Posts Tagged Arab World
The Sound of War
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on February 20, 2010
Each time I visit Lebanon I keep thinking to myself, “Will the war erupt and will they close down the airport while I’m there?” A friend of mine and I have had this secret wish for so long it’s become a common joke between us. Yes, wish. Not for a war, but for us to physically be there if a war does actually begin.
I’ve never been to a war zone. I have no idea what the sound of an F16 right above my head would be like, the closest I ever got to a fighter jet was when I was 9 with my class when we went to visit an army museum to see the jets that fought against Israel in 1973, but that was back when pride in “our soldiers” was something still being taught in Egyptian schools. Another time I was sitting in the living room when a very strong sound of a plane started approaching. At first I thought it was just a civilian plane, but the closer and louder the sound became the stronger the engine sounded. Interestingly, it would just not go away, it kept getting louder and louder until I officially panicked and froze. All I could think about was that Cairo was under an air strike. War broke out and I can’t move my feet to the TV to check the news since the building is about to crumble anyway. I later remembered that it was October 6, and the army was performing in commemoration of the 1973 crossing. When I finally did get the strength to look at the window I saw a part of the performance. The aircraft was in no way as near as it sounded. I had honestly thought I was taking my last breaths.
But listening to that sound and knowing for sure it’s an air strike is definitely worse, because there’s no room for doubt this time that it would surely take lives. I did listen to a detailed description from a Gazan friend a few years ago of what an F16 sounded like and it surely unsettled me. I saw the psychological effect of the sound and the accompanied fear on the reaction of another Palestinian friend to fireworks in Cairo right across the street. As I jumped in excitement and watched the “show” she closed her eyes and tried to block her ears. She simply could not take what was to her the sound of war.
I’ve never been a high intensity seeking kind of person. I’m usually very careful with myself and I weigh consequences. So much so that I once declined a horse riding trip after I had gotten on the horse simply because I discovered that I was wearing the wrong pants. I couldn’t stabilize myself properly, so I chickened out.
But when I’m actually in the situation, the “woman in charge” takes over. I recall traveling from one town to another during pilgrimage on foot, simply because I knew my feet would get me there faster than all the buses that seemed to be parked for hours along the highway. And I’m a person who doesn’t have a very good sense of direction.
If war erupts in Lebanon I don’t think I can sit by in the comfort of my living room in Cairo and watch it all like a spectacle on television, let alone listen to useless critical commentary from those who’ve never been smiled at by an orphaned child from the south, or who’ve never breathed the air at the southern tip of a mountain that overlooks historical Palestine. I’m known amongst my friends to be a freak when it comes to the whole Lebanon subject, but even the food in the south tastes like freedom. No one is subordinate there. Everyone controls their own will. Everyone is a master of their own land. That sense of ownership Robert Fisk once wrote was so missing from most Arab countries is so vivid in south Lebanon.
But as much as I claim to know how different the place is, I think I’m yet to acquire the ways of the people there in order to fully understand how they’ve learned to face death so fearlessly. I shudder at the very thought of losing the warm friends there who always make me laugh. Each time one of them talks to me I cherish every word and look them straight in the eye to take the moment all in. I always fear I may never be able to see them again. How blatantly “un-Shiite” of me to be such a coward about loss! And I’m a person who wouldn’t miss an opportunity to lecture about Karbala.
But I don’t think it’s that. I’m just a person who’s never been in a war, who’s never lost anyone for war, and that is my weakness, because as scary as the sound of war may be, it perfects a person’s ability to endure. It simply makes them stronger.
Mournful Ghosts or Uncovered Meat? The “Saudi Woman” Effect
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Thoughts & Vents on January 9, 2010
By Arwa Mahmoud
Additional reporting by Ahmad Al Amoudi – Jeddah
(First published in 2007 by IslamOnline.net)
“Stop! Stop it NOW!”
“I don’t know how to!!”
“Jump from it!!”
“I CAN’T!!”
The sound of a big splash combined with a loud engine overrode the girl’s screams as teenage Hoda, dressed in a T-shirt and swimming suit, drove into the Red Sea with her brother’s motorcycle in a public seashore in Jeddah.
Today, Hoda is 41 years old, married to an imam, and runs a self-development center specialized for women and children.
“Jeddah’s sea resorts have always attracted young men and women from different nationalities. Back in the late ’70s, it was never an uncommon thing to see a foreign woman on a boat in her swimming suit. Today, many girls continue to find their ways around these places,” said Hoda.
Saudi Arabia is a place that surely challenges a journalist’s professional ego. The common image of it being a desert with rich princes and women in black cloaks covering them from head to toe often tempts a writer to write about it with a great deal of sensationalism. Some of the Western literature on Saudi Arabia gives the immediate impression to an insider that the author has chosen the easy way: entering the country with a previously established idea, being guided throughout with selective perception, and eventually writing what sells.
BBC correspondent Rachel Reid’s recent reflection on Saudi, initially titled “The First Woman to Swim in Saudi,” and then changed to “Making a Public Splash in Saudi,” is reminiscent of such literature.
“Reading through Reid’s article, it was as if she wrote about Saudi some 50 or more years ago… women are depicted as subjects, recipients. Expressions such as ‘folded away’ and ‘ushered’ draw a dim picture of oppressed women beaten around like cattle,” commented Hoda. I listened to her as I looked back into the article, up to the third paragraph, where I reread her description of Gulf women in abaya as “mournful ghosts.”
As a half-Egyptian, half-Saudi woman, my life has always been divided between Egypt and Saudi Arabia. In Egypt, I drive and I wear whatever I want. In Saudi Arabia, I can’t drive and I have to wear an abaya on top of whatever I’m wearing. I switch between both modes naturally. I hardly give it a thought.
The black abaya that women wear in public places in Saudi has always been in my wardrobe. I put it on as I go to the airport to take my flight to Jeddah or Riyadh, always have it on as I walk in shopping malls or in the streets of Makkah and Madinah, and sometimes forget I have it on when I go visit a cousin and immediately start catching up with old conversations. Sometimes it gets in the way as I come out of a car, sometimes I trip over it when I come up or down the stairs, but I always attribute it to malpractice. As I try to hide my embarrassment, most of the women around me always seem to walk in it with grace and ease.
It never occurred to me once that I looked like a mournful ghost – no child ever screamed when they saw me.
You can never enforce a single uniform on people, let alone women. The Saudi abaya does appear to be a hassle to any foreign woman used to more overt expressions of her individuality. But many Saudi women still manage to find their ways around it. Walk in any fancy mall and you will be stunned by the variety of fabrics, designs, and decorated color appliques, not to mention the high heels, luxury bags, and full makeup that nearly always come with it. So even as the abaya is an enforced uniform on women, it never snatched away their personal taste or preference. Saudi women who do cover in plain black, head to toe, are culturally accustomed to it. In fact, some of them continue to wear it even outside the country.
The Private Public
Saudi women do not have to be escorted by men everywhere they go. Any visit to a “family” section in a restaurant shows it. Yes, they live segregated lives, but this has created a parallel public world with its own social codes and standards. It is also a world of ease and luxury that can easily get you into thinking that it is unsurpassed even by the Saudi man’s world.
There is very little that Saudi women cannot do in their own world. As a practicing Muslim wearing the hijab, I find my clothes nearly have no place in Saudi. I catch myself digging for jeans and dresses each time I have to travel there. Underneath the abayas, women there wear anything they please. It even gets competitive.
The busier women are always caught in their work, and in their leisure time they practice a wide variety of sports ranging from martial arts to horseback riding, the latter often taught by a male trainer.
“Saudi Arabia is loaded with a number of social and sports clubs that offer special services for women, and swimming is no exception,” commented Maida Zaazou, a Saudi poet and writer who takes swimming as a primary sport.
“My best friend goes swimming with her children every week in Al-Bilad Hotel. It has a certain number of hours for ladies. Most hotels here do,” added Hoda. “What the hotel provided for Reid was a private hour. This wasn’t so public. They just gave her another private public space, something normally offered in many other hotels.”
Reid created a catchy story from a single incident in one of the hotels, and she fit it perfectly at home with what many readers want to read about Saudi.
Saudi women’s roles are not necessarily confined to the “private public” sphere. An increasing number have joined the workforce, and many of them can be seen in less “scary” abayas, smiling, and joining male counterparts in meetings and discussions.
Currently, there is a large number of women members in the Jeddah Chamber of Commerce and Industry. “There are four women in the board of directors,” added Salih Al Turki, the chairman of the board.
Segregated life in Saudi is still not easy. Especially as a woman who does not live in the country, I sometimes find it frustrating to constantly be interrupted by figuring out where to sit, or having to rely on someone else to drive me to the place I’m going. Also, Saudi society has started to develop its own list of problems and complications that many Saudi youth are now trying to find solutions to. However, the problem is far from being the old cliché of a suppressed, covered woman always in the shadow of a ruthless, selfish man. A closer look at the society exposes a whole new set of issues that are by far more real and more pressing.
The Controversial Vote
With the image of the covered Saudi woman and her imaginary male escort still fresh in Reid’s mind, she concluded her piece with a reflection on women’s rights in Saudi Arabia, with special attention to voting. She commented that if women were allowed to vote in the 2009 elections, it would be a “revolution.”
“What revolution? We have an existing problem with the voting system itself! Even men suffer from inequality in this regard,” Hoda giggled. “Did everyone forget that we live under the most tyrannical monarchy in the region? Focusing on voting as the sign of women’s liberation is laughable. It simply does not apply.”
She added, “This country needs serious human development, good education, more social awareness and cohesion, and professional training in order to reach a phase in which voting is actually efficient and effective.”
How Far Can Labels Go?
Reid’s reflection story promises problematic reporting. Because it is an opinion piece, Reid has unknowingly given her prejudice so much liberty that she easily used terms and labels that are culturally offensive. She equaled herself to Australian imam Taj Din Al-Hilali when he labeled women who did not wear the hijab as “uncovered meat,” which was equally offensive.
“It’s about what people are culturally used to and how they conduct their lives accordingly,” said Nadia El-Awady, a half-Egyptian, half-American journalist. “In some beaches I see topless European women tanning or having cocktails with great ease, an uncomfortable scene for any person who is not used to nudity. It’s the same feeling others get when they see women covered head to toe, which is an opposite extreme. In the end it is what each of those women is culturally used to.”
One of the key skills journalists often feel compelled to learn at the very beginning of their career is the ability to detach themselves from their personal prejudices and cultural standards, to be able to take a clear and pure look at everything new a foreign society has to offer them. The further journalists manage to go down that path, the more they will be able to mirror what they find as accurately and as credibly as possible.
A Lebanon Chronicle (Part II): A District of Lullabies
Posted by Arwa Salah Mahmoud in Uncategorized on November 26, 2009
By Arwa Mahmoud
My first visit to the southern district of Beirut was an organized field trip by the conference I was there to attend.
The conference was an assembly of activists and professionals who came from different parts of the world to show their solidarity with the Lebanese resistance and to discuss future civil resistance strategies to carry out back at home. The mosaic of cultures and backgrounds was wonderful. Many of them had never been to Lebanon or the Middle East, yet they had done so much in support of the rights of civilians who suffered directly from the ramifications of war. Many came with so much emotion and conviction, and many were stirring examples of kindness and commitment to people they share nothing with except the fact that they were human, not subjects.
(Click here for a photo gallery of Beirut’s southern district after 2006)
The Dahyeh
As we boarded the buses to southern Beirut, I sat next to a Lebanese woman, Karima, who welcomed me with a warm smile. I told her that this was my first visit to Lebanon after the war and that I couldn’t imagine what seeing the destruction with my own eyes would feel like. She responded with the same smile: “When we reach the district, I will show you where the building I lived in used to be.”
This was my first lesson in speechlessness. It’s very hard to think of anything to say to someone who’s experienced grave loss. That’s what you normally go through whenever you visit a war-torn place and talk to its people. Nothing on a personal level can even remotely relate to their experience. You can either console them with words of comfort and feel stupid, or go on asking questions and be rude.
She reached for her bag and took out her mobile phone. She showed me the picture she’d chosen for a background; a picture of a part of her then brand new living room that was taken after the first few air strikes on the district. All I saw was a crumbled room with shattered glass all over. But she saw something else: “See the colors of the sofa and the wall? I chose those myself.”
On the time the picture was taken her apartment had been only partially destroyed. One day after that picture was taken, the entire building was leveled to the ground.
As the bus continued through Beirut I began to spot the first signs of the Dahyeh, Beirut’s southern district as preferably referred to by its people. This area was one of Israel’s primary targets. For those who continue to view Hizbullah as a physical entity that can be destroyed, the Dahyeh is believed to be its “headquarters,” just as Bint Jbeil in the south is considered the headquarters of Hizbullah’s military wing, or the “capital” of the resistance. Yet the Dahyeh wasn’t really a military barrack. It was the area in which much of the Shiite exodus from the conflict-torn south and Bekaa began to settle roughly during the 1960s. There are no gates that separate it and you don’t need permission to enter, but once you’re inside, it’s another Beirut you seldom get to see.
Not much of it was left when I saw it in 2006.
An Exhibition of Savagery
I gasped as I saw my first spot of rubble. Karima stood next to me and spoke with unconcealed pride, “That’s nothing! This used to be mountains of rubble! We’ve cleared so much of it already!”
The magnitude of the destruction was beyond description. And yes, the creepy feeling of standing under a half-destroyed 15-story building surpasses any experience a person could have by just looking at its picture. Walking in those streets was like walking in an exhibition of hi-tech savagery. From corner to corner, I could see massive holes stretching so many meters underground—traces of missiles that failed their targets, scattered clothes, books, toys, etc.
I slowly began to make my way through the alleys. I stopped by an American colleague frantically taking pictures of what seemed to be hundreds of books buried in the rubble. When I walked up to where he stood I could see there were tears in his eyes. “They told me this was a library,” he spoke with a quivering voice, “My tax money builds libraries at home and destroys them here!”
Because I had followed the war minute by minute, suddenly being there brought the trauma back to life to me. It had already been three months since the cease-fire started, and even then many of the district residents were back already, going about their lives in the midst of the destruction. They had build small shelters on top of what used to be their homes. They would make it a point to go there daily and dig under the rubble to reclaim what they could of their belongings, or simply sit right there and drink tea, just to make a statement of ownership and survival.
I could not imagine what the place must have looked like when it was still a ghost town, haunted by terrifying sounds of jets roaming around it all night, each time choosing a different prey.
During the war I used to go to bed in Cairo after midnight and think, “Air strikes must have started again. I wonder how many children are crying right now, I wonder how many mothers are singing them lullabies to soothe them, silently praying that the strikes would end without taking more lives.”
And each morning I would wake up to a new statistic.
I walked from street to street, looking at scattered children’s books and stuffed toys in the midst of the rubble. It was as if the lullabies they inspired were still in the air of the Daheyh, memories of childhood left behind to a refugee tent, a hospital, or death.
But to the Lebanese children who survived, the nightmare was over. They were running around the streets of the district playing, laughing, waving their hands at the visitors and welcoming them.
“On to Change! On to Reform!”
From the minute I arrived in Beirut, I’d been fascinated by how quickly this nation was recovering and picking up the pieces. Their grief turned almost immediately into positive energy.
Hizbullah’s broadcasting station Al Manar created a live studio in a tent it built in the midst of the rubble, hosting guests that spoke about the ramifications of the war all day and most of the night, celebrating the mere fact that they still stood there, documenting the war by filming everything around them.
On more than one spot of the rubble in the Dahyeh there were mocking signs that read “Made in USA” or signs that showed alternative addresses to offices where they used to stand. No time wasted; they were simply moving on with their business.
Almost everywhere I walked there were teams of workers who were clearing the rubble, or builders who were reconstructing sites. As I got closer to one of the workers I heard him sing, “On to change! On to reform! Together, we build our country.”
Lebanon is a nation that takes so much pride in its ability to endure. Many of the poems and speeches speak of life being born with each fighter who falls and with each mother or child who dies. It is as if the physical losses are the key signs of triumph, because they were endured for the protection of one’s land, heritage, and most importantly, one’s dignity. For that reason, the Lebanese believe that they won this war.
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