saudi stepford wife

Blogging Break

2008-05-19T00:51:00.003+03:00

I'll be on a blogging break until around mid-June. I won't be making any new posts nor will I be responding to any new comments or emails. Inshallah, I'll be back after that with some entertaining posts.

Stay Tuned....

Some titles planned for next month:

- Calling All White Boys to Islam...
- Trying to Pray With Kids
- A Driving Desire

I Dream I'm Searching for Jesus

2008-05-16T09:43:00.004+03:00

About 11 years ago, I dreamt I was searching for Jesus. As a person who rarely remembers her dreams, even a few minutes after waking, the fact that every detail of this dream is seared into my memory even to this day is a testament to its impact. Muslims believe that on occasion, a person can experience a dream sent by God and surely, for me, this was one such dream.

My mission from the beginning of the dream was quite clear; I had to find Jesus. I was paired with another on my quest, a man I didn't know and have not met yet, to my knowledge.

The two of us began our quest in a very nice looking neighborhood with beautifully paved and clean, tree-lined streets during a sunny summer's day. We asked a few of the happy passers-by if they knew where Jesus could be found. Each smiling respondent enthusiastically pointed us in the direction of a large stadium in the distance.

Upon entering the packed stadium, the sound of hysterical laughter was deafening. Well-dressed men, women and children of various races filled every seat in the huge stadium and all were transfixed with laughter at the events taking place at the center of the stadium. There wasn't a person in the place whose face wasn't contorted with a jester-like quality and who were bent over in the throws of uncontrollable laughter. There was an unrealistic, almost forced quality to the laughter, as if it weren't genuinely produced from the soul. The absence of true joy was apparent in the eyes of the laughers as if their smiles had been unnaturally transposed over mourning faces.

My partner and I proceeded to try and ask several of the laughing people in the stadium if they knew where Jesus was, but it was so hard to distract them from their jocularity. In our confusion upon entering the stadium to this hilarious bedlam, we hadn't even glanced in the direction of the stage in the middle. When we looked...there was nothing there, just an empty stage with a spotlight shone upon it!

"What are you laughing at", I asked one of the people after shaking him out of his trance-like laughter long enough to look away from the empty stage and look at me. He was a middle-aged African-American man with glasses and looked to be an average middle-class family man.

He heavily lifted his arm and pointed his finger towards the empty stage while still contorted with laughter.

"But there's nothing there", I insisted while trying to keep him from slipping back into his laughing-trance.
"Don't you see it, it's right there, look", the man giggled and shifted his attention back to the stage.

"What, what's there, I don't see anything on stage...", but it was too late, he'd already been re-entranced by the empty stage.

Unable to snap any of the stadium-goers out of their insane laughter, we were forced to leave to continue our search despite having been instructed by various people outside the stadium that indeed, that's where Jesus is supposedly located. My partner and I decided to get into an awaiting taxi parked in front of the stadium and search in another neighborhood.

"Do you know where we might find Jesus", we enquired of the grungy cabbie upon getting into the older-model cab.

He nodded in the affirmative and proceeded to drive us a short distance to a dank, dirty, deserted part of town replete with tipped-over, rat-filled garbage cans and stagnant puddles of sewage overflow next to tall, dilapidated apartment buildings. The bright and cheerful sun which had shone in the nice neighborhood didn't appear through the smog and pollution casting tones of twilight across the dingy, urban scene like something out of an old gangster movie. The cabbie indicated to one of the condemned buildings, suggesting that would be where Jesus is located.

My partner and I entered the building and began knocking on apartment doors on every floor. Most were empty and the few people we did speak with, weren't helpful at anything but misdirection and contradiction until finally, there was only one apartment left unchecked. We opened the door to the sight of water filled up to just a few inches below the ceiling. There was an invisible barrier holding the water in the apartment and keeping it from flowing out of the open door. We could feel a type of pull, somehow we could sense that Jesus was in there and we had to enter through the door and into the water.

As we passed through the doorway, we were entirely immersed in water and were forced to float to the top. Our heads bumped against the ceiling next to the single light bulb which dimly illuminated the water below as we held our mouths above water and gasped for air. My partner and I took turns diving below the water and searching for Jesus in every cabinet and closet. We would rise to inform the other of where we'd already searched in the murky, greenish colored water and breathe while the other would dive below to continue our search, which now seemed more like a rescue mission. We treaded water for what seemed to be forever and we became exhausted.

Then finally after dozens of dives, we found him.

On my last dive into the kitchen, I'd found Jesus, weak and powerless to release himself, curled up in one of the lower cabinets in a fetal position. He wasn't dead, but practically unconscious. Upon opening the cabinet door and discovering him, the water gushed out of the apartment leaving us to carry a wet and tired Jesus out of the condemned building into the street. We rushed as fast as we could to try and find help for him and saw that the taxi which had brought us to this seedy neighborhood was still idling outside, ready to take us to the hospital. My partner and I held Jesus in the backseat of the taxi, trying to revive him. As he opened his eyes, he passed us a key that had been clenched in his hand all that time.

And I woke up.

The Meaning

There are people who are gifted with dream interpretation. A few years after having this dream, my husband contacted a sheikh who was renowned for accurately interpreting dreams. I already had an idea of what the dream meant but I wanted to have my ideas confirmed. I told him the details of my dream and he gave me the following keys:

Jesus= the true message of God. For Muslims, Jesus (PBUH) was an important Prophet and he carried with him the same message that all of God's prophets did, from Adam to Noah to Moses and beyond. Upon reading the Bible, I can spot where the original message was and where it had become changed and distorted from its original meaning. For me, Islam isn't a different religion from Christianity, hence the use of Jesus and not Mohammed (PBUH) as symbol for Islam in my dream; it's a continuation and a correction of what had come previous but had been manipulated by the hands of man.

The nice neighborhood at the beginning = the christian world

The laughing stadium goers = Christians who unbeknownst to themselves, were deluded into happiness by unsubstantial joys of this world. In error, everyone thought Jesus was there in the stadium with them but in fact, there was nothing. The forced quality of their laughter and the contradiction of their sad eyes to the apparent hilarity alluded to the fact that they suspected or knew the fallacy of the situation, but didn't want to admit it or question it.

My partner= we're not exactly sure who he is but the sheikh thought he is a person who was also going through a similar search for true Islam. I did not feel any romantic attachment to him nor do I recall any particular fondness for him... but I do know he is western-oriented like me although the details of his appearance have been obscured from my memory. All I felt is that we were linked in our search. One of my friends suggested he may be my then unborn son, who may join me on future religious projects, Allahu-aalam. A part of me feels he may be another Muslim who also had the same dream as I and may work with me in real life one day on an important Islamic project; this thought has compelled me to keep certain details of my dream out of this post in case I were to ever meet the brother, I could confirm his authenticity (far-fetched, I know).

The taxi = dawah, propagation of Islam. It's older state is a testament to outmoded methods used to promote the religion as well as its "foreignness". The grungy state of the driver, and the fact that many taxi drivers in metropolitan areas are of Muslim extraction may be of significance.

The bad neighborhood = the Muslim world today. The lack of light is how we lack enlightenment and are in a type of "dark ages". It also shows what a miserable state most Muslim countries are in.

The apartment dwellers- cultural Muslims, or Muslims-by-name-only who don't really practice the religion nor do they know much about it.

The water = fitna. This was one of the strongest symbols in my dream and the one I faced the most difficulty with. Diving down through all the fitna in the Muslim world in order to find the true message of Jesus (PBUH), which is the same as our Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), proved to be an exhausting ordeal.

The key= perhaps to the gates of heaven for finding the true message of God through all of the fitna, after having left my nice neighborhood to search for it in the foreboding Muslim world.

**********************************

Upon having this dream, two years or so after I really started practicing Islam and before my husband and I had left America for Saudia, I was instantly comforted that I was on the right path. I'd been given confirmation by God that my struggles were not in vain and that my destiny was to go to the Muslim world to dive and search through the fitna to find the true message of God. It also meant that there were others like me and I was never alone in my search and they would also help me bring the true religion of God out of the Muslim world where it had formerly been held, neglected and bogged down by fitna.

Chinese Eyes

2008-05-14T08:19:00.004+03:00

Random Filipina nurse: (to me) "Are you Chinese?"

Daisy: *?!?*

Random Filipina nurse: *earnestly awaiting answer*

Daisy: "Uh... no. But strangely enough, that's not the first time I've been asked that".

(people who know me...seriously, I've been asked this several times)

You never know when a recessive trait is going to strike. In my case, it's my "Chinese eyes".

Before we all had kids, there were only two people in my family with "Chinese eyes", me and my gorgeous Cousin Suzy. As a kid, I watched men fall all over themselves as my exotic looking cousin, then in her early 20's, passed by with her dark hair, classy style and her captivating eyes. I recall riding on rides for free when Suzy took me to the carnival. In a family whose looks exemplify "the girl next door", Suzy's features were unique.

"Are you sure you guys didn't have a Chinese milkman", DD jokes with me.

2 out of my 3 kids have inherited my "Chinese eyes", what had been a recessive trait. I hadn't thought much beyond my "Chinese eyes" when thinking of recessive traits. My DNA, when combined with DD's, is varied enough that I don't need to worry about passing things on like Sickle-Cell, cystic fibrosis or Huntington's onto my kids. Or so I thought...

"What the hell is going on, how the hell did we end up with two kids with epilepsy?"

After Buddy had his 3rd seizure in 4 days, I was asking a lot of questions. We weren't terribly surprised when EttaMae was struck with seizures last year; the poor kid really got a bad shuffle of the DNA deck. Not only did she get bad hair, bad teeth, bad eyesight amongst other things but, she'll catch every virus and bacteria in the general vicinity and is constantly sick. But now, Buddy too!

"Is there anyone else in your families that has convulsions", the neurologist asked DD and I while we were at the same hospital as that random Filipina nurse.

"No", DD answers quickly. Although the same thing can't be said with diabetes, sickle-cell and big-butts...no one in his family has epileptic seizures.

"I do have a cousin, a second cousin actually. She had a seizure once in her 20's but to my knowledge, she never had one again. And she was told it was probably from an old head injury, something about an old bruise on her brain, maybe from a childhood fall."

I recalled the details of Suzy's seizure to doctor as best as I could remember of the second-hand story.

"Maybe this is evidence of a recessive trait in your family" the neurologist said.

Although I'd like to deny any culpability, perhaps I've passed on more than just my Chinese eyes.

Tussle My Hair

2008-05-11T09:39:00.005+03:00

Silky-soft brown swirls and whirls,
flippy-floppy cowlicks and gentle waves,
there's something about Buddy's hair that says, "Please, tussle me".

There hasn't been an outing amongst people yet in which at least one person, a complete stranger, does not pass by smiling and give his hair a little tussle. On many shopping trips, up to four people of all different walks of life, have felt compelled to playfully rifle their fingers through his hair; little girls, Asian laborers, old ladies and cashiers all are drawn to my boy's head. Sometimes, the hair-tussle is accompanied by a piece of candy or a bag of chips, to Buddy's delight.

I understand the magnetic pull of Buddy's hair, I must tussle his hair several times a day myself.

The Lazarus Roach

2008-04-26T04:01:00.003+03:00

As I entered the bathroom to give Buddy a bath yesterday, I was greeted by the site of this, icky bug, triumphantly crawling out of the bathtub's drain.

So far, I've been blessed in this house when it comes to roaches or rather, the lack thereof. In the two and a half years that we've lived here, I've only come across less than a dozen in total. Most of the time, they waltz in through one of the downstairs bathrooms and don't make it into the house much further than that before they're....eliminated.

This is a far cry from the "old neighborhood" where roaches were walking in under the door from outside with impunity, as if they'd been invited for tea. Thank God my cats were roach detectors back in those days. They're worthless when it came to killing them, they're too well fed for that messy business, but at least they stared unflinchingly for several minutes at a time which told me, there's a creepy crawly in the house. Just to make sure you understand the scale of these bugs, this one was at least as long as my pinkie finger.

So there I am, a naked Buddy in one hand and the spray hose in the other. I set Buddy down to pick up the toilet brush, the only thing I'm not worried about messing up with roach guts, and start bashing the roach back down the drain as it's trying to emerge. I combined beating it with spraying it until it gave up clinging to the sides of the drain and washed down the two floors to the sewer pipes below. Just to make sure it wasn't clinging, I made sure to flush down plenty of water during Buddy's bath then later when I took a shower.

Bath-time comes again in our home, always around Isha prayer when I'm getting the kids ready for bed. Again, I enter the bathroom and turn on the light and there, in a triumphantly brazen pose, is that damned roach. There's no way it could be a different one considering this is the first roach in all these years to express an obsession with my second floor bedroom's bathtub. My bathtub is this roach's Mt. Everest. It had to climb up two floors of pipes to make it all the way up to my room, no wonder it wasn't worried about scattering after I'd turned on the light, it had lived a full life...it made it to the bathtub.

Armed with a camera and a shoe, I made sure to capture this roach's accomplishment for posterity before bashing it repeatedly to death. Since these roach's are so big, just one smack, or even two, can't do the job.

Crrrrunch.....Fluuuuuush......try coming back after that beeeeyach!

Buying Makeup

2008-04-22T16:38:00.005+03:00

Cousin1: (in the midst of bickering with her uncle's wife) Daisy, is MAC the same as Makeup4Ever?

Daisy: No, there two different companies. MAC is only 3 letter's, M-A-C..nothing else, that's how you can remember the difference.

Uncle's wife: nuh uh, when I went shopping the last time, the guy called it "mac for ever".

Daisy: then then the guy's just dumb...they are two, completely separate companies and their make-up's totally different too. MAC's made in Canada, I used to love their makeup.

Cousin1: I went to that MAC store at Dhahran Mall, they didn't have any Makeup for Ever there, Daisy's right. MAC makeup is fantastic isn't it.

Daisy: I drove 3 hours all the way to Toronto once just to buy MAC lipsticks (as well as to change scenery a bit). They didn't have MAC in the States yet at that time. That's where I got my nose pierced on my 20th birthday (affirmation of my one-time coolness and freedom to up and go to Toronto on a whim, unlike these days when I have to beg and plead just to get to the grocery store). Ah, those were the days, before marriage + kids.

Uncle's wife: I don't like their foundation though. In fact, I don't like most American foundation.

Daisy: Don't buy American/western foundation, remember, Americans like the "tanned" look so even the lightest shades won't get you the smooth porcelain look your going for.

Cousin1: Amani just bought 500 riyals of MAC make-up then ended up having to toss it all out. After she got home and put it on, it looked like baby crap had been smeared all over her face and since it had been opened, she couldn't return it. She could only test it on her hand at the store and that's not the same as on her face. Do you remember how a long time ago, the MAC store in Rashid mall used to be closed off and have women employees.

Daisy: Yeah, I remember that. That was ages ago though, 8+years maybe. I was so mad when I went there after they did away with the female employees and there was all men there. The first time I went I took off my veil and tried all the make-up on before I bought it. I mean, look (I held my hand up to my jawline) my hand's a completely different shade from my face. Especially these days since all winter I've been taking Buddy outside to the roof everyday so he doesn't get rickets and now I've gotten a tan mainly on my arms since my face moisturizer has sunscreen in it.

Cousin2: you look good darker.

Daisy: Seriously? (really confused...did I just here that come out of a Saudi woman's mouth?!? darker=prettier?!?)

Daisy cont'd: besides, if you want that smooth, white look you should go for that Japanese company Shiseido. Japanese like white complexions where Americans think you look sickly when your too white. (I know, I'm an enabler)

Uncle's wife: Yeah, geisha's.

(everyone's eyes twinkle a bit as they think of themselves donning the "geisha look" for an upcoming wedding in the family...some have come really close with the amount of powder/light make-up they use!)

The Technicolor Streak

2008-04-21T04:23:00.000+03:00

My MIL finished her mourning period of four months and ten days, as is the Sunnah. During these months she only wore plain, undecorated clothes, didn't apply perfume or make-up, and didn't leave the house. On the evening her mourning period was finished, she donned a garb which clearly stated exactly how finished she was.

Now, if only one out of her 5 adult sons that she was "blessed" with, mashallah, would get off of their ungrateful butt and take the woman somewhere. All of the meals that were cooked in a blazing hot kitchen, all of the clothes that were laundered for them, all of the love and attention that was paid to them over the years went seemingly unremembered after her mourning period was done.

While all of her old-lady friends have been taken to Dubai, Syria, Egypt as well as other exciting places, the only place this poor unappreciated woman has been taken in her life is to Mecca and once to Bahrain.

Words cannot express my disappointment in all of her "loving" sons, who are now her legal guardians since her widowhood. The woman's been widowed for God's sake and had to stay in the house for 4 straight months. She deserves a well-earned trip replete with pampering, just for her.

The Source of Sleeplessness

2008-04-21T03:23:00.003+03:00

How I've struggled these last few months to get some sleep. I find myself unable to turn "off" at 11pm, 1am, 3am...then hell, I might as well keep myself awake because there's fajr prayer and the kids get up by 6 am. I've been managing to get a "nap" in around 9-10am when Buddy takes his nap until the girls get home from school after 12:30 pm. I'm exhausted!!! Human beings can't go on like this for very long.

Last week during a school break, we had a family get together which kept us up till dawn. As a result, my kids slept until 2:30 pm and....SO DID I!!! And then it hit me, I can sleep! The problem has been all along WHEN I'm sleeping. My circadian rhythms are all off causing me to feel sleepy between 8am-5 pm, times when I have to force myself to be awake and take care of my kids and home. I'm not exactly sure how they got that way considering I never slept at those times to establish a weirdo pattern like that. That's more typical of....

hold the phone- those are Saudi summer/Ramadan sleeping hours!

Yes siree Bob! This country has once again managed to screw up my sleep! Even though my kids are sleeping at night, just BEING in this country apparently is enough to mess up my sleep. So having discovered the source of my misery I'm left with a choice:

Do I-

A) go ahead and give in to my screwy sleep patterns, turning myself and kids into nocturnal creatures, completely worthless/unconscious during daylight hours? I'd finally fit in with my in-laws schedule but this type of schedule has many drawbacks in my past experience.

I end up being late/missing several prayers such as Thuhr and 'Asr in order to get enough hours of uninterrupted sleep.

Sleeping during the day has never been refreshing and I wake up feeling zonked and unmotivated despite filling my necessary sleeping quota.

If I sleep during the day, my kids have to come along for the ride because they're still young and I must be awake when they are. My kids behaviour becomes ridiculously bad when turned around (remember, I've followed this type of schedule off and on for several years because of living in my in-laws house).

or...

B) wait until school lets out at the end of May when I no longer have to worry about school hours and try to adjust my sleeping schedule a little every day/week until it corresponds with normal human hours, not Saudi hours. I wouldn't be able to do it before then because I'd always have to worry about waking up to get my kids ready for school and to open the door for them and take care of them once they get home. Although this sounds logical, this also has its drawbacks.

MAY!!! I'm tired and want sleep NOW!

I'll be managing to fix my sleep the exact time that the rest of the country will be switching to night mode and I'll once again be out of sync with everyone and everything else here.

I'll be honest, I'm leaning towards option B and I'll just try to fit in as many "naps" as I can till then. The times that I've had to sleep "Saudi" hours during the daytime have been some of the worst in my life. I've never felt so lethargic, depressed, and out of tune as those seemingly endless summers at my in-laws house when I prayed for school to start again just to be able to resume a normal schedule of night sleeping. Even if I slept for 12 hours, I never felt refreshed.

After trying EVERY herbal/natural remedy known, trying proven behavioral modifications and even calling Peaceful Muslimah in Qatar and Nzingha who goes to Bahrain to see what sleep medicines are available there, I'd be ready to pay someone to hit me over the head with a sledge-hammer if it were guaranteed I'd have a good nights sleep. There are no sleeping pills available here in the country so these are my only options.

Since I can't write these days...

2008-03-12T13:31:00.004+03:00

Although I don't always agree with what she says or how she does it, I have to admire the guts Saudi women's rights activist, Wajeha Al-Huwaider, has to be able to make this video protest for International Women's day showing her driving on the streets of Saudia. Now mind you, if it's technically not illegal for women to drive here, and she does have a driver’s licence, then why should she get in trouble for making this video which shows her driving? Unfortunately we all know it doesn't quite work that way here:

I also came across a video featuring the always eloquent Suzan Zawawi from the Saudi Gazette. The first and second videos tell non-Saudis more about the lives of Saudi women in a few minutes that what I could write in a few years. We miss you Suzy, your mom and your sisters here in Al-Hassa:-)

part2

I had a real problem pressing the mute button on this video, I soooo luv this song (AAYB DAISY!). It's an homage to the niqabis...I plan on being that sister at the end of the video on the motorcycle.

I Was Playing in the Street When...

2008-02-26T08:14:00.005+03:00

This is the phrase I've heard several old women using when emphasizing how old they were when they were married off:

"I was playing out in the street when they came and brought me to see this strange man and..."

My MIL estimates that she was probably around 11 years old when she was married off to her husband, a man 20 some years her senior (we never did know exactly how old my FIL was, God rest his soul). She claims that she hadn't even started menstruating yet, as once a girl hits puberty she can no longer play "out" in the street. The woman he'd been married to passed away suddenly and at the wake, his uncle came to comfort his grieving nephew.

"Why don't you marry my daughter", he offered to him. The man felt in his heart of hearts that having a new wife would ease his nephew's suffering as well as provide his daughter with a husband he knew and trusted. And so, my MIL was married off to my FIL.

As was common in those days, a new bride did not become the managing force in her household but rather, she became a part of her new husband's family's home. His mother was the matron and called all the shots. She was expected to be an apprentice to her husband's mother, bear the children and eventually, after her MIL became old and infirm, she would take over the managing the household.

More than likely due to the strain on my MIL's yet undeveloped body, her first 3 children died immediately, within a day or so, after birth. Although in the days "before oil" the infant mortality rate was astounding, 3 in a row would be tough! She was probably not even in her mid-teens before her first living child was born, at home, as were all the children at that time. After having lost 3 children in a row, they didn't take ANY chances with this one. Believing that someone had given them an "eye" resulting in their babies deaths, they hid the newest baby for over a year and didn't announce the delivery to anyone outside of the family. As a result, my husband's oldest brother didn't get circumcised until he was around 8 or 9 years old as well as never discovering exactly what his age is.

Such was life, back in those days. Both my MIL and FIL were illiterate and had to work hard for everything they had. My FIL was a manual laborer and worked various unskilled jobs throughout his life, jobs that S.E. Asian workers now do for less pay. There were no other options for girls back then; they were destined to become wives and mothers. Education for men was only available to the elite and the clergy in the past and upon attaining puberty, a girl was ready for the next stage in her life: marriage. There wasn't any thing else.

These days it's unheard of for a man to marry an 11 year-old girl in Saudia and attitudes have changed towards young marriage. Although you will hear of the occasional 14 year-old getting married, it's a rarity and teenage pregnancy rates in the west are probably higher than the rate of Saudi girls the same age marrying. Even marrying in high school is becoming more infrequent with every successive year. Some become engaged in the last year or so of high school or immediately after graduation. Many young women now are trying to finish university and get a year or two in working before marrying.

Occasionally, especially during exam times, I hear comments from some of the older women. "I don't see why they're killing themselves with all this studying for university when they're just going to get married and stay at home with the kids."

Locusts and Al-Hassa

2008-02-26T08:12:00.001+03:00

THE LOCUSTS ARE COMING...THE LOCUSTS ARE COMING!!!

My father-in-law used to tell us about how difficult life used to be before oil. Al-Hassa, being an agricultural city, could be dessimated by a locust invasion before modern and efficient trade with areas outside the city were established. When asked how they coped once all their crops and food were consumed by the locusts he said, "we'd eat the locusts".

YUM!

First Wife Bribed for Understanding

2008-02-26T08:12:00.000+03:00

Sidelights: First Wife Bribed for UnderstandingArab News

YANBU, 26 February 2008 — Ah, the complexities of having multiple wives. Some may think this makes life easier, considering that multiple wives means multiple housecleaners and multiple food-preparers and if one gets on your nerves you can go hang out with the other one until the first one behaves properly. But in fact it’s not as easy as it sounds to have a number of women in your life: life ain’t easy for a player, as some might say. So it may come to no surprise that — according to the daily Al-Madinah yesterday — a man lavished his first wife with a grand fête filled with expensive gifts and jewelry when she did not dispute his desire to marry a second woman. Perhaps there is no better way to reward a woman for allowing you to marry another woman than to give her lots of shiny things.

If it works for her, who are we to say anything?

Domesticating Saudi Men Must Start Early 2

2008-02-24T22:21:00.005+03:00

Now, if he could only teach his babba!

Domesticating Saudi Men Must Start Early 1

Name and Shame

2008-02-23T22:11:00.002+03:00

I propose a website, called "Aayb Alayk" (Shame on You), which would name and shame the Kingdom's bad boys.

Ladies, next time you’re receiving unwanted attention, whip out those mobiles and start filming them in action. Extra points will be given if license plates are clearly displayed in the film or if the culprits give their names. We can then upload these incriminating videos to the Aayb Alayk page.Any type of bad behavior can be filmed as long as its done in the public sphere; stunt driving in traffic as well as flirting are just a few of the possibilities.

Why should we let them get away with chasing us at high speeds in their shiny sports cars, endangering our lives while trying to shout their numbers at us, even when we are accompanied by our men in some instances? Why must we feel compelled to avoid certain shopping centers and malls because it’s a well known flirting gallery?

In what must have been a busy day for the MIB-Men In Beards (aka Muttawwa), 57 men were nabbed in Meccan shopping malls for trying to harass and/or flirt with women.

And girls, I know not all of you are innocent victims of male aggression. You know who you are, Miss Pops-Open-To-See-My-Miniskirt-Skinny-Abaya with your toxic applications of perfume, come-hither eye-makeup and your crippling stilettos. And we know you don't have your period even though you spent Maghrib prayer while the shops were closed primping in the Mall's bathrooms instead of praying. I'm not addressing you, you irreligious hussy. I'm speaking to women who aren't soliciting this type of attention from men.

Arm yourselves sisters, with your cameras.

The Grass is Always…Fatter

2008-02-22T01:41:00.004+03:00

The house was bursting at the seams with women who'd come to pay their respects in the days after my father-in-law passed away. Some stayed for only a matter of minutes, enough time to greet the other women present and drink a cup of coffee while expressing their condolences to the family, as is in good taste and is the Sunnah. Others, some close friends of the family but mostly unwanted lingerers, sat and chatted about all manners of goings-on as my grieving sister-in-laws turned into waitresses by refreshing bottomless cups of coffee and tea. The men had rented a farm to accommodate the onslaught of mourners but the womenfolk came to the small, old-style house since my mother-in-law is not able to exit her home during the mourning period for widows of four months and 10 days.

Since I actively avoid weddings, I don't often encounter large groups of women like what was present during the 3 days following my father-in-laws death. As women filed in and out of the house, all types of discussion were taking place; gossip, recent events, more gossip. Feeling a bit like Typhoid Daisy, I stood and greeted every woman that entered with the mandatory handshake and kisses on the cheek despite my 1o2°F fever then returned to shivering quietly, curled up under my abaya and layers of clothing while seated on a sofa in the corner of the room. Not up to participating in the topic-du-jour, I listened-in as the chatty women resumed whatever issue was being hashed out before disruption of greeting the latest batch of mourners.

"Are you still looking for a house?", one of the older women enquired of a younger woman who'd come with her mother, whose tight off-the-shoulder "bad-girl" abaya barely contained her girth and made her the topic of discussion after her departure.

"I found one next to so-and-so's house in such-and-such neighborhood", she responded as a group of old, toothless women across the room began paying attention to the information she was giving.

"For rent?", the older woman continued her inquiry. "Who owns it?"

"I can't remember the exact family name, my husband knows it, but he's got two wives and…", Miss Tight Abaya was cut-off before she could finish by one of the old toothless women.

"That's my son's house", she exclaimed, taking a proactive approach to the conversation before the women went too far into the "two wives" issue.

"When did he marry again?" another older woman asked with a surprised expression, obviously an old friend who'd lost touch with the polygamist's toothless mother.

"Last year" she answered her friend as more and more of the two dozen women in the room dropped whatever lines of meaningless discourse were taking place to substitute it with eavesdropping on this meatier topic , "I don't know why though, his wife is a good wife" the toothless mom added.

"So why'd he get married again?" a previously uninterested middle-aged woman interjected as the room began to go silent to listen in to the reason.

There are a number of supposed certains in a woman's life here regarding marriage. Some of which are as follows; if you do x,y,z for your husband, he won't get married again. If you are a good wife, you're husband won't have a reason to get married again on you. Being a "good wife" is of course a very subjective matter but some of the general qualities of a good wife are: your house is clean, you make plenty of babies, you cook well, you don't get fat, you don't look old, you take care of your appearance, you are not demanding, etc. If a man marries again, it is assumed for certain it's because his first wife was lacking in some way which forced him to go forth and seek greener pastures. When people hear a man has married a second wife, the question which immediately follows is: "why?" Everyone wants to know what was wrong with the first wife.

The entire room of mainly middle-aged women eagerly awaited the toothless mom's answer. Every woman wants to avoid the pitfalls of other women who've inadvertently forced their men into the arms of a second wife and even if this isn't their main motivation for paying attention, having dirt on the first wife is reason enough to listen intently.

"She's a good wife", the toothless polygamist's mom said again. "She's a good cook, her house is clean, she has three kids, she's not ugly…", she went on extolling the virtues of her seemingly infallible daughter-in-law.

"So what's his problem with her then", another woman impatiently enquired of the toothless mom?

"He says she's too skinny and he wants to be married to a fat woman", the old woman announced to a silent room which was instantly transformed into a sea of confused faces. For a few moments, the women in the room pondered the grammar and word order of the sentence with which the evidently confused old woman perplexed them.

"You mean she's too fat and he wants to be married to a skinny one", one of the eavesdroppers corrected her after concluding that the senile woman had inadvertently switched adjectives. After all, this order makes sense to everyone as they nodded their heads in agreement with the semantic correction.

"No", the toothless mom asserted, "his wife is thin and he wants a fat wife!"

The initial confused silence continued for a few more moments, left over from the toothless mom's first statement and compounded by her second. Logic and reason were turned on their heads, the sun began to rise from the west as the earth reversed rotation on its axis for these women. All of the sudden, in a simultaneous explosion, every last woman in the room burst into an uncontrollable fit of laughter.

Women doubled-over with convulsive laughter while clutching their jiggling belly rolls and crossing their thick thighs as they wiped away tears from their plump cheeks with their sausage-like fingers. Miss Skinny Abaya popped a button in all the commotion. My MIL covered her face with her abaya trying to mask the hilarity, which was completely unbecoming of a grieving widow at the wake. Not one of the women in there was less than 15 kilos overweight and no doubt, the majority had tried many dieting methods and failed. Earlier that same day, DD's female cousin passed out and was having bad stomach pain from taking diet pills on an empty stomach. This laughter continued unabated for several minutes until, after catching their breath, some of the women wanted to clarify the facts of this distinctive second marriage.

"So was the first wife like, chemotherapy skinny?"

The polygamist's toothless mom answered, "No, she has a nice figure, not scrawny or anything. Just thin."

"They're never happy are they", I added my 2 cents to the conversation. "If they have a tall wife they want a short one, if they have a fat wife they want a skinny one, etc."

The old women all nodded their heads in agreement. The grass is always greener on the other side, or is it fatter?

The Canadian F-Word Blog Awards

2008-02-21T23:58:00.007+03:00

I was honored to be nominated in the Best International Feminist Blog category. Due to my absence, I didn't post about this soon enough and didn't make it to the final round however, there are many fantastic blogs to check out and its worth taking a look and perhaps, casting your vote for a more reliable blogger than myself. Thanks for the nomination

A Dust Documentery

2008-02-21T17:01:00.005+03:00

written on the steps to my house in dust: "I would rather shovel snow"

I spent a fair amount of time in my youth raking leaves, mowing the lawn, and shoveling snow. Living in the Great Lakes region meant I was familiar with the term "Lake-Effect Snow" which basically means that you can be sitting in 60F sunny weather at noon, only to have a foot of snow dumped on your head that night. As backbreaking as shoveling wet snow can be, at least it doesn't infiltrate every nook and cranny INSIDE your home.

The dust in the above picture didn't stop at my doorway...nor is it stopped by cabinet doors and closed windows. When a dust storm hits, every surface of EVERYTHING in a house must undergo dust removal. Every shelf, every piece of furniture, every dish in your cupboard, and your kids stuffed animals all have a fine layer of reddish dust on them. Normal dusting in this country is a b***h even without the dust storms and daily dust removal is a must during the winter when it’s windy.

The worst experience with the dust in this country came when I was pregnant with EttaMae and went into labor. When I was certain I would be giving birth that day, I decided to clean up my home to keep my mind off of the pain and to make sure that my house was clean to return to after coming home from the hospital. I started cleaning at 9am and didn't stop until after 3pm when I finally had to go to the hospital. I cleaned every bathroom, every floor, every dish, and every bit of laundry. I only stayed in the hospital less than 24 hours and returned home the next day after noon. During the night, a dust storm had hit and coated everything in my apartment with a layer of dust. I returned, physically exhausted from the birthing process to this: all my clean dishes had to be rewashed, the clean clothes on the line were coated with dust as well as the clothes in my cabinet, my sparkling bathrooms turned into muddy messes, and the floors all had footprints through the dust...

...I cried

Wearing either black or white is also a pain when one leaves the house. Anyone who lives in an area where road-salt is used can sympathize with the smudges on your arm or butt as you ever-so-slightly brushed across the side of your car which unbeknownst to you, left your clothes branded for the rest of the day. I've been washing my abaya after each trip out, no matter how brief the excursion. The dust is dangerous for drivers too, as Emiratis are being warned.

Our heads ache, our chests burn, and our eyes are crusty from the dust. But at least it’s not hot yet, right? We should count our blessings, no matter how dusty they are.

And later that day

I went to give EttaMae her bath at night and found this mess...
I wrote "The Bathroom" in the dust.

Keep in mind that this is after only one day.

Bless my well-wishers

2008-02-19T09:26:00.000+03:00

A sincere and profound thank you to everyone who made dua'a and sent their condolences after the death of my dear father-in-law. It really warmed our hearts to read your messages.

Even more thanks for the emails and enquiries as to my state during my latest blogging absence. I wish I could say that all is well but unfortunately I've been chewed-on, swallowed and partially digested by the dark forces that be here in Stepford, Saudi Arabia.

My housekeeper, who'd been at my in-laws since my father-in-laws illness, never returned to my home but rather, had to travel back to Indonesia to tend to her own mother who'd fallen ill. The lack of any adult help in the house (DD doesn't count) coupled with Eid vacation from school immediately followed a few weeks later by the end of term vacation means its been endless child-rearing, cleaning, cooking, washing and dusting.

It's been months since I've visited a friend or one visited me. It's been months since I've gone out of my house more than twice in a week, once for groceries and once to see my MIL on Fridays. I haven't seen the inside of a salon in....can't remember. I have 3 outfits suitable for the cold weather but haven't managed to shop for more. I can't touch my dissertation.

This Daisy's withered on her stem and is barely recognizable as the glorious bloom she once was.

So, it's time to water this Daisy with flowing, intelligent dialogue and supplement her intellect with rich topics of interest. I've never been able to shake my blogging mindset since I started, even during my extended internet absences, and I find myself struck by possible topics almost daily. It's become a compulsion in me which deserves to be indulged.

Now, time to reacquaint myself with written English as I found myself struggling for over an hour to write this little post despite English being my mother tongue...

The Bell Tolls for the Alarm-Clock King.

2007-12-04T07:36:00.000+03:00

"Athaan?", my nearly-deaf and almost blind father-in-law asks as he pops his head out of his bedroom at 1am to see if the call to the pre-dawn prayer has passed.

"Not yet Dad, it's still early", I'd assure him at the top of my lungs.

He brought me his alarm clock almost every night before going to bed to make sure the time was accurate and the alarm was set to go off about a half-hour before the athaan was called so he'd make sure to be up, washed, dressed and sitting in the first row by the time they got around to calling for prayer.

"Set it to a quarter-to-4" he'd instruct me then hold the clock at the end of his nose, straining to confirm my settings after handing it back to him.

Despite my assuring him of it's accuracy, he'd proceed to fiddle with it after returning to his bedroom, usually to set it a bit earlier just in case so he'd be sure not to miss prayer. This meant that his alarm was going off at all times during the night. Sometimes he'd pop out 3 times a night to ask if it was time to pray yet or not because he couldn't hear it himself nor see a clock well enough to check the time. Each time we send him back to his bed to await pleasing his Lord a few hours longer.

My father-in-law spent his last few weeks in this life asking every few minutes if it was time to pray. Much of the speech he was capable of in the days after his stroke in September was used to invoke the name of God and thank him for everything in his life that he could remember through his delirium. May Allah have mercy on him, forgive him of his sins and accept him into the highest levels of heaven. He passed away last night, Allah yarhamma.

His alarm went off at 3:30 this morning.

TP Or No TP- That Is The Question

2007-11-23T07:16:00.000+03:00

TP or no TP- that is the question;

Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
By braving soggy undies, by far it is tougher.
But that dread of something with which I take issue
The undiscover’d truth- thou art without tissue

Islam requires the washing of your bottom
But alas, no tissues! If I’d only brought’em!
To grunt and sweat under forceful nature’s effluence
Then wash with one’s hand is Saudis toileting preference

I am sicklied o’er the thought of just using
My lovely left hand, it na’er requires musing
This despis’d custom turns my expression awry.
If only TP to wipe, perchance to dry.

To refuse using tissue, methinks you’re not pious
The reality is, you’ve revealed your true bias.
Your claim that its use imitates the kuffar
Is completely unlike driving your western-made car.

Or your wife, beautied with a plast’ring art
Her and her Sephora must be pried apart?
And your children’s addiction to video-gaming
Is not due to the toilet paper you’re blaming.

Muslims can wipe, wash, and then dry their toosh
And it helps to prevent the dred’d yeasty bush
So if only to avoid your guests throwing a fit
Go buy some TP so our hands don’t touch s**t.

Tagged-Thank God!

2007-11-20T05:10:00.000+03:00

Thank you Mamma Mona for tagging me! I've been in a blogging funk for the past few weeks so this may be the kick in the pants I need to get my creative juices flowing.

Here's the rules:
1. Link to the person that tagged you, and post the rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 random and/or weird facts about yourself.
3. Tag 7 random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs.
4. Let each person know that they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

7 Weird and Random Facts About Daisy

1. I am one of the most noise sensitive people you might ever come across. This increases during pregnancy when ALL tv commercials must be muted so I don't go insane by their noise.

2. Speaking of pregnancy, I haven't been able to eat chicken since my 2nd pregnancy 8 years ago when my MIL cooked it everyday while I was having months of severe morning sickness.

3. Although I had no problem fibbing in my youth, I feel a pang in my chest if I even consider telling a lie now.

4. I inherited an extra tendon in my wrists from my mother and my daughter inherited double-jointed thumbs from me.

5. I am a borderline germaphobe. Sloshing my hands around in hot soapy water is almost a fetish.

6. I'm a closet-Trekkie. No conventions or action figures for me but I dream of owning ALL the Star Trek series starting from the original '60's series through to Enterprise.7. I can't watch movies a second time until enough time has gone by that I've forgotten most or all of it.

hmmmm...I tag you-
DesertFlower Camel Crusher Hema Carol Suburban Lalla Mona teacherlady

Domesticating Saudi Men Must Start Early

2007-11-06T20:27:00.000+03:00

Someday, my future daughter-in-law will thank me for this.

Update: apparantly not everyone is able to view the pic of my sweet little 1 year old boy "cooking" in his sisters toy kitchen. Gotta love the internet here!

computer issues

2007-11-02T21:36:00.000+03:00

So sorry folks, I swear I'm not ignoring you. I'm having some internet connection problems so that's why I'm not posting or responding to comments. I'm "borrowing" my neighbors wireless connection to post this quickly so I gotta go before I disrupt their internet usage:P See you soon, inshallah.

Saudis and Sickle Cell: Breaking Under "Takesser"

2007-10-24T10:16:00.000+03:00

“Y’uma (mommy)”, the little boy in the bed across from us kept moaning, “my hand hurts”.

His young mother would stroke his head and whisper to him, trying to comfort him in the dark as she lay with him in the same hospital bed as the 3 year old cradled his aching hand and ceaselessly moaned the same complaint the entire night. To the right of the whimpering boy was a frail-looking little girl hooked up to an IV bag of a vile-looking reddish-brown liquid who remained silent and motionless our entire two week stay except for occasional, labored walks to the bathroom which sapped the little strength she had. In the bed to the left of the moaning boy and his mother, was a pair of sisters. The oldest girl, a very sober 13 year-old, was looking after her younger sister during her stay in the hospital. Their mother had to stay home to care for her other children. In the morning, after that first sleepless night in the hospital with a sick 6 month-old EttaMae, I asked that young mother about her son.

“What’s wrong with his hand?” I hadn’t noticed any cast or bandages to indicate that the little boy had been injured in any way.

“Nothing’s wrong with his hand, thank God”, she replied to my surprise.

“Oh, I was just wondering since I heard him complaining (the entire night) that his hand hurt him.”

“It’s not in his hand, it’s Takesser (Sickle-Cell)”, the young mother admitted in a hushed tone.

The frail looking little girl to the right was in for complications from Takesser too. A Nigerian doctor would ask her several simple medical questions in his remedial, broken Arabic phrases only to converse with his coworker using contrastingly complicated English words like “transfusion” and “organ failure”. The younger of the two sisters to the left was hospitalized for Takesser as well. Out of the 6 children in that particular family, only the oldest one, the 13 year old, did not have the disease and both the mother and the father had it as well. In fact, out of the 6 patients in that room, 3 were there for sickle-cell. And they weren’t alone.

In the United States people are often surprised when they learn that a person who is not African American has sickle cell disease. The disease originated in at least 4 places in Africa and in the Indian/Saudi Arabian subcontinent. It exists in all countries of Africa and in areas where Africans have migrated. The transatlantic slave trade was largely responsible for introducing the sickle cell gene into the Americas and the Caribbean. However, sickle cell disease had already spread from Africa to Southern Europe by the time of the slave trade, so it is present in Portuguese, Spaniards, French Corsicans, Sardinians, Sicilians, mainland Italians, Greeks, Turks and Cypriots. Sickle cell disease appears in most of the Near and Middle East countries including Lebanon, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Yemen. Sickle-cell in the western part of Saudia is similar to the type that shows up in Africa however, the type of sickle-cell in Eastern Province in Saudi Arabia is called the “Indian” sickle-cell mutation and is thought to have been introduced from/to the sub-continent via ancient maritime trade routes hundreds of years ago.

Ironically, another study claims the reason sickle-cell has spread across so many diverse populations has everything to do with MALARIA. They propose that because people with sickle-cell are protected from malaria, they lived longer than their sickle-cell-free brethren in areas with high incidences of malaria enabling them to reproduce more thus, passing on their malaria-free though, sickle-cell tainted blood to their children. Judging by pictures like this of old Al-Hassa and how my house is filled with mosquitoes every winter during the “wet” season, I can go along with this theory as I imagine malaria used to be a big problem here.

Al-Hassa has been hit particularly hard by Takesser and I’ve heard that we have more cases of Takesser here that in the entire rest of the kingdom combined. One study indicated that approximately 20-30% of Saudi newborns in the EP are carriers of the sickle cell trait. Can you imagine 30% of your population carrying a trait which could afflict their children with pain and misery most of the days of their shortened lives!

Although I’d been around Arabs a significant part of my life, I’d never been aware of how prevalent the disease was. No one wanted to talk about it or admit to having it in their family until recently. A government awareness campaign was launched a few years ago as well as mandatory pre-marital blood testing which put the topic of the disease on the table. Although I’d asked about the takesser-status of several individuals in the family before, up until 3 years ago no one knew nor would admit to who had sickle-cell or who was a carrier in the family. This all changed when a young man, known to have sickle cell because of the painful attacks he’d had in front of my husband’s brother, came to propose to one of the young women in the family.

“Has she been tested to see if she’s a carrier or not?” I asked my husband.

“I don’t know”, he replied with a type of indifference.

This was before the wide-spread governmental education program about the disease and the blood tests were not yet mandatory. Even if someone knew they were a carrier, many parents might not want to admit to their daughter being a carrier of the trait let alone having the disease because this may reduce her marriage prospects.

I continued to talk in his ear for several days, “you have to talk her into getting tested. You have to be the one as the most educated one in the family. This is very important. You wouldn’t wish for her to watch her children writhing in pain, constantly hospitalized during pain attacks. Since you know, you have to insist so at least they can make informed decisions regarding whether or not they’d want to go through with the marriage if it would may in all their children being born with this horrible affliction.”

My husband succeeded in convincing the perspective bride to go and get herself tested. However, after the results came back and the wedding plans began to roll forward, she was a bit odd whenever I’d bring up the topic of the blood tests.

“So, you aren’t a carrier then”, I asked the bride a few days after she’d had the blood tests done then immediately accepted the young man’s proposal.

“Al-Humdulilah (thank God)”, she replied and quickly shuffled away to engage in another wedding planning activity.

Hmmmm…that was ambiguous! I didn’t want to be pushy; as long as she knew what the consequences of her decision would be and she was well informed it wasn’t my place to impose my opinions on delicate matters of the heart. And it was apparent, she already had her heart set on marrying this frail, pain-racked young man and nothing was going to deter her.

After the wedding contract was signed and sealed, the ladies of the family all lounged around at the “engagement” party (khortuba) amongst the palm trees at one of Al-Hassa’s many farms and chatted about the bride’s decision to marry the sickly young man.

“You do realize the blood tests confirmed she is a carrier, don’t you? She was just afraid to tell you and your husband for fear you may do something to try and stop the wedding”, one of her cousin’s intimated to me.

I smiled, “I figured as much, but we wouldn’t have done anything like that. We just wanted her to know so she was fully aware what she was getting herself into. It broke my heart watching those kids in the hospital and I’d never wish that on anyone.”

“I know, I’ve seen so-and-so with their kids as well as so-and-so…” and this cousin began naming off individuals in my husbands family who are all afflicted with sickle-cell as well as their kids. I was gob smacked! I didn’t have any idea. I made this cousin spill the beans and tell me EVERYONE who has the disease in his family.

As it turns out, none of my husbands siblings have the disease although a few of them do carry the trait. However, there are many, MANY members of his extended family who have the disease and who are in and out of the hospital with their ailing children. I was around these relatives all the time, but any problems they had from takesser were explained off by other causes such as “achiness” caused by changes in the weather or “bad periods” for young women.

Time rolled on and the young bride became a mother. I held my breathe during her pregnancy until we received the happy news that her beautiful boy with shining eyes and gorgeous dimples was takesser-free and would never suffer the pain his father endures.

All I can say is, Al-Humdulillah (thank God).

The Street of DOOOOOOOOOM!

2007-10-22T08:47:00.000+03:00

(Mission Impossible theme music playing)

My mission: Cross the "Street of Doom" with 2 kids, a baby, and the maid without getting plowed over by a lunatic.
-

Last year I was delighted to learn that the new American friend I just met lived in my neighborhood. If I stand in the street outside my house, I can see hers. I thought it would be great, we could walk back and forth to each others houses and this whole messy issue of finding a ride wouldn't interfere in our plans. There's only one problem, there is a major street that runs between us that may as well be the Berlin Wall running through Al-Hassa for how it keeps our two families apart.

This street, which has now been dubbed "The Street of Doom" by my friends, is four lanes wide in each direction, brand spankin new pavement and a long clear stretch of road which is conducive to speeds not seen outside of the Indy500. It's not really a highway; the patch that runs by my house has a roundabout at one end, a traffic light at the other and is only a fraction of a mile in actual distance. For the most part this street isn't very busy. It's easily navigable in the sparse traffic of the scorching hot broad daylight however, it becomes increasingly dangerous as twilight descends and the heedless youth of the country rouse from their daytime slumber to inflict nocturnal vehicular chaos.

Although my friend and I both acknowledge the danger this street could possibly pose, we were perplexed, amused, then touched by how similar our husbands reactions were to the thought of us crossing this street on foot with our children. My friend and I are both mature, both drivers, and are of sufficient intelligence to cross streets unscathed. However, both of our husbands prefer driving us across the street rather than letting us walk.

Yes, you read it correctly, they both want to drive us across the street!

At first I was a bit dismayed. Initially my reaction was, "You don't think I'm intelligent enough to manage crossing a street for God's sake?!"

"No, it has nothing to do with YOU, it's everyone else that's stupid!", DD tried to explain to me.

After a while, my friend and I started to look at it as a chivalrous gesture and thought it rather cute that our husbands would fret about us so. And besides, I'd rather DD drive me anyway if the truth be told. It's damn hot out there during daylight hours and there's no way I'm crossing that street at night wearing an ALL BLACK abaya which assures my invisibility to already deficient drivers. I might as well sew a bulls eye to my butt first.

Daisy the House Drudge

2007-10-22T08:46:00.000+03:00

Out of my 11+ years of marriage and keeping house, I've only had a maid for 1 1/2 years of that time. Boy how that 1 1/2 years made a big difference in my sanity!

We sent my housekeeper to my in-laws house to work. My father-in-law has become quite ill and it's becoming increasingly difficult for my mother-in-law to keep up the house. I'm grateful I had my maid to help me out with my last heavy months of pregnancy and the first year of Buddy's life. Although it was nice having the dishes washed and toilets scrubbed for me, I found I miss having another adult around the house more than anything since DD's not here most of the time.

In the two days since she's left I have the following problems:

-only 4 combined hours of sleep due to balancing Buddy and EttaMae's waking during the night.

-had to take the world's fastest shower as Buddy stood screaming outside the bathroom.

-had to "hold it" until Buddy passes out for a nap

- carry Buddy in the laundry basket with the dirty clothes since he can't be left on his own

-speedcleaning at night after the kids are asleep because Buddy won't let me do anything else as long as he's awake.

-haven't yet taken the garbage out to the street because I can't carry Buddy and the garbage and I'd have to do it in my abaya.

- I can't just run out for a moment without packing up all my kids.

These are all things my maid would help out with when she was here. She'd play with Buddy for a moment if I needed to answer the "call of nature" or manage EttaMae if she woke up at night while I managed Buddy instead of the two locked in a cycle of waking each other up with their whining. And if I didn't get any sleep the night before, she'd watch Buddy for me as I took a cat nap. She'd also make sure EttaMae didn't kill her brother with love while I was reading for my dissertation.

Inshallah, I'll work out a system soon. I always say that as long as you schedule things right, you can fit in an amazing amount of stuff into a day.

Apparantly, I wasn't invited either

2007-10-22T08:44:00.000+03:00

I left the computer alone for a few days and my own blog denies me access claiming I'm not invited! Don't ask me what happened, but I think I got it worked out. So, my apologies to any readers who felt slighted by my blog going "private" and please let me know if you are aware of others being denied access to my lunacy:-)

I am chattel

2007-10-18T23:29:00.001+03:00

Slavery is a social-economic system under which certain persons — known as slaves — are deprived of personal freedom and compelled to perform labor or services. The term also refers to the status or condition of those persons who are treated as the property of another person or household. This is referred to as "chattel slavery".

The 1926 Slavery Convention described slavery as "...the status and/or condition of a person over whom any or all of the powers attaching to the right of ownership are exercised..." Slaves cannot leave an owner, an employer or a territory without explicit permission, and they will be returned if they escape. Therefore a system of slavery — as opposed to the isolated instances found in any society — requires official, legal recognition of ownership, or widespread tacit arrangements with local authorities, by masters who have some influence because of their social and/or economic status.

How could the above definition possibly apply to my life?:

1. I cannot leave my house without my husband’s permission. If I did and my husband wanted to exercise his “power”, he can have the police bring me back or even imprison me where Muslim women in other countries would only have to contemplate incurring divine punishment in the afterlife.

2. As a Saudi woman, I am not allowed to travel without my husbands documented permission. Even if escorted by my father, brother, uncle, son or other Islamic mahram, once married my husband’s permission is still requisite and I would be prevented from exiting the country without it.

3. If I had a less than understanding husband, I may feel compelled to provide marital “services” to him a legally recognized minimum of several times a month, or he could be granted a divorce from me where Muslim women in other countries would only have to consider “divine” punishment for refusing her husband without a good reason.

4. Even if I were to pursue my Islamic right to request a divorce from an unhappy marriage, I would have to get past the following hurdles as a woman, alone without male family members inside the country:
· I’d have to make contact with a male lawyer who is not a male relative of mine and therefore, I’m limited with the kind of contact I may have with him. At this point female lawyers are prevented from arguing in court.
· I cannot drive myself to meet with my lawyer or even to the court in order to pursue obtaining a divorce from my husband.
· If I did manage to get there, I’d have to deal with entire legions of men who are unaccustomed to dealing with a woman as most send their brethren to represent their interests.
· I’d have to pray that the judge appointed to my case truly tried to follow the Sunna and not a misogynistic, cultural version of Islam. Even if I were never wronged by my husband but simply didn’t like him leading to my being discontent, I should be granted a divorce if requested.
· I do not have access to official documents, which are obtained my husband, including those vital to everyday transactions such as the “family card”. Although legally, to my understanding, a law was recently passed allowing women to procure them, most women would send a male family member to do it (which is not an option for me).

5. I cannot even report the birth of my child and register his/her name.

6. Legally, the house I live in is not mine and I have no rights whatsoever to it. Even if I contributed money to it, unless my husband was kind and loving enough to add my name as partial owner on his own accord, it’s entirely his house. Upon divorce or death, I could be homeless if his relatives or children wanted to claim their portions (much larger than mine) as their rightful inheritance. This potential eviction would be delayed fortunately, until my youngest child reached legal adult age.

7. Although I’m a citizen, because I am foreign-born and don’t have anyone (male) in the country from my family to be my “guardian”, upon divorce those few rights I have as a Saudi woman to remain in the country near my children could be revoked with my citizenship and I’d be sent packing, childless, back to America where my father lives. (See Carol’s blog for more on this)

8. If I ever did need to dig up male family members to represent me, these are my options:
· I wait for 15 more years for my son to grow up and represent me.
· I make a couple more sons as backup in case the first one isn’t willing.
· I find my estranged scam-artist half-brother from my father’s second marriage who lives in America, who I can’t tolerate and who’d attempt to milk me dry for every riyal I have.
· I contact my other half-brother from my father’s first marriage on another continent who despite being a kind man who would no doubt help me out in desperate times, I can no longer communicate directly with because I’ve forgotten his language for the most part.
· I put my ailing, elderly father on a boat from America. He can’t fly because the pressure may cause him to have another stroke.

At this point I’d like to reassure my readers that these are NOT the circumstances of my life at present or anyone I know. Also, most Saudi women will live their entire lives without any/most of these list items every affecting them. Not every Saudi man is out to flex his muscles and exercise his legal “power” over his wife. I could cite several examples of women with similar circumstances to my own within my social circles who’s houses are in their names or who are bequeathed their “husband’s” house despite their being housewives and not contributing to it’s purchase (my MIL), as well as women who rule the roost. What pains me is that if the Devil took over my husband, these could be some of the potential results.

Many commenter’s may be keen to point out several items which are part of Islam and to which I’m subject to being a Muslim woman such as, not leaving the home without my husband’s permission. When living outside of the country, and being a believing woman, I “police” myself. Since my husband respect’s my judgement as a mature and intelligent woman, I have my husband’s understood and implied permission to do the errands I need to do during the day (FYI to non-Muslims: this doesn’t mean I have to go to him every time I step one toe out the door). As is customary between married couples around the world I say, “I’m running to the store before I pick up the girls, see ya”. He returns the same courtesy and doesn’t just wander out the door without giving me an idea of where he’s going and/or saying bye. If there were a conflict of interests, this would be dealt with between ourselves without the possibility of legal intervention.

Although I usually try to keep things a bit upbeat on my blog, there are times I feel the need to throw my own little pity-party. For all the good things in my life I say Al-Humdulillah (thank God) and pray for God to keep me safe and protect me from the above listed items. For any men who are reading this list and nodding their heads in agreement thinking, “yeah, this is the way it should be”, I’ll leave you with these messages:

From the Prophet’s (PBUH) last sermon:

O People, it is true that you have certain right with regard to your women, but they also have rights over you. If they abide by your right then to them belongs the right to be fed and clothed in kindness. Do treat your women well and be kind to them for they are your partners and committed helpers.

From the Quran:

Lodge them (the divorced women) where you dwell, according to your means, and do not treat them in such a harmful way that they be obliged to leave. (Surat
Al-Talaq 65:6)

From Hadith:

Narrated Abu Huraira, God's messenger said: "The believers who show the
most perfect faith are those who have the best disposition and the
best of you are those who are best to their wives." [Tirmidhi]

Suprise- It's Eid in Saudia

2007-10-12T00:31:00.000+03:00

As we sat driving in the car, SMS messages started coming into our phones from family and friends congratulating us on Eid. But, didn't everything and everyone in the world tell us that Eid was supposed to be on Saturday?

-Eid housecleaning, not done
-henna, not done
-clothes that fit my midget Indonesian housekeeper after 2 failed tries, not done
-special Eid decorations, not done

Apparantly someone here saw the crescent moon.

Well, to all my Muslim readers, Eid Mubarak:-)

Souk Make-up

2007-10-10T16:05:00.001+03:00

True Beauty of the Veil...
Originally uploaded by Doc_E in London JUly/Oct

Yes, girlfriend's cute. But isn't all the eye make-up negating the whole entire reason for wearing the veil in the first place?

Pictures like this are circulating through men's mobiles around the kingdom; snapshots taken of random women out shopping in all their ocular glory. This sister is on the mild end of the spectrum.

Many young ladies are spending inordinate amounts of time decorating their eyes with tools of the beauty trade before leaving their houses: mascara, eye-liners, colored contacts are combined with shades and combinations of eye-shadow that could make a peacock jealous. These perfectly painted provocative peepers are poised under painstakingly plucked puny eyebrows which punctuate their preposterousness.

Crime, what Crime?

2007-10-09T20:37:00.000+03:00

The folks at Tash Ma Tash did it again. Today's episode: Crime in Saudia.

I've proudly proclaimed to vast amounts of people "I feel safer in Saudia than in any western city". For the most part I still stand by that statement. I've been in and out of the country for the past few years and apparently, things have started to change while I was gone. Car-jackings, robbing people at ATM's, gang-rapes, motorcycle muggers grabbing mobile's out of people's hands as they talk as well as traditional pick-pockets are in the papers almost daily. I think what is most shocking to people is the perceived escalation of such crimes at such a fast pace. Are these things still happening at a much lower rate than in any typical western country? Yes.

It didn't take long after entering England for us to be a victim of petty crime. In fact, it took only a few weeks. Several of our friends had their houses burgled and in one case, the thieves were in their bedroom as they slept. In four years time, several of our friends had been the victim of crimes in addition to us and I was even the target of a physical assault as I walked down the street pushing a small EttaMae in her stroller.

Now the comparison:

In the almost 10 years in Saudia I have never been the victim of a crime. I only know one person amongst ALL the people I know that have been the victim of a crime; my SIL had her purse picked as she was shopping in the souk, but didn't discover it till some time later. I've heard of some things going missing from the majlis* at my in-laws house several years before I went there, but keep in mind that normally the front door to the street, which is adjacent to the majlis door, is wide open most afternoons to welcome in visitors (and apparently some wayward teens). In the souk, the most advanced security system in the world is used as a theft deterrent: tarp. Tarp is thrown loosely over the merchandise as trusting shopkeepers leave their goods completely unattended as they go off to pray.

I've been taking walks with EttaMae almost everyday a bit before sunset to burn-off some of her boundless energy, just the two of us, me and my little girl, two lone vulnerable females. As I walk through the neighborhood I notice that like my at my in-laws, there are many houses with the front doors left wide open. I've noticed the way I feel as I'm walking as well. While in the west, I follow all the common sense rules I've been taught since childhood; use the buddy system, don't walk alone at night, check under your car from a distance before you get in case someone's waiting under your car to ambush you, hold your keys or pepper-spray in a ready position in case you need to use them. I'm always "battle-ready" when I go out and to describe me as alert is an understatement. However, I've never yet had that feeling here. You couldn't pay me enough money to walk alone past abandoned urban construction sites in the west, what better place to lay in wait for a potential victim and then than that! I don't have that same feeling of foreboding here as I walk past the several unfinished houses that line my path.

I'd be in denial if I claimed that crime doesn't happen here and I don't need to hear about so-and-so who had this-and-that happen to them in Saudia. I know bad things happen here. And I don't need any smart-alecks trying to turn the comments-section into discourse on terrorist boogiemen…those kinds of attacks are very few in comparison to the thousands of heinous murders and assaults that occur daily in western cities. I used to live in the (at that time) murder capital of the U.S. and there were two murders and a hostage situation that happened in the vary apt. building that I lived in (during the course of two years). But Alhamdulillah (thank God), although things like this happen in Saudia, they are so few and far between that everyone in town knows about it when it happens. And don't bring up the hand-chopping thing: DD says he hasn't heard of anyone getting their hand cut off since he was little and attributes this lack of an effective deterrent to the ever-increasing crime-rate.

So as my western readers check the locks on their doors and windows, turn on their alarm systems and make sure the motion detector light is working before they go to bed, know that many of us here in Saudia still have our doors gaping open. Naïve? A bit, maybe.

Drooling Daisy

2007-10-09T20:36:00.000+03:00

Ramadan note to self: Don't go to Saadeddin's a half hour before it's time to break my fast.

The Ayjooza* News Network: Faster and More Accurate Than Al-Jazeera?

2007-10-07T20:09:00.000+03:00

Before leaving America to come and live in Saudia, I met a woman from my husband's neighborhood in Al-Hassa who'd come as a travelling companion for a Saudi princess. During a pizza party with the princess, we chatted for a bit. This woman from the other side of world already knew all my business before she'd even stepped on the plane. At this point, I hadn't yet met my in-laws in person and this woman wasn't even related to my husband's family nor was she a friend of a family member and hadn't known in advance that she'd be meeting me. So, how on earth did she already know so much about me?!

You know you're a Hasawia (female Hasawi) when you know who your new neighbor is, what their dirty laundry is, and any and all gossip associated with them before they've even moved in.

Information passes through old Hasawi neighborhoods at a dizzying speed. This may be the reason that basic DSL connections are still under 1mg in the country…old women's wagging tongues far exceed the download speed of even the most modernized server so, why upgrade? Every weekday, there's a long-standing social tradition in the older neighborhoods. Old ladies file out of their houses after 'Asr prayer, sometimes armed with plastic baskets holding vacuum thermoses of hot tea and coffee and a few jingling glass tea cups as they walk to visit other old ladies in the neighborhood. The reason I say "old ladies" is because this tradition is dying out amongst the younger generation in newer neighborhoods.

Cities have expanded and completely new neighborhoods have sprung up in the deserts uprooting people from their old familiar neighborhoods and regrouping them into new, unfamiliar, constructed neighborhoods. Houses are bigger and further apart than in the old neighborhoods making it hard to get to know you neighbors. It's also harder to hear the arguments in the houses next door and you can't casually see their comings or goings without staking them out from your window either. All of the sudden, privacy reigns in the newer neighborhoods. Unlike in the older neighborhoods, you now need to announce your visit well in advance if you plan on visiting anyone to avoid majorly inconveniencing them.

Back in the old neighborhood after 'Asr, the old ladies knock on an open front door or clap their hands to announce their entrance to the residents inside. In many older houses, the magellat, or women's parlor, is located off of the family's living room. This means that the guest/intruder gets to see who's kept up house well, who's kids aren't cleaned up, and whether or not your hair was brushed upon stepping in the door. In order to keep up appearances, many women I know who live in these old neighborhoods sleep until noon then, cook lunch, eat, then rush to make fresh tea and coffee and promptly clean up and shower before the 'Asr prayer hits. If she's running a bit behind schedule, she risks un-announced guests arriving to see her and her house looking all torn up…what gossip fodder that is!

Ladies take a seat in the magellat in front of the a/c and are given a cup of water as they cool off a bit. Not having yet caught their breath and still wiping the perspiration from their faces with the inside of their now flipped-open face-veils, the Ayjoozat begin the day's gossip session with an exchange of pre-determined pleasantries to be said AT each other not TO each in a swift, simultaneous, robotic exchange without an obvious ounce of true concern to their demeanor:

"How are you…how's it going…how's your health…how's the family, good?…how's your parent's?...how's your mom's uncle's wife's father's cousin twice-removed's daughter doing?" (Ok, so I embellished a bit… but that's how it feels sometimes!)

Wedding invitations are like gold to these old women, there's really not much else to do around town. Anyone who receives an invitation with a +1 on it is everyones best friend. Many animated conversations revolve around events at these weddings and filling in the blanks for any non-attendees:

"Oh my God, there was this girl in a half-there purple dress! She was shaking her thang like this and her boobs were hoisted up like that (complete with actual booty shaking and boob-hoisting motions)"

"Ya, but the bride's mom, NO shame! Her hair's cut so short and she's wearing a sleeveless dress like this, at her age! And how's her stomach so flat?"

"Gurl, I heard she had a tummy-tuck and lipo just for the wedding"

"I heard they paid XXXX amount of money for the dress and they got it from Jeddah. And the tagagat** cost them XXX per hour and they were brought in from Kuwait.

"I saw so-and-so. I heard she's hired a lawyer to get a divorce from her husband"

And the beat goes on…

In one afternoon, sometimes 3 or 4 women visit my MIL's house. After sitting at her house for a bit and exchanging gossip, the women leave and many times go on to different houses to visit other friends in the neighborhood. Now it's math time:

4 women visit my MIL's house each bringing with them one piece of gossip to add to my MIL's gossip. After the exchange of gossip, each woman who'd originally had one piece of gossip leaves my MIL's house with 4 new pieces of gossip totaling 5 juicy tidbits. Then, each woman goes on her separate way once leaving my MIL's house and goes to another friend's house with her 5 bits of information where she meets 4 more women at the next house. She then spreads her 5 juicy tidbits to the 4 new women at her other friends house while acquiring at least 4 more juicy tidbits, at least one news bite from each woman totaling 9 interesting news bits for the day (I think). But if this is the second or third house the women at the other friend's house had visited that day, each woman may have more than one juicy tidbit to pass on!

Who from my readers is good at logarithms? LOL!

*Ayjooza= old woman

**Tagagat= female drum players/singers at weddings and parties (hired band)

Disappearing Daisy

2007-10-07T20:08:00.001+03:00

I'm the incredible shrinking Daisy!

Fasting doesn't bother me much. I'm an "eat to live" kinda gal anyway so as long as I get a caffeine fix at least once a day, I'm fine. Trouble is, I usually don't eat full meals on my best days- I'm a picky eater (not variety, just the method). I eat enough but it's a result of picking at small amounts of generally healthy food during the course of the day and/or while cooking and I rarely eat a full plate of food at any meal.

I delivered Buddy last Ramadan and wasn't able to make up those days till the month before this, resulting in two consecutive months of fasting. I think that 's why I'm so ready for Eid this year. Since my picking habits have been altered by Ramadan and I'm not staying up the whole night grazing like most people I know, I'm losing my 'womanly' curvesL

Want to follow the Daisy Diet Plan too? It's as easy as this:

Fast 2 months straight.
Breastfeed an insatiable infant till he sucks the vary life-force out of you.
Stress yourself out with trying to write an academic research paper with three children home on school vacation.
Make yourself so tired that by the time it's sunset and you're allowed to eat, fall asleep a few minutes after taking your first bite. Then, don't sleep any more than 4 hours in any 24 hour time period.
Don't buy any of your favorite bootyfoods from Dammam because it's too hard to go anywhere during Ramadan.

Seeing as how I'm too stingy to go and buy clothes to fit my new Ramadan figure, I'll just have to gain the weight back after Ramadan's finished:P

Good Mourning Al-Hassa

2007-10-03T06:04:00.000+03:00

Usually during Ramadan, the streets and shops open and are all lit up as life begins after Taraweeh prayers finish around 8:30pm. Since we haven't bought the kids their Eid clothes yet and time's running out, we decided a few days ago that we'd go out after prayers last night. We picked up some of DD's nieces for the trip and set out before 9pm but, something wasn't quite right.

Daisy: Traffic seems unusually light going through the souk.

DD: What time is it? All the shops are still closed.

Daisy: Prayer's done with, is there something special going on for the Shia today?

Ah yes, this must be the reason. I vaguely recall seeing an unusual amount of black clothing on offer at the markets during the past few weeks.

Shia make-up around 1/3 of the population of Al-Hassa as well as there being small groups of Sufis and almost every denomination of Sunni Islam as well. Because the tenuous tranquility of the town exists at the expense of our Shia neighbors freedom to practice religion and express themselves as THEY deem correct, we Sunnis are usually completely unaware of various Shia customs and religious practices.

Although we Sunnis work, study, and many times live next to Shia Hasawis, the topic of religion is verboten due to its volatile nature and the gag-order that's been imposed on the Shia minority . Sunnis and Shia don't pray together and Shia have their own masjids, labeled "Husaynias", which they go to for prayer but are restricted by the government to announce only the Sunni call to prayer at Sunni designated times over the loudspeaker because it differs slightly from that of the Shia. Marriages between the sects are also virtually unheard of in Al-Hassa and if it does occur, it would usually be a Sunni man with a Shia woman. Due to the lack of genetic homogenization, Hasawis can easily distinguish on-sight which camp one belongs to due to the distinct facial features and mannerisms each group exhibits which may not be apparent to a non-Hasawi observor.

With respect to any Hasawi Shia that may be reading this and to the education of all my readers...I know I'm only touching the tip of the iceberg in my description of the rift that exists between the two sects as well as the ensuing discrimination and although I sympathise with their plight. I won't pretend to completely understand its ramifications as a member of the majority.

Measures have been taken(read "smackdowns") by several institutions such as schools and companies to quash the expression of many Shia religious observations; the most obvious to Sunnis are the various days of mourning which Sunnis do not acknowledge. Due to nepotism, tribe pride, and wastafarians running rife and most times, unchecked, Shia have long been kept out of even the most basic employment by the Sunni majority.

Sound familiar?

Like many minority populations, such as Jews in Europe, this has forced them into self-employment and +90% of the women's souk in Al-Hassa as well as most of the gold-merchants are Shia-owned. The majority of times, speaking from my own experience, this isn't a problem as I observe Sunnis buying from our Shia businessmen without reservation.

Now, back to our shopping trip gone bust:

DD quickly called one of his Shia acquaintances to ask him what's happening...no answer. Then he tries calling one of his Shia-knowledgeable cousins while driving through a ghost-town of a souk. He confirmed that Shia were indeed, mourning the assassination of Ali ibn Abi Talib (RAA), the cousin and son-in-law of the Prophet (PBUH) who died on the 21st of Ramadan in the city of Kufa in 661 CE. This is one of several days in which Shia observe mourning but Sunni Muslims in Saudia, although we highly revere Ali (RAA), do not. We Sunnis in Saudia only observe the two Eids within the framework of our religious practice. Had so many shops not been closed for mourning, we would have never noticed/remembered the event.

Determined to salvage the evening, we decided to seek out a restaurant. We will try shopping again tonight but not before we consulted our Shia-"expert" again to confirm the mourning would be finished by then to avoid another wasted trip out. Driving through town armed with our renewed inter-cultural understanding of our Shia brethren, we took notice of the vast amount of businesses closed during peak shopping times. Whole swaths of town were as black as the clothing Shia children were wearing while walking to "Husaynias*" in stark contrast to the Ramadan lights on open Sunni businesses.

DD: "I can't believe I've lived here all my life and didn't realize what was going on!"

Sorry, Can't Help Ya

2007-10-02T00:06:00.000+03:00

I have to admit, there are days that I feel bad rousing DD out of bed when I know he hadn't slept, in order to take the girls to school in the morning. Most of the time, it's only because he doesn't have enough self-discipline to go to bed the night before instead, hanging out with his friends and family who've stayed up the entire night. However, there are days when he'd legitimately been working hard long into the night and it's entirely up to him to take the girls to school in the morning, such as today.

Daisy:

(poking an unconscious DD) Yella, goom! (get up), it's time to take the girls to school.

DD:

Aagh, I haven't slept at all for days.

Daisy:

I know, but the girls are all dressed and waiting for you.

DD:

Let them stay home today, I'll take them tomorrow.

Daisy:

Just make yourself get up and take them, maybe you can come home and sleep again.

DD:

Their not even having lessons now, don't bug me, let them stay home today.

Daisy:

Believe me, I wish I didn't have to bug you like this but I don't have any choice, I can't help you out here. It's up to you.

In England, my husband had me as a backup, and vice-versa. As most busy couples, we had an intricate schedule to follow every day based on who was free during the school drop-off/pick-up times. If I was working or had a lecture, it was up to him and if I was on my way home from being out, I'd pick them up. Being a typical Saudi man, he was never at his peak in the morning so many days it was up to me to drop the girls off on my way out.

My ability to drive in England also meant that DD's schedule was undisturbed by other necessities of life like food shopping and general errand running. Being the manager of the house, I could get all the stuff done as I needed, when I needed, and exactly how I needed without having to recruit my reluctant husband unnecessarily for things I could, and wanted to do, myself. As far as he was concerned, food magically appeared in the refrigerator and new clothes appeared in the closets despite him never stepping foot in a shop, something he dreads with every fiber of his being.

Since returning from England, many arguments, too much stress, and a lot of hurt feelings have resulted from this one, core issue which sinks its razor-sharp, rank teeth into almost every aspect of our family life:

I can't drive here.

We're not from one of those families that can easily afford to bring a live-in driver from S.E. Asia to do all those errands I usually did for myself, nor do we want one. Also, we can't easily afford to pay a Saudi driver just for the school runs nor, do we want to. There's no public transportation and a lone woman takes a chance with her safety and moral standing any time she takes a taxi alone. Many teachers here sometimes spend close to half their salaries just to pay some putz to drive them to their jobs and back.

Financial implications aside, does anyone else here agree with me that they aren't comfortable trusting their children with men they don't know anything about?! I fear anything with a penis coming within the general vicinity of my children let alone saying;

"please, take my children with you, alone, every day as long as they eventually make it to and from school. I don't know anything about you or your real history and you could be the world's biggest, most perverted, undiscovered pedophile but I will allow you free access to my children".

There are those who have an old man in the family, who's long been retired, to act as a type of chaperon. Well, that's great if you have one in your family but my FIL is in poor health, deaf, and blind so he can't help out. Some send their maids as chaperons for their kids which is bad as well. You may be putting your maid in a compromising situation, leaving your maid vulnerable to a possible assault or even, her hitting on the driver! There's a reason that in Islam, a man and a woman shouldn't ever be alone together, because Satan is always the third in such a situation.

One of my friends brought her maid's husband from Indonesia as the family's driver. Because it isn't proper for her to be alone with the driver, she had to bring her maid with her every day to be dropped off and picked up from her job. If this isn't ridiculous enough in itself, her youngest two children, who stayed with the maid while she was working, had to be hauled along with the maid every day just so my friend could go to work! Needless to say, my friend didn't work for too long with this complicated mode of transport. Because of her not being able to drive herself to her job in educational research to improve this country's deplorable education system, Saudi Arabia lost a well-educated woman's contribution to the betterment of the country.

There are those within the country who, when confronted with women complaining that they aren't able to get out and about say, "Stay at home! A woman's place is in the home". Hey, I'm at home sometimes an entire week without even stepping foot out of my house even once. However, necessity dictates that I need to go outside to pick out food (which my husband can never do correctly on his own), to purchase myself and my children clothes, or to visit family members or sick friends. Even the strictest hard-liners can't dispute those requests as legitimate reasons to go out. So every time one of these situations pops up in my home, a dialogue such as this follows:

Daisy:

(to an obviously tired DD) We're out of vegetables, when can you take me to get some?

DD:

I can't today, I'm too tired and tomorrow I have meetings before and after it's time to pick up the girls. Even I don't know how I'm going to manage to pick them up, After I drop off EttaMae (who's school's an hour's drive round-trip) I only have two hours to sit and do any work until I have to pack up and set out again to pick them up. Since school's started I've hardly been able to get any work done.

Daisy:

I wish I could help, but you know we have to depend on you to do this and we don't have any other options. This is food we're talking about my dear, not something that can be put off.

DD: Ok, tomorrow inshallah.

(tomorrow comes and goes and despite my understanding and sympathizing with DD, I'm irritated at the situation...)

Daisy:

(as DD walks in the door from work, trying to still sound nice despite a rage building inside) you didn't get any fruit and vegetables, we've already been out for a few days.

DD: I was too busy and I forgot. I'm too tired now to go out again.

Daisy:

Then don't take me, just try to stop on your way to or from someplace and grab a few things. And while your at it, we're out of bottled water and chicken too...

DD: My God, it's always requests, requests, requests from you.

Daisy: (citing the driver-less, Saudi woman's credo)

I don't have any other choice, what else am I supposed to do?

This same dialogue has been repeated time and time again, in houses across the country for many different situations. It's the material for Ramadan tv series depicting a young woman dressing like a man out of necessity to drive, and another women facing honor-killing by her brother for accidently being alone in a car with a strange man.Whether it's waiting anxiously at home praying for our kids to be dropped off unharmed by a total stranger or turning into shrewish nags in the eyes of our husbands in order to procure basic necessities of life, not being able to drive doesn't just affect the women in this country.

I'll leave you with a glimpse into the past, at marketplaces in Al-Hassa in the years 1938 and 1947 and the last one from around the same time in Riyadh. This was back when no one in the country drove, unless it was by donkey-cart or camel and towns were so small, most things were within walking distance. Take special notice of all the women, shrouded in black draping from their heads, going about their shopping. They enjoyed a freedom of movement and an ability to do things for themselves that has been stolen from us in modern times. If you'd like to sign the petition via email by sending your name, profession, nationality, and city of residence, for women to be given back this basic freedom, enjoyed by Saudi women in the past, by allowing women in Saudi Arabia to drive, it will be open for some time to come.

This first photo from 1938 is entitled "Vegetable and Fruit Vendors" from outintheblue.com. Hey, you there in the photo, can you buy me some while your at it?

This is from Riyadh

Where's My Camera!

2007-09-23T11:46:00.000+03:00

Feeling a bit hot under your abaya? Well now there's help. Go out and buy yourself a "TIT" fan!

I think I'd need to read the enclosed instructions to see exactly how to use it 8 different ways although I've already deduced a few possibilities; left of, right of, below, above, or between your tata's.

Are you a non-Caucasian in a far-away country and don't recognize racist slurs in English when you see them? Then the "Darky" watch is for you.

I'm wondering if this is a cruel joke played by the watch-makers or another in a long tradition of linguistic nuances lost in translation (although it's transliterated as "Darky" in Arabic, not translated)

Now's my chance to post some of the pictures that I've been snapping while I'm out and about town. Besides, I don't have it in me to type actual words anyway. A few weeks ago I got to go on another whirlwind tour of Dammam and we stopped at an Applebees to eat. If you remember my issue with Bootyfood, you'll know how special these trips to a western restaurant are.

DD got his wings

Iced-tea, a particularly reviled drink in my in-laws house. Despite her seeing me make it several times, my MIL still makes the same disgusted face every time she sees me pouring tea over ice!

**DD crashes in the booth** Oh, poor baby had to drive two whole hours to get to Dammam! My heart bleeds for you! And apparently, so does my steak...all over my potatoes YUCK!

How the Grinch Stole Ramadan

2007-09-12T08:33:00.000+03:00

In imitation of Dr.Suess, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas”

This “Daisy”
Before marriage,
Liked Ramadan a lot

But then DD,
Who only eats food from Saudi-ville,
Apparently did NOT!

DD made her dread Ramadan!
The whole Ramadan season!
Now, please don’t ask why. No one knows the reason.
It could be that his gut wasn’t digesting quite right.
It could be, perhaps, that his belt’s fitting tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his belly’s not at all small.

But,
Whatever the reason,
His belt or his poo
He becomes the Grinch during Ramadan, and makes Daisy blue
Staring down at Daisy’s food with a sour, Grinchy frown
At the warm, cooked meal below as he tossed a fork down
For he knew every Saudi during Ramadan ate tons of food
And his wife’s low-cal food puts him in a bad mood

“And they’re making lugaymat*!” he snarled with a sneer.
“This food’s not for Ramadan! It’s salad, my dear!”
Then he growled, at his wife he was looking
“I MUST find a way to keep Daisy cooking!”
For, during Ramadan, he knew…

…All the Saudi kids don’t sleep at night, instead,
Would stay up till bright and early. Then rush to their beds.
And then! All night noise! Oh the noise! Noise! Noise! Noise!
That’s one thing Daisy hated more than the cooking, THE NOISE!

Then the Saudis, young and old, would sit down to a feast.
And they'd feast! Not pray more, just feast!

And they'd FEAST! FEAST! FEAST! FEAST!

They would start on custard, and greasy, fried samboosa**

Which Daisy wouldn’t cook cuz of the DD’s large karsha***.

And then, they’d do something most important of all!
All good Muslims in Saudi-ville , the tall and the small,
Would stand close together, with the Qur’an blaring
They’d stand shoulder to shoulder, and the Muslims would start praying!

They’d pray! And they’d pray!
AND they’d PRAY! PRAY! PRAY! PRAY!
And the more Daisy thought about Ramadan and prayer,
The more Daisy thought, “I’ve gotta grow me a pair!”
“Why, for 11 years I’ve put up with it now!”
“I MUST stop DD from demanding so much chow!”
“…But HOW?”

But hungry DD had a different idea!

An awful idea!

THE GRINCH GOT A WONDERFUL,

AWFUL IDEA!

"I know just what to do!" The Grinch Laughed in his throat.

And he made a decision “on me she must dote”.

And he chuckled, and clucked, "What a great Grinchy trick!

"I’ll have an attitude problem, I'll act like a big dick!"
"All I need is a threat..."

The Grinch looked around.

But since Daisy’s so mellow, there were none to be found.

Did that stop the old Grinch...?No!

The Grinch simply said,"If I can't find a threat, I'll make one instead!"

So he called his Mom, and his older sister too.
And he told them “From Daisy’s cooking, I’ll soon be dead”.

After whining to his mom, he went to her house to feast!
He devoured so much food, he resembled a beast!

He cleaned out that icebox as quick as a flash.

Why, that Grinch ate every last bit of their hash!

And the one speck of food

That he left in the house

Was a crumb that was even too small for a mouse.

Then

He did the same thing

At his sisters’ houses
Leaving crumbsMuch too small

For the other families’ mouses!

He stuffed all the food in his big mouth with glee.
"And NOW!" grinned the Grinch, "I’ll make them pity me!"
And the Grinch told his mom, “Daisy’s food really lacked”

That’s how Daisy’s Ramadan got hijacked.

He turned her month into one long cooking spree!

With so much hard work, there’s hardly time for prayer free.

It was quarter past dawn...

All the Saudis, went a-bed

All the Saudis, went a-snooze
This is Ramadan since Daisy wed
It’s been a life of baking! Frying! Chopping!
No energy left, even for Eid shopping!

And the Grinch, with his grinch-belly bloated with grub
Has caused Daisy to bite her nails to a stub.
About Daisy’s cooking he constantly nags,
And of his mom and sisters he frequently brags.
Because of DD appetite, Ramadan’s such a chore
Trying to concoct things she’s never cooked before.
Her culinary creations, the in-laws now abhor
“What a bad wife she is for the son we adore”

And what happened then…?
Well…in Saudi-ville they say
That DD’s jelly-belly
Grew three sizes in one day!
And once his belly didn’t feel quite so light,
You’d think he wouldn’t take another bite.
Rather than grazing all night, he could go and join prayers,
To save his soul and forgo angry Daisy’s stares.

The End

Boy am I gonna hear about this when DD reads it LOL!

Inshallah yours will be a more Islam-centric Ramadan.

*A fried desert traditionally eaten during Ramadan.
** Similar to Asian “samosas”…deep fried pastries with meat or cheese filling.
***Jiggly belly.

Update on the pursuit of my degree

2007-09-12T08:20:00.000+03:00

Don't worry...I'm not goofing off. Put the whip back Hema!

I temporarily don't have access to several resources, crucial to my dissertation, so I thought I'd take a few hours break and write something fun for a change.

Update #1: Buddy's fever is gone now and despite how deathly ill he appeared at first, he only got about 2 dozen spots on his body. And his babba decided to shave his head to make his hair grow in thicker.

Update #2: I actually think I may be able to get my dissertation done. At some point, after I'm finished, I'm going to detail the uphill struggle it's been. Unfortunately, it's shared by many mothers all over the world but even more acutely by women in Saudi Arabia.

Update#3: Ramadan is due to start and since I'm trying to finish up my paper, the month is going to be completely ruined for me as well as affecting my family. For all of my non-Muslim readers, just imagine working through Christmas on through New Years while everyone around you is celebrating. It's gonna bite.

I'd like to take a moment to thank Cairogal and Hema for their support with my studies...it helps to have people backing you up:)

A pox on all your houses

2007-09-07T00:37:00.000+03:00

If I were a Hasawi, I'd think y'all gave me an eye. You were so jealous at the thought of me earning my Masters that your collective bad will found its way to my family from all corners of the globe and inflicted poor little Buddy with Chicken Pox at the same time he's teething. The result: a naked, drooling, inconsolable, polka-dotted 10-month old baby with nothing but wet towels and ice-packs over him to cool his 104F (40C) fever for the past three nights. I have the night shift when his fever's the worst and must be monitored carefully, and my housekeeper is taking him for a few hours in the afternoon so I can get a few ZZZ's.

This is not conducive to finishing my dissertation!

At least I'm not so arrogant as to really believe that the entire cosmos was nefariously aligned, at the whim of a blogging ne'er do well, just to malign little 'ol me. But then again, I'm not Hasawi.

Desperate Daisy won’t be blogging for a while

2007-09-01T20:26:00.001+03:00

As if I haven't neglected my blog enough these past few weeks, now I need to take it a step further. I've been informed by the University from which I haven't technically graduated from that if I don't get my butt in gear and submit my dissertation, they'll give me a zero for it. This means that I'll graduate with a Masters degree with a big, fat, ugly D- written on my transcripts for my accumulated GPA once they've averaged the zero for my dissertation which will negate all the rest of my hard work. Imagine applying for a university lecturer's position like that:

Daisy (to perspective employer at a Saudi University): "Oh yes, I do have fancy, expensive degrees from a well respected and highly ranked English university and would like you to give me an academic position and a fat paycheck every month . "

Perspective employer: "How impressive! May I see the transcripts you're hiding behind your back?"

Daisy: "Is that really necessary? My diploma is really pretty and decorated with an official seal and calligraphy. It's proof that I really did pass…can't that be enough?"

It's now or never folks. Please root for me these next few weeks as I work sleep deprived, with a lack of resources and through the din of my children all vying for mommy's attention. I'm sure I'll get the dissertation equivalent of "Final-itis", the dreaded affliction of students around the world come assessment time, and think of witty and positively brilliant posts to write instead of working on my thesis. If that should happen, I need all of my readers to gang up on me and redirect my focus back onto my dissertation until I've finished to avoid the dreaded "D".

People Watching

2007-08-11T13:33:00.000+03:00

"That girl's abaya's so tight I can see the wedgie her panties are giving her", said DD as we sat in the hospital waiting for EttaMae's speech therapy appointment to begin.

"So what are you doing looking at her a** for you twit! What ever happened to "believing men, lower your gaze"?!

I'm not at all surprised as this is DD's favorite hobby right after vegging out in front of the TV: people-watching. And it's not just women he's watching either, otherwise I'd be a bit more uptight about it, LOL! The government hospital is a great place for people-watching and it contains a cross-section of Saudi society with every social/ethnic/economic group within Saudia represented. I'm guilty of people-watching too, although less obvious than DD as its done through my veil, and commenting on some of the more unusual characters that fall victim to our scrutiny.

Daisy- "You don't like men looking at me as I walk past so why do you do it to other women", I asked my ogling hubby.

DD- "Well, I can't exactly beat up everyone who looks at you now can I?"

Daisy- "How would it make you feel if I sat leering at every man that went by", I asked?

DD- "Be my guest!"

Daisy- "Huh?!"

DD- "Let's take a look at the selection in front of us now, shall we. Take this guy for example (pointing in front of him)...he's short, bald and he's got a pot-belly. Men, in general, are ugly. Women are much better to look at."

Daisy- "Yeah, but you're looking at it from a man's perspective. Try looking at it through a woman's. Do you think I've never been out walking somewhere and had a "WHOA BABY" moment when seeing a good-looking guy?" ***but of course immediately diverting my eyes and neeeeeever leering;)*** "You do realize there are good-looking guys out there, right?"

I'm not sure if DD thinks that a magical spell was cast on me at the signing of my marriage contract which only gives me eyes for him or what! The man is obviously delusional or else he's depending heavily in my piety:)

me- "Didn't your mom every give you a "it's not nice to stare" lecture when you were a kid?"

DD- "No, can't say she did, it's just kinda understood when you get older I suppose."

me- "Uh, ya think? It doesn't seem as if you reeeeeally understood all that well, wouldn't you say!"

Maybe next he's gonna claim that men just can't help staring.

I won't be in town to respond to comments so converse amongst yourselves for a bit:)

Government Warnings About Skin Bleaching

2007-08-11T13:32:00.000+03:00

What a coincidence, weren't we just talking about stuff like this in the comments section of my last post? Seems like enough women have fallen victim to whitening "treatments" in salons that something had to be done about it. Today, two pamphlets were stuffed under our door compliments of the Saudi Food and Drug Authority. One warned the nation's women of the dangers of these "whitening" procedures done so frequently now, here's the English summary of the pamphlet and here's the full Arabic version.

I have one childhood friend in America who was diagnosed with skin-cancer before the age of 30 from trying to bake her beautiful porcelain skin into a "California glow" and I've got Saudi friends on the road to Cancerville from trying to bleach their tanned-by-God skin. I remember the reaction we all had in my high school history class when we learned how European women in the 1700's used to eat arsenic wafers to kill off the hemoglobin in their blood to make themselves "whiter" as well as applying layers of arsenic and lead-filled powder to their bodies. Apparently we haven't evolved as far as we thought.

I won't be in town to respond to comments so converse amongst yourselves for a bit:)

Um Kisha

2007-07-27T21:02:00.000+03:00

*Kisha- an adjective describing hair texture which lacks a direct translation into English, but falls somewhere between fuzzy, wiry, nappy, or kinky.

While doing a dissertation on "Lawrence of Arabia" a few years ago, I came across a passage in which T.E. Lawrence talked about how reviled curly hair was to the Arabs he came to know and the extents one would go to in trying to rid oneself of the unattractive feature. Apparently things haven’t changed much in a century.

I’ve watched women lay their heads down on ironing boards and iron their hair. I’ve taken desperate sounding Saudi friends to Afro/Caribbean salons in England to interpret for them as they get their hair relaxed and their pocketbooks fleeced. I’ve comforted someone close to me as she cried for days because the straightening treatment she did to her hair caused it all to break off starting an inch away from the roots. “Dark and Lovely” is sold most everyplace hair-care products are and even the kids’ version is available. Brylcream is purchased by the gallon and Vaseline is apparently great on hair too. Hours upon hours are spent with hair dryers and straightening irons trying to smooth wavy, curly, and wiry locks.

In a past post, I’ve already mentioned part of MaryJo’s inheritance from me…my hair. Although far from its former glory, my hair possesses a much sought after feature amongst Arab women…it’s straight. Smug little MaryJo struts her stuff knowing that in everyone’s eyes, she’s got straight, shiny, ideal hair like this advert:

Then there’s her younger sister, poor little EttaMae, aka Um Kisha:

So... what to do about it?

I hear constantly… “Adeli kishat-ha” (fix her fuzzy hair) coming from my in-laws mouths. Last night they were telling me to chop it all off. No one wants to be seen out in public kisha or with someone who’s kisha. Because her hair is baby-soft and ridiculously thin, hair creams and oils won’t do and makes her look like an oil tanker leaked on her head. No chemical treatments for my baby so park the “Dark and Lovely” back on the shelf. When I went back to America I tried all the standards like Pink Lotion and Frizz-Ease…nothing! I spend a lot of time hovering dangerously close to a wiggly, impatient 7-year-old with hot hair-styling equipment on Eid mornings just to have my work destroyed after 5 minutes of play.

Then last year, I got a great idea…

“When I go to the States I’m gonna get EttaMae’s hair braided”, I told my husband.
“What do you mean “get it braided”, go and braid it yourself”, he replies, thinking I mean I’ll put a braid or two in her hair like normal.
“No, I mean braided all over. I lack the talent and the patience to do it myself so I’ll get it done while I’m at my sisters. I’m sure she knows someone who does it out of her house so I don’t need to pay salon prices. I’ll take her when we first get there then she’ll keep them in till it’s time for us to come back.”
“Oh no, don’t do THAT to her hair”, he says with a disgusted look.

Hmmm, struck a nerve.

So, braids are out of the question for my Um Kisha.

My sister is thrilled with the new tracks she just got. She’s a big fan of falls (those fake ponytails) and had several lying around her house which at first glance, looked like sleeping animals on her dresser. I’m glad she’s found away to deal with her troublesome hair and although I’d like to be able to tuck the kisha away underneath fake hair…we can’t do it. Muslim women are not allowed to wear “false hair” because of how Jewish women used wigs instead of truly covering their hair. So after a summer in the States of going natural and sporting a ‘fro on top of her head that rivaled anything from the ‘70’s, we came back to Saudia and many hours of wrangling her kisha hair into submission.

I know in the past, young Gulf Arab girls used to wear several thick braids in their long hair kind of like this:

Even Bedouin men wore their hair in two or three braids. It was kinda a unisex hairdo…the Pocahontas braided look. Today, young girls may wear a ponytail with several braids in it, but non wear their hair down with braids. Way back in the days of the Prophet (PBUH), some women used to wear their hair in what was described as, “closely braided”.

Book 003, Number 0643:
Umm Salama reported: I said: Messenger of Allah, I am a woman who has closely plaited hair on my head; should I undo it for taking a bath, because of sexual intercourse? He (the Holy Prophet) said: No, it is enough for you to throw three handfuls of water on your head and then pour water over yourself, and you shall be purified.
(Sahih Muslim)

Braiding seems like the most sensible option but despite its history in this area, no one does it now. Instead, all the “Um Kisha’s” of the country prefer the seemingly endless applications of chemicals and electrical appliances. I guess healthy, braided hair is old-fashioned.

Update: Thanks to everyone for the numerous suggestions on how to manage EttaMae's hair woes. I'm working through them one at a time to see what works best at taming my girl's wild hair and will post the winning solution (and I hope there'll be one) in a future post:)

The Great Abaya Debate: Head vs. Shoulders

2007-07-24T09:24:00.000+03:00

My readers from outside of the Kingdom cannot possibly understand the time and passionate debate that Saudis devote to this issue. Families quarrel over it, marriages dissolve over it, women have been damned to hell by clergy for it and signs have been hung in public about it. Never since the days of "tastes great, less filling" has there been a public debate of such mammouth proportions: should the abaya be worn from the head or shoulders?

Many non-Saudi people are now asking themselves, "why don't they get rid of it all together"? Trust me, the abaya's extinction ain't happening any time soon. For well over a decade now, what kind of abaya a woman wears is like wearing a public advertisement of her moral values, level of religious dedication, and ethnic background.

I established from before the time I got here that I wasn’t going to wear a "head" abaya. I’d been forewarned by my ‘bad-girl’ Saudi friends about how awkward and uncomfortable they are so my decision was made before I got here. To make matters worse, my mother in law bought me a head abaya and sent it with my husband preceding my leaving America. I gave this monstrous, heavy black tent a test run and it turned me sour. It was much bigger and heavier than this one:

Upon arriving here the first thing I did, while wearing that big ugly heavy abaya from MIL was go to the souk and place an order for a "shoulder" abaya to be made for me. I had to be advised as to what the local styles were so that I wasn’t pegged as a foreigner or weird looking just by the sight of me. I never got one of the really skinny or showy abayas, I always had them cut very wide and flowy as well as forgoing all the sparkly crystals and embroidery. There was a catch…I was pregnant. After a few months my baby belly became really obvious so I decided to return to a head abaya so I didn’t look like a black python who’s trying to digest a whole rabbit. I went and had one made with lighter fabric than the one my MIL sent me, no zipper or snaps down the front (old-fashioned), and a slimmer design like this one: I found out it wasn’t so bad. It’s actually cooler than the shoulder abaya. After wearing it awhile I was mostly unbothered by it (except getting in and out of the car with baby stuff). I cooled down even more by forgoing the rectangular scarf under it all, just wearing a three-piece face veil with no scarf under it all. Mmmm, breezy. Loved it. I found out some unexpected benefits: the flirters all but left me alone.

Perceptions of women wearing an abaya from the head:
-She is a religious woman
-She is a traditional woman
-She is not looking to flirt
-She is modest

- of course she's Saudi

Pros of wearing head abaya:
- Judged by others with the above listed criteria
-If I put my hand up to the a/c vent in the car I’ve got a central cooling system that goes up my sleeve and all around inside my abaya.
-No/less flirters
-I can hide friends underneath my abaya with me…no joke, I did this at a wedding once with a friend who couldn’t find her’s when the groom was going to enter.
-Easy to breastfeed a baby under. The whole kid fits under there and people maybe wouldn’t even guess the kids there.
-Don’t worry about a big, huge, pregnant belly. You’ll still look pregnant but it’s not that obvious…you could just be fat.

Cons of wearing a head abaya:
-Hard to look left/right, up/down without the stupid thing needing to be either held on or readjusted.
-Once you get up from a seated position you gotta hoist it back up onto your head.
-Hard to carry stuff on your shoulder (purses, baby bags) without yanking it off your head.
-Can't manage carrying a wiggly baby/toddler with all of the above issues.

Perceptions of women wearing an abaya from the shoulders:
-She is modernized
-She’s a “bad” girl
-She’s rebellious
-She’s young
-She’s irreligious
-She MUST be looking to flirt

Pros of wearing a shoulder abaya:
- Unobstructed movements including looking around, getting up and down from seats or in and out of cars.
- Carry as much as you can.
- These two pros are ALL I need to prefer a shoulder abaya

Cons of wearing a shoulder abaya:
-Although maybe ok for a teenager, looked down upon as undignified for anyone older than that. -All of the perceptions listed above.
-Here comes the flirters.
-Stuffier
-Cant breastfeed as discreetly as with a head abaya.
-You look weird very pregnant.

Considering I've had several Hijazi friends that don't even cover their hair, I know that these issues may have already been dealt with long ago in other parts of Saudia. But here in Al-Hassa, the debate still rages on. Attitudes can vary drastically with regards to what's appropriate, even within the same family. My husband prefers for me to wear an abaya from my shoulders, although I'm the only woman in his family who does. Unfortunately due to public perceptions, the choice is not necessarily one based on beliefs but rather, on what the neighbors are gonna say about them.

All images were taken from www.essenceofblack.com

More American Hasawis

2007-07-22T05:34:00.000+03:00

We have a new friend that we've welcomed into the fold of the SBB (Sunday Bitching Brigade). The first thing I did was introduce myself then convince her to read my blog when she got home that night. Poor dear, I got her hooked on blogging now too. She's just starting up so keep an eye out in the near future for posts... if she's ever able to put down her adorable twin baby girls to type:)

From the new blog Camel Crusher :
Welcome to my blog. I hope that you will find my stories interesting. I know I have believe me. I am here to create the picture of an AMERICAN wife, married to a Saudi. The ups and downs, acception, denial. Top 10 of Saudi Arabia. Driving to Dammam, Khobar. Spongebob Squarepants...lol

Al Hassa, Hoffuf, SA

Hasawis And Their Seeds

2007-07-15T21:01:00.000+03:00

When I first took my furnished apartment upon arriving to Saudia from America, I found a stick-on bindi left over from the previous tenants embedded into the seemingly clean short-piled carpet. From this bindi, I had accurately guessed (later to be confirmed by my new neighbors) that the former tenants were Indian as wearing a bindi is an Indian thing to do. I wonder if the people who took the apartment after us guessed accurately that Hasawis had lived in the apartment upon the discovery of discarded seed husks which had remained deeply buried in the carpet fibers, unseen to my eyes as I cleaned, which tend to pop up one at a time during successive cleaning sessions.

From a previous post- tips on spotting a Saudi Hillbilly:

#1 You know you’re a Hasawi if there’s a pile of chewed-up spit-out seeds shells on the ground next to you.
#12 You know you’re a Hasawi if you must have a bag of seeds, della of tea and beyalas to “travel” to Dammam. (Dellas are vacuum thermos flasks and beyalas are little glass tea cups).

My first days with my in-laws, they stayed with us in the temporary furnished apartment that we’d rented for a few days to welcome me to the family. On the first night, they came with vacuum thermoses of tea and Saudi coffee and distributed plates of various toasted and salted seeds such as sunflower and melon seeds. They sat sipping tea, chatting, laughing, and putting handfuls of seeds in their mouths.

I watched in silenced shock as my new family members deftly maneuvered the seeds around their mouths with their tongues to crack open the shells, extract the inside of the seed, and move the empty shell to the outside of their mouths leaving the husk dangling from their bottom lip waiting to be orally projected out onto the floor in front of them- all without the use of their hands. It was reminiscent of watching those large parrots at the pet store eat their seeds, cracking them open with their beaks and extracting the inner part with their tongues.

Within a half hour of the first seeds being consumed, the living room floor was filled with discarded seed shells which then became embedded into the bare feet navigating through the shell piles. This facilitated the migration of seed shells throughout the entire apartment as they resettled on the previously immaculate carpet once shaking free of their podal vectors. There wasn’t a corner left unmolested by a seed’s presence in the entire apartment. Several times during my in-laws stay, the husks were swept up by a hand-broom (as I hadn’t yet been able to buy a vacuum) once seed-appetites had been satiated for the evening only to have a fresh coating redistributed during the course of the next tea/chat session.

This was my introduction to Hasawis and their love of seeds.

Previous to coming to Saudia, most of my Saudi acquaintances had been either Hijazi or Najdi. People from all different parts of Saudia eat seeds, although not necessarily in the manner previously described. What sets Hasawis apart from the average Saudi seed eater is the frequency and amount of seeds that are eaten as well as the manner in which the husks are disposed of. Although I have seen many Hasawis delicately remove the empty seed shells from their mouths with their fingers and neatly dispose of them in a designated receptacle, more prefer the spittoon-style disposal method onto the floor/ground. This irks me to no end- especially if it’s MY carpet!

Keeping in mind that I may be generalizing, I didn’t apply the seed-eating/spitting stereotype to ALL Hasawis. However, year after year of witnessing countless discarded seed husks around town around have confirmed that this is indeed a wide-spread Hasawi convention. Also, I’ve come to learn that some Hasawis use eating seeds as a way to help with appetite control when dieting or to stop smoking. With the exception of peanut shells on the floor of a well-known steakhouse chain, I’d never before come across seed husks when in public. Here are a few locations I’ve seen piles of seed husks:
· friends and family’s cars
· the park
· the desert on the outskirts of town- despite its size there are usually petrified seed husks mixed in the sand.
· in parking lots
· on supermarket floors
· on the ground in the souk
· in the sofa-cushions of just about any Hasawi home.
· at the beach
· outside my children’s schools
· outside the hospital
· in DesertFlowers knickknacks
· inside computer printers
· thobe pockets

There are more, but you get the point.

DD has not only infuriated me with this seed-habit, he refuses to alter it any despite my trying to convince him with logic. Yesterday, while watching the Saudi vs. Indonesia game, he called for the housekeeper to bring him up a plate of seeds. I started telling him he shouldn’t be eating seeds now; Buddy is 8 ½ months, crawling and putting everything he finds in his mouth. I’m worried a broom-evading seed husk could get lodged in his little throat. After he deflected my objections with a look that says he doesn’t give a damn and I’m just nagging, my housekeeper arrived with the plate of seeds. Unaware of my having already reprimanded him, she started chastising him too. Apparently, the middle-ground was reached because by the end of the game there wasn’t a seed husk left on the floor because they’d been respectfully discarded in the trash bin. Thanks DD…and it only took 10 years folks!

So…if when in Saudia you see a pile of seed husks on the ground- chances are, a Hasawis been there.

Indomie Rage

2007-07-15T20:42:00.000+03:00

It's time for me to come down from my organic high-horse with a confession to my readers. I've forced gallons of organic juices down my kids throats and carried whole-grain energy bars and raisins in my purse to snack on. I refuse to give my babies formula and only rarely let my kids eat candy. Besides my occasional binges on booty-food, I eat healthy and so do my kids. Oh, how the high-and-mighty have fallen...and fallen straight onto my hypocritical a**:

I've been needing an Indomie fix at least once a day...usually late at night. I get withdrawal symptoms which include grumpiness and not helping old ladies in supermarkets like Hema when she's having a PotNoodle rage:) (all symptoms of instant-noodle withdrawal syndrome)

My housekeeper is the one who got me started on it, and she got my kids hooked too like some sort of Indonesian carb pusher. And the stuff stinks! We all reek after eating it but I can't stop. Is there a rehab for this stuff?

Retiring the oldest working Jawal in KSA

2007-07-11T16:33:00.000+03:00

Saudis are obsessed with having the newest and coolest mobiles. Some of my Saudi friends get a new mobile every few months in order to be seen holding only the latest models. Seven months ago, my really cool mobile from England got ruined by water. This isn't hard to do with 3 kids in the house! I quickly had to find something, ANYTHING to put my SIM card into so I wouldn't lose touch with life. Since we didn't have the funds to go out and by a brand spankin new mobile right away, around SR 1,000 ($260) for a reasonably accessorized mobile (which is the only type I like), I dug out an old mobile that hadn't been used in years:

By Saudi standards, being seen with this phone in public is the same as carrying around this phone:

I bought this phone, already discounted, the first year we were in England in the summer of 2001. This was before color monitors were widely used, before there were cameras, multimedia and video on mobiles, and there's not even a polyphonic ring tone let alone an MP3 player! Simply put, it's simple. I could place and receive calls and type out a simple text message.

Six years is the equivalent of a century in technology years and the very next year after this relic was purchased, we'd already moved on to nicer and more advanced mobiles as we did every year after that thanks to new mobile contracts with free new phones included:) This mobile was then destined for a dusty life the junk drawer, never to see the light of day again until we packed up our household for the return trip to Saudia. Before leaving, we gathered all of our mobiles acquired through the years and decided which mobile would go to which family member upon our return to Saudia with this particular mobile reserved for my technologically-challenged mother-in-law. Since we don't have the same deals on phones with new contracts as is available in England and the US, you have to pay for the full price of any new phone outright. This can hurt.

We came back from England bearing gifts of mobile technology for our kinfolk like some sort of Saudi Santa's. My mother-in-law, who can barely manage to dial her home phone and frequently has one of her kids do it for her, accepted her mobile with relief. All her friends had one and now she could be reached when her ride comes to pick her up from weddings and social gatherings. Her happiness lasted exactly two days. Upon going out to the next gathering and proudly displaying that she too now had a mobile like everyone else, the grim truth was revealed to her in a conversation such as this:

"That' a really old model", her friends told her.

"What ever do you mean?", my mother-in-law replies, having previously been blissfully ignorant of advances in mobile technology.

"Well, look at mine. Mine is in color, and I can take pictures, and I changed the color of it and hung these cute little dingly-dangly thingies off of it. Noooooobody carries around old ones like that anymore (said with a disdainful glance at the painfully unflashy old mobile). Have your son buy you a new one since he must be rolling in lots of money now that he's just finished his PhD two months ago."

Rejected and scorned by a woman who doesn't even know what the hell SMS is, this mobile was one again fated to a existence without purpose and a return to the junk drawer. There the phone languished until it came time for me to work in a university here. All of the students had to turn in their phones with cameras into the office and I wasn't allowed to take mine into lectures either for fear someone may take pictures of all these uncovered young ladies. In order to stay connected, I got out the only mobile still around without a camera in it. I grudgingly carried it around the university, constantly having to reassure people who poked fun at my unfashionable phone that it was only used inside the university...my cool phone's in my office.

Upon the death of my cool phone for which I mourn to this day, seven months later, I was forced to once again use the rejected mobile. Even it's name in Arabic is unattractive*, "Al-Aaneed" "العنيد" or stubborn/persistent, because apparently it's to stubborn to die. Every month there was something else that sucked up the salary, making it impossible to buy a new mobile.

Having a cool mobile is crucial here, and even the poorest are clamoring to have nice phones. The line was drawn when I noticed that domestic workers were coming into the country with nicer phones than what I was carrying! Even DesertFlower offered for me to use her phone when out shopping with me one day instead of face the embarrassment of being seen with me while I dialed my eye-sore of a mobile (I know she was just poking fun at me:). Once, upon finishing a nice conversation with one lady doctor in a hospital, I tried to explain that my phone was too old and I didn't have enough battery to record her number in it in order to call her and chat again. She took it as a snub and a hint that I didn't want to be friends with her and left very abruptly, obviously offended.

Al-humdulillah...Finally, since last night, I can return the "stubborn" mobile to the depths of the junk drawer and talk in public without shame:

And since it has a 3 mega pixel camera on it, I no longer have to lug my camera around with me in order to capture visual jewels from around town to display on my blog.

First thing I did was put my WeeMee as the wall paper:

*jawal-colloquial for mobile/cell phone

* many mobiles are given names by the general public according to characteristics that particular mobile embodies.

Science, Abayas, and Thobes

2007-07-09T01:26:00.002+03:00

Last week we went on one of our whirlwind treks to Dammam with one destination in mind (at least in DD's mind): the Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz Center for Science and Technology. We took along two of DD's teenage nieces along with our own two girls at left a whiny, teething Buddy at home with his Grandma, our housekeeper, and an aunt all taking turns trying to console our little 8 month-old prince.

I highly recommend anyone with kids in the EP to go to this place. The kids all had a blast and we enjoyed watching them press buttons, turn levers, and pull ropes. There's many hands on, interactive scientific displays as well as a place for younger kids to play and learn. There's also an IMAX theatre showing educational films which was the biggest hit with the two nieces. Although feeling like I was looking over the edge of a cliff down into a volcano then teetering out a helicopter door was kinda cool in my mind...the two teens begged and pleaded to wait and see the next show as well as any others we could fit in before closing time. I then realized...this was the very first time in their lives they'd ever been to a theater!

Movies aside, one display in the exhibits called "Cooling Down With Color" caught my interest. I was trying to sneak this picture without anyone seeing me since many people here throw hissy-fits at the sight of a camera so my apologies for the blurriness (and this is AFTER I cleaned it up in Photoshop). Just above the picture were two plates, one colored white and the other black. The instructions read as follows:

1) Press the button to heat up the colored surfaces

2) Wait 30 seconds

3) Touch both surfaces. Which is hotter?

4) Which one cools faster?

It then goes on to read:

"Dark colors absorb more heat than light colors. This gives light-colored animals the edge in hot environments."

I'm gonna take a stab in the dark and say 1) a man wrote this 2) the man was not Saudi and 3) I'm not the only woman who's stood reading this while wearing a black abaya next to their white thobe-clad husband and had this thought...

"No sh**, Sherlock!"

Hasawi Asses

2007-07-09T01:17:00.000+03:00

Well...what did ya think I meant?!

And yeah, that was a mean dust storm going on in the background of those pics, just outside the city on the road to Dammam.

GO TO BED!!!

2007-07-07T17:40:00.000+03:00

I remember on several occasions in my youth, sleeping until noon. I also remember how lazy, unproductive and hung-over I’d feel for the rest of the day as a result. No one could ever accuse me of being an early-bird however, I’d usually be up by 9-10 AM at the latest.

I first entered Saudi Arabia in the summertime, during the break from school, almost 10 years ago. Since we’d just moved from overseas, we didn’t have a home of our own and so we lived in the in-laws house. During the summer, the number of people in the house increases as my sister-in-law comes from Jubail with her 4 kids and various other related children come and spend the night. At one point there were 17 family members residing in the house with 5 bedrooms and a couple more children going in and out.

My in laws house is old and built in a traditional way on one floor. The family living room is located in the center of the house with all the bedrooms surrounding the living room. There’s no “yard” like in western homes and the original patio has long been built over to accommodate the growing family on such a small plot of land. The numerous children have no place to go “out” to play so they play in the living room. There are whole soccer games, tag games, climb the entertainment center games, and various other games played out in this small living room as the adults try to talk through the din. This is bad enough during the rest of the year but during the summer, it becomes a type of purgatory to be endured until school starts up again.

Sleeping habits here vary from family to family. Several of our family members allow their kids to be up the entire night until it’s time for them to go to school. They then get dressed and go to school only pass out immediately upon returning home and eating. They then wake up some time in the early night hours after missing all the days prayers and repeat the cycle the next day. Several of my sister-in-laws kids have been caught dozing off in school. Mothers complain about this and about how sleep deprived they are as a result of their children's bad sleeping habits. My response is, “tell them to go to bed” accompanied by a look which says “DUH!”.

This backwards sleeping schedule isn’t limited to children. While teaching at a university here, I noticed several of my students arriving to my 8 AM lectures in full make-up and complicated hair-do’s. For a while I thought, “wow, what time did they wake up in order to pull that look off?” I didn’t take long to figure out that they were waiting to go to bed after my lecture finished at 10 AM. Several housewives go to bed after their kids go to school then wake up at around noon when they come home.

Getting back to my first summer in my in-laws house…

The first few weeks after arriving in Saudia were spent with my new family and of course, following their lead. I ate what they ate, went where they went, and slept when they slept. I had absolutely no choice in what time I slept seeing as how the door to my bedroom was off the living room where the entire family spent their time and the children played till they were worn out. Even when I tried my hardest, I couldn’t sleep at night because of all the noise in the room next to me. Also, my toddler felt as if she was missing out on all the fun and wanted to join her new cousins instead of being confined to bed at night with mom.

My mother-in-law and sister-in-laws would get to sleep some time after sunrise a 5 to 6 AM but the kids (all under age 10 at that time)… still had a few more hours of noisy, raucous play in them. They’d stay awake for at least 3 more hours after adult supervision had given up the struggle and went to bed, doing basically anything they pleased. They go up to the roof and throw things down onto the street below, they’d go to the kitchen and “create” culinary masterpieces, they’d bounce on sofas and use overturned tables for forts and dancing platforms. Being kids, they’d go in and out of their moms room with various complaints and requests waking her to solve their problem. She’d also have to rise to seek out the source of wailing after one of the “dancing stages” gave way and broke under them or they misjudged the distance between the top of the wardrobe to the bed when attempting flight. Eventually around 9 or 10 AM they’d start to wander off to bed one at a time and the house would finally be peaceful.

This type of schedule went on or rather, dragged on till it seemed that I couldn't’t take any more. I constantly had headaches, my toddlers behavior was awful because of the lack of structure, and I felt so down and depressed as a result of being away so far away from everything familiar to me. Eventually, we got our own apartment and I could have things the way I want them right? WRONG! Because our social life revolves mainly around the family, whenever they had get-togethers I have to do it according to their schedules, not mine. The weekly gathering would commence sometime around 9PM and go till 1AM at night. That was fine for them, whose kids had just woke up shortly before they left the house at night but for me and my kid, we’d be sitting there exhausted wanting to go to bed. They’d follow this schedule during Ramadan too. Everyone would sleep after sunrise and not wake up until after 2PM in the afternoon in order to pray thuhr prayer before ‘asr was called and to start cooking for the evening meal. Since sunset was at 5:30pm they’d only do without food for a few hours…kinda like skipping breakfast. Doesn’t seem like fasting to me.

The only exception to this backwards sleeping in this family is the working men. They follow pretty regular schedules. Once when I’d mentioned what time I normally sleep and wake my father-in-law commented, “what are you, a man?”

I spent two whole years like this, going against the grain of my in-laws backwards sleeping schedule. Whenever I’d mention wanting my children to sleep at 8 PM at night on school nights, it was almost as if I were being cruel to them. Then, we went to England where the country sleeps with the chickens. Most places were closed by 6 or 7 at night except for pubs and the weather was so crappy most of the year there wasn’t anything else to do but sleep. This suited me fine but my hubby was still sleeping on Saudi Standard Time, staying up most of the night doing his studies.

We’d come back to Saudia every year during the summer break only to have me counting the days left till we’d go back to England so I could get a full 8 hours sleep. I loved being around the inlaws but since we’d given up our apartment when we moved to England, we were in the family’s house during these trips home with a few dozen feral kids running amok. Summer trips here became hellish with fatigue as well as boredom due to the bad weather. I wasn’t the only one suffering as all the mothers of these wild children complain endlessly about how tired they are. It becomes a type of contest of sorts; “I’ve only slept 2 hours in 2 days”, one will say as another confirms she’s had only one hour more sleep than her. Women are dozing off while sitting and chatting with others and everyone is popping headache pills and drinking liters of tea.

Am I the only one who doesn’t understand this situation. I know not all Saudis do this as many of my friends as well as some family members do force their families to sleep at night, although they are in the minority. Some argue that’s it’s due to the harsh weather that people stay awake at night. This doesn’t make any sense to me because the a/c is working no matter what time they wake and sleep. Also, this is not traditional as many older family members have confirmed. Most people in the past used to be awake all day with a siesta in the afternoon.

As for myself, I’m going to sleep (when I have things the way I want them) around 11 to midnight. I wake for fajr as this is the time my baby wants fed too, and go back to sleep until mid-morning. Most stores open up after 4 pm until around 11 pm so if I need to go and buy something we go out in the evening. This seems to me to be a sane alternative to the sleepless chaos going on in my in-laws house. My mother in-law couldn’t even keep her eyes open yesterday when I saw her because her head was throbbing due to sleep deprivation. Since we’ve had several family activities recently, our sleeping schedule is going much later with me finally getting to bed after I pray fajr (I’m in the process of shifting it back). We have 3 girls spending the night at our house with the understanding that when at my house, they must sleep at night and wake-up mid-morning.

I’ve been saving this post for the summer break only because that’s when I feel its bitterness the strongest. It’s normal, for many places around the world, for kids to stay up later and sleep in during summer break. As many other things in Saudia, this is taken to the extreme!

***sung to the tune of “where’s my little dog gone”***

Oh where oh where has your Daisy gone?
No new posts! oh how can that be?
She’s not sleeping till way past dawn.
“School’s out” means no blogging for me.

I may not be able to respond to comments due to lack of time and a crappy Internet connection...please don't get offended as I do get to see them although I may not be able to acknowledge them online till much later:)

Arabish Names

2007-06-19T23:52:00.000+03:00

There are some Arabic names that I could never inflict on my future children. This is mostly because no matter how well I speak Arabic...I think in English. For those readers who are not Arab it's important to know that for most Arabs, the meaning of a name is very important. Sometimes its meaning supercedes the way the name sounds. Having grown up in America...where people sometimes create names (my sister included) and most people may only have a vague idea if any of what their name means, the way a name sounds becomes VERY important.

During the course of our marriage and the resulting three children, my husband and I have had many discussions and some serious fights about what to (or what not to) name our children. Here is a list of some names that are flat out rejected and will NEVER be considered.

Banned Names (M or F for gender)

Turki (M) (also spelled Turky) - gobble gobble

Nayif (M)- pronounced like 'knife'

Bender(M)- uh...why's he bending or what's he bending?

Anas (M)- Too close to 'anus' to be comfortable with that name.

Abeer (F)- Budweiser or MGD?

Lamaa (F)- sure to be pronounced llama

If you think these names are bad on their own, just try hyphenating them for a whole new twist:

Nayif-Bender

Turky-Nayif

Turky-Bender

Turky-Anas

Anas-Bender

Anas-Nayif

Bender-Anas

It also gives new meaning to the phrase, "I'll have a-beer".

Arabish

2007-06-07T13:49:00.000+03:00

A few days ago I saw a report on CBS Evening News about China's efforts to improve mistakes in English language around the nation...dubbed "Chinglish" (Chinese English), in preparation of the upcoming Olympics tourism there. We have our own version, called "Arabish" (Arabic/English). Although I have yet to see an "Anus Hospital" for a proctologist like they had in China, some signs can get a bit corny. I usually don't have to look any further than my own family...myself, husband and kids included, to get the best Arabish (a later post) but these specimens are out for public display:

Do you feel lucky? Take a chance with our oil.

In case you ever wondered where the town's fat-a**es go to play pool:

Nursing homes are so cruel. We just throw all the old guys in one neighborhood so they have their own little community. We call it "Old Kout" area. (old coot in American English=old codger for those in England):

In a country where young men and women sometimes marry without having met each other, you can get to know your seafood and poultry in a meet-and-greet before they're killed for your dinner:

In case your turkey needs a trim:

Possibly free delivery or is the food free if I 'arrive' there?:

Just in case there's someone who feels like commenting on how cruel I am and how these people are trying and I should give them credit since this isn't their language...blah, blah, blah... I suggest you take yourself to that "Anus hospital" in China and get that stick removed so you can laugh more:D

Forcing Maids to Wear the Veil

2007-06-03T08:26:00.000+03:00

I never once considered getting a non-Muslim maid. I think it causes many issues for a non-Muslim maid to work in a Muslim house...especially one with children. One of these issues, although one that I don't think is important enough to write an article about, is with covering in public. This is an issue for most, if not ALL, female ex-pats who come to live/work here as it is for for housekeepers.

Although I've never insisted that my Indonesian housekeeper wear a face-veil in public, we did buy an abaya for her after her arrival in Al-Hassa; a very functional on-the-shoulder one similar to my daughter's. Although I have seen some maids in public without them, they really catch my attention because they stick out. This, in itself, is reason enough for maids to wear abayas in public, in my opinion. My housekeeper already wears a headscarf of her own accord, even around the house since my husband and other males are here and she is a practicing Muslim woman.

Is it so strange to expect an abaya and headscarf to be part of a 'uniform' that maids in Saudia must wear? I had a worse uniform at the first job I worked at as a teenager and I'm sure many of my readers have uniform horror stories of their own:) Why should it be an issue? Couldn't we just chalk it up to being 'part of the job'? After all, they don't need to come here to work, they're all given choices of what country they want to work in before they leave.

Why Keep the Tea-Towel Look?

2007-06-03T07:53:00.000+03:00

This could be one of the reason's why ghutras aren't going out of style anytime soon:

Saudi Arabia: Over $ 320 Million Spent Annually on Hair loss Products

This article also hints that all the product used in an effort to manage hair loss is contributing towards another hair blight of the Saudi population....dandruff. For a desert area there's sure a lot of snow here!

How Am I Stingy?

2007-05-17T10:41:00.000+03:00

This is me putting my literature degree to good use- my mock sonnet parodying Elizabeth Barrett Browning's "How do I love thee?" Sonnet#43.

How am I stingy? Let me count the ways.
I am stingy to the depth and breadth and height
My salary can reach, when feeling funds are tight
For the ends of frivolity is just before paydays.
I am stingy to the level I rush to today’s
Most advertised sale, since full prices bite.
I am stingy openly, not embarrassed, I’m right;
I am stingy most purely, when prices soar like a kite.
I am stingy with a passion put to use
In the shopping mall, it comes from the depths of my heart
I am stingy with a tightfistedness I seem not to lose
With my pay raises- I am stingy, with money I hate to part,
Half price sale’s my soul’s delight!- and, due to lack of floos*,
I shall be stingy in the loading of my cart.

*money-colloquial Arabic

Driving Ms. Daisy

2007-05-17T10:17:00.000+03:00

See what I gotta resort to!

Go to Sand Gets in My Eyes blog for an unbelivable picture on this same topic.

Hair, Hair, Everywhere

2007-05-14T08:34:00.000+03:00

***to be sung to the tune of "Old MacDonald"***

In Dammam we have expats
Ee ei ee ei ooh
And these expats they show their hair
Ee ei ee ei ohh
With some blond streaks here
And no veils there
Here is hair
There is hair
There’s no Muttawa anywhere
EP is a laid-back place
EE EI EE EI OOOOOOOOH

Thank you Shaymaa for your inspiration in the car on our way from Dhahran Mall.

We don't have much of an western expat community in Al-Hassa, so the sight of all these uncovered white folks on my short trips to Dammam is kinda strange for me. I'm glad I live in the EP with our beaches, oases, and relaxed attitudes. Despite all the modern commodities of Riyadh, it sounds a bit too uptight for me with roving bands of Muttawa and "tribe pride".

Topics of Conversation in the Magellat

2007-05-12T11:31:00.000+03:00

What have women been talking about in our magellat*? Here's some insight from this weekend's conversations.

Body Image- It was being discussed how now when a wife gains a few pounds, husbands are dogging them to slim down. Some of these women there have taken to extreme dieting to loose weight.

Changes in Married life- women were reminiscing about back in the days. These women are aged mid-20's to mid 40's and are all worried about getting older and appearing less attractive to their husbands. The influence of media on men's perceptions of their wives was discussed heavily. Who can compare to TV women who never change poopy diapers or scrub a floor and have perfect make-up, hair and bodies? Their grandparents never had issues like this.

Misyaar marriage- it used to be that a poor man's wife could relax when it came to one issue, her husband wouldn't be able to afford a second wife so her position was secure. But now, with some unmarried professional women willing to give up their rights to support and housing just to get married, even the poor guys can get married again. Where western women worry about their husbands having affairs with their secretary or taking on a mistress, women here worry about a second wife.

I was a quiet observer during this conversation and just listened to what these average Saudi women had to say. Some are slightly more educated than others, none of them are professionals, they have never travelled except to Mecca and Bahrain, and the household income for all of them doesn't exceed SR6,000 ($1,600).

*magellat- women's parlor, a room in a house used to receive female guests.

Hangin at the farm

2007-05-12T11:16:00.000+03:00

Eat your hearts out Najdis and Hijazis. Y'all have your fancy shmancy buildings and your glittery cities. You got your shopping malls and your restaurants. But how often do you get to see mother nature at her finest? We may be in Podunk, but we have miles and miles of green stuff. Here's how Hassawis spend there time:

We hung out the whole night and left at dawn. There was dancing, singing, laughing, swimming, and eating greasy lamb on top of rice. We aren't lucky enough to own a farm, this one was a rental, but we're gonna buy one Inshallah. These farms are what holds me back from running like a bat out of hell to a "big city". This is quality of life.

5 Words I Think I Use The Most

2007-05-12T11:00:00.000+03:00

I've been tagged by Samia (sorry it took so long) in Denmark to write about the 5 words I think I use the most. This is the brainchild of my friend in the UK Hema. Samia has an interesting piece on her chat with a Nazi.

"No" -I have small children.
"Actually"- I start too many sentences like this during conversation.
"Really"- my emphasis word. I usually stretch it out reeeeeeeally long for extra emphasis.
"Shhhhh"- not really a word but I say it often. I value peace and quiet.
"Sleep"- as in "go to sleep", "Man, I need some sleep", and "I'd do anything to sleep 6 straight hours".

I don't as yet have too many established blog buddies so I'm just gonna tag DesertFlower. This tag isn't entirely without merit, it gives some insight into our lives. Don't worry Hema, I'll make sure in the future to tag you first in revenge for creating a tag.

Support Sisters, Saudi Heritage, and the Envirionment With One Transaction

2007-05-07T22:42:00.000+03:00

I’m being teased mercilessly and getting called “Nakhlawiyya” (farm-girl) by my in-laws because of my choice in laundry baskets. Instead of buying one of gazillions of plastic laundry baskets, I went and ordered a traditional, woven basket to be made for me by one of the dying breed of basket weavers here in the city. It’s actually used for hauling dates around but I saw its value for hauling clothes around. Nowadays most of these baskets are woven from plastic so I had to order one made for me of old-fashioned, undyed palm leaves.

Um Ahmed is the lady who managed to solicit our patronage…and these are some aggressive saleswomen! They’re located at the Thursday Market in back of the Central fruit market every Thursday morning till noon prayer. Yes, I mean the now notorious fruit market which is in back of the Flirty-Go-Round (the Baladiyya-City Hall). Since this area is away from the main body of the Thursday Market I could get down out of the car and browse through some of the ladies’ goods on sale and have a chat with them without shaming my family for several generations to come.

Um Ahmed allowed us to take a few pictures of her wares, all stuff she’s woven herself, as long as she was out of the picture. A tiny man, whom I can only assume is Abu Ahmed, was happy to pose holding up some of the items on display in a bid for free advertising. All the while he was telling me about the value of these baskets and how strong they are…that’s OK, we’re buying them already.

Um Ahmed saw my dork husband coming from a mile away and talked him into buying some traditional fans, pictured perched on top of the basket in the handles along with the mat she convinced him we need.

These poor women could use an A/C. The temp was rising fast and it wasn’t even noon yet!
The only things they have to protect them are these little shelters.

If I’d chosen a plastic laundry basket, it would be around for hundreds of years after its job of carrying laundry was done. It would have probably broken and cracked, forcing me to buy another one after only a few short years. This adds another plastic laundry basket behind as my ecological legacy for future archeologists to find and speculate as to their uses along with millions of pampers, plastic shopping bags, Pepsi cans and legless Fulla ‘idols’ in a Saudi landfill.

You can find 'Um Ahmed's' in any country on this planet, struggling to preserve traditional crafts and bring them to market. By buying from Um Ahmed I’m helping to preserve a piece of heritage and history, I’m putting food on her table and clothing her children and I’m not polluting the earth. Also, I get to listen to my in-laws reminisce about their sweet memories growing up ‘before oil’, a history lesson triggered by the sight of my new laundry basket.

The Flirty-Go-Round

2007-05-03T00:10:00.000+03:00

A strange phenomenon occurs when you combine a city full of big butts, guts, and only one nice sidewalk: The Flirty-Go-Round.

Many people here would like to walk for exercise but, the lack of sidewalks can make this unpleasant. Some neighborhoods also lack sewers and there is sewage leaking from overflowing septic tanks into the sidewalk-less streets. Also, walking on the road can turn you into a moving target for this country’s unskilled drivers. Only recently has the city begun to create actual sidewalks on some main drags.

The first place to get a nice new brick sidewalk was the city hall building (Al-Baladiyya). It is very wide and completely encircles city hall and its surrounding greenery. There isn’t any houses close by, only the maternity hospital and a big post office building. People began to flock to the new sidewalk, which resembles a track, to get their daily exercise. It’s popular because of its nice wide circular shape, nice green scenery, its central location, it provides a measurable distance for the walkers, and it’s just become a “thing” to do.

Pregnant women, fresh from seeing a doctor at the maternity hospital, would go walking/waddling there to bring on or progress labor. Other women, who work at some of the neighboring hospitals, also started going there and would walk while chatting with their friends after their shifts. Some men, in full jogging gear, also began going there, weaving around the slowly walking abaya-clad women. More and more people came to walk and it wasn’t long before the young men of the town caught wind of this new place to go and potentially meet women on the move.

Recognizing the “danger” posed by all this gender mixing, the people inside city hall came up with a rule to help curb potential flirting. The rule was; anyone walking around city hall has to walk in a clockwise direction. This would help to keep men from “bumping” into oncoming women or vice versa. It would also curb any flirty looks at oncoming walkers. So, the walking continued, in a more orderly fashion.

One can come any day after ‘Asr prayer and see the clockwise walking continue right into the night. There’s usually a girl/boy order to the walking: a gaggle of girls immediately preceeding a flock of flirters in freshly ironed thobes and starched ghutras…yeah, they’re there to exercise...sure.

One determined young man decided to use his education to convince the government officials of their folly in deciding to keep everyone moving in a clockwise direction. He took an appointment with the highest minister in city hall and proceeded to argue logic.
He quoted from his science books:

“Sir, it’s scientifically proven that if a human being continues to move in a clockwise direction, his heart will explode! The rule that everyone has to walk in a clockwise direction will harm our health and should be revoked immediately.”

The minister sat, and let the earnest young man complete his spiel without objecting or saying a word. Little did the young man know but this particular minister was a science major himself. After he was done the minister showed the young man out. He informed him it was doubtful any of the walkers could attain such a speed, only attainable in a centrifuge-like device, so as to cause their heart to explode and thanked him for his concern.

I guess he’ll have to find another way to meet women.

If you loved me you'd cook me rice

2007-05-01T19:54:00.001+03:00

He: The house is a mess, and I’m hungry
She: I’m so tired, I have a project I need to do.
He: That’s enough, I’m sick of always coming after your schoolwork. When was the last time you cooked?
She: Buy something from outside, I’ve got too much stuff to do. I also need to get the kids bathed and put to bed so I can finish my work for tomorrow.
He: If you loved me you’d cook me rice.
She: That’s the measure of love? Everyone else I go to uni with has maids, I’m the only one who doesn’t.
He: So I’m supposed to get you a maid now? We don’t have any money.
She: That’s not what I mean, can’t you be patient and understanding a little?
He: You’ve been going to school for 6 years already. I got married to have a wife, not to live like this.

This couple almost got a divorce last week. My husband was called in to intervene and talk to the man. I talked to the woman to get her side of the story so when my husband was talking to the man, he’d have more of the facts. We’d already gotten the cliffnotes version from her father who gave us the call and we were discussing the issues in the car on the way to meet them. Being close to the woman I knew more background on the story than my husband did so I asked him to pass on a few morsels of counsel to the man. I wanted him to tell the man about our life when I was a student in England.

We were both studying but of course (as is the way it is in most of the world, wrong or right) the housework and childcare were my responsibility. My husband’s degree took precedence over mine because although we were both on scholarship, his career and consequently our future, depended on HIS doing a good job.
· Remember my bouts of crying because I had too much on my plate?
· Remember how I wouldn’t sit down to eat with my family because I had to start on the cleanup?
· Remember how I had to choose either attending lectures or studying, I didn’t have time for both?
· Remember how I was the only Saudi female student we met who had small kids but no maid?
· Remember how I could only do my uni work after the kids were fed, bathed, played with, sent to bed and the house cleaned?
· Remember how I had to base what lectures I chose on the timetable and how it fit around my kids being home, not on the quality or content of the lecture?
· Remember how when I had essays due, and there’d always be three or more due at the same time, I’d have to do a housework and children strike for almost a week previous to the due date, not sleep for 3 days previous to the due date, and once again cry because I can’t do the good job that I wanted to and I know I’m capable of and I was so stressed out.
· Remember how skinny and sickly I became because of the pressure? I spent second semester of my third year in and out of the hospital with asthma, many attacks were triggered by stressful situations.
· Remember how we had to put off having more children because there’s no way a baby could have fit into the chaos?
· Remember how I had to do my grocery shopping online because I could point and click and Voila! It was delivered for a fiver.
· Remember how I’d go months without talking to some of my friends because I didn’t have time?
· What beauty regime? Oh yeah, every week I’d clip my nails. I had an annual hair trim immediately after taking the year’s last exam. Good thing I wore hijab AND nikaab at uni! There were days I had on my PJ’s under my jilbab.

I regularly talked with this woman about her struggles while trying to finish university. I already knew of her husband’s attitude towards being “neglected”. She confides in me since many stay-at-home old-school Saudi women don’t understand the pressure she’s under. She’d gotten married, had two babies, underwent a major health scare and spent much time in the hospital with one of her children all since starting her studies.

This could be any couple, any where in the world. Although some western men may help somewhat around the house, I’ve heard statistics which suggest that women in two-income families still do upwards of 80% of the housework in America and England. And even the 20% SOME of them do is praised unnecessarily! Don’t be surprised a Saudi man sits around like King Farrouk waiting to be served by his frazzled wife because unfortunately, they’re not the only ones as I’m sure we’ll hear about in the comments section. I remember some of my Eastern European relatives bitching because their son was washing the dishes after getting home from work: his wife had three kids under the age of 5!

Rather than relating more sad stories of female oppression via housework, I want my readers to feel how universal this situation is. Did it make any difference that it took place in Saudia, in Arabic, and with two Saudis in an Islamic marriage?

Analyze this!

2007-05-01T15:47:00.000+03:00

Hema tagged me...

I can't analyze handwriting, but I'm sure mine speaks volumes. Most men write more girly than I do. I'm constantly criticized about how ugly it is and I should take more pride in it. I couldn't care less.

I tag DesertFlower

What's the point?

2007-04-29T00:13:00.000+03:00

My husband's friend was in an eyeglass shop chatting with the guy behind the counter when a veiled woman entered by herself. Completely disregarding the fact that there had been a customer there before her she proceeded to thrust a broken pair of glasses at the Indian man behind the counter.
"Fix them", she demanded
"I'm not able to sister", the man says politely.
"Thor int? (Are you an idiot?)", she growls.
"They can't be fixed sister, you'll have to pick out another pair of frames", the poor guy pleads.

The 'veiled threat' then proceeds to angrily rummage through the various frames on display. After a few moments she locates a pair and puts them on over her face veil. She turns to my husbands friend and asks:

"Heloo? (Do they look nice?)

Top 10 ways you know summer has hit in Saudia…

2007-04-25T19:29:00.000+03:00

(David Letterman style)

10. If you use the bathroom any time after 10am, the water is so hot after running for 3 seconds that if you don’t wash in that amount of time, you will literally burn you’re a** off.

9. You turn off the water heater to create a reservoir of cool water. Thus, the “cold” tap is used for hot water and the “hot” tap for cold.

8. You can guess a person’s heritage by the B.O. bouquet they leave behind them from the food they eat. And don’t get all uppity and insulted in the comments, in 40C+ weather (120F) EVERYONE stinks despite O.D.’ing on perfume! The stink is universal, just the nuances of an individuals parfum differs from group to group. Examples:
· Egyptians, Levantines, and many Hijazis-garlic
· Najdis-onions
· Indonesian-Indomie and chilli
· Indians-curry
· E.P.’s-Fried fish with onion
· Me- all of the above (I’m just guessing since I eat all those foods. It’s hard to smell your own B.O. unless your Mary Katherine Gallagher from SNL-that’s for u DF)

7. You add at least one additional shower to your daily routine and afterwards apply so much powder, your entire torso becomes white in an effort to stave off above mentioned B.O. for a while.

6. You shave your cat thus, completely freaking out your child who thinks some kind of monstrous rat has invaded the house.

5. Life is evident in city streets just after the crack of dawn or around sunset. The rest of the time, the city is dead.

4. Before driving you don’t let the car run to warm it up, you turn it on ahead of leaving to cool it down.

3. Cotton! Oh wonderful, hideous, shapeless, cotton kamees- how I love thee!

2. You can wring out your burga after removing it.

1. And the number one way you know summer has hit in Saudia….(drumroll please)

You’re making reservations to be anywhere other than Saudia!

Since we don't have an oil well in our backyard and lack funds to travel...here's how we're keeping cool.

My mangled cat

2007-04-24T16:42:00.000+03:00

Due to the high heat, we need to shave my Maine Coon every summer. If we don't, she turns into a matted, miserable mess. Since we lack grooming facilities and veterinarian services are limited to medical care, I have to take matters into my own hands. It's a good thing my cat doesn't look in the mirror !

Update: Apparently my cat is so hideous looking in real-life, my 6 year-old is completely freaked out by her. When she woke up the next morning and my cat streaked past her, she had a hand-flapping, jumping, screaming, crying, heart-pounding FIT! It's now the second day and she still can't look at her without panic! I never expected this...it's just a really bad hair-cut.

Before the carnage

After

Note the whiskers lost while trying to bite me while the clippers were on her neck. She may look ridiculous but I guarantee she's happy to get rid of her winter coat.

New Racial Sensitivity Rules for commenters on my blog

2007-04-24T15:13:00.000+03:00

In light of the reactions to another post, I’ve discovered that I’m obviously much too blasé about comments regarding my own social/economic/ethnic identity. I’ve decided that I will, from this point on, throw hissy fits in reaction to any type of racial/social/etc. reference that could be applicable to blood relatives of mine unless the commenter fits neatly within said social or racial group.

1. No Arab references of any kind unless you are a Saudi Sunni Arab, and are from Al-Hassa.
2. No project/ghetto references,- my sister lives in the projects, has a “ghetto” name, and calls her daughter the ‘project princess’
3. No redneck/hillbilly/hick/Podunk jokes, this includes using redneck names or somehow insinuating hick-ness in anyway.
4. No mafia, Goodfellow, or Godfather references, I have an Italian-Americans in the family and an association may be implied
5. No Nazi references- I have a German-American half-sister and could construe a linkage between her and Nazi misdeeds and would therefore, be offended.
6. No trailer trash references, my mom’s half-sister lives in a trailer-park and I spent some summers at her place.
7. Do I have to say no terrorist references?
8. No truck driver jokes- got some truck-driving cousins and a half-brother who just took up the career.
9. No ESL, or non-English speaker references, I have another half-brother who doesn’t know even two English words along with countless cousins, aunts, and uncles, nieces, and nephews.
10. No run-for-the border references- No habla espanol but we watch a lot of “Dora the Explorer”, “Diego”, and “Mind of Mencia” since we acquired a couple of Mexicans.
11. No insinuating construction workers have bad manners, we owned a contracting company.
12. No saying Geronimo- You guessed it, Native American roots also.
13. No eastern-Europeans as prostitutes references-I have family living in Eastern Europe. I even went to visit the “old country”.
14. No plumbers crack jokes- got a plumber in the family
15. No nerd/geek/dork references-my husband may get his feelings hurt.
16. No inferring that accountants are socially inept, pencil pushing, boring bureaucrats.
17. No Irish jokes- too many “Mc” names in the family to count. This includes alcoholic references too as this is commonly associated with Irish.

…I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. And if any of you actually thought I was serious and you considered trying to follow these rules…..GO AWAY FROM MY BLOG NEVER TO RETURN because you obviously don’t get my sense of humor.

The only things my family is still missing is a Jew and an Asian. Seeing as how we never stick “with our own kind”, I have a feeling the youngest generation will take care of these missing delegates of our own little U.N. Maybe Saudi Jawa could engage my Hispanic niece if he’s willing to wait about 20+ years. I’d suggest my daughter’s, but they already have waiting lists and would need to refuse a few dozen potential suitors to get to the bottom of it.

How did my family get to be like this? Well, obviously we have a lot of tolerance for other cultures and groups and don’t take ourselves too seriously. Also, we have too many divorces and re-marriages resulting in a spectrum of half-siblings who repeat the cycle.

Man, my kids are a tribal Saudis worst nightmare to have marry into their family!

Choosing a Nom de Plume

2007-04-24T13:53:00.000+03:00

I can’t go around calling myself only SSW but I’m not willing to confess neither my, nor my children’s, names. Although my real name is common in Saudia (There’s a popular Saudi TV show presenter with my name) it was hard growing up in the states in a non-“ethnic” area with that name. I always dreaded the first day of school and knew when the teacher reached my name on the attendance list due to the long pause and contemplation over pronunciation. I didn’t meet anyone else with my name till I was 19 and bumped into a like-named Jordanian woman in a Masjid in America! My sister had a similar issue, she grew up in a white neighborhood with a ghetto name. This issue has since been resolved as she now lives in the projects:P

My Aunt Teddy (her nickname not her real name) tried to encourage me to choose an “American” nickname for myself when I was young. My name is too “foreign” and she thought that if I chose a more “American” sounding name to use, it would make people more comfortable. When I was a child, I cursed my name as it made me more different from my peers than I already was. I longed to be named Jenny or Amy. I now love my real name and hate the fact that there are so many others with that name here in Saudia.

Choosing a nickname is a kind of family tradition on my grandpa’s side of the family (my mom’s dad). The other branches of the family, both foreign and domestic, have normal names that reflect their paternal social/ethnic backgrounds and at best, shorten them to find a nickname. My grandpa was the only stick-in-the mud who didn’t choose a nickname out of his four siblings and the majority of that generation went by very imaginative nicknames. I feel like continuing the tradition in my efforts to blog-name myself and children. Seeing as how some of my grandpa’s family’s names (both real and nicknames) are very southern sounding, I went to the red-neck name generator on the internet. For some strange reason it was blocked! I didn’t know red-neck names were morally dangerous to Saudis! This strengthened my resolve to find redneck names for us. I want to pick a name that both Americans and non-English speakers could say seeing as how the name might just stick! For example, I thought of nick-naming my son “Cooter” until I pictured his Saudi cousins and my dad trying to say it! After doing a bit of research, recalling old family names and asking my children their opinion, I’ve narrowed it down to the following choices:

Myself: Daisy

My oldest daughter: Maryjo
My middle daughter: EttaMae
My son: Bud(dy) -must be said like Rudy Huxtable from"Cosby" or alternatively like Pauly Shore

My oldest daughter already has a nickname from soon after her birth that agrees with all ethnic aspects of my family. I had to change that for my blog because she’s only called by her nickname now so it may reveal her identity! I’ve been searching for one for my son since his birth and I think Buddy may stick. Anyone got any suggestions? Remember to try and pronounce it with a foreign accent and if it sounds way too weird, don’t bother.

Al-Hassa's screwy weather

2007-04-14T21:44:00.000+03:00

For those of you living in tornado ally or in the path of future hurricanes, you won't blink an eye at the following picture. We live with the hottest weather on planet earth, that's our lot in life. It's miserably hot but, predictable down to the week every year, the same thing. This year has been a bit different. There's been more rain at times there's usually not rain and the other night, a wind storm that tore pieces of the city and threw them.

This is in one of the poorer neighborhood's, Salhiyah

You would think that this fell from the house that it's leaning against but your wrong...It came from 3 houses over to the left of the picture! We'll see how long it takes to get cleared and by whom.

The Abazons

2007-04-10T12:19:00.000+03:00

The Amazons were an ancient nation of female warriors.

It has been noted that until the 20th century, Amazons were typically depicted in literature as an alien adversary that threatened the masculinity of heroes. As such, the typical goal of the heroes has been to defeat and humiliate them as a way of reasserting their own, masculine superiority.

In the 20th century, Amazons were depicted with increasing sympathy. Today, the typical depiction of the characters is as an isolated community of powerful and beautiful warriors whose respect and cooperation the male heroes are challenged to earn.

Abazon- An abaya-clad Amazon who, as their literary counterparts in the past, threaten the masculinity of most Saudi men. As such, the typical goal of the Saudi man has been to defeat and humiliate them as a way of reasserting their own, masculine superiority.

Abazons differ from their Amazonian cousins in that the term Abazon doesn’t strictly denote a warrior-woman although does not exclude that notion either. It can be applied to any Muslim woman who struggles , either publicly or silently, against unfair treatment of women, who steps forward to claim the rights granted to her in the Quran and Sunnah, and asserts her God given authority within her society.

I think I'll patent the term Abazon....remember folks, you heard it here first.

Do you think we'll achieve our rights faster if we look like the Abazon above?

Boo Ya!

Cultural Crap

2007-04-08T09:47:00.000+03:00

As a Saudi citizen, I’m a stakeholder in the future of this country. Unlike some critics who criticize this country from an outsider’s perspective, change- or rather lack thereof- directly affects my family’s lives. Many things I try to point out in my blog are things that some Saudis have become complacent about and don't question the logic or the why's behind it-they just go along with it. That's not OK with me. Having grown up outside of the culture, I'm able to distinguish between cultural Islam and real Islam immediately. No one can pull a fast one on me by giving me the answer "haram" and I consider my culture-free insight into our religion a blessing. I’m not the only one with issues about this topic; what is Islamic and what is Saudi- they’re not the same after all. The Saudi blogs are full of people, some more constructive intentions than others, with similar issues (read comments too). Many of us (not all of course) criticize because we want our country to improve so it can realize its glorious potential, as a truly Islamic nation.

Whether or not I can go to the fruit market may seem insignificant in comparison to the issue of forced divorces…but it’s one of those small cultural issues I’m faced with on a daily basis which add up and build up. Another example from many, some try to argue that riding 4wheelers isn't something that girls should do. They say ridiculous things like "maybe the wind will blow her veil or abaya and she'll be uncovered" or my favorite, "it's undignified". Oh, for God's sake get over yourselves. No, riding a 4wheeler isn’t a necessity of life but, why not? Was it a necessity of life for our Prophet (PBUH) to have a footrace with his young wife Aisha (RAA) or a food fight with his wives? Fun’s a part of Islam too.

I’ve seen women on TV in Iran, covered properly, doing everything from sliding down enormous inflated slides to engaging in sporting activities. Iranian women really seem to be go-getters and I want to know more about them. It may just be a faulty observation by a Sunnia, but it looks like Shia women don’t have as much cultural BS to deal with as we Sunnis do. They appear to have more freedom of movement and go about their business normally. I need to ask my Shia friends about this. Comparing notes is a favorite activity between me and a Shia lady from Qatif. What we’ve found is there are more similarities than differences, and the differences are not so important to cause the huge divide that exists between the two groups in this country….but that’s another post. They’re usually the only ones I see out on their own and in places I can’t go because it’s a ‘shame’. You go Shia girls!

The funny thing is it’s not just the men, women too are limiting our activities with similar arguments. I went 4 wheeling with several of my teenage nieces, my sister-in-law, and my two daughters at a popular spot on the edge of the city. We went when it was almost dark and to a location which wasn’t full of men and during the work week when there wasn’t a lot of people gathered there. We had a great time and I’m glad my husband isn’t of the ‘stick-in-the-mud’ variety of men who would dismiss our desire to go and play. We all remained covered, our laughter was unheard by any men, and my husband was the only male in the bunch. What did my mother-in-law have to say about our activity, “qalilat il adab! (we don’t have good manners)”. There was a whole piece in one of the Arabic newspapers here about women 4wheeling last year- I can’t remember which one though. The gist was when men were interviewed and asked whether it was OK for women to go 4wheeling, many of them responded “yes”. Then the interviewer asked if it was OK for their sisters, mom, wife, etc to go and almost all of them said “NO”. hmmmmmm.

It's amazing how almost everything fun here that involves outside your house has to be an issue of indecency. They have no religious basis for most of it, it’s a tool of repression used by feeble men who aren't respected outside their own households so they have to lord their 'authority' over their womenfolk.

Real men are willing to challenge the status quo if something isn't right and especially if it means standing up for someone other than themselves. If it were only African Americans and women standing up for their rights, their rights would have never been granted to them. It's because people outside those groups could recognize the unfairness of their treatment and joined the bandwagon. One must pick one's battles carefully. Even if men aren't willing to challenge the status quo head on, they must be willing to at least consider the prevailing opinion's absurdity. We’re not to the point that my husband is willing to take us 4 wheeling on the busiest days with a lot of men passing by us in cars but, he’s willing to take us. That speaks volumes here.

Forbidden Fruit

2007-04-07T14:39:00.000+03:00

There are some places here where it’s just not OK for a woman to go. But the fruit market, come on!

What are they worried about, someone man-handling my melons or pinching my peaches?

My husband, the Dork of the Desert (DD), hasn’t a clue how to pick out what I need. The result- him walking back and forth a couple of times to and from the car when I don’t approve of his choices or need to remind him of items he’s forgotten. There are some old women there, some foreigners, but even my husband is a bit uneasy with me being there in the car.

I know a household of women, real do-it-yourselfers, who go fruit shopping anyway. The father died not long before I met them and their only brother was living overseas. Their solution: the oldest daughter (in her ‘30’s) put on her old lady abaya (styles differ between the generations) and went and did whatever she needed to, including the fruit market.

The Thursday market is another no-go zone for the estrogen-endowed. One man told me he wouldn’t even take his infant daughter to the bird market there, it’s such a shame. Once again, the few women there are Bedouin or Shia, and only some of the oldest Sunni women. My mothers in law’s requests for transport to the Thursday market are met with all her 5 sons refusing to take her. I’ve convinced my husband to take me on a few occasions but only descended from the car once, after he took a good look around to see who’s watching.

Another strange place that I can’t go is the Islamic shop where there are various books, cassettes, and religious paraphernalia for sale. This one I couldn’t fathom why. I wanted to buy some Islamic nasheed (a cappella songs without musical instruments) tapes for myself and my children. Once again, I can’t go in because “it’s just not done”. DD has to go in and communicate with me walkie- talkie style on our mobiles for my approval as I sat in the car outside.

There isn’t a law forbidding us to go any of these places, as I’ve mentioned there are some women there. Unfortunately, our men don’t want other men seeing them take their women to these places. I have a feeling that with the influx of Qataris this will soon change, if it hasn’t started already- I haven’t gone for quite awhile. Unaware that fruit shopping is a shame, Qatari women, who are similar to us in appearance, will freely peruse the markets. I hope the Saudi fruit sellers can endure the sight of these women all fondling their fruits and caressing their cucumbers.

Women can't drive if she wears a veil....Bull!

2007-04-02T14:24:00.000+03:00

Food for thought for those naysayers that think we must discard our veil in order to drive:

Personally, I've driven veiled in the east and in the west (I've even driven in SAUDIA- Shhhh!). If you have enough of an IQ to operate a motor vehicle, you have enough brains to arrange your veil so it doesn't interfere with your peripheral vision. Now, let's discuss the topic of long hair blowing in the wind, impeding it's possessors vision.

Fee Garroos

2007-03-31T07:23:00.000+03:00

After finishing with our obligatory Friday in-law visit, we take the kids for outings. This time of year, the weather is still tolerable so we are engaging in mainly outdoor activities after Asr. Yesterday, we went to a small outdoor amusement park where my kids and their cousins rode on small roller-coasters, drove bumper cars, and happily hurled from motion sickness. I sat watching the fun from a bench, holding my sweet, sleeping baby. I soaked in the soft breeze filtering through my black chiffon burga and relished the gentle warmth of the season’s slowly setting sun as if trying to keep a piece of it to consol me through the upcoming harsh summer months. I blocked out the whooping and hollering bellowing forth from all the kids in the park in order to engrave the perfection of the moment in my memory. The sky began to change from blue, to hues of pink and orange necessitating our departure. The kids were happy and so was I.

We embarked on the return journey home to a symphony of requests for ice cream and slushies. How dare we adults consider the outing complete without the requisite intake of sugary substances. Five minutes into our journey, I felt a disconcerting twinge in skin of my left shoulder. This twinge slowly started to turn into a sharp radiating heat. Then another twing developed on my left arm, and another on my chest.

“STOP THE CAR!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Stop the car someplace where no one can see, it feels like there’s something sticking me, like a hot needle, AAAAYYYYE! Hurry!”

My husband proceeded to honour my orders and quickly pulled the car over to the side of the road, although not in as secluded a spot as I had hoped.

“Huh, esh feech? (what’s wrong?)”, the kids started asking me from the back of the car as they watched me begin a frantic search for the source of my pain under the folds of my abaya.

“Oh no”, I thought to myself, as I batted at my shoulder, “I know this pain.”

“FEE GARROOS!” I wailed pathetically to the car’s occupants upon the realization of my assailant’s identity. I’m now clawing even more desperately at my clothes under my abaya. “FEE GARROOS, FEE GARROOS!”

The Garroos: my enemy. It’s an insect which I'm convinced is an agent of Satan and it must have hitched a ride in my abaya as I contendedly sat on that bench. I have no idea to which kingdom, phyla, class, order, family, genus, or species it belongs (boy, my 10th grade biology teacher would be impressed I’ve remembered those classifications all these years). It looks like a large, long, flying ant. It thrives on hot weather and warm surfaces-including skin. It has pinchers that inflict a bite that feels akin to a bee sting which leave a radiating heat from the afflicted area that lasts up to a week or more (depending on how sensitive you are). Summary-you don’t want to be bitten by a Garroos.

I proceeded to lift open my abaya and my scarf while ducking down in an effort to keep myself concealed from the passing traffic. I systematically probed quickly through my clothes with my right hand while holding layers of clothes open in my left. My husband, sensing my desperation, proceeded to help by jamming his hand down my shirt and rummaging around (I’m not sure his intentions were all pure as I think he copped a feely!).

“I don’t see anything”, he says.
“I know it’s there, look!” I produced a corner of my now red and swelling left shoulder as proof of my sanity. “See, it’s in there somewhere.”

We sat at the side of the road for the next few moments, trying to ferret out the offending insect which only succeeded in angering him further thus, prompting more bites. All the while, the kids were snickering at me through my yelps of pain.

“Maybe it’ll crawl down into her underwear”, the little heathens speculated from the back seat of the car.

Admitting defeat, we conceded to continuing the drive home with the understanding that I couldn’t strip naked in the car to find that bastard bug! I believe I have never held so still in my life as I did during that car trip home. The only thing that moved on me was a finger, which tapped nervously on the armrest in anticipation of more bites.

“But we wanted ice cream”, the ungrateful little twits whined at us.

After a few minutes of ceaseless whining, my nerves broke and I chastised them for their selfishness without so much as expanding my ribcage to amplify my volume to avoid another bite. “It’s on the move”, I whimpered as I felt that hideous insect crawling over to the right shoulder via my chest.

My husband- who missed his true life’s calling, playing the part of Figaro, the Barber of Seville- began to bellow a tune using his best booming operatic voice:

Fee-Ga-Roos

FEEgaRoos FEEGaRoos FEEGaRoos FEEGaRoos

FEE - GA - ROOS!

This ditty distracted the kids from their ice cream campaign and they began singing along. Finally we arrived at my house. While rounding the corner just before reaching my house, I advised everyone to stay in the car for at least one minute after I went in the house. The car hadn’t yet rolled to a stop and the garage door was only partially open when I began my race to the bedroom. Upon stepping foot into my courtyard, my abaya, headscarf, and veil came off faster than what’s been witnessed on any departing international Saudi Airlines flight. My strip-in-transit was continued as I ran up the stairs of my empty house, items of clothing dropping to the floor immediately upon their removal. I entered my room in only my bra and pants and flipped my hair over, giving it a thorough shake out. I quickly removed the last few remaining articles of clothing and proceeded to beat all the clothes against the wall.

I never did find that bastard bug! His legacy: 3 bites on my left arm, 2 bites my left shoulder, 1 bite my right shoulder, 1 bite on my chest, and a really bad nights sleep from their hot-itchy pain. Each red bite measures around 4 cm in diameter with a swollen nucleus of 1½cm. What else was his legacy? He deprived you of reading the earth moving, serious post I had planned because instead, I wrote this one.

Booty Food

2007-03-30T06:19:00.000+03:00

Booty Food, noun, [boo-tee food]
1. Any nourishing substance that is eaten, drunk, or otherwise taken into the body to sustain life, provide energy, and promote prolific booty expansion in the members of the Sunday Bitching Brigade (SBB).
2. Food items, high in fat and calories that have been horded and valued beyond societal norms for their American-ness, limited availability, and due to their difficult and sporadic acquisitions.
3. Examples of booty food are (but not limited to): Log Cabin pancake syrup, A&W Rootbeer, Pumpkin pie, Butterball Turkeys, any food of Mexican origin, most food of Italian origin, French bread, cheddar cheese (real stuff, not Velveeta), Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Pillsbury Toaster Strudels, deli meats, Pillsbury Cinnamon Rolls, tins of biscuits, Steak, Doritos, Chocolate chip cookie dough, Dunkin Donuts, and Eggo Waffles.
—Related forms
boo·ty·less, boo-ty-full , boo-ty-li-cious adjectives

Every Sunday, I look forward to consuming Booty Food with my friends. Readers of this blog who live in the Greater Dammam Area (ARAMCO central), Riyadh, and Jeddah are probably perplexed at the great value the SBB (Sunday Bitching Brigade) places on many of the food items listed. For you, it’s just a normal trip to the supermarket to get any one of these things and more. Either that or you can just go to one of many American chain restaurants and order some of these things. For the SBB, these things are luxuries and we’ve gone to great lengths to acquire them. Although better than in years past, Al-Hassa still lacks the variey of....well...just about everything except date palms.

Seeing as how my husband is Hasawi, it takes months of nagging and planning for him to take me to Dammam (this includes Khobar and Dharan too) as this is considered major traveling to him (1 ½ hr car trip). When there, I execute a carefully planned order of stops with military precision to provide the least amount of irritation to my travel-sensitive spouse, and yet accomplish all my goals. This plan includes a mix of supermarkets, clothing stores, Starbucks, the gorgeous Corniche, friends’ houses, and restaurants, all designed to maximize my Dammam time. All the while I have my husband, trudging behind me holding packages or a child and asking, “ma baad khalaasti (haven’t you finished yet)?”

During my supermarket trips, I refer to two lists I’ve compiled over a period of months. One is a list of foods and other items to keep my eye out for myself, and the other list is my friends’ requests. Sometimes, I will find one item in one supermarket, and a related item in another. For example, I’ll find turkey in one supermarket, and a can of cranberry sauce in another. The supermarkets don’t always stock exactly the same items all the time so if I find pumpkin pie filling for example, I’d better buy it then and there as it may not be there on my next visit. My daughters are incensed if I return from a trip to Dammam without the obligatory string cheese and Eggo’s.

Later on, back in Al-Hassa, my kitchen cabinet’s stock takes on an eclectic theme. There sits a lonely jar of salsa, waiting for its chance to be united with refried beans and tortillas upon their long-awaited discovery in a Dammam supermarket. Or, there’s the stuffing mix and cranberry sauce that have been yearning for months for my husband to agree to the purchase of a 100 riyal turkey (+$20). It took two months of shopping trips in Al-Hassa and Dammam to gather all the ingredients necessary for a proper pot of chili! We’ve even gone so far as to collect food items on our trips to the States or to request them from people sending care-packages to us. I bought up kosher onion soup mix, cream of tartar, and baby cereal on my last trip and my friend regularly has her mom send her white gravy mix. Another friend in Jubail told me of when her mom had sent her a care package containing various items and Reese’s Cup’s. The package arrived with all the items intact but alas! Only the distinct aroma of the Reese’s Cup’s remained. Apparently, they’d been "confiscated" by Saudi customs agents in a bid to keep this nation’s booty sizes in check. The valiant lads!

Every few weeks, the SSB creates a themed meeting. For example, after sporadically gathering items over the course of several months, we had Mexican day. We wantonly applied great gobs of sour cream to tacos and salaciously dipped our tortilla chips in salsa with a sense of enormous fulfillment. It was almost an X-rated scene. Only people rescued from a long stint on a desert island relish their food more than we do on these days. When November rolls around, we all have strange hankerings for turkey. Since we’re all Muslims, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas. That fact doesn’t detract from the fondness we hold for the memories surrounding those holidays in the States, including the tastes and smells of that season’s food.

Possibly, it’s for the best that we don’t have regular access to some of our favorite foods. Given the freedom to regularly indulge in booty food, even our big roomy abayas couldn’t contain our huge booties, a bit too much ‘junk in the trunk’.

(No, that's not my butt in the picture above, in case any smart a**es were gonna ask. Google Image, search- "big butt")

Prodding the Sleeping Lioness of My Feminist Tendancies

2007-03-25T04:33:00.000+03:00

I’ve had two people guess my sun sign just by looking at me as a teenager, completely unprompted, and from complete strangers, two separate incidences. Both were 100% accurate on the first guess. One day a middle-aged lady sitting down to a cup of coffee in a restaurant, looked at me and asked;
“You’re a Leo aren’t you?”
“Good grief!” I was amazed, “how did you know?”
I’d never seen this woman before in my life and to my recollection, hadn’t even said a word to her.
“It’s the way you hold yourself, with a regal self-confidence, a lioness”, she responded.

I was quite pleased with myself for having inspired such an impression. The self-confidence part of it was especially true. I’ve always had confidence in spades. I knew who I was and what I believed and to hell with anyone who didn’t like it.

So, what happened to my lioness self?

Well, she was trapped live by a Saudi hunter who sought to domesticate her. She bred in captivity and gave birth to three cubs. The oldest female cub is starting to hone her nascent inclination to bite at her keeper’s hands. For the most part, my lioness has been content raising her cubs, which is busy work. Occasionally, my lioness is let out to stretch her limbs and chase a gazelle on the Saudi wild game reserve. It’s fenced in so there’s no chance of her escaping to intimidate the world at large. But as everyone knows, a lioness can only feign domestication for so long. Then one day, someone prods her, teases her, or doesn’t show the proper respect due to such a magnificent creature….and she lashes out.

I’ve been in a maternal lull for so long I’ve almost forgotten her. I got a glimpse of my old lioness self when I met one of my high school friends last summer when I was in the States. To her, I was almost unrecognizable. Her impression was akin to, “What the hell happened to you?” Hadn’t I been a rampant feminist when she knew me? I attributed it to mellowing with age, after all, I was just turning a ripe old 30 years old. In the west, people are just getting around to getting married and thinking about kids at that age. I’ve already been married for 10 years. My friend is still single and childless. I still remember the reaction of the doctors and nurses when I was delivering my first child in America, “You’re so young to be married and pregnant (I was 20 at the time)”. Ironically, there was an unwed teen mother and a crack addict whose child was taken from her upon delivering in the same room as me and yet, I was the oddity. I wanted to be married and I wanted children. I supposed I bought into the ‘You can have it all” brand of modern feminist thinking. And yes, I am trying to have it all. I’ve earned advanced degrees while working part time, all while my kids are at school to avoid guilt. Damn, it’s hard having it all. But the thing is, I’ve been so busy having it all I’ve forgotten something; my duty to improving my perceived status in this world for my sake, my daughter’s sake, and the sake of my sisters in the world. It’s time to do my part. It’s time to allow my lioness to awaken and find a place for her to live in my life.

“So, what prompted this rant” enquired another friend after telling her of this post. “It’s always been there”, I informed her. Only recently, it’s taken the form of a stomach ulcer developing as a result from holding it all in. The ulcer is from my lioness, who’s been scratching away at my innards while dreaming of hunting down hapless antelope on the open range and it’s causing me very real physical pain. It’s the little things on a daily basis that keep building up, poking and prodding at my lioness, threatening to wake her. I, and her captor, do our best to lull her back to her dreams. It’s been really difficult keeping a lioness all these years. Her Saudi captor tries to keep her sedate by scratching her in back of her ears every once and awhile and buying her a steak as a treat. Then after his short displays of affection, she purrs a bit and goes back to sleep. There’s been no place for me to keep my lioness these past few years, if she were to escape. So, she’s mainly had to stay in hibernation. She’s usually has an even-keeled personality. She rarely roars, and my oldest daughter knows; the quieter I say something, the faster she’d better do what it is I’m asking. Posing as a male lion, the captor lounges around and expects the lioness to bring him food and take care of the cubs by herself. Occasionally the cubs are allowed to pounce playfully on him but when he’s had enough, that’s it. She’s almost never shows aggression to her captor. She’s learned to value a peaceful den; it’s easier to take cat-naps when it’s quiet. Every once and awhile her captor postures menacingly and roars intimidatingly in an attempt to remind the lioness who’s the boss. Knowing full well in her heart who’s the better of the two, she goes off to find him more food to stuff in his mouth to shut him up. Only last week….he, and just about every other male in the world, prodded my lioness too strongly.

Having internet access is a mixed blessing for me. The more I read, the more restless my lioness became. I read a piece about new “Places’ for women to pray in the Haram so we’ll be “protected’ from men in crowded mixed areas. As I read that piece I remember how I so wanted to go and touch the black stone on the Kaaba but because I’d need to wade through a sea of men, I couldn’t. I read about a non-Saudi woman arrested for driving and her husband told he needs to stop her because it will lead to immorality. I read about not allowing women to vote when the time comes.

Then there’s what I experience every day. I can’t even go for a walk down the street by myself if the mood hits me because single males may interpret it as “flirty” and my captor feels a need to “protect” me from it by prohibiting me from going alone. There’s not real danger here. At least there isn’t for me. My lioness can handle hormonally-charged adolescents with delusions of being ‘playas’ while driving their shiny flirt-mobile cars playing a 50cent track and not reeeeeally understanding it. They’re not dangerous, just annoying and they’ll go away if you don’t give them face (veil pun intended).

Since last week, my lioness has been awake. She’s still a bit drowsy and can still be contained in my house, for now. But, she’s tried to make a break for it a couple of times already. Beware world, my lioness is still stretching and preening now, but she’ll be making her appearance soon.

Evil Eyes in Al-Hassa

2007-03-20T07:11:00.000+03:00

Let’s play a guessing game. Imagine you’re a Hasawi and try to guess what may be the single underlying cause of the following events.
1. Due to mystically sinister reasons, a large zit came into existence between my eyes which is neither coverable by make-up, nor my burga.
2. A predisposition to rashes was not the principal cause of a rash.
3. A car accident is not purely a car accident caused by the insanity and ineptitude of the majority of this country’s male drivers.
What is the causal theme between all of these distressing events? They could have all been caused by (imagine ominous and sinister sounding music here)…

THE EYE! (Dum Dum Duhhhhhhhhhhhhm sounding music here).

On Friday, we went for our usual visit to the Family’s (in-laws) house to eat lunch after Jumaat prayer. One of my daughters has several mosquito bites from leaving her window open in her room. What did my mother-in-law tell me to do for those bites? “Put Vicks”, she said assertively. My husband and I snickered silently behind her back remembering my last blog post. Then, she noticed the ghastly rash that my oldest daughter has creeping up her face. It just started up a few days ago, seemingly out of the blue. Two out of my three children have inherited my ultra-sensitive skin. I have to be so careful whenever using new skin products or perfumes to patch-test them first. Failure to do so has landed me with a face full of hives several times during my life. Upon expertly examining the offending eruptions on her grandchild’s face from several angles my mother-in-law concluded , “someone gave her an eye.” She then proceeded to treat my daughter with some special incense, holding it under her chin and reciting the name of God several times among other incantations and advised her to come over the next day to have the procedure repeated again. In addition, she sagely advised my daughter to always braid her long straight silky hair, as opposed to leaving it open and flowing at school, to avoid someone giving her hair an Eye. If that should happen, she may fall victim to spontaneous hair kinking or something dire of that nature. After all, her cousin H had a flawless complexion all her life up until someone gave her (gasp in terror-filled anticipation here for effect) THE EYE. Someone had the audacity to complement her on her skin and shortly thereafter, she fell victim to the dreaded blight of teens everywhere-the “pizza-face syndrome”. Coincidence? Hasawis think not.

During my tenure in this town, I’ve heard Eyes to be the cause of insanity, divorce, obesity, marrying a second wife, constipation, breast cancer, and car accidents among an infinite number of other things. There is not a single misfortunate event that happens in this city without someone attributing it to an EYE. Not only is this a ubiquitous mindset within the city but apparently, among Saudis we have a reputation for giving Eyes too. Before traveling with my new husband to Al-Hassa, I was advised by other Saudis that Hasawis have “strong Eyes” meaning, they have a proclivity for afflicting people Evil-Eyes. Because of this mindset, I’ve been discouraged from taking my babies with me to visit people, attend functions, or go shopping. Instead, I’ve been offered a chance to go footloose and baby-free by the In-Law Babysitting Service. Although my in-laws are lovely people and genuinely want to help me out, it’s always with the implied understanding that they’re worried someone will think my baby is cute and give their grandchild an Eye. Sometimes I give in because it’s really cool not to haul baby+accoutrements all over the place. Sometimes I insist on taking them with only to pray that the baby doesn’t come down with even a sniffle upon which to blame the Eye and my lack of parental protectiveness.
As Muslims, we believe in an “evil-eye”. It may not be exactly the same as in other cultures but the basic principle is similar: someone wishes ill-will on you while coveting something you have. It is not a hex, nor is it a curse placed upon a person, although that exists too. A person may not even be consciously aware of having afflicted someone with an Eye. However, there appears to be a gap between the Islamic understanding of an “evil-eye”, and the traditional cultural understanding. In different parts of the Muslim world, different groups attempt to ward off Eyes/curses with different methods. Thanks to widely available religious training, much of the shirk and pseudo-Islamic voodoo that occurs in other countries is slowly becoming extinct amongst Saudis with every generation of educated individuals that is produced. Saudis tend to use avoidance as a means to ward off an eye. The idea is: what’s not seen or talked about, can’t be coveted. This has lead to some unnecessary extremes. For example, upon her family’s urging, one girl at my daughter’s primary school covers her hair with a scarf to protect her from an eye while everyone else is uncovered.
I’m sure every group within this country has its own vanishing variety of hocus pocus intended to ward off or rid oneself of the Eye. Some people hang a passage from the Quran from the review mirror of their car or around their neck as an engraved necklace. I’ve seen little blue eyes inlayed in jewelry. A sister residing in Canada wrote me of her native Tunisia and described the wide assortment of amulets, magicians, and soothsayers. There’s one problem with this…they’re ALL wrong. All though the Quran can ward off an Eye, it has to be in your heart, not around your neck.
Now, it had been my intention to provide some pearls of Islamic wisdom but there’s a big problem with this, I’m ignorant. At least as an Islamic scholar I’m ignorant. I know what I’m not supposed to do but I don’t have exact info on what I AM supposed to do to ward off an Eye, just a general idea or two. I know to recite ayat Al-Kursi to protect myself from an Eye and to wash or drink from the water that an Eye-giver has washed in to remove a legitimate Eye. I’m waiting for my friend to get back to me with actual Ahadith from her Imam husband. I’ll update my post after she does. (updated info in comments section)

Meanwhile, don’t be so paranoid my fellow Hassawis. I shalt not covet my neighbor’s Caprice. So don’t blame my Eye when you get in that fender-bender with a Qatari’s Land Cruiser because your view was obstructed by a windshield covered in the chewed-up/spit-out sunflower seed shells you tried to orally project out the window whilst speeding and simultaneously picking your nose. Not everything bad happens because someone has it out for you. Sometimes it’s just the will of God or your own stupidity and one must acknowledge that Sh** happens.
By the way, my husband- a Hasawi to the core- got a kick out of my last post. After reading it he first gave me a playful smack to the back of my head before asking me to send him the link so he could send it to his friends. Truth hurts. And yes, he owned a white Caprice. That should say everything.

You Know You're a Hasawi When...Tips on Spotting a Saudi Hillbilly

2007-03-13T07:17:00.000+03:00

People from Al-Hassa (aka Hofuf, Al-Ahsa) are some of the loveliest people you’d ever want to meet. They’re more rural (this is an oasis town with a lot of agriculture), less jaded, and are pleased with some of the simpler things in life. Having said this, there are certain characteristics that make Hasawis distinctive from anyone else in the kingdom and have long made them the butt of jokes. I had originally planned on posting this after my blog got more of a Saudi fan base (because only Saudis could appreciate most of this post) however, I decided this would be a way to give outsiders a glimpse of Hasawi life.
So, in the tradition of the comedian Jeff Foxworthy (you know you’re a redneck when…) here’s how to identify a Saudi hillbilly…

You know you’re a Hasawi when…

There’s a pile of chewed-up/spit-out seeds next to you on the ground.
you picnic on the side of busy roads
you and/or most of your family have takeser (sickle-cell anemia- we have more cases in Al-Hassa then than in the entire rest of the kingdom combined)
you go to your uncle’s house to find a bride
You drive either a white Chevy Caprice or GMC Suburban (I have a max count of 12 Caprices on one block of road!)
You use one hand to steer your Caprice while using the other hand to pick your nose.
you’re at the farm a couple days a week hanging out
you consider going to Dammam traveling (it’s barely over an hours drive)
Your Suburban or white Caprice gets into a fender-bender with a Qatari driving a white Toyota Land Cruiser. (You’d think there’s nothing in Qatar, lately Al-Hassa is full of Qataris. Good for the local economy though.)
you can tell the difference between a Mubaraz accent and a Hofuf accent (two main urban parts of Al-Hassa not including the villages)
You change your accent to a Najdi accent when dealing with people other than Hasawis in an effort to sound more professional.
you must have a bag of seeds, della of tea and beyalas to “travel” to Dammam. (Dellas are vacuum thermos flasks and beyalas are little glass tea cups).
You visit the camel/sheep market with your kids in the car for a family activity.
If you can fit 17 people into a Caprice.
Like a fish, you can only live outside of the Al-Hassa fishbowl for short periods of time and have to return often to survive. (Many Hasawis who live/work in other towns like Jubail and Dammam, sometimes come home to Al-Hassa every weekend.)

You know you’re a Hasawia (female Hasawi) when…

a wedding invitation is the hottest ticket in town
Your hands are 5 shades darker than your face (due to generous applications of powder in an attempt to look “white/beautiful”).
You take off your burqa and on the inside is an exact print of your face made of powder and eye shadow.
an abaya from the shoulders is for “bad girls”
You think Vicks can cure everything from baldness to rheumatism, oh yes- it can help a cough too.
You think an a/c causes most illnesses
You think drinking cold water or eating ice cream causes most other illnesses.
There are at least 2 boxes of Kleenex in every room of your house.
your relatives in the village have a worse accent than you
If your fart smells different than usual you run to the hospital.
Your kids are awake all night jumping around like monkeys and go to sleep immediately after getting home from school at noon.
You know who your new neighbor is, what their dirty laundry is, and any and all gossip associated with them before they’ve even moved in.
You measure your cloth for the tailor in finger-lengths, hand-lengths, or arm lengths.
You expect 5 lanes of traffic to stop dead for you as you casually meander across the middle of the street in the souq, or any other street for that matter.

And finally, you know you’re a Hasawi if this post pissed you off.

A bit more about who I am and what I belive

2007-03-09T05:23:00.000+03:00

I wish I had more guilt-free spare time to blog and gather info from the world at large. Unfortunately I don't. I've discovered a few blogs created by people who have similar interests as me and have done all the hard work of skimming through tons of articles and forums for me. One of these blogs is Saudi Jeans (check out my favorites in the right column). I've enjoyed reading what he has to offer and admire his boldness (not to mention he's from Al-Hassa).

The other day when on Saudi Jeans blog, I left a comment on "The War of Hearts and Minds" . Seeing as how I have a busy life I wasn't able to go back to the computer for a few days, I was kinda surprised by the war of words found in the comment section. The discussion had gone from commenting about US propaganda in Iraq, to a all out war of words about who hates whom in the world and why.
I commented that if people were to watch Fox News on free view satellite instead of all the video channels which pollute our minds and morals, the US would lose its bid to win our hearts immediately.
Then, someone named Kafir made about my comment:
"If anyone has a question about the motives of Saudi stepford wife, the phrase "music videos designed to pollute our minds and morals" should clear things up. Fox news is also not the Muslim hating organization she paints, either"
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hmmmmmmmmmmm...MY MOTIVES??
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Let me clear some things up for all of you Mes Amis. I'll start with my background:
Grew up in America, American mother, father a political dissident, and I KNOW AMERICA, LUV politics and American media, and I hold a Saudi passport .

Is that it in a nutshell?

Oh yeah... and I'm not some extremist nutjob looking to make jihad all over the world.

Now, when I was growing up in the States (and by the way you'll notice me use that phrase a lot in my blog) I remember religious groups that ran the spectrum. There was one kid in 4th grade whose parents didn't let him stand for the Pledge of Allegiance every morning at the start of the school day because it contained the phrase "One nation under God", which I think isn't said anymore. His parents were atheists. I remember another girl who wasn't allowed to wear pants to school, only skirts and dresses, because her christian group didn't allow it. Another was taken out of school at 15 to be homeschooled because her parents were worried about the negative and immoral influences at school (whoa buddy were they ever right!). There was a group of kids who gathered around the flagpole every morning holding hands for prayer before school. This was in juxtaposition to burnouts across the street getting their last drags off their cigarettes before the bell rang. The first girl to get pregnant at school was 14, she was pregnant the second time and living with her boyfriend when we graduated.
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Where am I leading with this you may be asking? None of these people came from Muslim homes nor were extremists of any kind, but it's different when it comes out of christian mouths. If I were to say to you that I don't allow my children to watch music videos, you may assume it's because I have an extremist husband with a bushy beard standing over me holding a whip telling me not to.
WRONG.
Most of the reasons don't have to do with religion at all, even though I don't listen to music for religious reasons. Here are some of the reasons I don't want my children to watch music videos:

#1 mindless, inane, unproductive use of time and the grey matter that resides between our ears which was graciously bestowed upon us and separates us from the beasts (aka our brains).

#2promotes an unrealistic body/beauty image of women. Wouldn't all of us look great if we had a hairdresser and makeup artist touching us up after every take and if we were only viewed at the best angles through special fuzzy lenses which blurred our cellulite and fine wrinkles? I don't want my daughters to feel less than adequate because they don't look like demi-goddesses nor do I want my boys to grow up thinking this is what a woman should be.

#3 unrealistic view of sexuality- music video vixens pine away, writhe suggestively, wiggle and shake around one man, and are valued for their sex-appeal. They are eye-candy and all barely legal age (these are references to the background dancers in any music video). The female singers are allowed to be older and are usually jaded by a lover or flirting with a potential one. This isn't reality folks. I want my children to learn that they are supposed to be viewed at as sexy by their spouse, who should value them for who they are as a whole person, sexuality included in the complete package.

#4 distorts moral values- the other reasons I mentioned before are enough. Morality, Muslim or just decent family values ( there's not much distinction) is important. Is it enough that we should teach our kids not to steal or to be nice to others. How about, "don't sleep around", or "save yourself for marriage". I don't just mean girls, boys too. There's no double standards in my book. My husband was a Saudi virgin when I married him (and No, he wasn't just bullsh**ing me) and I want my sons to be also. Any gulf Arab man can get laid if he wants, if not by a domestic slut, there are prostitutes in Bahrain or the Emirates. The bottom line is, when deciding what is moral one must ask oneself, "would I want my son/daughter to act like this?" If the answer is no, you know it's probably wrong.

I could go on about this but it's time for me to pray Fajr (pre-dawn prayer for those readers who are not Muslims.) I'll elaborate more about my life through other posts. Next one on Monday God willing.

Saudi-ness

2007-03-06T09:00:00.000+03:00

In light of recent news items involving 'tribe pride', I found a few verses from the Quaran which describe certain characteristics of the tribes living around Medina during the time of the Prophet. The following verses I found particularly ironic. Certain descendants of tribes that were causing problems during the time of the Prophet (PBUH), are causing problems today due to the character flaws described for us:
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The Arabs of the desert are the worst in Unbelief and hypocrisy, and most fitted to be in ignorance of the command which Allah hath sent down to His Messenger... Certain of the desert Arabs round about you are hypocrites, as well as (desert Arabs) among the Medina folk: they are obstinate in hypocrisy...(Sura Al-Tawba vs. 97-101)

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Apparently some things never change. Even after centuries of Islamic teachings and brotherhood still, some of them hold fast to their flawed belief systems.
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"They (the non-tribal) want to enter the Saudi community and infest unto it because no one will marry their daughters and sons because they are immoral and with no origin".

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Thanks to Ash for this quote from some a**hole in Jeddah. (Even if the source of the original quote is dubious, doesn't matter- I've heard almost the same exact words with MY ears).

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Well, I hate to inform our tribal brothers but we all have roots:

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O mankind! We created you from a single (pair) of a male and a female, and made you into nations and tribes, that ye may know each other (not that ye may despise each other). Verily the most honoured of you in the sight of Allah is (he who is) the most righteous of you… (The Quran, Sura Al-Hijurat v. 13)
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I included this verse from the Quaran to illustrate what should be happening in a Muslim nation. Muslims, living in peace and brotherhood with each other. Instead, Muslims are divided amongst several countries bickering and quarrelling about borders, politics, and origins. Even within its borders, Saudis are denying each other their "Saudi-ness". How so? Let me elaborate with some dialogue which occurred between a husband and wife:
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Wife: (Upon seeing a cute little girl with brown hair and green eyes) Oh, mashallah, isn't she cute? I wonder why she's so white.
Husband: Well, that's because they're not reeeeeeeeeeeeealy Saudi.
Wife: What do you mean?
Husband: If I remember, the dad's last name is of Turkish decent. I'd be that white if I were Turkish too.

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Living in Al-Hassa, some of the old Turkish forts like Ibrahim's Castle (shown in my pics) are a constant reminder that this used to be a Turkish controlled area. How long ago was this? Try hundreds and hundreds of years. Despite these people living here for all that time, there are those who would not consider them really Saudi.

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This begs to ask the question: who is Saudi then?
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"Saudi" when used to describe a person, is a misnomer. Reason being unless your last name is Al-Saud and you're a member of the royal family...you're not reeeeeeeeeeeally a Saudi.
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OK then, I've heard people put a different spin on this, they say," I'm not Saudi, I'm Arab". Well, applying that criteria would exclude several million people living for hundreds of years in what is now Saudi Arabia. Hajj has brought steady immigration from countries all over the world since the advent of the pilgrimage. Many of whom decided to settle and have been living there ever since. One only need to look at the population of the Hijaz to see a rainbow of ethnicity's. You have the Levantine Arabs, Gulf Arabs, North Africans, Sub-Saharan Africans, Indian/Pakistanis, Indonesians, Malay, Chinese, Eastern Europeans, etc... You catch my drift. I would venture to say that perhaps the majority of people living in the Hijaz are not of only Arabic decent, but have other ethnicity's added somewhere back in there family trees.
Well, that's the Hijaz, some would say. It's was a part of a different country before WWI. What about Al-Hassa? We've already established that Turkish have been here for centuries. How about former slaves? There are large groups of people from African descent. What about as a result of trade? There are also many people who had married Indian/Egyptian/Syrian/Moroccan brides. We're close to Iran and there's a lot of people from Persian descent.
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Then it all boils down to tribes again. If you can trace your roots back to a Saudi Arabian tribe, then are you really a Saudi? If that were the case, Osama bin Laden wouldn't reeeeeeeeeeally be a Saudi. His dad's of Yemeni descent and his mom is Syrian. Woo Hoo! Maybe we should put a positive spin on his "Un-Saudi-ness" so we won't be chastised any more for his misdeeds (LOL).
Speaking of Yemenis, all Gulf Arabs are supposedly descended from Yemen anyway. So what does this mean...NONE of us belong here nor have a right to claim distinction above anyone else. Get over yourselves.

I think I can, I think I can...

2007-02-28T23:18:00.000+03:00

OK, I've spent enough time trying to make everything nice and pretty for my guests. I want to get down to the nitty gritty. I'm going to try and post at least once a week, I think on Mondays. I chose Mondays because on Sundays, my friends and I have a little get together at my house. We sit and gripe about what's buggin us which provides more fodder for the blog-flame.
Keep your eyes peeled. The first post will be about "Saudi-ness"; what makes a Saudi, a Saudi. Who is considered a Saudi, and who is not, by whom, and for what reasons. Also, I've added a few pictures, one of myself (covered of course, silly!). Check out my pics by clicking the hand pic on the right side as well as the rest of my tentative titles listed at the bottom.
For those of you who have been blogging for awhile this will sound kinda cheesy: I was so happy when I saw people were viewing my blog I got a bit teary eyed with pride. I was surprised it happened so quickly, people were reading and commenting on me already, after a few days! I still haven't listed myself on a feed yet, still researching which one I want to use. Can't wait to see what happens then. I'm already getting to know some of you and that fills a void that I've had due to a lack of stimulating conversation. This tends to happen with housewives all over the world so sisters, UNITE. Let me know you're there and comment your hearts out. Thanks for the support.

stay tuned

2007-02-27T07:37:00.000+03:00

I have so, so many ideas. I've been jotting down thoughts on over two dozen topics to discuss. The catch...three kids and trying to finish my Master's thesis before May. Until I eliminate one of these hindrances to blogging I'll be faced with a guilt complex every time I log on (to clarify, I don't mean eliminating my kids-duh!). I want to make a grand debut so until I get my life settled, I'll only be making guest appearances on other blogs comments while seeing how bloggers do things.
I've told some of my friends and my husband about my blog and have sent my address to them. My friends have been eager to contribute ideas and have already started sending me texts and IM's with different thoughts that have hit them during the day. Although I'm claiming this blog as my own, my friends and their lives will also provide inspiration and insights. In a way, I expect this blog to be like any typical bitching session I have with my friends when we get together. I'll try to give credit where credit is due. For the most part, I will try to remain as anonymous as possible so in case I get too vocal on touchy subjects, it won't impact my life negatively (I can only speculate as to how). Only a few trustworthy people will know my real identity.
Meanwhile, please be patient and when I do make a post, please understand if I have not made an instant rebuttal to comments. Not only do I have 3 kids under age 10 (the youngest only a few months old) and my studies but also, a job search and a social life involving contact with flesh and blood people rather than a keyboard to maintain. Somehow, through all this, I hope to develop my cathartic little brainchild. In the interim, stay tuned....