Maher’s Parallel lives
I ran into Maher this weekend… Maher is an assumed name . He is one of my most liberal acquaintences…and I really really mean liberal. But…and there is a big but here he comes from a very conservative family. Mind you it a prominent one. And since I have not seen Maher in a while. We had a lot of catching up to do, Therefore, he decided to brief me about his latest … hmm… how shall we call it … a challenge maybe? It is simple really … His parents would have been thrown into an awful flutter had his in laws brought up the request of alcohol in the wedding… he said that alcohol would have been more offensive to his parents than suggesting that everyone should come nude to the wedding! The in laws still don’t know that the issue is not alcohol at all… the issue is a tinnnnny bit more complex… well ….his family won’t attend his wedding at all...if it is mixed… They gave up on mixed weddings, since they went to the haj a few years ago.
Story does not stop there… his fiancée’s family will go MAD once they hear… and he is worried they won’t attend the wedding if it was not mixed! They have only one daughter and since they themselves never had a wedding, this will be the wedding of their dreams! I understood that Maher lives two complete separate lives… he is this modern, liberal non-religious person when with his in laws…. he drinks, plays cards, dances…. but he is conservative… does not drink …fasts Ramadan… does not allow Fiancée to wear anything revealing when with his parents…. … apparently this extends to the whole family… his brothers, sisters and cousins are all like that…. they are very open and liberal when they are on their own… or with their girlfriends/boyfriends, wives, friends, work colleagues… ….yet they are all super conservative in family events. They all collectively conform to every single family rule… As a matter of fact… if you are looking for them they can be found drinking in Trader Vic’s Thursday nights and in Al Kalouti Mosque praying every Friday noon!
I was really amused talking to M. Not because of all these stories that I am very used to, I mean we are all hypocrites one way or another………but what amazed me is that I realized how compartmentalized Maher’s life is…. this guy leads two parallel lives that have nothing to do with each other… actually we can safely say he is two people!My Flat mate in London asked me once a hypothetical question…. how our lives in the Middle East would have been if they were not compartmentalized?? How would they have been if we suddenly became open without judging each other? If everyone did what they wanted without feeling the need to hide or be something else in order to be accepted?….. He asked me to imagine the effort we go through to remember the different stories we tell… the different personalities we create to deal with different people from different compartments….different lies… different standards… different values… different variations….different alternatives… different emotions involved….Then he asked me to consider how that effects our mental health…
He then asked me to imagine how life would be without all that!
Ufft… I was Dazzled!!
ted two weddings… one for his family and one for hers… I also told him that I shall be charmed, to accept a wedding invitation…given to the mixed one… I just think that people at least women behave in a much more civilized manner in mixed weddings, they sort of take their comfort a bit too far when the wedding is not mixed! Note 2: Abna’a il qal3a is a great book.. it is a pleasure to see how amazing Mr. Qassem’s Arabic is… Arabic is a slave that does what he wants…He was really really good….I am loving the book… Allah Yir7amoh.
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LOL… You pretty much summed up many peoples’ lives. Torn between the old and he new, between the ego and the id, between hell and heaven, between control and desire…
Why do they need a wedding again? Khalas … no wedding, no problem..
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Maher and his fiance should elope, and save the wedding money for a very luxurious honeymoon:)
Abna2 Al Qal3a is a great book, I enjoyed reading it a couple of times..glad you’re liking it.
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glad you’re enjoying the book!
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You know, it’s ironic that you are posting this at the same time I am thinking about posting about it.
Your friend Maher seems to be a simplified version of me. I’ve made choices, decisions, that have disturbed my own family profoundly. In order for me not to lose my family, and all the privileges that they afford me (which are many in this part of the world), I decided to create an alter ego, another me who they do not know and do not like. It’s the only way to reconcile my current situation with what I aspire to be, and so badly want to live, and to save my sanity.
You have no idea.
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Actually I do
A lof of us are in very similar situations… I am sort of going through a phase that i call negotiationg my space… i knew i had to do this the moment i came back to Amman… and Toloy… it has been an interesting experience 
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Thanks to you
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yeah… a good idea… the problem is Fiancee’s mother did exactly that and spent her whole life tit7asar!!! she wants her daughter to have a wedding no matter what… Allah yustor!
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Yeah… i guess so.. we all live in a different variations of this scenario…
Agreed… weddings are over rated.
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I like what you said about the women behaving alot more discretly when they are present in a mixed wedding,it is so true.
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The question is… does that apply to men too? i have never been in a men’s wedding… although i really would have liked to.
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No, men are pretty much the same kind of assholes with or without women
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hada maher 2osto ossa, its too much of both extremes, and that wedding party problem is just the tip of the iceberg, many more family problems to come.
I consider living those double lives a society sickness,all resulting into ppl becoming self-hypocrites..and it leads to less and less trust spread in the society, personally its one of my main reasons I’m extra careful when dealing with somebody and almost never give out trust.
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I guess we all have our ways to deal with this problem…
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hmm… really?
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I guess that Jordanian society is far more complex than I have imagined! I have never lived any sort of double life. However, I hope that your friend Maher and his bride to be will find happiness regardless of how the wedding goes.
Mariam, I don’t understand what you mean by a “mixed” wedding. Can you please explain that?
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Hey… sure… it is sort of funny that it did not even occur to me to explain what that means!
a mixed wedding is a wedding where people from both sexes can attend! in a lot of cases religious people don’t like mixed events…Believe it or not, but sometimes we have segregated weddings 
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I never heard of a wedding where men and women did not attend together! Please go into more detail about this custom. Can the bride and groom be present together at the traditional non-mixed wedding?
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Hi David,
In Jordan and in the whole Arab world…sometimes weddings are segregated. Women have their own party and men have another party. It could be the same day or on a different day…. It could also be in the same location but a different room or in a totally separate location.
In these cases women remove their veils(if they were veieled), since there are no men… obviously the groom does not attend his wedding
however at some point of the evening he shows up, so that the women meet him…
When the groom comes, some messenger tells the women that the groom will come in. So they all wear their veils (if they are veiled)… the groom comes in with a few friends or brothers or sometimes alone… he sits with his bride on some sort of stage and people go to introduce themselves.
People who have these kind of weddings are either religous or very traditional ot live in Rural areas.
Women party would include dancing and Music… but if the party is segregated because the people are religious, men would just have a gathering.
In Bedioun societies, they ask a woman to come and dance, she would be veiled from head to toe and no one would know who she is… it can be very sexy actually
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Thanks for the further detail Mariam.
I think that wedding customs can say a lot about a society and its cultural roots. They are sort of a microcosm of a society’s traditions. I once attended a wedding in South Korea. The brother of my good friend was getting married. I attended as a guest of the family. There were actually two weddings in one. The first was a Western style wedding with the groom in suit an tie and the bride in a formal white gown. The second ceremony was a religious Buddhist wedding. The bride and groom changed into traditional formal silk attire and a Buddhist priest performed the wedding rituals. The first ceremony was attended by hundreds of guests. The second religious ceremony was attended by only close family. My friend’s family honored me by allowing me to attend both events.
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H.
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