April 17, 2006
Do Arab women sleep around?
I mentioned a girl- friend yesterday to a guy friend and he asked me how she is doing… I said that I have not seen her in a while but last I heard she met someone. My guy friend asked me very calmly with what I describe as male innocence, if she is sleeping with this someone! I won’t use the words he used to formulate the question, because the question was crude. But I should add that his question did not shock me the least… by now I am used to the one track manner in which some men’s minds work. That does not mean his question was met with approval, I gave him a vicious look and said “I don’t know, I don’t think so, Arab women don’t sleep around!” and as naïve as it sounds, I felt I have to take it upon myself to defend the honour of all Arab women from this viciousness that was not vicious at all in this case, but was actually naïve and gullible! But what is really shocking is my reaction to his question… I realized even I fall in the of hypocrisy of holding women to higher standards in our society.
I remember few years ago, I was attending a wedding in Boston. I was standing with few people, when this gorgeous lady was introduced to us. The moment she left, one of the guys who were standing commented that she was an ice queen, another guy answered that she has to be an ice queen, she has to have an iron shield to protect herself from all the scum she meets… which was a wonderfully perceptive and sensitive remark considering it was coming from a guy.
Arab women have to have iron shields to survive; they walk on thin ice every second of their lives…. Just walking in shmeisani, or Sweifieh or Duwar Abdoun or anywhere really makes me feel completely conscious of what I am wearing and the way I walk, some of the comments are just too much to handle! A girl gives part of herself to a man out of love mind you and she is a whore in his dictionary the day after, I picked this sentence from a book years ago, I am not sure by whom though, it could be Haidar Haidar walima li A3shab il ba7r, or Ahlam Mustaghanemi zakiratu il jasad. This man however, would still consider himself, maybe not a saint, but definitely not a whore! Yes there are men who are whores, although probably they are called something else! And he would still look at himself in the mirror feeling completely at peace with himself. This man’s judgment comes from a society that has several different standards to judge, one for him and one for her… simply because one standard does not work and will never work…
I am not talking about sexuality alone… I am talking about everything, about relationships in the family, about relationships in the neighbourhood, about ethics at work? In the street?
One thing that always shocks me is talking to Arabs outside the Arab world, People who live by the rules of God… praying whenever it is time to pray, preaching when it is suitable and when it is not….yet the only other topic they talk about is how to beat the system, how to create ways to use the loop holes in the system… The holes that could not be covered and are left for people’s sense of ethics… especially when it comes to financial issues….. Ok I am talking very high level here, let me give a very simple example… one of my acquaintances uses the free refill system in movie theatres, he buys the popcorn bag once and then keeps the bag. Whenever he comes back to the theatre he brings that very same bag and refills it J funny no? Well this is only one example…. Another one is getting in public transportation for free, and running away from taxes, and living on the welfare programs…. And so many other examples… the problem is not in doing these things, the problem is in feeling that it is ok to do them…
To answer the original question, do Arab women sleep around? From an Arab woman’s perspective, between the answers of some of my single friends who don’t have boyfriends at all because it 7aram and it is shameful, and those who save themselves to the moment prince charming will show up on his white horse, and the others who leave their boyfriends because they ‘started playing with hands’ and those who carry their boyfriends’ pictures around and ask everyone to say good night, this actually happened in one of my youth projects, a young girl was carrying the picture and asking everyone to say good night to the picture and the teddy bear, who are her husband and her son! To the other extreme, all those stories you hear about girls going through virginity restoration operations just before their wedding nights…
And my married friends on the other hand, who are so dedicated to their husbands and their homes, they don’t even have time to think about anything outside the kids and the meals and the house and what is left of the career, and those who have forgotten how to chat with people outside their social circles, and yet another group a bit older though, who complain that their husbands are no longer interested in them, because according to them “il la7em bikhawi” yes I did found this expression to be very vulgar it is translated into the flesh creates a siblinghood, after a while they become like brothers and sisters! And all these ladies scattered around the streets of Amman and the Arab world, and in cheap hotels, either because they have no other choice, or because they are driven to it, or maybe because it is their way of resistance…. I feel that sometimes it is better to leave things unsaid, so I choose not to say anything at all.By the way, I just love being an anthropologist, it opened a door for me to be able to discover and talk about worlds that were completely closed to me before, I started believing in the Islamic saying “la 7aia2a fi il deen” which means there is no room for shyness in religion only I started thinking that there is no room for shyness in science and humanity as well.
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