society IS changing!
Went yesterday to the Kazim il Sahir and Nancy Ajram concert… was amazing… I loved the intensity of the audience when Kazim started with a song called Baghdad… we all stood up, we all felt the adrenaline rush of the moment… just being part of a united group with all these strong feelings was really great.
Anyhow, the family that was sitting in front of me was interesting, 4 ladies and one young man… I sat there making assumptions on who they were to this guy… one was the fiancée, one is the mother and one is the aunt and the last one would be the older unmarried sister… she was the object of my attention… she was in her late thirties, early forties, a typical 40 – year old Arab spinster! ( I say typical 40 year old Arab spinster, because today this is something that is seen only in third world countries… I mean 40 year old unmarried ladies in Europe or the states… that I have met and not all of course look as gorgeous as our 28 year olds… they are fun, they are happy, they dress impeccably and they have a life…) I hate this word spinster by the way…it is so degrading… but this was the first word I thought of to describe this lady … she was restless, hugging the ladies on each side one minute, kissing the brother the next minute, asking them to move in and out of the small and tight aisle every 3 minutes so she could pose, or take their pictures, all the fussing around the fiancée… the way she was dressed, the acting cute all the time… it was… how shall I put it?! mish 3arfeh shou ti3mal fi 7alha! does not know what to do with herself!… and the only feelings I felt were I am sorry.
Unmarried older women in our society reach this desperate situation, as a result of the socio-economical factors that conspired together to generate these FABULOUS results. Many women were not allowed to work, or travel abroad to study or work, or live alone and in some extreme cases not even study… so women were unable to generate money ( which is equal to power) and so they are a burden on the family… who tried hard to marry them off comfortably… and since there is a big demand for good men… and as the simple rule of supply and demand dictates, it was the men who imposed the rules, and families were the IRON hand to make sure that these rules were carried out to the letter…
However this has changed in our days, despite of everything, almost all women are university graduates, and since everything is becoming expensive, women HAVE to work if they want to have a decent life, even if married or specially if married (many ladies in the scattered villages of Jordan told me that the day they land a good job, suitors start knocking on their doors)… I mean look around you… I started seeing girls studying abroad alone; I even started hearing of women who are working alone in Dubai for example… I also started hearing of families where the wife makes more money. And for the first time since I started attending the wedding seasons in Amman, I hear of divorced women as brides and many, many civilized divorces… compared to the disgraceful war zones we used to hear about before… ….
I think society has made HUGE leaps in the last 10 years… I can’t say they are for the best, but they are happening… and of course the change is faster than the mentality but no one can do anything to stop the change, so people will end up accepting… Shaden U-topia wrote about this issue recently….
What a small world ,yesterdays concert the 4ladies and young man ,the one taking pictures is my sister and my nephew ,imagine being with you in the same place !!!!
Madas ,you seem to have your glass full of good wishes good for you, I am not sure if anthropology falls under an MBA program , I think it is a straight full MA, with archeology as a prerequisite. I stand to be corrected, you have a good MA/PHD anthropology, program next door at university of Akron, Akron, Ohio, the good ones are east, Brown RI, or Harvard Mass. Are you in Michigan by choice because it is your home? Michigan state university has a good for humanities dept. very good luck on your perusal
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Madas ,just kidding it was not my sister ,and i don't even know where the concert was ,I am a practical joker but not from a distance .I am like you when I am in a restaurant or airport waiting I play this game of making mental notes and assign a role to each one
about anthropology/archaeology the MA/PHD involves a full semester of field excavation ,reason I know ,last summer we hosted a Phd, stuident on a field assignment .
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Most middle-aged women who are single feel miserable. This all has to do with the way we've been raised. As soon as the girl starts growing up she will be injected with the thought that her life is meaningless without a husband and nothing else would subtitiute for him. She starts college years with the aim of finding eben el 7alaal and then comes getting good education. She will be regarded as “incomplete” if she doesn't get married; however she would be regarded by people as happy and complete even if can't read or write and her husband is a womenizer and her kids are nawar just because she is married.
More and more Jordanian men are in support of women working. Unfortuantely the main reason is financial, and they still carry the belief that if it wasn't for the indespensible need of the money, a woman should stay home and raise her kids. It was so sad to see many of the female medical students who topped my class in meidcal school, getting married just after graduation and staying home given the fact they could have been outstanding pyhsicians who could come up with breakthrough discoveries. I still believe there's nothing more beautiful for a woman to raise her kids and i repsect any who leaves her job to do that, but that should be her choice, not something she is subject to because of her socitety's laws.
Hareega
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I've been meaning to comment on your blog for a while, but you keep posting these deep and thoughtful subjects that a guy has to be in the right mood to be able to post an equally deep and thoughtful comment. I just haven't been in that mood for quite sometime, so, for now, I'll just say that I enjoy reading your blog a lot, and I'll save my depth and thoughtfulness for a future comment, itha Allah rad.
- Ziad
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I truely hope you're right about the society changing. I know I sound pessimistic amd passive but I don't see any considerable change. Those who made it are probably coming from families in which parents are understanding, I'm yet to see an example of a woman who made it on her own despite of all the pressures and disapproval of the parents.
Any change in behavior that doesn't accompany a change in mentality is useless to say the least, some can be very harmful. What we need is to change minds in order to accomplish our objective, otherwise changes in behaviors are nothing but a destruction to our morals and values as Arabs. We need to change our culturally manipulated beliefs and at the same time stick to our religionally-formed beliefs.
Thanks for the great post Madas.
SC
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Yeah, i know. but we need to look at the positive side, we need to be the pioneers who push other women to change their environment… One of my friends used to say… create your own reality… once we start believeing in this… things will change for everyone
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Well… Thank you very much, looking forward to reading your comments.
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The change is there, whether we see it or not yet… it might be slow, but it is there… i agree about this happeneing first to certain families, but these same families are accepting more, and the other families are accepting more as well… and it is not because they want to but because they have to…we dont live in isolation, sometimes things happen and we dont have control over them… forced by economy, environemnt, politics… etc….
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Your observation about the 40-something lady is true and i have certainly noticed it more than a few times. The behavior may have been sub-consciously exacerbated by the fact that the lady, as a “spinster” in an Arab community, is desperate for attention. I am not saying all unmarried woman in Arab societies are desperate for attention, but I am certain that many of the ones that have nothing to show for (intellect, education, job, achievement,..etc.) are. The same behavior is also noticeable from older ladies married who think they are “free-spirited”. I believe that such ladies are influenced by what they see from the younger generation and somehow they refuse to acknowledge their maturity. Just like the older grandpa who drives a red convertible Porsche, this behavior is a sign of the female mid-life crisis.
I think people should “yesta7i 3ala sheibit-hom”.
-jameed, whose wife thinks is going to hit mid-life crisis so bad he may actually become another case of “American Beauty”
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jameed, you always manage to make me smile… actually what you said is true married or unmarried, free spirited or not, women or men who are starving for attention do this because they have nothing to give (intellectual, education, job,achievement…etc)….they are poor internally… mashallah 3aliek lama7! which means bright! have a nice day…
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you got me there for a split of a second…but i knew it was a joke… in all cases I realised how menacing cyber space can be, and for this i will say thankful
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apology for the spur-of-the-moment nitwit,agree with you , cyber can be nuisance like in my case of unintended disruption .point taken and lesson gained on how to measure my limits.I sincerely mean it.take care.
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it was just a thought that crossed my mind…and thought i should share… by the way… I hear Dr. Shahrour is an amazing writer, who does not go by the main stream islamic ideaology…. is he really?
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