I suppose because it was an important doctor's appointment or something, they sent a full-blown Abla with me. The Ablas are the four head mushrafas. They're very nice women, all of them, and have taken very good care of me, but there is such a thing as too much care. And believe me, that's what I'm getting.
So they sent Abla M with me today. In addition to worrying like crazy over my eating habits (worse than my real mother), Abla M has made it her individual duty to ask me every day whether my toe is giving me pain. Despite the fact that I answer 'no' and look cheerful-to-the-point-of-death every time she asks me this, she never gives up the worry that I'm hiding a festering wound of death. Maybe she just doesn't think I am understanding the question properly. So when we went to the doctor's office she insisted on staying with me, in the examination room, and patting me lovingly on the shoulder and/or thigh regularly as if to assure me that it would all be okay. Now, granted, I was a little nervous, and we all know there's nothing like a stranger's hands on your thigh to make everything okay again.
Luckily Mrs. East's brother, the doctor, understood the situation, or at least understood that she was more worried than I was. He ended up asking her to leave or sit in a chair on the side, so I was left to my own devices during the actual painful part. Thank goodness. Pain makes me talk a lot, but it also makes me edgy, and I have no idea what I might have done to that poor woman if she'd started patting me.
The good news - and I know you're all eager to know this - is that my foot is not infected, nor is it going to be a mangled heap of dead flesh. So that's that problem out of the way.
I wonder whether your stereotypical Saudi woman is capable of doing things on her own. They must be - there are so many successful and independent Saudi women around. But I really wonder how they acquire that skill when, even when they're 'away from their family' they're treated like children. And I'm talking 7-year-olds. Of course, I'm sure that the Ablas are more paranoid because we're not actually their children. It's probably better at home, where at least you can prove yourself competent. Here you don't really get the chance. I mean, the Ablas have an excuse, in that the HEAD head Abla has been the Abla here since when the school was a boarding high-school. So she's used to dealing with 14-17 year olds. But even so.
'Abla', by the way, is the respectful (and outdated) term used for older sisters. I think my little sisters could take a lesson from this. Abla Elisabeth. I like the way it sounds.
When I was 16 my mother was very paranoid. She has since improved dramatically although she still remains a little worried occasionally (but for good reason - I am in Saudi Arabia), but my friends still make comments about how paranoid my mother used to be. It's something of an urban legend at college. And the women who live here make my mother look like a crazed adrenaline-junkie who makes it a point to jump off of tall buildings sans bungie cord as often as possible. These women are nuts. I've taken to calling them the spider women, because they lurk downstairs in the dining hall waiting to quiz me about my eating habits, my sleeping habits, my mental health. As if it's any of their business. And on top of that they know my every move in and out of the college. Worse, they control my every move. Well, I can fix that last bit, because I can hire my own taxi drivers to take me around, and starting very soon I will do that. But otherwise I have to ask them for a car, and then they send a mushrafa with me to make sure I am well-guarded. And in the case of hospitals and whatnot where I'm not sure what the directions are, it seems safer to put up with the mushrafa in order to get the superior directions.
Well, today, I suppose because it was an important doctor's appointment or something, they sent a full-blown Abla with me. The Ablas are the four head mushrafas. They're very nice women, all of them, and have taken very good care of me, but there is such a thing as too much care. And believe me, that's what I'm getting.
So they sent Abla M with me today. In addition to worrying like crazy over my eating habits (worse than my real mother), Abla M has made it her individual duty to ask me every day whether my toe is giving me pain. Despite the fact that I answer 'no' and look cheerful-to-the-point-of-death every time she asks me this, she never gives up the worry that I'm hiding a festering wound of death. Maybe she just doesn't think I am understanding the question properly. So when we went to the doctor's office she insisted on staying with me, in the examination room, and patting me lovingly on the shoulder and/or thigh regularly as if to assure me that it would all be okay. Now, granted, I was a little nervous, and we all know there's nothing like a stranger's hands on your thigh to make everything okay again.
Luckily Mrs. East's brother, the doctor, understood the situation, or at least understood that she was more worried than I was. He ended up asking her to leave or sit in a chair on the side, so I was left to my own devices during the actual painful part. Thank goodness. Pain makes me talk a lot, but it also makes me edgy, and I have no idea what I might have done to that poor woman if she'd started patting me.
The good news - and I know you're all eager to know this - is that my foot is not infected, nor is it going to be a mangled heap of dead flesh. So that's that problem out of the way.
I wonder whether your stereotypical Saudi woman is capable of doing things on her own. They must be - there are so many successful and independent Saudi women around. But I really wonder how they acquire that skill when, even when they're 'away from their family' they're treated like children. And I'm talking 7-year-olds. Of course, I'm sure that the Ablas are more paranoid because we're not actually their children. It's probably better at home, where at least you can prove yourself competent. Here you don't really get the chance. I mean, the Ablas have an excuse, in that the HEAD head Abla has been the Abla here since when the school was a boarding high-school. So she's used to dealing with 14-17 year olds. But even so.
'Abla', by the way, is the respectful (and outdated) term used for older sisters. I think my little sisters could take a lesson from this. Abla Elisabeth. I like the way it sounds.
Friday, October 14, 2005
Disconnected
Hello, loyal blog-fans. It's Friday morning Ramadan-time, which means it's 3pm, and I have just arisen to start my day. I find that the Ramadan schedule is so much closer to my normal schedule anyway that sleeping during the day and eating at night seems completely natural now. This is excellent, because it means I'm no longer starving. Of course, my gorgeous skin-and-bones appearance is on the way out, so we're all crying about that.
I remember complaining at collge in the States about how I wish things stayed open in the middle of the night because that's when I was awake and in the mood to go out - they should take a lesson from Saudi Arabia. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow at 11:30pm. Things don't even open until 9 or 9:30pm. Of course, here I have no good way of getting out to take advantage of this fantastic schedule... but we can't have everything. And I will acquire the numbers of a few dependable drivers who aren't working for the College, and then I will have my freedom back. Oh, sweet freedom. Of course, I know some of the drivers for the college now and really like them. Mohan, an Indian man from Kerala (is that how you spell it?) has been here 25 years working for Dar el-Hanan and then, when it became a college, Effat. He's got two children in Kerala. He speaks four languages and says he used to be fluent in Korean but has forgotten most of it. He's been here since Jeddah was just a couple of huts on the Red Sea, so he REALLY knows his way around. He says he likes it here because he has a good job.
I'd just like to insert something here. The problem with being in an extreme environment that has access to air conditioning is that the hot-cold-hot-cold makes me sick. I sneeze so much more here than I ever did in New Haven, despite the whole ''winter" thing.
I should explain something basic about my situation here. There are three administrators at the school who have made themselves extremely available to me and have done their best to make me feel welcome. One of them is American, I'll call her Mrs. West for lack of a better name. One is Saudi, I'll call her Mrs. East. And one is a mix of everything, half-Saudi but grew up in Europe and America, I'll call her Ms. East-West. All three have my undying gratitude because without them I would probably have left after a week. These names make them sound old but they're really not. Mrs. West and Ms. East-West are probably ten years older than me, Mrs. East a little older than my parents. I've been referring to them in the blog as "an administrator who..." or something like that, but since my relationship with each of them is different and important, I figured I'd separate them.
I see the Saudi girls who attend school a lot, obviously, but so far I've only really acquired a few people I would consider to be 'friends'. There's Mona, obviously, I rave about her often enough. I'll figure out names for the rest of them when I get there. I don't know to what extent it's fair for me to use people's real names.
Anyway the last couple of weeks, what with my toe and a sudden burst in academic activity (for me, not for the classes themselves - I finally started sitting down and trying to learn Arabic), I've been practically a hermit. But when it rains, it pours, and for yesterday I found I had TWO invitations from wonderful people. Mrs. West and her husband invited me out to play badminton with Dr. A, one of the professors here I've come to like quite a lot. The British school runs a badminton team for teachers and other interested people every Wednesday, and then people generally do dinner or the one time I went there was a surprise party for one of the professors. This would have been an excellent opportunity to get out and see some Westerners. Of course, I couldn't play badminton because of my toe, but I could certainly have cheered.
And then Mrs. East invited me to Iftar at her mother's house! Obviously, that's the sort of invitation you can't refuse. I have met a lot of her family already and they've all been extremely welcoming and very easy to talk to. Her family is fairly Westernized - one of them even married an American - and though individual members may be very religious the family as a whole mixes freely with both men and women, and many of the women don't cover their hair. Not a very traditional family, then. The invitation was precipitated by the fact that one of Mrs. East's brothers is a plastic surgeon and he was kind enough to offer to look at my foot and see if it was healing properly. I felt a bit nervous crashing the traditional Wednesday night family dinner, and during Ramadan at that - but once I got there I no longer felt awkward.
Pretty much it's impossible for a situation like that to bother me. Everybody is very relaxed and at home and I never feel awkward among Mrs. East's family. She has a 13-year-old daughter who I have gotten along with quite well, and an older daughter who is married to a guy who went to college in Connecticut also, so he and I had a good bit of time reminiscing about I-95 (I told some horror stories) and northern winters. Also, one of Mrs. East's nieces, the daughter of 'the American', is involved with the British School and I had actually met her before through the Wests. We had a really interesting conversation about East family dynamics and how HER life had been. Her mother doesn't speak Arabic, and she grew up in Texas and speaking English until first grade, when she was dumped into Arabic-language primary education in Saudi Arabia.
And when nobody was speaking English to me I was listening to the conversations around me and trying to figure out what they were talking about. I wasn't hugely successful, but that's never really bothered me. And I felt significantly more comfortable using basic phrases with the matriarch (Thank you so much, I'll see you again Inshallah, that sort of thing).
The tradition in the house is basically this. One room was set up as a mini-mosque with the entire floor covered with prayer rugs, and family members were continuously wandering in and out to pray. A small table in the entrance hall was set up with sambousas and some sweets and dates and the traditional juices generally used to break the fast. When prayer call appeared on the television (every station shows a live picture of the Qa'aba in the Haram in Mecca as soon as prayer begins - it's a fairly stunning sight to see the millions of people circling the Qa'aba. I heard one woman in the family telling people that someone (this was in Arabic so I didn't catch everything) had gone to pray in the Haram mosque for Fajr prayer one day this week (praying in the Haram mosque is obviously a special experience and since Mecca is so close by people can do it fairly easily, and praying in a mosque during Ramadan is much more important than praying in a mosque any other time of year). Fajr is dawn prayer. And she said that at 4:30 or 5 in the morning, when dawn prayer happened, there was barely standing room in the mosque it was so full. I don't know if you've seen pictures of the Haram mosque, but if you have you probably have an idea how huge it is. And yet for every prayer during Ramadan it is completely packed, as you could clearly see at the beginning of Maghrib. It is moving to see so many people so devotedly involved in an act of worship, even if you aren't part of it yourself. I can only imagine what it feels like for Muslims to see that sort of thing.
I had actually been fasting that day, since my current schedule actually fits with Ramadan fairly well, so I broke my fast like everyone else (futoor is the normal name for 'breakfast', iftar is the name for Ramadan break-fast - see the similarities?). Then we all moved back to the sitting/living room where we all sat on the floor in front of an enormous cloth that had been spread, and we all ate. Then Tash Matash came on (I have no idea what that means so I don't know if I am spelling or even pronouncing it correctly). Tash Matash is the most famous show on during Ramadan. It's been playing during Ramadan probably for almost a decade, and you can tell it's funny even if you can't understand what they're saying. There are some interesting charicatures of people. One scene I remember had a woman in her home getting out of bed and getting ready to get dressed when an old Saudi man wandered in, clearly confused. She started screaming and threw herself into a corner, and he looked around, chewing contentedly, and then sat on the bed and just kindof stared into space. It was entertaining.
So that was my first 'authentic' Iftar experience, and it was fantastic.
Wednesday was a good day for other reasons as well. Obviously, I was looking forward to the weekend - even when I don't have anything in particular to do, it's great to be able to be a bum and do your own thing for a while. I had a quiz in translation and, despite the fact that I'm sure I messed up horribly, I felt a huge sense of victory over the fact that I finished it at all. My Arabic has clearly improved when I can pretend to fit in with a class of bilingual people. Pretend badly, but it's a beginning.
I also had a really interesting conversation about religion with an Indian girl, Y, and a Saudi girl, D, both of whom I have become fairly good friends with. Y came to Effat because she couldn't find a school anywhere else that taught the amount of religious education she wanted. D came but wants to go to Duke if she can. D seems to agree with a lot of American principles, like separation of church and state. Y seems much more faithful to the Saudi-taught interpretation of Islam.
And when I mentioned the video I had seen of those two girls, D had heard of it and knew about the incident. Apparently there was a national issue over it. Some people accused the girls of being too friendly, and that caused an outcry. Others were just outraged in general. The boys are not, she says, going to be killed. She didn't know what was going to happen to them. But she did have an interesting story to add to my collection of creepy-Saudi-guy stories. She knows a woman who is a gynecologist. This woman was in an ambulance rushing to the hospital; she was helping to deliver another woman's baby. They stopped at a red light and some guy in the car behind them, who could see in enough to tell there was a woman in the ambulance, waved a bunch of money at her out of his car window. Hahahaahahahahaha. I have no idea what he expected from this - that the doctor would climb out of the ambulance and offer to have sex with him? It's a ludicrous situation.
One thing I like about life here is that it does seem to have a sort of surreal quality to it. On the way to Mrs. East's house for iftar we passed a woman standing by the side of the road who had a small plastic bag, tied shut, sitting on her head, and was holding a broom with the sweepy side up much like Moses held his staff. This looked, I realized at the time, completely natural for her. And yet anywhere else....
This reminds me....I may to search this picture out. I was sent a picture taken by a friend of a young boy in Pakistan. This is apparently how boys who don't know how to swim keep themselves afloat - by stuffing their pants with styrofoam.
Some things just HAVE to entertain you.
I remember complaining at collge in the States about how I wish things stayed open in the middle of the night because that's when I was awake and in the mood to go out - they should take a lesson from Saudi Arabia. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow at 11:30pm. Things don't even open until 9 or 9:30pm. Of course, here I have no good way of getting out to take advantage of this fantastic schedule... but we can't have everything. And I will acquire the numbers of a few dependable drivers who aren't working for the College, and then I will have my freedom back. Oh, sweet freedom. Of course, I know some of the drivers for the college now and really like them. Mohan, an Indian man from Kerala (is that how you spell it?) has been here 25 years working for Dar el-Hanan and then, when it became a college, Effat. He's got two children in Kerala. He speaks four languages and says he used to be fluent in Korean but has forgotten most of it. He's been here since Jeddah was just a couple of huts on the Red Sea, so he REALLY knows his way around. He says he likes it here because he has a good job.
I'd just like to insert something here. The problem with being in an extreme environment that has access to air conditioning is that the hot-cold-hot-cold makes me sick. I sneeze so much more here than I ever did in New Haven, despite the whole ''winter" thing.
I should explain something basic about my situation here. There are three administrators at the school who have made themselves extremely available to me and have done their best to make me feel welcome. One of them is American, I'll call her Mrs. West for lack of a better name. One is Saudi, I'll call her Mrs. East. And one is a mix of everything, half-Saudi but grew up in Europe and America, I'll call her Ms. East-West. All three have my undying gratitude because without them I would probably have left after a week. These names make them sound old but they're really not. Mrs. West and Ms. East-West are probably ten years older than me, Mrs. East a little older than my parents. I've been referring to them in the blog as "an administrator who..." or something like that, but since my relationship with each of them is different and important, I figured I'd separate them.
I see the Saudi girls who attend school a lot, obviously, but so far I've only really acquired a few people I would consider to be 'friends'. There's Mona, obviously, I rave about her often enough. I'll figure out names for the rest of them when I get there. I don't know to what extent it's fair for me to use people's real names.
Anyway the last couple of weeks, what with my toe and a sudden burst in academic activity (for me, not for the classes themselves - I finally started sitting down and trying to learn Arabic), I've been practically a hermit. But when it rains, it pours, and for yesterday I found I had TWO invitations from wonderful people. Mrs. West and her husband invited me out to play badminton with Dr. A, one of the professors here I've come to like quite a lot. The British school runs a badminton team for teachers and other interested people every Wednesday, and then people generally do dinner or the one time I went there was a surprise party for one of the professors. This would have been an excellent opportunity to get out and see some Westerners. Of course, I couldn't play badminton because of my toe, but I could certainly have cheered.
And then Mrs. East invited me to Iftar at her mother's house! Obviously, that's the sort of invitation you can't refuse. I have met a lot of her family already and they've all been extremely welcoming and very easy to talk to. Her family is fairly Westernized - one of them even married an American - and though individual members may be very religious the family as a whole mixes freely with both men and women, and many of the women don't cover their hair. Not a very traditional family, then. The invitation was precipitated by the fact that one of Mrs. East's brothers is a plastic surgeon and he was kind enough to offer to look at my foot and see if it was healing properly. I felt a bit nervous crashing the traditional Wednesday night family dinner, and during Ramadan at that - but once I got there I no longer felt awkward.
Pretty much it's impossible for a situation like that to bother me. Everybody is very relaxed and at home and I never feel awkward among Mrs. East's family. She has a 13-year-old daughter who I have gotten along with quite well, and an older daughter who is married to a guy who went to college in Connecticut also, so he and I had a good bit of time reminiscing about I-95 (I told some horror stories) and northern winters. Also, one of Mrs. East's nieces, the daughter of 'the American', is involved with the British School and I had actually met her before through the Wests. We had a really interesting conversation about East family dynamics and how HER life had been. Her mother doesn't speak Arabic, and she grew up in Texas and speaking English until first grade, when she was dumped into Arabic-language primary education in Saudi Arabia.
And when nobody was speaking English to me I was listening to the conversations around me and trying to figure out what they were talking about. I wasn't hugely successful, but that's never really bothered me. And I felt significantly more comfortable using basic phrases with the matriarch (Thank you so much, I'll see you again Inshallah, that sort of thing).
The tradition in the house is basically this. One room was set up as a mini-mosque with the entire floor covered with prayer rugs, and family members were continuously wandering in and out to pray. A small table in the entrance hall was set up with sambousas and some sweets and dates and the traditional juices generally used to break the fast. When prayer call appeared on the television (every station shows a live picture of the Qa'aba in the Haram in Mecca as soon as prayer begins - it's a fairly stunning sight to see the millions of people circling the Qa'aba. I heard one woman in the family telling people that someone (this was in Arabic so I didn't catch everything) had gone to pray in the Haram mosque for Fajr prayer one day this week (praying in the Haram mosque is obviously a special experience and since Mecca is so close by people can do it fairly easily, and praying in a mosque during Ramadan is much more important than praying in a mosque any other time of year). Fajr is dawn prayer. And she said that at 4:30 or 5 in the morning, when dawn prayer happened, there was barely standing room in the mosque it was so full. I don't know if you've seen pictures of the Haram mosque, but if you have you probably have an idea how huge it is. And yet for every prayer during Ramadan it is completely packed, as you could clearly see at the beginning of Maghrib. It is moving to see so many people so devotedly involved in an act of worship, even if you aren't part of it yourself. I can only imagine what it feels like for Muslims to see that sort of thing.
I had actually been fasting that day, since my current schedule actually fits with Ramadan fairly well, so I broke my fast like everyone else (futoor is the normal name for 'breakfast', iftar is the name for Ramadan break-fast - see the similarities?). Then we all moved back to the sitting/living room where we all sat on the floor in front of an enormous cloth that had been spread, and we all ate. Then Tash Matash came on (I have no idea what that means so I don't know if I am spelling or even pronouncing it correctly). Tash Matash is the most famous show on during Ramadan. It's been playing during Ramadan probably for almost a decade, and you can tell it's funny even if you can't understand what they're saying. There are some interesting charicatures of people. One scene I remember had a woman in her home getting out of bed and getting ready to get dressed when an old Saudi man wandered in, clearly confused. She started screaming and threw herself into a corner, and he looked around, chewing contentedly, and then sat on the bed and just kindof stared into space. It was entertaining.
So that was my first 'authentic' Iftar experience, and it was fantastic.
Wednesday was a good day for other reasons as well. Obviously, I was looking forward to the weekend - even when I don't have anything in particular to do, it's great to be able to be a bum and do your own thing for a while. I had a quiz in translation and, despite the fact that I'm sure I messed up horribly, I felt a huge sense of victory over the fact that I finished it at all. My Arabic has clearly improved when I can pretend to fit in with a class of bilingual people. Pretend badly, but it's a beginning.
I also had a really interesting conversation about religion with an Indian girl, Y, and a Saudi girl, D, both of whom I have become fairly good friends with. Y came to Effat because she couldn't find a school anywhere else that taught the amount of religious education she wanted. D came but wants to go to Duke if she can. D seems to agree with a lot of American principles, like separation of church and state. Y seems much more faithful to the Saudi-taught interpretation of Islam.
And when I mentioned the video I had seen of those two girls, D had heard of it and knew about the incident. Apparently there was a national issue over it. Some people accused the girls of being too friendly, and that caused an outcry. Others were just outraged in general. The boys are not, she says, going to be killed. She didn't know what was going to happen to them. But she did have an interesting story to add to my collection of creepy-Saudi-guy stories. She knows a woman who is a gynecologist. This woman was in an ambulance rushing to the hospital; she was helping to deliver another woman's baby. They stopped at a red light and some guy in the car behind them, who could see in enough to tell there was a woman in the ambulance, waved a bunch of money at her out of his car window. Hahahaahahahahaha. I have no idea what he expected from this - that the doctor would climb out of the ambulance and offer to have sex with him? It's a ludicrous situation.
One thing I like about life here is that it does seem to have a sort of surreal quality to it. On the way to Mrs. East's house for iftar we passed a woman standing by the side of the road who had a small plastic bag, tied shut, sitting on her head, and was holding a broom with the sweepy side up much like Moses held his staff. This looked, I realized at the time, completely natural for her. And yet anywhere else....
This reminds me....I may to search this picture out. I was sent a picture taken by a friend of a young boy in Pakistan. This is apparently how boys who don't know how to swim keep themselves afloat - by stuffing their pants with styrofoam.Some things just HAVE to entertain you.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
All Is Not Peachy
I really enjoy spending time with the girls down the hall. Dalia, the youngest, is trying so hard to teach me Arabic, and I really appreciate it. It's such an uphill battle. Listening to them talk about random things (most of which I don't even understand) is so exhausting. I feel like Sisyphus. I know that somewhere in my brain I'm learning huge amounts, but it seems to have such a small effect on my actual ability to function in an Arabic conversation. I can say "Emergency Room" in Arabic, undoubtedly a useful term in cases of emergencies, but it certainly isn't very useful when trying to tell the story of your father who accidentally lodged a fork in your uncle's forhead. Really, nothing can prepare you for such a story. I find myself regularly at a loss. These girls are so nice to me and I feel bad being so quiet and so difficult to communicate with... these things take time. Hopefully they won't give up.
I did learn something horrifying today. Or, rather, I saw with my own eyes what I never expected to see. I walked into the room and they all were gathered around the laptop and waved me over to see what was on it. They started the video running and what I saw was a nighttime scene filmed, they tell me, by the mobile phone of a friend of theirs. In it were two women (you could tell because they were completely covered, except for their brightly colored purses) walking down the street who were attacked by a group of about four guys in thobes. Black and white. The men were unbelievable. Laughing the whole time, they were rubbing themselves against these women's backs, slapping them on the bottom, and one even grabbed one of the womens arms behind her back and picked her up and carried her around. Never mind that such a scene was filmed, I couldn't believe it happening. What women would let this happen? This is much more blatant than sexual harrassment ever gets in the States - this was at the point of assault, and yet all of the guys seemed to think they were just just having ''a little boyish fun". And both of these women were fully covered - in no way could anyone argue they were asking for it with their whoreish Western dress.
The second thing that surprised me was that the women didn't seem that horrified. They were kindof laughing, saying "get away", "get away" and slapping them ineffectually with their purses now and again. Rather than kicking them or running away, they were walking so slowly it sortof seemed like they were asking for it.
Is this culture so repressive that both sexes think this sort of blatantly harrassing behavior is okay simply because it's the only sort of contact either sex gets?
I looked horrified, and the girls realized that, and it became clear that they didn't think this was acceptable either. What followed was a series of stories where each girl described a similarly ridiculous experience with men who just didn't have any idea how to behave correctly. Luckily in all cases their fathers or the police were around and the men didn't go any farther than minor assault and harrassment, and the girls were never in any physical danger. But it seems that this is widespread!
When my father and I were in Jordan, and we mentioned we were from Saudi Arabia, every person we talked to had a negative opinion of Saudis. It sounded like the accepted stereotpye was that Saudi guys would come out of Saudi Arabia and assume that because the women weren't covered and weren't Saudi or, in some cases, weren't Muslim, that it was okay to have sex with them and treat them badly and throw money around for crazy parties with alcohol and drugs and sex and table dancing. Apparently Saudi men regularly behave badly towards non-Saudi women, presumably because they consider the rest of the world 'loose'. I had always taken this to mean they didn't consider their own women loose, but apparently that's not true either.
As an aside, there are clearly plenty of really well-behaved Saudi men.
I've had some bad experiences too. I remember once when I was 17 I got caught outside of school without my abaya or any sort of male protection (the male in question will be paying for this for many years to come). A Saudi family drove up next to me in an SUV, and the guy got out. His wife was in the seat next to him and he had four or five children in the backseat. He opened the door next to me and came out and with a lecherous grin asked me in broken English how much I cost. In retrospect I should have said something witty and biting, but at the time I was just horrified and practically sprinted back to school and protection. I was wearing courderoy pants and a turtleneck sweater. Apparently that looks like an open invitation to some people.
Anyway, it sounds like most women have a story like this, and the one caught on video was worse than most. According to these girls, this happens regularly in Riyadh, presumably because it is so much more repressive than Jeddah is.
To make matters.... worse, I guess.... they tried to assuage my horror by saying that the boys involved are going to be killed.
Killed!
Granted, I would have done something violent and nasty to them if they'd tried something like that to me, but I would never want them dead. They were a bunch of really really badly behaved stupid guys.
And if people get killed for this sort of behavior, what on earth prompts people to continue it?
And really, I wonder about the person taping the whole incident.
In any case, this is something from the 'dark side' of Saudi Arabia that I never expected to see with my own eyes.
Enough drama for you?
On another completely unrelated note, I ate Iftar with the girls today rather than waiting for an hour or so and then slinking downstairs to get leftovers. They seemed happy to see me, so I might try that again.
And on a note which is only mildly related to the previous unrelated note, I found an intresting blog post Daniel Pipes wrote concerning Christians (or non-Muslims) who fast during Ramadan. He clearly finds it worrisome and amusing. Certainly, it is an interesting question: what is a Christian who fasts during Ramadan really saying? "I am Muslim now"? "I believe in the same things you believe in"? "This is an interesting quaint custom and I want to get the ethnic feel"? "Ooh what fun, let's see if I can survive a day without food"? (This last seems similar to the justification I used for taping my thumbs to my hands for a day to demonstrate the importance of opposable thumbs, or tying a bandanna across my eyes and playing 'blind' for a day.)
There are clearly some people who take it too far. Note particularly his December 2003 update about the school teacher who assigned fasting as an extra-credit project. Either this is saying he doesn't take Islam seriously as a religion, and thus fasting is a sort of cultural or ethnic festivity similar to making paper cranes for leukemia, or he's completely ignoring the fact that a school should never ask its students to practice religion, even if it's a religion no one is in danger of believing. And that seems to be the message he's sending - it's okay for me to ask my students to do this, because nobody's going to believe it anyway. There is thus no danger that I am using my power to indoctrinate the children in religion, because Islam is not a religion which anybody is in danger of being indoctrinated in.
However, I feel voluntarily fasting to show solidarity or support or political dissent isn't the crime Pipes seems to think it is. After all, Ghandi used hunger fasting regularly. Does the fact that the fasting occurs during the month when Muslims are fasting for religious reasons mean that anybody who fasts during the same month is necessarily pandering to the Muslims? I think not. And even if they were "pandering to the Muslims" why is that such a bad thing? I made dredles in kindergarten so that I would know something about Jewish traditions (although, to differentiate this from the above paragraph, dredles are in fact a tradition rather than a part of the religion, and nobody ever asked me to fast for Passover). Part of the way society absorbs new people is through people who are willing to be a bridge and share both cultures. And, frankly, if we're not willing to welcome Muslim traditions into our traditions, why should they be willing to change theirs to allow ours in? Some give and take is necessary.
I have really answered my own question from yesterday concerning whether it is possible to have a single society with competing values - of course it is. Our own society, freedom and liberty and all, is full of competing values. One of the things that makes human society so fascinating is that it's a constantly shifting balance of competing and opposing values. Safety vs. freedom. Religion vs. secularism. Government and community vs. individual rights. Capitalism vs. the duty of a society to care for its own. So obviously throwing in a new set of values and a new set of emphases is going to shift that balance, but since the balance has always survived in the past I can only be optimistic that it will continue into the future. I have no way of judging whether I will like this newly balanced society, of course, or whether it will balance the values the way I think it should, but a balance will be found.
I did learn something horrifying today. Or, rather, I saw with my own eyes what I never expected to see. I walked into the room and they all were gathered around the laptop and waved me over to see what was on it. They started the video running and what I saw was a nighttime scene filmed, they tell me, by the mobile phone of a friend of theirs. In it were two women (you could tell because they were completely covered, except for their brightly colored purses) walking down the street who were attacked by a group of about four guys in thobes. Black and white. The men were unbelievable. Laughing the whole time, they were rubbing themselves against these women's backs, slapping them on the bottom, and one even grabbed one of the womens arms behind her back and picked her up and carried her around. Never mind that such a scene was filmed, I couldn't believe it happening. What women would let this happen? This is much more blatant than sexual harrassment ever gets in the States - this was at the point of assault, and yet all of the guys seemed to think they were just just having ''a little boyish fun". And both of these women were fully covered - in no way could anyone argue they were asking for it with their whoreish Western dress.
The second thing that surprised me was that the women didn't seem that horrified. They were kindof laughing, saying "get away", "get away" and slapping them ineffectually with their purses now and again. Rather than kicking them or running away, they were walking so slowly it sortof seemed like they were asking for it.
Is this culture so repressive that both sexes think this sort of blatantly harrassing behavior is okay simply because it's the only sort of contact either sex gets?
I looked horrified, and the girls realized that, and it became clear that they didn't think this was acceptable either. What followed was a series of stories where each girl described a similarly ridiculous experience with men who just didn't have any idea how to behave correctly. Luckily in all cases their fathers or the police were around and the men didn't go any farther than minor assault and harrassment, and the girls were never in any physical danger. But it seems that this is widespread!
When my father and I were in Jordan, and we mentioned we were from Saudi Arabia, every person we talked to had a negative opinion of Saudis. It sounded like the accepted stereotpye was that Saudi guys would come out of Saudi Arabia and assume that because the women weren't covered and weren't Saudi or, in some cases, weren't Muslim, that it was okay to have sex with them and treat them badly and throw money around for crazy parties with alcohol and drugs and sex and table dancing. Apparently Saudi men regularly behave badly towards non-Saudi women, presumably because they consider the rest of the world 'loose'. I had always taken this to mean they didn't consider their own women loose, but apparently that's not true either.
As an aside, there are clearly plenty of really well-behaved Saudi men.
I've had some bad experiences too. I remember once when I was 17 I got caught outside of school without my abaya or any sort of male protection (the male in question will be paying for this for many years to come). A Saudi family drove up next to me in an SUV, and the guy got out. His wife was in the seat next to him and he had four or five children in the backseat. He opened the door next to me and came out and with a lecherous grin asked me in broken English how much I cost. In retrospect I should have said something witty and biting, but at the time I was just horrified and practically sprinted back to school and protection. I was wearing courderoy pants and a turtleneck sweater. Apparently that looks like an open invitation to some people.
Anyway, it sounds like most women have a story like this, and the one caught on video was worse than most. According to these girls, this happens regularly in Riyadh, presumably because it is so much more repressive than Jeddah is.
To make matters.... worse, I guess.... they tried to assuage my horror by saying that the boys involved are going to be killed.
Killed!
Granted, I would have done something violent and nasty to them if they'd tried something like that to me, but I would never want them dead. They were a bunch of really really badly behaved stupid guys.
And if people get killed for this sort of behavior, what on earth prompts people to continue it?
And really, I wonder about the person taping the whole incident.
In any case, this is something from the 'dark side' of Saudi Arabia that I never expected to see with my own eyes.
Enough drama for you?
On another completely unrelated note, I ate Iftar with the girls today rather than waiting for an hour or so and then slinking downstairs to get leftovers. They seemed happy to see me, so I might try that again.
And on a note which is only mildly related to the previous unrelated note, I found an intresting blog post Daniel Pipes wrote concerning Christians (or non-Muslims) who fast during Ramadan. He clearly finds it worrisome and amusing. Certainly, it is an interesting question: what is a Christian who fasts during Ramadan really saying? "I am Muslim now"? "I believe in the same things you believe in"? "This is an interesting quaint custom and I want to get the ethnic feel"? "Ooh what fun, let's see if I can survive a day without food"? (This last seems similar to the justification I used for taping my thumbs to my hands for a day to demonstrate the importance of opposable thumbs, or tying a bandanna across my eyes and playing 'blind' for a day.)
There are clearly some people who take it too far. Note particularly his December 2003 update about the school teacher who assigned fasting as an extra-credit project. Either this is saying he doesn't take Islam seriously as a religion, and thus fasting is a sort of cultural or ethnic festivity similar to making paper cranes for leukemia, or he's completely ignoring the fact that a school should never ask its students to practice religion, even if it's a religion no one is in danger of believing. And that seems to be the message he's sending - it's okay for me to ask my students to do this, because nobody's going to believe it anyway. There is thus no danger that I am using my power to indoctrinate the children in religion, because Islam is not a religion which anybody is in danger of being indoctrinated in.
However, I feel voluntarily fasting to show solidarity or support or political dissent isn't the crime Pipes seems to think it is. After all, Ghandi used hunger fasting regularly. Does the fact that the fasting occurs during the month when Muslims are fasting for religious reasons mean that anybody who fasts during the same month is necessarily pandering to the Muslims? I think not. And even if they were "pandering to the Muslims" why is that such a bad thing? I made dredles in kindergarten so that I would know something about Jewish traditions (although, to differentiate this from the above paragraph, dredles are in fact a tradition rather than a part of the religion, and nobody ever asked me to fast for Passover). Part of the way society absorbs new people is through people who are willing to be a bridge and share both cultures. And, frankly, if we're not willing to welcome Muslim traditions into our traditions, why should they be willing to change theirs to allow ours in? Some give and take is necessary.
I have really answered my own question from yesterday concerning whether it is possible to have a single society with competing values - of course it is. Our own society, freedom and liberty and all, is full of competing values. One of the things that makes human society so fascinating is that it's a constantly shifting balance of competing and opposing values. Safety vs. freedom. Religion vs. secularism. Government and community vs. individual rights. Capitalism vs. the duty of a society to care for its own. So obviously throwing in a new set of values and a new set of emphases is going to shift that balance, but since the balance has always survived in the past I can only be optimistic that it will continue into the future. I have no way of judging whether I will like this newly balanced society, of course, or whether it will balance the values the way I think it should, but a balance will be found.
Monday, October 10, 2005
Getting it Done, Saudi Style
I had forgotten that the world is completely nocturnal during Ramadan. I was trying desperately to get in touch with my travel agent concerning tickets out of here (home! home!) and I called at 2:30, and I called at 5, and each time I got a message saying it was prayer time and they would be back soon. Now I can say with certainty that it was not prayer time either of those times. Luckily, I happened to talk to someone well-informed, and they reminded me that everything is closed during the day. The travel agents didn't even open until 9:30pm. It reminds me of what I was told when I commented on how late the weddings are here (dinner typically isn't served until 4 or 5am). A woman told me that it doesn't make sense to have the weddings during the day when prayers are going to get in the way every two or three hours. Instead, they start things after late prayer at 8:30 or so, and go on from there, because they have a good 8-hour period of no prayer. It's interesting to think that even social life is scheduled with prayers in mind.
Anyway, things continue to move along. I need to start my Arabic homework, because there's a whole lot of it to do, and it'd always be helpful to recite some Arabic vocabulary and try to learn it. I do enjoy the Arabic homework though because most of it is like a puzzle. Once I figure out what it says it's actually fairly easy stuff, and I suspect the other girls are spending about 10 minutes on it, but decoding it and eventually making sense of it is a challenge I quite enjoy. Of course, it's awfully irritating when I can't figure out what it says. But we'll pretend that never happens.
And I've come to an excellent arrangement with the really spectacular TA for my Translation class - I will go to her a day before class and get the translation so I can work on it at home and get extra time and practice, and then after class she will give me a photocopy of her version of the translation so that I can check mine over again for errors. Things are looking up! I wrote a sentence using عمّا today and I am very proud of myself. For those of you who don't recognize this fabulous news for what it is, let me just say that عمّا is a contraction of عن ما and means, roughly, "about what" and that, for people who aren't entirely sure how to use conjunctions and prepositions and that sort of thing, it seems awfully complicated. But I used it, and I used it correctly! I am an Arabic genius!
At least I enjoy the language bit. If I didn't this would be a real drag.
In other interesting news, I finally finished the book I borrowed from the library and have started another one. I figure since the library doesn't have too many books, I'll work through as many of them as I can before I leave. It seems ike much more of a manageable task than trying to tackle the Yale library in all of its glory. Anyway, the one I just finished is called Beyond the Veil by Dr. Seymour Grey, a physician who worked at one of the same hospitals as my father, but a decade earlier. He came to Riyadh when things were just getting started, when the building boom was in its inception, and before Saudi Arabia became a home to a huge number of Western ex-pats. However, his story parallels my father's in many ways, and I picked up the book because my dad keeps talking about maybe wanting to write a book one of these days.
Dr. Grey really romanticizes things. I'm not sure if he made things that way in order to be more interesting to the reader, or if that's really his perception of events, or if perhaps things were, in fact, much more romantic 30 years ago. I think it does a disservice to this place to continue to treat it like some hidden place beyond time, but I can understand the impulse to do exactly that. It certainly makes it easier to accept how different everything is if you assume it is a kind of alternate universe. And really, in a place where Western values are clearly not the traditional values, can you really try to apply those values?
Are any values really universal?
There's a website, Dhimmi Watch, I've been meaning to bring up... and now seems like the time. I disagree with the premise of the website, which is that Muslims are incapable of seeing non-Muslims as equal or worthy of their consideration. But it is interesting to note the continuing effects of Muslim values upon the rest of the world. It only makes sense that as the population of Muslims in Europe and America increases so will their influence on society, but how much will that undermine the traditional values of freedom etc is unclear. Certainly it's an interesting thing to watch, and this website does a good job of documenting one side of the story. Today's installment mentions British clergymen suggesting an apology on behalf of the British for colonizing Muslim lands. Certainly an interesting idea, although I doubt it would do any good at this point.
I wish I could talk to my intro anthropology professor, he would probably have some interesting things to say about all of this. I've been struggling with cultural relativism for a long time. I can't decide how competing values can be fit into a single system, but I have to hope they can.
Enough for now. Back to Arabic.
Anyway, things continue to move along. I need to start my Arabic homework, because there's a whole lot of it to do, and it'd always be helpful to recite some Arabic vocabulary and try to learn it. I do enjoy the Arabic homework though because most of it is like a puzzle. Once I figure out what it says it's actually fairly easy stuff, and I suspect the other girls are spending about 10 minutes on it, but decoding it and eventually making sense of it is a challenge I quite enjoy. Of course, it's awfully irritating when I can't figure out what it says. But we'll pretend that never happens.
And I've come to an excellent arrangement with the really spectacular TA for my Translation class - I will go to her a day before class and get the translation so I can work on it at home and get extra time and practice, and then after class she will give me a photocopy of her version of the translation so that I can check mine over again for errors. Things are looking up! I wrote a sentence using عمّا today and I am very proud of myself. For those of you who don't recognize this fabulous news for what it is, let me just say that عمّا is a contraction of عن ما and means, roughly, "about what" and that, for people who aren't entirely sure how to use conjunctions and prepositions and that sort of thing, it seems awfully complicated. But I used it, and I used it correctly! I am an Arabic genius!
At least I enjoy the language bit. If I didn't this would be a real drag.
In other interesting news, I finally finished the book I borrowed from the library and have started another one. I figure since the library doesn't have too many books, I'll work through as many of them as I can before I leave. It seems ike much more of a manageable task than trying to tackle the Yale library in all of its glory. Anyway, the one I just finished is called Beyond the Veil by Dr. Seymour Grey, a physician who worked at one of the same hospitals as my father, but a decade earlier. He came to Riyadh when things were just getting started, when the building boom was in its inception, and before Saudi Arabia became a home to a huge number of Western ex-pats. However, his story parallels my father's in many ways, and I picked up the book because my dad keeps talking about maybe wanting to write a book one of these days.
Dr. Grey really romanticizes things. I'm not sure if he made things that way in order to be more interesting to the reader, or if that's really his perception of events, or if perhaps things were, in fact, much more romantic 30 years ago. I think it does a disservice to this place to continue to treat it like some hidden place beyond time, but I can understand the impulse to do exactly that. It certainly makes it easier to accept how different everything is if you assume it is a kind of alternate universe. And really, in a place where Western values are clearly not the traditional values, can you really try to apply those values?
Are any values really universal?
There's a website, Dhimmi Watch, I've been meaning to bring up... and now seems like the time. I disagree with the premise of the website, which is that Muslims are incapable of seeing non-Muslims as equal or worthy of their consideration. But it is interesting to note the continuing effects of Muslim values upon the rest of the world. It only makes sense that as the population of Muslims in Europe and America increases so will their influence on society, but how much will that undermine the traditional values of freedom etc is unclear. Certainly it's an interesting thing to watch, and this website does a good job of documenting one side of the story. Today's installment mentions British clergymen suggesting an apology on behalf of the British for colonizing Muslim lands. Certainly an interesting idea, although I doubt it would do any good at this point.
I wish I could talk to my intro anthropology professor, he would probably have some interesting things to say about all of this. I've been struggling with cultural relativism for a long time. I can't decide how competing values can be fit into a single system, but I have to hope they can.
Enough for now. Back to Arabic.
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Mona is Far Cooler Than I
hey all.
Mona is here. She just brought over all of the pictures from the Great Toe Adventure, so I'm going to put up some of the best.
For those of you who don't like blood, stop here.
Alright, for those of you with a goulish interest in gore, or for those of you with a vested interest in my health, i offer these lovely before-and-after photos. I've become somewhat proud of mywound.
I will accompany them with a brief discussion of the event itself, because as we know nothing that happens here is without cultural benefit. I was playing ping pong in the gym - well, actually I hadn't started playing exactly. But I discovered, to my extreme joy, that there are at least four or five girls around who are very good at ping pong and really enjoy playing. Sorry, "table tennis". (It's actually called table-ball in arabic - كرة الطاولة ) Anyway, this makes me happy. Of course, it'll be a while before I can actually play again. But I will be back to prime fighting form by next week, Inshallah.
Anyway, after smushing my foot like a ripe berry, bleeding profusely (I am extremely thankful I didn't get blood all over my favorite jeans), and having the nurse tell me I needed stitches (I resisted, but common sense eventually took over), I was rushed in a fairly disorganized manner towards the gate. I didn't have ID, I didn't have my abaya, I didn't know if I had insurance or not. For travelers outside of the US - KNOW IF YOU HAVE INSURANCE. Luckily it wasn't a big deal for me, but it was a definite oversight on my part. Anyway, thanks to Mona I acquired both my passport and my abaya, and having contacted via cell phone (thank goodness for cell phones) my parents, I set off with my foot wrapped to King Faisal Hospital, the newest private hospital around and supposedly the best.You're lucky I haven't got a better photo of my foot. If you can see the little bit of flesh squeezed out of the toenail there... well, I think I need say no more.
Anyway, the King Faisal Hospital was, in fact, very fancy and hi-tech, but apparently they didn't have anybody qualified to stitch up my foot, so we were packed off to Erfan Hospital where they had a foot surgeon in the ER. Meantime the doctors at King Faisal made me angry via treating me like I wasn't there - I HATE when doctors do that - and so I was feeling like a typical pushy American by the time we arrived at Erfan. Luckily the first doctor only wanted an x-ray to make sure I hadn't broken anything - I hadn't - and then the next doctor was everything that a doctor
should be. He was entertained by Mona's continuing use of the camera, so he let her take pictures during the procedure (the one above is of right before they started sticking me with needles). He even posed my foot at the end so we could see how much more like a toe it looked.I guess what entertained me the most about all of this was the bureaucratic efficiency of it all. Sortof like a hospital in the states, in that the individuals get lost in the shuffle, but with its own peculiar Saudi version. I got my temperature and blood pressure taken twice, once at each hospital. At both hospitals they spelled my name wrong (spelled it different wrong ways) and when I corrected them said "oh, it doesn't matter, you just need your number". This makes a good amount of sense for a world where people don't have established last names and generally go by the name of their father and grandfather or tribe, and of course translations of Arabic names all come out looking different in English. But it was strange for me.
The best part of the whole experience was the immense number of fans I discovered. Well, not so much fans as mother hens. My father, because I woke him up at 7:30 am to tell him I was going to the hospital, and because this is the way my father deals with things, called everyone in the universe, who then of course called each other and me again and again to make sure I was really alive and to make sure everything was being done. Everyone I knew in Jeddah appeared in the hospital at some point or another, and I think most were disappointed to discover that the problem was merely a squashed toe. It was fantastic to realize what a large support network I have if I need one - but I didn't need one on this occasion and so it ended up being a bit hysterical by the end. And then the mother hens insisted on my not walking but being wheeled around in a wheelchair, and not going to classes, and all sorts of other silly stuff which I ignored a soon as possible. But it does feel awfully good to be taken care of, and I am continuously grateful for how much the people here are willing to take care of a relative stranger. I feel like in coming to Saudi Arabia I also was adopted into an extended family of Saudi aunties, some of whom are actually American men.
This is one of the fantastic things about being an ex-pat in Saudi Arabia and, I imagine, most other places - the community is very cohesive, and really leaps to offer its help. In this case I have a Western community I'm only starting to explore and a ready-made community of Effat College people, and between the two I have been as well taken cared of as anybody could have hoped. Had I moved in with family I could not have found a warmer welcome.
And I think that's definitely enough about my toe for one day or, perhaps, a lifetime. I'd show another picture of its current status but I feel that when it comes to injuries there is such a thing as too much of a good thing. Suffice it to say I feel almost ready to get back to training for the ping pong world championships. And I look forward to it - some exercise would be really good for my laziness right now. Maybe I'd spend less time writing in my blog, and more time out grabbing life by the ears.
Friday, October 07, 2005
Abaya Nation
"Elisabeth," I hear your little voices asking, "What do women there TALK about?"
Ah, what an interesting question this is. Unfortunately this is something I'm struggling with myself. I find my typical conversational topics - current events, something philosophical like religion, griping about parents, telling funny stories about friends, boys - are all useless, because my background is so different from theirs. Most of them have been to the United States before, but that resulted in a love of Disney, Norah Roberts, J-Lo, and pretty much the best of American teeny-bopper pop-dom with a dash of trashy romance. Not that I'm dissing Disney - I think we may have quite a lot in common where Disney is concerned. Of course, I don't wear the matching pyjama outfits, but it's what's inside that counts.
This is entirely unfair. The Saudi girls I've met here have all been extremely nice to me, and I have had a lot of fun hanging out with them and trying desperately to follow their conversations in Arabic. Judging from the amount of laughter, they're pretty interesting. We've had some interesting religious conversations - mostly comparing Islamic and Christian stories of, say, Jesus' birth - but those always get a little strained when we stray too close to talking about what I actually believe. I don't want to flat-out lie to people, and yet the horrified expressions on their faces when I say "well, sooooooooooooortof...." in reply to their "But you believe in God, So That's Okay" pretty much end the conversation.
Anyway, the girls down the hall (GDH) have treated me very well, and seem fairly normal. But as I say, my topics of conversation will only take me so far without any common ground.
Okay, so what DO we talk about?
Well. Makeup, clothes, fashion, boys. The zodiac. Yes, the zodiac and its teachings are very popular here and one of the first questions I generally get is "what's your sign". It took me a loooong time to figure out what this meant, since I think the last time someone asked me that question was the fortune-teller at the Devon Horse Show when I was 8.
Them: What's your name?
Me: Elisabeth
Them: Where are you from?
Me: The states, where are you from?
Them: Saudi. What's your sign?
Me: Democrat?
In clothes and fashion and makeup they are much like any other group of girls although I guess I never really moved in those circles. I only learned how to put on eyeliner recently, and it was because Alice, my 16-year-old little sister, decided it was high time she bought her big sister some makeup and showed her how to use it properly.
So the other weekend they (very nicely) dragged me upstairs to sit and eat pizza with them and gossip. Of course none of these girls have ANY contact with men outside of their family or, occasionally, random people who get their phone number somehow and call them hoping to hear a woman's voice, and then call back again and again in the hopes of starting a sordid phone affair.
[Side note: this happened to me the other day. I picked up the phone and there was a guy on the other end. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello?
Him: 'Allo.
Me: Hello?
Him: 'Allo. Salaamu aleikum (seductive)
Me: Who is this?
Him: Oh. Nevermind. (hangs up).
Now I know for a fact that no Arab Man could possibly have my cell phone number. Unless it's the husband of one of the administrators here and THAT would just be... well. Let's not go there.]
Anyway. So when we gossip there isn't much to be said about boys, so talk focuses on what sorts of guys are better than other sorts, and which celebrities are particularly attractive for one reason or another. Good qualities in men are: loyalty, being good in bed, romanticness, ability to write poetry and/or speak well, wealth.
Attractiveness doesn't really come into it much. The guy they seem to be the most in love with is a Saudi singer who is REALLY fat, but does have a boyish charm which makes him cute and, I guess, loveable. They are obsessed with him.
And then of course the talk turned to me. But instead of asking me about all of my flings and boyfriends and one-night stands, they asked me, with bated breath, "So, has any boy ever said 'I love you' to you?"
I was floored. First off ..... what? Secondly, the whole saying "i love you" thing isn't big in the West. And having someone SAY it is very different from having him mean it, or feel it. And it certainly isn't the sort of thing you want to tell people you have just met.
But for girls who have never really talked to or met men in a non-family context, it must be hard to see things from outside a romantic point of view. Now, a huge number of my friends are male, and it's bizarre to be here in an all-female environment, and that's yet another thing these women and I do not have in common. I keep calling them girls because everybody refers to them as binaat or 'girls' in Arabic and because, in some ways, their approaches to life are more like 13-year-olds than 20-year-olds.
This reminds me of the greatest story ever. When I first got here there was a girl, we'll call her Russia, who was a Saudi girl who'd lived outside of Saudi Arabia for a long time. She always gave me one of those "what are you wearing?" looks, so I was never particularly fond of her. And then she disappeared. And I found out (through anonymous sources) that she'd got kicked out of the dorm for sneaking out to meet her secret boyfriend and hid her absence by, you got it, stuffing pillows under her covers. Her roommate caught on and alerted the authorities and so Russia got a call on her cell phone from one of the authorities.
Authority: Russia, where are you?
Russia: I'm in my room. Why?
Authority: Well, gee, Russia, that's interesting. I'm in your room. And I don't see you anywhere.
Her very loyal best friend then stuck up for her saying she'd overdosed on Prozzak and needed to be rushed to the hospital.
Anyway, my first reaction to this was not, in fact, surprise. If you give people no responsibility, no accountability and no freedom, what do you expect them to do with it? Of COURSE they're going to break the rules. What's the worst that can happen? They get put in a different place where nobody will let them go out?
Of course, that's not entirely accurate. Most of the girls here can go out pretty much when they want, because they're fathers have agreed. I, of course, as a legal adult, am kindof ticked my father has to have anything to do with it whatsoever, but here you're pretty much a child until you get married and have kids of your own. There is no 'age of independence'. Why would you want independence from your family?
So, to continue, all of this is secondary to what I really wanted to talk about, which is this: Abaya fashion. Yes, they tell you that women cover themselves in layers and layers of black and walk around like blobs which Westerners in Riyadh thoughtfully and kindly referred to as BMOs, Black Moving Objects. This is not accurate. First, it is a rare woman indeed who actually covers her entire face, and that woman is generally older. Secondly, those "ninjas" (to borrow a term a friend of mine used to describe his mother) who cover everything but their eyes frequently do it just to avoid problems. If men were going to follow ME around all the time acting creepy and trying to touch me, I'd probably find some way to make them less interested. Covering your face is certainly one way to do that.
And third, abayas are not the drab black things they are frequently portrayed as. I guess some women wear shapeless plain black things, but again, those women are few and far between. These days the abaya is as much a statement of fashion as the purse, the shoes or the sunglasses. Yes, black is still the accepted color, although I've seen some very nice dark blue abayas and at least one strange-looking neon green and purple concoction. I wish I could photograph them all to show you without getting myself arrested. First of all, the abayas are much more form-fitting and much better made, so they look more like gorgeous floor-length coats than burlap sacks. Secondly, embroidery has made a huge comeback, and it's the rare abaya indeed that doesn't have anything on it besides the black. Sequins and beads and rhinestones are also very popular. Satin borders and see-through bits are everywhere. And of course your headscarf needs to match.
I don't, as I say, have any good pictures of these, because taking photographs of women is not very polite, but I may be able to coerce some of the girls here to let me photograph them sometime (properly covered, of course). For the moment, the best I can offer is this picture of Rachel modeling the style of abaya that was all the rage in Riyadh before we left.
There was a wonderful British woman who used beautiful black silk and lined it with silk she painted herself to meet the demands of the wearer. Every female in my family had one, and they were quite the hot item. We had women stopping us in the supermarkets asking us where we got them.
I long for another abaya of that quality.
And now there is one other thing I should mention. It's not all about the abaya, it's about how you wear it. The hijab, for example, also known as the tarha, is the headcovering. I had a devil of a time figuring out how to put it on so that it wouldn't come off. And as soon as I figured it out I realized that a lot of the other girls don't wear it so that it will stay on. In fact, a lot of them seem to wear it in ORDER for it to come off. If you don't care whether men see your hair (and this is a religious issue) then you wear the tarha for social propriety, only, and to get people to leave you alone. In these circumstances, a tarha which 'happens' to come off regularly and might flash a bit (0r a lot) of hair is kindof like wearing a shirt that keeps slipping off your shoulders. Oops? Is that MY bra strap? You don't mind, do you? hehe.
And for other girls, it's just a pain in the butt, and they wear it because someone might look at them weird if they don't. For these girls it's kindof a statement of their non-religiousness when their tarha doesn't cover all of their hair.
I'll see if I can't get some other pictures of abaya fashion up here, before Rachel kills me.
And on a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I found this entry in a blog while I was wasting time today. I really agree with some of what he says. I really disagree with the rest of it. See what you think. In either case, I think it's well-written.
That's all for today. I've got a jillion Arabic legal terms to learn for translation tomorrow.
Ah, what an interesting question this is. Unfortunately this is something I'm struggling with myself. I find my typical conversational topics - current events, something philosophical like religion, griping about parents, telling funny stories about friends, boys - are all useless, because my background is so different from theirs. Most of them have been to the United States before, but that resulted in a love of Disney, Norah Roberts, J-Lo, and pretty much the best of American teeny-bopper pop-dom with a dash of trashy romance. Not that I'm dissing Disney - I think we may have quite a lot in common where Disney is concerned. Of course, I don't wear the matching pyjama outfits, but it's what's inside that counts.
This is entirely unfair. The Saudi girls I've met here have all been extremely nice to me, and I have had a lot of fun hanging out with them and trying desperately to follow their conversations in Arabic. Judging from the amount of laughter, they're pretty interesting. We've had some interesting religious conversations - mostly comparing Islamic and Christian stories of, say, Jesus' birth - but those always get a little strained when we stray too close to talking about what I actually believe. I don't want to flat-out lie to people, and yet the horrified expressions on their faces when I say "well, sooooooooooooortof...." in reply to their "But you believe in God, So That's Okay" pretty much end the conversation.
Anyway, the girls down the hall (GDH) have treated me very well, and seem fairly normal. But as I say, my topics of conversation will only take me so far without any common ground.
Okay, so what DO we talk about?
Well. Makeup, clothes, fashion, boys. The zodiac. Yes, the zodiac and its teachings are very popular here and one of the first questions I generally get is "what's your sign". It took me a loooong time to figure out what this meant, since I think the last time someone asked me that question was the fortune-teller at the Devon Horse Show when I was 8.
Them: What's your name?
Me: Elisabeth
Them: Where are you from?
Me: The states, where are you from?
Them: Saudi. What's your sign?
Me: Democrat?
In clothes and fashion and makeup they are much like any other group of girls although I guess I never really moved in those circles. I only learned how to put on eyeliner recently, and it was because Alice, my 16-year-old little sister, decided it was high time she bought her big sister some makeup and showed her how to use it properly.
So the other weekend they (very nicely) dragged me upstairs to sit and eat pizza with them and gossip. Of course none of these girls have ANY contact with men outside of their family or, occasionally, random people who get their phone number somehow and call them hoping to hear a woman's voice, and then call back again and again in the hopes of starting a sordid phone affair.
[Side note: this happened to me the other day. I picked up the phone and there was a guy on the other end. The conversation went like this:
Me: Hello?
Him: 'Allo.
Me: Hello?
Him: 'Allo. Salaamu aleikum (seductive)
Me: Who is this?
Him: Oh. Nevermind. (hangs up).
Now I know for a fact that no Arab Man could possibly have my cell phone number. Unless it's the husband of one of the administrators here and THAT would just be... well. Let's not go there.]
Anyway. So when we gossip there isn't much to be said about boys, so talk focuses on what sorts of guys are better than other sorts, and which celebrities are particularly attractive for one reason or another. Good qualities in men are: loyalty, being good in bed, romanticness, ability to write poetry and/or speak well, wealth.
Attractiveness doesn't really come into it much. The guy they seem to be the most in love with is a Saudi singer who is REALLY fat, but does have a boyish charm which makes him cute and, I guess, loveable. They are obsessed with him.
And then of course the talk turned to me. But instead of asking me about all of my flings and boyfriends and one-night stands, they asked me, with bated breath, "So, has any boy ever said 'I love you' to you?"
I was floored. First off ..... what? Secondly, the whole saying "i love you" thing isn't big in the West. And having someone SAY it is very different from having him mean it, or feel it. And it certainly isn't the sort of thing you want to tell people you have just met.
But for girls who have never really talked to or met men in a non-family context, it must be hard to see things from outside a romantic point of view. Now, a huge number of my friends are male, and it's bizarre to be here in an all-female environment, and that's yet another thing these women and I do not have in common. I keep calling them girls because everybody refers to them as binaat or 'girls' in Arabic and because, in some ways, their approaches to life are more like 13-year-olds than 20-year-olds.
This reminds me of the greatest story ever. When I first got here there was a girl, we'll call her Russia, who was a Saudi girl who'd lived outside of Saudi Arabia for a long time. She always gave me one of those "what are you wearing?" looks, so I was never particularly fond of her. And then she disappeared. And I found out (through anonymous sources) that she'd got kicked out of the dorm for sneaking out to meet her secret boyfriend and hid her absence by, you got it, stuffing pillows under her covers. Her roommate caught on and alerted the authorities and so Russia got a call on her cell phone from one of the authorities.
Authority: Russia, where are you?
Russia: I'm in my room. Why?
Authority: Well, gee, Russia, that's interesting. I'm in your room. And I don't see you anywhere.
Her very loyal best friend then stuck up for her saying she'd overdosed on Prozzak and needed to be rushed to the hospital.
Anyway, my first reaction to this was not, in fact, surprise. If you give people no responsibility, no accountability and no freedom, what do you expect them to do with it? Of COURSE they're going to break the rules. What's the worst that can happen? They get put in a different place where nobody will let them go out?
Of course, that's not entirely accurate. Most of the girls here can go out pretty much when they want, because they're fathers have agreed. I, of course, as a legal adult, am kindof ticked my father has to have anything to do with it whatsoever, but here you're pretty much a child until you get married and have kids of your own. There is no 'age of independence'. Why would you want independence from your family?
So, to continue, all of this is secondary to what I really wanted to talk about, which is this: Abaya fashion. Yes, they tell you that women cover themselves in layers and layers of black and walk around like blobs which Westerners in Riyadh thoughtfully and kindly referred to as BMOs, Black Moving Objects. This is not accurate. First, it is a rare woman indeed who actually covers her entire face, and that woman is generally older. Secondly, those "ninjas" (to borrow a term a friend of mine used to describe his mother) who cover everything but their eyes frequently do it just to avoid problems. If men were going to follow ME around all the time acting creepy and trying to touch me, I'd probably find some way to make them less interested. Covering your face is certainly one way to do that.
And third, abayas are not the drab black things they are frequently portrayed as. I guess some women wear shapeless plain black things, but again, those women are few and far between. These days the abaya is as much a statement of fashion as the purse, the shoes or the sunglasses. Yes, black is still the accepted color, although I've seen some very nice dark blue abayas and at least one strange-looking neon green and purple concoction. I wish I could photograph them all to show you without getting myself arrested. First of all, the abayas are much more form-fitting and much better made, so they look more like gorgeous floor-length coats than burlap sacks. Secondly, embroidery has made a huge comeback, and it's the rare abaya indeed that doesn't have anything on it besides the black. Sequins and beads and rhinestones are also very popular. Satin borders and see-through bits are everywhere. And of course your headscarf needs to match.
I don't, as I say, have any good pictures of these, because taking photographs of women is not very polite, but I may be able to coerce some of the girls here to let me photograph them sometime (properly covered, of course). For the moment, the best I can offer is this picture of Rachel modeling the style of abaya that was all the rage in Riyadh before we left.There was a wonderful British woman who used beautiful black silk and lined it with silk she painted herself to meet the demands of the wearer. Every female in my family had one, and they were quite the hot item. We had women stopping us in the supermarkets asking us where we got them.
I long for another abaya of that quality.
And now there is one other thing I should mention. It's not all about the abaya, it's about how you wear it. The hijab, for example, also known as the tarha, is the headcovering. I had a devil of a time figuring out how to put it on so that it wouldn't come off. And as soon as I figured it out I realized that a lot of the other girls don't wear it so that it will stay on. In fact, a lot of them seem to wear it in ORDER for it to come off. If you don't care whether men see your hair (and this is a religious issue) then you wear the tarha for social propriety, only, and to get people to leave you alone. In these circumstances, a tarha which 'happens' to come off regularly and might flash a bit (0r a lot) of hair is kindof like wearing a shirt that keeps slipping off your shoulders. Oops? Is that MY bra strap? You don't mind, do you? hehe.
And for other girls, it's just a pain in the butt, and they wear it because someone might look at them weird if they don't. For these girls it's kindof a statement of their non-religiousness when their tarha doesn't cover all of their hair.
I'll see if I can't get some other pictures of abaya fashion up here, before Rachel kills me.
And on a COMPLETELY unrelated note, I found this entry in a blog while I was wasting time today. I really agree with some of what he says. I really disagree with the rest of it. See what you think. In either case, I think it's well-written.
That's all for today. I've got a jillion Arabic legal terms to learn for translation tomorrow.
Something Cheerful
Hey all. Something uplifting to start off your (my) day.
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei for "their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way".
Sad as I am that my dean didn't win (see 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize ), and Haifa Jamal al-Lail is an amazing woman, no doubt about it, but this guy absolutely deserves it. He's always done an excellent job of remaining impartial and very professional in what are understandably very trying circumstances internationally. Some things I find particularly interesting:
His approach to Iran is much more balanced than what you get from the States or Europe:
(This from an interview held with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on March 17th, 2005).
Additionally, he calls for an international agency to be responsible for the processing of fuel and the control of the dangerous processes in the creation of nuclear energy. This is significantly more fair than Bush's solution of preventing everybody who doesn't already have it from getting it.
Of course, like most fair solutions, his is not yet being considered. But at least he is well-respected and most people realize that he is as close as you can get to an impartial observer. I would really like to believe he's one of the old-school integrity-driven men. Or new-school. I guess there have to be SOME good people around.
Just as a point of interest, did you know that selected students from the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) get to serve nightcaps at the Nobel Prize after-party and hobnob with the rich and famous. Something to keep in mind when choosing your econ program.
So, bravo to fantastic people!
On a personal note, the Ramadan Diet continues. I'm watching Arabic TV again, and a cooking show is on. In the middle of the day, during Ramadan. Does this seem strange to anybody else?
The Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and to its director general, Mohamed ElBaradei for "their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest possible way".
Sad as I am that my dean didn't win (see 1000 Women for the Nobel Peace Prize ), and Haifa Jamal al-Lail is an amazing woman, no doubt about it, but this guy absolutely deserves it. He's always done an excellent job of remaining impartial and very professional in what are understandably very trying circumstances internationally. Some things I find particularly interesting:
His approach to Iran is much more balanced than what you get from the States or Europe:
They are fulfilling their legal obligation as I said, there is a minor
infraction here and there but much less than in the past when there was a major
concealment of the program but again this is not for me and the international
community this is not enough. Iran... need[s] to rebuild confidence, and for that they need to go out of their way to be transparent it is in their own interest and the interest of the international community.
(This from an interview held with CNN's Christiane Amanpour on March 17th, 2005).
Additionally, he calls for an international agency to be responsible for the processing of fuel and the control of the dangerous processes in the creation of nuclear energy. This is significantly more fair than Bush's solution of preventing everybody who doesn't already have it from getting it.
Of course, like most fair solutions, his is not yet being considered. But at least he is well-respected and most people realize that he is as close as you can get to an impartial observer. I would really like to believe he's one of the old-school integrity-driven men. Or new-school. I guess there have to be SOME good people around.
Just as a point of interest, did you know that selected students from the Stockholm School of Economics (SSE) get to serve nightcaps at the Nobel Prize after-party and hobnob with the rich and famous. Something to keep in mind when choosing your econ program.
So, bravo to fantastic people!
On a personal note, the Ramadan Diet continues. I'm watching Arabic TV again, and a cooking show is on. In the middle of the day, during Ramadan. Does this seem strange to anybody else?
Bush's Speech
Bush made a speech on Oct. 6th to the National Endowment for Democracy, and it focused on Islamofascism (an interesting term) and the war in Iraq in an attempt to shore up his waning support. It was sadly lacking in actual strategy. I was struck, however, more by the conciliatory language of some parts of his speech. Gone are the "with us or against us" ultimatums of the past - his comments instead assert the need for allies:
Obviously, this is not a good way to 'win', but I think perhaps it is a more realistic theoretical approach to things. Additionally, and it disturbs me to admit this, I think he does a very good job tying incidents like Bali and the murder of Theo Van Gogh into creating, if you will, a case for radical Islam as a global ideology.
Also, and this hits me only now, I think maybe it's not useful to discuss the ways in which mainstream Islam supports violence or the actions of terrorist groups. In my world, at least, it is necessary for Islam to be integrated into a Western style of living because, if that doesn't happen, your remaining options are a full-out cultural 'clash of civilizations' to use Huntington's term, or a permanent and fundamental change in Western values. What we should be doing, then, is exactly what Bush did in this speech - assert that in no way does Islam support these actions. Because even if you secretly think maybe Islam does, wouldn't you rather change that? And, as the West has been doing for years, the best way to deal with difficult religious issues is to ignore them. If you don't make an issue out of it, then the secular lifestyle of the West can survive. The Catholic Popes of ages past have made a huge number of 'infallible' decrees - asserting Galileo's idiocy and various other things, and the Catholic church has (correctly, I think) found that the best way to deal with their subsequent disproving was to ignore them and pretend they never existed. I mean, if we all read Catholic doctrine correctly, or ANY religious doctrine correctly, then homosexuality just couldn't exist legally. Period. And yet it's been here for years, and most people agree that it should continue to exist. That's because the religious doctrines concerning it have faded quietly into the woodwork. You can't just unsay the Word of God, so you have to sweep it under the carpet.
All of this talk about Islam as a fundamentally violent religion is certainly not helping much.
This all has very little to do with Bush's speech which, I think, was the latest in a string of largely meaningless and yet very patriotic speeches. I found one comment particularly interesting:
A little self-descriptive, do we think? But it couldn't be tyranny if our 'grand vision' is FREEDOM.
And this leads to an interesting corollary - is there such a thing as philanthropic war?
The white man's burden is a hard one to bear.
Defeating a broad and adaptive network requires patience, constant pressure, and
strong partners in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa, Asia and beyond.
Obviously, this is not a good way to 'win', but I think perhaps it is a more realistic theoretical approach to things. Additionally, and it disturbs me to admit this, I think he does a very good job tying incidents like Bali and the murder of Theo Van Gogh into creating, if you will, a case for radical Islam as a global ideology.
Also, and this hits me only now, I think maybe it's not useful to discuss the ways in which mainstream Islam supports violence or the actions of terrorist groups. In my world, at least, it is necessary for Islam to be integrated into a Western style of living because, if that doesn't happen, your remaining options are a full-out cultural 'clash of civilizations' to use Huntington's term, or a permanent and fundamental change in Western values. What we should be doing, then, is exactly what Bush did in this speech - assert that in no way does Islam support these actions. Because even if you secretly think maybe Islam does, wouldn't you rather change that? And, as the West has been doing for years, the best way to deal with difficult religious issues is to ignore them. If you don't make an issue out of it, then the secular lifestyle of the West can survive. The Catholic Popes of ages past have made a huge number of 'infallible' decrees - asserting Galileo's idiocy and various other things, and the Catholic church has (correctly, I think) found that the best way to deal with their subsequent disproving was to ignore them and pretend they never existed. I mean, if we all read Catholic doctrine correctly, or ANY religious doctrine correctly, then homosexuality just couldn't exist legally. Period. And yet it's been here for years, and most people agree that it should continue to exist. That's because the religious doctrines concerning it have faded quietly into the woodwork. You can't just unsay the Word of God, so you have to sweep it under the carpet.
All of this talk about Islam as a fundamentally violent religion is certainly not helping much.
This all has very little to do with Bush's speech which, I think, was the latest in a string of largely meaningless and yet very patriotic speeches. I found one comment particularly interesting:
Throughout history, tyrants and would-be tyrants have always claimed that murder
is justified to serve their grand vision. And they end up alienating decent
people across the globe.
A little self-descriptive, do we think? But it couldn't be tyranny if our 'grand vision' is FREEDOM.
And this leads to an interesting corollary - is there such a thing as philanthropic war?
The white man's burden is a hard one to bear.
Thursday, October 06, 2005
Misuse of the Pulpit
And, just because I can, I found a great quote in Stephen King's The Gunslinger, the first of the Dark Tower series. If y'all like Stephen King, or even if you don't, this is worth reading I think. Not horror. Rather Tolkein writ Wild West.
In any case:
"He fled the light and the knowledge the light implied, and so came back to himself. Even so do the rest of us, even so the best of us."
Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it.
In any case:
"He fled the light and the knowledge the light implied, and so came back to himself. Even so do the rest of us, even so the best of us."
Stick THAT in your pipe and smoke it.
Why is Islam different?
Daniel Pipes' website has an interesting article he published in the New York Sun. It enumerates examples of Islam, as he puts it, "upset[ting] a benign status quo". In many cases I think he is correct, but I don't know if it is fair to blame it on Islam. If one religion can upset the existing regulations so thoroughly, might it not be a problem with the system itself?
The Fight for Secularism
It isn't only in the Arab world that the fight between religion and secularism is coming to a head. The division exists just as strongly in the United States.
The Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia visited Effat College the day after Karen Hughes made her splash at Dar el-Hikma. The Canadian ambassador made a huge point of his extreme tact in direct comparison to the 'preaching' of 'our southern neighbor'. I found a couple of things interesting in his talk, and I agreed with a lot of it, but one of his comments hit home very strongly. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Canadians often forget that there's more to the United States than the Northeast." I would venture to add that they are probably unpleasantly surprised when they are reminded of the rest.
Now, I am the liberal child of liberal parents who attends a liberal university in the Northeast, and when he said this I realized that his comment applies equally to Americans - people in the Northeast frequently forget that there's more to the United States than the Northeast. That was a huge part of what made the 2004 election so depressing for us (those of us it did depress) - we had forgotten, or tried to ignore, the huge amount of the country who completely disagreed with us. Well, we can't really do that so much any more. They outnumber us and, for whatever reason, the uber-religious right is making a big comeback. This is not, of course, to say that every Republican is uber-religious. But American religion has really become the domain of the Right, and it's growing fast. Take the current debate on Creationism. I had thought, along with most of my classmates, that this argument ended in the Scopes Monkey Trial. But of course, the tension between religion and 'secular' life is never really going to be solved.
And that makes some sense. From a religious point of view, it's never going to be okay to just 'forget' God, or 'separate' God from some other part of life. Americans like myself have become very good at reasoning religion into an entirely internal, individual relationship with whatever Higher Being you do or do not believe in. There is an entirely different sort of religion, however, for whom that is exactly the wrong way to go about it. This second sort of religion is all about community, and there's nothing like social pressure to help people behave in morally respectable, religiously acceptable ways. And frankly, if I want my child to grow up believing in Creationism, then I don't want him hearing anything about evolution in his biology class. It might give him ideas.
In the New York Times today there is an interesting article, actually fairly depressing, about how two different groups of people can look at the same facts and come away with completely different opinions. The entire idea of democracy is that, like Demosthenes in Athens, I should be able to get up and convince people of my point of view. Obviously this is a little naive, and I realize that American politics haven't worked like that for years, but still... shouldn't that at least be the ideal? The idea of compromise seems to have gone out the window. It is win or die trying these days, and that is only exacerbated by throwing religion (which has never been very good at compromise) into the mix. To go back to this article:
Isn't it depressing that smart, intelligent people feel it necessary to seek like-minded groups? As someone currently living in a place where everybody but me is like-minded, I definitely appreciate how uncomfortable it can be to hold the dissenting opinion. But in my mind that's one of the things that makes America's emphasis on individual rights and freedom of speech and religion so very important - unless it's protected by law, these things are the first things to go. The other thing I'm beginning to appreciate more about the American system is the belief that more information is always better. If we all have all the information, and we all have similar goals, then reasonable people ought to be able to come to some sort of agreement.
Of course, teaching about all religions, or teaching religious theory, isn't nearly the same as teaching religion, which is what Creationists want.
In Jeddah, here, Islamic Studies is required in school all the way up, including college. Considering that this is an unabashedly Islamic state, this seems reasonable to me. What has caught me by surprise is, I guess, the unacademic nature of the class itself. Rather than teaching history or religious theory or religious teachings, all of which would seem to me to be in keeping with the goal of promoting Islam, they are teaching some generalized set of dogma. For my class, Islam 101, they essentially go through the problems of the world - pollution, unemployment, poverty - and discuss how Islam has solved all of these problems. But instead of providing any concrete methods of preventing pollution, or lowering unemployment, we are merely given sets of Qu'ranic verses which say, in gist, "be nice to the environment". This doesn't even seem useful from an Islamic point of view.
I haven't come to any conclusion on this, but I am becoming more and more aware of the universal nature of the religion-secularism fight. Europe is facing it in the form of Muslim immigrants and Turkey's fight for membership in the EU. Turkey and France are facing it and dealing with it by forbidding the most obvious forms of religious observance like the headscarf. This seems on the face of it unfair from an American perspective. America has the benefit of history - freedom of religion has been one of our tenets for as long as we've existed - but it can only maintain that freedom of religion if it is understood that religion doesn't have the right to intrude on public life. Basically, you can believe whatever you want, but you can't tell me what to believe.
This has always seemed like an extremely attractive idea to me. The problem is, isn't that an ideal, a belief, an ideology? I guess for me the difference is doubt. I am willing to admit that my idea isn't the only one or, necessarily, the best one. People who think there is only one Truth and that they happen to know it frighten me. But obviously the search for truth is an ongoing human quest, and there will always be people who think that they have found it. And perhaps they have.
And that's the Truth.
The Canadian ambassador to Saudi Arabia visited Effat College the day after Karen Hughes made her splash at Dar el-Hikma. The Canadian ambassador made a huge point of his extreme tact in direct comparison to the 'preaching' of 'our southern neighbor'. I found a couple of things interesting in his talk, and I agreed with a lot of it, but one of his comments hit home very strongly. He said, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Canadians often forget that there's more to the United States than the Northeast." I would venture to add that they are probably unpleasantly surprised when they are reminded of the rest.
Now, I am the liberal child of liberal parents who attends a liberal university in the Northeast, and when he said this I realized that his comment applies equally to Americans - people in the Northeast frequently forget that there's more to the United States than the Northeast. That was a huge part of what made the 2004 election so depressing for us (those of us it did depress) - we had forgotten, or tried to ignore, the huge amount of the country who completely disagreed with us. Well, we can't really do that so much any more. They outnumber us and, for whatever reason, the uber-religious right is making a big comeback. This is not, of course, to say that every Republican is uber-religious. But American religion has really become the domain of the Right, and it's growing fast. Take the current debate on Creationism. I had thought, along with most of my classmates, that this argument ended in the Scopes Monkey Trial. But of course, the tension between religion and 'secular' life is never really going to be solved.
And that makes some sense. From a religious point of view, it's never going to be okay to just 'forget' God, or 'separate' God from some other part of life. Americans like myself have become very good at reasoning religion into an entirely internal, individual relationship with whatever Higher Being you do or do not believe in. There is an entirely different sort of religion, however, for whom that is exactly the wrong way to go about it. This second sort of religion is all about community, and there's nothing like social pressure to help people behave in morally respectable, religiously acceptable ways. And frankly, if I want my child to grow up believing in Creationism, then I don't want him hearing anything about evolution in his biology class. It might give him ideas.
In the New York Times today there is an interesting article, actually fairly depressing, about how two different groups of people can look at the same facts and come away with completely different opinions. The entire idea of democracy is that, like Demosthenes in Athens, I should be able to get up and convince people of my point of view. Obviously this is a little naive, and I realize that American politics haven't worked like that for years, but still... shouldn't that at least be the ideal? The idea of compromise seems to have gone out the window. It is win or die trying these days, and that is only exacerbated by throwing religion (which has never been very good at compromise) into the mix. To go back to this article:
Members of both groups said they had signed up for these charters to be
surrounded by like-minded people.
Isn't it depressing that smart, intelligent people feel it necessary to seek like-minded groups? As someone currently living in a place where everybody but me is like-minded, I definitely appreciate how uncomfortable it can be to hold the dissenting opinion. But in my mind that's one of the things that makes America's emphasis on individual rights and freedom of speech and religion so very important - unless it's protected by law, these things are the first things to go. The other thing I'm beginning to appreciate more about the American system is the belief that more information is always better. If we all have all the information, and we all have similar goals, then reasonable people ought to be able to come to some sort of agreement.
Of course, teaching about all religions, or teaching religious theory, isn't nearly the same as teaching religion, which is what Creationists want.
In Jeddah, here, Islamic Studies is required in school all the way up, including college. Considering that this is an unabashedly Islamic state, this seems reasonable to me. What has caught me by surprise is, I guess, the unacademic nature of the class itself. Rather than teaching history or religious theory or religious teachings, all of which would seem to me to be in keeping with the goal of promoting Islam, they are teaching some generalized set of dogma. For my class, Islam 101, they essentially go through the problems of the world - pollution, unemployment, poverty - and discuss how Islam has solved all of these problems. But instead of providing any concrete methods of preventing pollution, or lowering unemployment, we are merely given sets of Qu'ranic verses which say, in gist, "be nice to the environment". This doesn't even seem useful from an Islamic point of view.
I haven't come to any conclusion on this, but I am becoming more and more aware of the universal nature of the religion-secularism fight. Europe is facing it in the form of Muslim immigrants and Turkey's fight for membership in the EU. Turkey and France are facing it and dealing with it by forbidding the most obvious forms of religious observance like the headscarf. This seems on the face of it unfair from an American perspective. America has the benefit of history - freedom of religion has been one of our tenets for as long as we've existed - but it can only maintain that freedom of religion if it is understood that religion doesn't have the right to intrude on public life. Basically, you can believe whatever you want, but you can't tell me what to believe.
This has always seemed like an extremely attractive idea to me. The problem is, isn't that an ideal, a belief, an ideology? I guess for me the difference is doubt. I am willing to admit that my idea isn't the only one or, necessarily, the best one. People who think there is only one Truth and that they happen to know it frighten me. But obviously the search for truth is an ongoing human quest, and there will always be people who think that they have found it. And perhaps they have.
And that's the Truth.
The Ramadan Diet
شهر رمضان الذي أنزل فيه القرآن
هدى للناس وبينات من الهدى والفرقان
فمن شهد منكم الشهر فليصومه
"The month of Ramadan, wherein the Koran
was sent down to be a guidance to the people,
was sent down to be a guidance to the people,
and as clear signs of the Guidance and the Salvation.
So let those of you, who are present at the month,
fast it." (Sura al-Baqarah, Ayah 185)
For those of you who care, I'm taking the English from A.J. Arberry's translation of the Koran and the Arabic from the Quran that came with my cell phone. It's been more useful than you would have thought. When my father gave me the phone (which he'd bought for himself) and I noted with glee the electronic version of the Qu'ran it included, Papa's only respose was "Yeah, I tried to delete it, but it wouldn't let me." My father, religion's biggest fan.
I realize I wrote "Koran" in three different ways in that previous paragraph. I'm going to have to figure out a standardized transliteration. I think I'll go with "Qur'an" because it's the most complicated and foreign-looking.
This verse is on a big framed poster right outside of my door. I think it would be difficult to overestimate the importance of this month in the Muslim year. Dr. Khadija, my professor for "The Cultural and Social Context of Childhood in Islam" or what I've taken to calling "Parenting for Muslims", tells me this is because a Muslim's connection go Allah is stronger during this month than any other time. The days of fasting and the nights of prayer allow almost uninterrupted thought of Allah, and the lack of food purifies the spirit and makes it more worthy of that connection. The lack of food also allows Muslims to experience the plight of the poor on a more immediate basis, and it is during Ramadan that the largest charitable donations occur.
Of course, much like Easter in the United States, there is a 'secular' (or what we would call secular) aspect to this holiday as well. First off, everybody stays up all night and fasts all day, so very little gets done. Classes are half as long and the school day is from 10-3 instead of the normal 8-4. Secondly I have it on good authority that the absolute best television of the whole year starts during Ramadan. So far it's helped my Arabic immeasurably - there are a number of historical dramas which air during Ramadan where the actors speak in فصحة (fusha), the classical Arabic of the Qu'ran, of written Arabic today, and the Arabic I learned in college. This is significantly easier to understand than the dialects people actually speak, at least for me. But by far the highlight of this year's Ramadan schedule is an Egyptian dubbing of The Simpsons called, roughly, "Al- Shamshoon". It is apparently well-accepted that the Egyptian dialect of Arabic is much better at comedy than any other dialect, and according to the girls down the hall from me the show is an unmitigated success. Maybe next year my Arabic will be good enough to understand it.
And now I move to the difficulty of the current situation. Since everybody in the universe, according to the Saudi government, ought to be fasting, serving food during the day is totally illegal. This is hypothetically okay. Fasting isn't so bad - I used to do it accidentally all the time. But I need food with my twice-daily antibiotics (for my toe), and staying up until suhoor at 3 or 4 in the morning is really not a viable option for me if I want to do anything useful the next day. Of course, nobody else is doing anything useful in the daytime, so given time I will hopefully turn my schedule around enough to stay up for the major meal, but for the last few days I've chosen a different alternative - semi-starvation. They snuck me food in the mornings, but that consisted of literally nothing but bread. I would go out to get food myself, but at the moment my mobility is limited by my toe. After two days of this I ended up asking Dr. Faten (one of the administrators and a woman who has been more than generous) if she would help me get some apples (for quick-intake glucose) and some noodes I could cook in the kitchenette down the hall. I think this must have also precipitated additional attention to my diet, because people have been very worried about me today. Abla Maha just came up to ask me to come downstairs and eat, and once I got down there insisted on helping me heap food upon my plate. "We have fruit! You want fruit?" (all of this in arabic). "Sweets! We have sweets!" "you should have something else to drink."
It reminded me of my first (and only, so far) experience going out "on my own" in a car with a college driver. Because I'm using college transportation, the oh-so-paranoid women who run the residence prefer that I take a "guard" out, presumably to prove to the world that I am chaperoned and also, I guess, as a secondary concern for my safety. Luckily the guard that they chose for me was a woman, Tayyiba, who has been nice to me regularly. She's Ethiopian, and her English is much worse than my Arabic, so I had good fun trying to communicate with her. We went to Jarir (the bookstore) and Danube (the supermarket) and the whole time she kept trying to carry my posessions for me, as a typical maid would do. I was having none of this, because she was only there because I insisted on going out and I wasn't going to buy that much anyway and besides, I don't do well with people serving me when I can do it on my own. So eventually this devolved into a loud, albeit jovial, argument in the middle of the supermarket. Imagine it: two women, one COMPLETELY covered head-to-toe in black, the other with blond hair fully unveiled, having a tug-of-war over a bag full of laundry detergent. She was shouting "Hua thaqeel! Hua thaqeel!" ("It's heavy! It's heavy!") as she tried to grab it from me, and I was shouting "Moo thaqeel! Moo thaqeel!" (It's not heavy! It's not heavy!) just as vehemently. We attracted quite a bit of attention, but at least we were both entertained. This is the sort of argument I find myself having regularly. People who want to take care of me just won't give up. It's embarrassing. I find myself longing for America's well-oiled machine, where I can get lost at will and if I miss a meal or three nobody will care.
Then again, starving to death during Ramadan seems like an ironic way to go. I suppose I have to let them take care of me at least to the extent that I stay alive.
And on an entertaining note from today's Arab News, my typical dinner reading-material, remember to feed your children.
Welcome to Planet Jeddah
The Romans did not like to work
Their duties they did shirk.
I think I finally found an appropriate context for this ridiculous bit of non-poetry. (For those of you who aren't my father, he wrote this stunning piece of literature sometime in the... 3rd?....grade, and practically ever since then has been desperately trying to convince me or one of my sisters to use it in a paper or an article or something).
I take this couplet to mean this: I can't stand the thought of doing something useful with my time, so I'd rather create a blog. Additionally, I hope that perhaps if someone else is reading my writing I'll have more incentive to actually keep that journal that I need so badly.
It's Magrib, everyone, and that means that in a minute I'll be hobbling down to the cafeteria ("restaurant") to get something to eat with the other girls in the dorm ("residence"). I've been watching Arabic TV in an effort to improve my language skills, and right now the eerie and beautiful sounds of the prayer-call are reminding me of the time.
Some background information is probably in order. I am an American girl, born and bred in the suburbs of Philly. Sometime roundabout my 13th birthday my father decided, for reasons which are still unclear to me, that it would be a perfect time to up and move my family to the Middle East. I like to think of this as a sort of mid-life crisis. At the time, my sisters and I (I have two, younger) had never even heard of Saudi Arabia, and most of my friends responded to my upcoming move with such stereotypical questions as "will you have to ride a camel to school?" and "do you have a real house, or do you have to live in a tent?" I wasn't any too certain of the answers to these questions.
It is now 8 years later. I am older and, perhaps, wiser. Four years in Riyadh for me, my sisters and maman, eight years for my dad. I graduated from the American International School - Riyadh and moved back to the States for college. Though I had various violent reactions to my experiences in Saudi, I would go back and do it again in a second.
And, in many ways, I AM going back to do it again. After three years of college (I'm majoring in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, which encompasses religious studies, language studies, and kindof anything related to the Middle East) I found myself getting antsy and decided, not without much trepidation, to try Saudi Arabia again, but from a different angle. Instead of the mainly expat community I enjoyed the first time, I would cloister (almost literally) myself in a Saudi school - the first private college for women in the country - and I would learn from the inside out what it is like to be Saudi, and female. Effat College is brand new (maybe 7 or 8 years old maximum) and offers the best attempt at a liberal arts education that the Kingdom has yet achieved. I'm living in the سكن (sakan), the residence, with a bunch of other girls who are mostly from other parts of Saudi Arabia. In addition to the wholly different cultural atmosphere, I'm also in a different geographical locale - Jeddah, the port city, rather than Riyadh, the capital. Everyone seems to agree that Jeddah is much more open and permissive than Riyadh. We'll see how that goes.
I've been here a month already (how time does fly) so this blog will have to play catch-up with my life a bit. Suffice it to say, things have not been dull. Highlights of the month (with possible expansion to follow) include:
1) my first Saudi wedding. Envision a graveyard for tacky haute-couture. But for some reason it all looked appropriate in context.
2) Trips to the beach, to Taif, and out on boats... sipping pomegranate juice and lying in the sun sure can get exhausting.
3) Meeting King Fahad's widow. Something of an embarrassing experience, since she wanted me to use my (minimal) Arabic, but I think I came off at least as someone making a valiant effort.
4) Richard Murphy and his wife, Anne. More to come on this later.
5) Dropping a ping-pong table on my foot. This precipitated my first experience with the Saudi hospital system, despite the fact my father worked in one for almost a decade. I am now the proud owner of a semi-functional toe with 7 stitches in it, although they should come out on Friday. I also have a photographic documentary thanks to Mona, the Light of my Life.
6) What I like to call the "Ramadan Diet". More to come on this later as well.
For the moment, that's all she wrote. But judging from the amount of time I currently spend in my room thinking about things, this could become my favorite place to be.
رمضان مبارك (Ramadan mubarak) and a belated Happy Rosh Hashana.
Their duties they did shirk.
I think I finally found an appropriate context for this ridiculous bit of non-poetry. (For those of you who aren't my father, he wrote this stunning piece of literature sometime in the... 3rd?....grade, and practically ever since then has been desperately trying to convince me or one of my sisters to use it in a paper or an article or something).
I take this couplet to mean this: I can't stand the thought of doing something useful with my time, so I'd rather create a blog. Additionally, I hope that perhaps if someone else is reading my writing I'll have more incentive to actually keep that journal that I need so badly.
It's Magrib, everyone, and that means that in a minute I'll be hobbling down to the cafeteria ("restaurant") to get something to eat with the other girls in the dorm ("residence"). I've been watching Arabic TV in an effort to improve my language skills, and right now the eerie and beautiful sounds of the prayer-call are reminding me of the time.
Some background information is probably in order. I am an American girl, born and bred in the suburbs of Philly. Sometime roundabout my 13th birthday my father decided, for reasons which are still unclear to me, that it would be a perfect time to up and move my family to the Middle East. I like to think of this as a sort of mid-life crisis. At the time, my sisters and I (I have two, younger) had never even heard of Saudi Arabia, and most of my friends responded to my upcoming move with such stereotypical questions as "will you have to ride a camel to school?" and "do you have a real house, or do you have to live in a tent?" I wasn't any too certain of the answers to these questions.
It is now 8 years later. I am older and, perhaps, wiser. Four years in Riyadh for me, my sisters and maman, eight years for my dad. I graduated from the American International School - Riyadh and moved back to the States for college. Though I had various violent reactions to my experiences in Saudi, I would go back and do it again in a second.
And, in many ways, I AM going back to do it again. After three years of college (I'm majoring in Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations, which encompasses religious studies, language studies, and kindof anything related to the Middle East) I found myself getting antsy and decided, not without much trepidation, to try Saudi Arabia again, but from a different angle. Instead of the mainly expat community I enjoyed the first time, I would cloister (almost literally) myself in a Saudi school - the first private college for women in the country - and I would learn from the inside out what it is like to be Saudi, and female. Effat College is brand new (maybe 7 or 8 years old maximum) and offers the best attempt at a liberal arts education that the Kingdom has yet achieved. I'm living in the سكن (sakan), the residence, with a bunch of other girls who are mostly from other parts of Saudi Arabia. In addition to the wholly different cultural atmosphere, I'm also in a different geographical locale - Jeddah, the port city, rather than Riyadh, the capital. Everyone seems to agree that Jeddah is much more open and permissive than Riyadh. We'll see how that goes.
I've been here a month already (how time does fly) so this blog will have to play catch-up with my life a bit. Suffice it to say, things have not been dull. Highlights of the month (with possible expansion to follow) include:
1) my first Saudi wedding. Envision a graveyard for tacky haute-couture. But for some reason it all looked appropriate in context.
2) Trips to the beach, to Taif, and out on boats... sipping pomegranate juice and lying in the sun sure can get exhausting.
3) Meeting King Fahad's widow. Something of an embarrassing experience, since she wanted me to use my (minimal) Arabic, but I think I came off at least as someone making a valiant effort.
4) Richard Murphy and his wife, Anne. More to come on this later.
5) Dropping a ping-pong table on my foot. This precipitated my first experience with the Saudi hospital system, despite the fact my father worked in one for almost a decade. I am now the proud owner of a semi-functional toe with 7 stitches in it, although they should come out on Friday. I also have a photographic documentary thanks to Mona, the Light of my Life.
6) What I like to call the "Ramadan Diet". More to come on this later as well.
For the moment, that's all she wrote. But judging from the amount of time I currently spend in my room thinking about things, this could become my favorite place to be.
رمضان مبارك (Ramadan mubarak) and a belated Happy Rosh Hashana.
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