Tag: culture

When it's time to talk to politics

There are rules for polite society – don’t talk about religion, politics, or sex – that lately I have been violating. The primary one being that you don’t talk politics during parties, social gatherings, Monday night football, or lunch at Korean bar-b-que

restaurants.

Yet during our current trip to the US, my husband and I seem to be the only people in our age group not frightened by the supposed eminent threats of higher taxes, more welfare, and the United States being

annihilated by unknown threats.

The fact is, we are both independents, in the much talked about ‘free votes’ group that both parties are scrambling for.  But we are not undecided in this election, 47 days before the big day.

The facts are simple, and yet shockingly missing from the knowledge of the average person in our age group:

America’s number one issue is not ‘security’; a vice presidential candidate who can’t address the doctrine of her own party’s sitting president may not be the ideal number two seat in the country; the great white leader can not continue as a paradigm for a country filled with millions of minorities.

There are a million other issues to chose from to have the headline: the economy, our reputation in the world, cuts in education, millions without health care etc. etc.

Please – get informed on the issues! And vote. This will be the closest election ever (including the much famed disputed one of recent years) and I am very afraid for the future of my adopted country.

 

 

 

I love visitors

not just because living in the desert can make you appreciate human companionship more than nearly anything, but because visitors to the place you live can give you fresh eyes. This always happens in Doha when I host groups from North America, as I did recently for a three week summer program. There’s so much to say, so it’s likely this will be the subject of several entries.

For now I will focus on the one thing that many people don’t understand about life in the Middle East – gender relations.

The group I hosted was co-ed, or ‘mixed’ as we say here. This mixed group was the first mixed class held at the university where I work that has adjacent but separate male and female campuses. The ironies of this exception (because it was summer) were numerous.

What was most confusing for the North Americans – but not for the subcontientials also in their group – were the apparent contradictions in the Doha based group’s behavior. The female and male students would talk to the female and male student visitors, but never to each other. The local female and male students would sit next to, work with, and laugh in conversation with the visitors of both genders. But they remained invisible to each other, even when traveling as a small group of six back from a weekend trip outside the country.

Years of disciplined socializing ensured that these boundaries were never crossed.

Typically when confronted with something different, the visitors wanted to change this, insist that it didn’t exist, or read their own motivations into this clear delineation of gendered behavior.

As the hinge person between these two groups, I was often caught in the middle. What surprised me is my lack of desire to ‘change’ or ‘make right’ the situation. Perhaps because this is the start of my fourth year living in the Arabian Gulf. Or perhaps I truly am beginning to have more respect for the host country and culture. In either case, I found it natural.

But I am glad the program is over and I can go back to working predominately with the female students (who outnumber the male students in significant numbers). Now I don’t have to worry about who is sitting next to whom or who doesn’t want her photo taken or who is trying to shake the hand of a person who doesn’t shake with people of the opposite sex.

In short, I’m excited about getting back to work.

National dressing requires discipline

Between the Bollywood themed birthday party last weekend and the young American men wearing thobes in Qatar,  I have learned a healthy amount of respect for cultures where people wear a national dress (notice I did not use the word costume). Costumes you play in. National dress marks you as a member of a certain society, with all the rights and obligations therein.

Both the slippery saris at our house and the wrinkled thobes in the classroom are examples of how complicated it is to wear something that one is not used to – and yet you don’t notice this until you try it on. The discipline comes from starting at an early age: most saris, thobes, and abayas are worn from teenage years onward. That’s when you learn how to keep your shyla (head scarf) from slipping off the crown of your head. That’s when you begin wraping the edge of your sari pallu (the part over your shoulder) around your waist to anchor it. 

There are moments when we must shock those whose national dress we are wearing: for example when I looked across the room and saw a that a friend’s sari had slipped, revealing the entire right side of her blouse, something akin to exposing yourself in your bra in public.

Or when a non-Qatari male wears a thobe right out of the Carrefour package, folds and all, in contrast to all the perfectly starched and ironed men coming into a resturant.

But mostly there is just enjoyment and appreciation that someone is trying to understand your culture and now appreciates a small portion of what makes you unique. After all, now you know we make it look easy, because at one point it was hard for us too.

Ever worn something that wasn’t the usual for you? Did you get positive or negative reactions? Would you do it again?