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.