Tag: middle east

My Writing Process Blog Tour: The Mohadoha Stop

 

2013-12-12 Reflections on writing process
2013-12-12 Reflections on writing process (Photo credit: sachac)

Thanks to Kate Lord Browne for asking me to participate in this blog hop. KLB is the author of ‘The Beauty Chorus’ and ‘The Perfume Garden’, which was shortlisted for Romantic Novel of the Year. She also writes the Ahlan! magazine Book Club column, the first of its kind in the Middle East, and lives in the only true desert country in the world with her family. 

Courtesy of this blog hop, you’ll get a window into world of writing via me and three other writers as we answer the same 4 questions.

1) What am I working on?

My mind, or shall I say computer, is a bit of a muddle right now because I’ve got 2 books that need heavy revisions and not enough hours in the day. One is a novel that’s set in the Arabian Gulf and explores the relationships between maids and their employers called The Dohmestics. This is my second title due out in paperback this summer. The other is a novel set in Laos in 1975, about war in Southeast Asia and immigrating to America, The Opposite of Hate. This is my next eBook. Looming deadlines are good motivators to get going as is controversy; the sequel for my banned novel, as yet unnamed, is lingering at 15000 words. Needless to say, it will be a busy summer of writing.
2) How does my work differ from others of its genre?

My work is a blend of history, culture, and place. The books stand out because they explore places that many readers may not know about: Laos or Qatar – examining spaces within these countries that wouldn’t be accessible to outsiders.
3) Why do I write what I do?

I write to take the reader places s/he couldn’t go on their own.
4) How does my writing process work?

Dear oh dear it’s not streamlined. I am usually writing a draft of one project, revising another one, and marketing all the published ones (8 to date). Generally I’m working triage, on whatever title is getting a facelift or scheduled for next for publication or promotion.

I’m tagging Scott Bury and Rob Chazz Chute as the writers next in line for the blog hop. Head over to their sites to see how and why they tell their stories.

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You in the Web of Human Trafficking

Cleaning Supplies for Spring Cleaning
 (Photo credit: Chiot’s Run)

A friend, who is also Kuwaiti, came into my office, eyes wide, full of regret. She had been employing an undocumented cleaner. Someone she describes as one of many who “fall through the cracks of the outdated, extortionate, unjust Kafala (or sponsorship,  work permit system used in this region including my Kuwait) ) system.” She grew up in a household with house help; she was not not unware of how it works. Yet when her cleaner did not show up several days in a row to work, my friend tried to do some investigating. Through a network of people connected to her cleaner, she was able to piece together a chain of events, locate the prison where she was being held, and eventually, secure her release.

Here she describes her experience with the quagmire of having a part time worker in and out of her home.

“My cleaner came to this Qatar under the Kafala of a cleaning company. She paid them a huge fee to come to Qatar to earn a living. When she arrived, she went through all the procedures to complete her sponsorship papers, finger prints, blood tests, photographs etc. she was given a photocopy of an official looking large stamp in her passport and told this said she was legitimately a resident. She was then told to find her own work, but to check in every two years to pay another large sum of money to update and renew her sponsorship, which she did. Little did she know they’d taken her money, and reported her as a ‘runaway’ and never completed her sponsorship papers.

When her flat was raided by the police, she naively showed the police the photocopy of the visa in her passport that she was given by the company. The one that said she had legal sponsorship. She was still taken to prison. They took away her phone. She had no access to the number of the company, her purported sponsors. She asked the police to call her sponsors. They repeated her only concern should be that she’s being deported.

In the meantime, on the outside, I was trying to do everything I could to secure her stay in the country. I called her ‘sponsors’ office to see if they’d agree to transfer the sponsorship to me. They denied ever knowing her.”

Her experience is one that speaks to the volumes of people who are caught by the middle men; the brokers who promise sponsorship and vanish. As she observes: “In a transient place where employers and employees have a high turnover such as here….there so much quick money to be made from it. I see prisons full of cleaning ladies.”

My friend didn’t want me to write about this until she had guaranteed her cleaner safe passage home. Her impassioned arguments are not only to policy makers but to GCC citizens: “If we are ever to progress we need to review our work permit laws. If we can ever get away with saying the Kafala system is not slavery, we need to do away with labelling people as ‘Runaways’. The amount of money changing hands for the labour force is mind boggling and we don’t dare call it human trade? ”

When I was researching for my novel, The Dohmestics, scheduled for release in paperback this June, I heard all sides of the employer/employee conundrum. Those of housemaids who appreciated their employers and were saving up to send two, three, four, or five children to university. Those of maids who were given a bed sheet to sleep on the kitchen floor instead of their own room. Those of maids who were deported after coming home intoxicated. Or pregnant. On and on. What remains clear is that while everyone might discuss the migrant workers, the men in blue jumpsuits building the stadiums for the 2022 World Cup, the housemaid or her day laborer equivalent, the cleaner, is ephemeral and perhaps even more vulnerable because she is in the most private space in the Arab world: the home.

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Barred from Jazz to Burning in Hell: Women, Qatar and Abayas

InstagramHajjaj.111If you alienate the middle, where the moderates are, all you’ll have left is the extreme. We’ve seen this happening in American politics as the Republicans and Democrats hurl insults at each other like parents at a toddler football game. And it’s happening in contemporary society in Qatar in the way people view or sanction behavior.

Take for example the decision banning of my paperback Love Comes Later in March. People in Doha, D.C. and everywhere in between, keep asking me why. Why was it banned? There are a few speculations based on the feedback my distributor gave me: “Because it’s about Qatar and Qataris.” A novel in English, about Qatar, written by an expat. A book that was researched for 3 years, in which the author attempts to represent Qatari life, as accurately as possible for an outsider, without the objectionable sex, politics or atheism, is still unpalatable.

Love Comes Later pops up among a list of titles that include Teaching Abdulla the Terrorist and If the Sun Doesn’t Kill You, the Washing Machine Will. Or more recently The Best Ever Book of Qatari Jokes: Specially Re-purposed for You Know Who. The description reads: “if you don’t burst out laughing from at least one Qatari joke in this book, there’s something wrong with you. This book has so many Qatari jokes; you won’t know where to start. For example: Why do Qataris wear slip-on shoes? You need an IQ of at least 4 to tie a shoelace.”

Take for another, the story of my friend Fatma. She is a dutiful Qatari daughter; she choose a mainstream major as a university student which is when I first met her. She wrote an essay for the Qatar Narratives anthology which was included in the book that became Qatari Voices. Fatma is not a rebel: “Many girls my age feel that they were born at the wrong time and in the wrong place—a place sealed with traditions and at a time that lies in between. But I could not be happier. I have traditions that keep me secure, definite, and relieved at a time that is full of risky choices.”

Fatma is proud of being Qatari. She wears her hijab “properly” (you can’t see any of her hair, her veil comes to her forehead). She’s so thin, Kate Moss would likely cut Fatma to avoid any chance of competition. But you’d never know because her abayas are not shaped to her body but hang loosely. She also loves jazz.

We exchanged a few messages about going out to Jazz at Lincoln Center Doha, the club at the St. Regis hotel in Qatar.

They don’t let Qatari women in I messaged.

I’ve taken off my abaya and they do she replied.

You did? I asked sounding like a shocked grandmother. Taking off your abaya is something Qatari women do when they want to go incognito. Ironically it’s a way of hiding in plain sight: Qataris scan crowds for other Qataris, skipping over expats. I’ve known other friends who have done this to go out with people their families would disapprove of. In Fatma’s case, she wasn’t hiding from family in public, she was doing the necessary, as mandated by law, in order to do something else she loved: listen to live jazz music with female friends.

The week was long, and the nights short with the baby, so I lost track of the conversation and went to bed early. The next day she told me what happened. And her intention to write about it. “I, a Qatari woman, was banned from an event that celebrated the women of jazz.  The obvious irony aside, I also was embarrassed when the guest relation’s manager politely, but firmly denied my entrance.  What really embarrassed me though was the thought that as a citizen of Qatar, I was banned from enjoying this unique art form…in Qatar!”

The first few days, people rallied to her cause. Other women agreed the rule that no Qatari women are allowed in the club – Qatari men not in national dress are – was unfair and silly. Men supported her for speaking out. All of this conversation was in English, on Facebook, or the original blog that posted her piece, JustHere.qa.

Not everyone appreciated the irony that jazz appreciation, like so many other specialized new activities in Qatar, cannot be enjoyed by half the citizens in the country. As Fatma says: “Nonetheless, I tolerated that no ‘national dress’ rule, donned a colorful hijab, modest shirt and skirt and went for one purpose: to enjoy jazz as it’s meant to be heard – live. Now, it would seem that ‘national dress’ is no longer an issue. Women are the issue. Qatari women.”

Others joined the conversation in full force, her critics posting under nicknames.

Commentators on an Arabic site asked how dare a Qatari woman go to a club that serves alcohol and take off her abaya.

She was called “an infidel, atheist, slut, will never get married, should burn in hell, ignorant, outcast who belongs to here on papers only, a shame to her tribe.” She was told she “should leave.” One commentator deduced “this is what studying abroad does to women.”

Fatma completed her degree at the national university that has separate campuses for male and female students.

There are multiple layers of conversation here; about what is acceptable behavior for women, either in written or physical form, whether expat or Qatar.  On both levels we see a society that has many ambivalent attitudes towards women’s place in the  public sphere.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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