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.