I have recently finished reading the Girls of Riyadh by Raja’ al-Sani… That made me think a lot… It may be a best-seller book, I do not CARE. It shows me many aspects of different lives. I read the book at the summer house where my grandparents live. I combined my observations with the book I read. First of all, about the East mentality, us Turks also have it… The elder
people have it more, feel it more strongly. We have it but in a different dose. I mean Saudi Arabia experiences this mentality in a severe way ,ours is way softer. However it does not change the fact that at heart the mindset is the same.
My grandfather who was born in 1937, cannot stand it when my father helps my aunt or mother to clean the table. This is an action which my father does voluntarily. Still, according to my grandfather ”a man” should not get involved with ‘distaff’ , by saying that he means housework is the problem of the female side. He was raised this way, for all his life he never HAD TO cook, even break an egg and prepare an omlette, because he was never single and he always had a woman to do it for himself. And now as my grandmother gets sick very often, he has to do many things himself which really bothers him. I told him that, at past women were not taking part in the ‘work life’, they were housewives mainly and they were domestic. So they were taking the responsibility of the housework but now everything has been changing, as a woman if I do study and work as much as a man does, I also deserve to be treated equally. That man should not think that the fact of being a female , gives me the obligation to back the all tiring work. A man should help with everything… Sadly, many mothers STILL raise their sons so: giving them the right to not ‘help’ them, raise them in a spoiled way and infuse them that a girl should make it all. Not them as a ‘boy.
In the book, people live under the Sharia rule and the relations between people are strictly controlled, especially between different genders. The most important thing for girls is to get married. As they cannot have opportunity to flirt or have a date, they try to catch the attention of their future mother-in-law. Where to see them? Of course, at weddings! We also have this in Turkey, many girls can get offers from other families…Surely, not very very common in Istanbul, but still…
The woman-man relationship is complicated. Once the engagement is arranged, at that day the couple has the CHANCE to see each other and have talk for some time. That is the only day they can see each other under four eyes. After that the girl takes permission from his father to have phone calls with the groom. So that they can talk on phone . The author emphasizes the importance of telephone lines in Saudi Arabia, especially after the dinner, the lines are quite busy. Now, the interesting thing, the couple requires from each other to have the details of the telephone bills ( both cellular and home), where they can check to which numbers calls have been made or sms have been sent. That is a way to learn especially for boy’s family if the girl has somekind of a relationship with another man.
This sounded quite scary to me, but what! In my country, boys may not want the details, but they want to have access to the email and facebook of the girl ( we should give due to the girls as well, it is a mutual agreement) and they take the mobile phone of the girl whenever they want to check the messages. Now, what is the difference between two countries?
What is this ”LACK OF TRUST” ? Recently, I have talked with a Spanish/Catalan friend of mine who has a Turkish girlfriend, he finds this situation quite reasonable as well. I was shocked. He says if there is a trust, there is no need to worry about giving each other the passwords and permissions… I really wonder, how he became this brainwashed , I really do not know what to call this. Giving each other password is really a matter of trust? This is a BIG PARADOX. A chicken and egg situation. If I trust someone, I do not have an urge to check his messages. The other side would claim: if you have nothing to hide then it is normal to give away your passwords. I really think that we people , who are in touch with East, have this pragmatic shiftiness which makes us DOUBT and JUDGE everything.
I really felt sorry for the girls who have to live under such conditions, there they are considered as second quality human. Many people marry because of their family’s pressure with people who they do not want to marry. They send their children to abroad to study , but do not consider that they can fall in love with non-muslim girls and boys. So again another tragedy. They force these children to marry other Saudis and in the end, a catastrophe marriage. The woman side tries to keep the marriage by giving birth. Useless… Another divorce. And now that she has a baby, it is x3 harder to get married a second time. Oh, the bad fate! What has she done wrong! As a divorced woman ( in Turkish many people especially the average person calls them -widowed- which I hate) Saudi women are sometimes even not allowed to go out, what if someone smears and stain the repuatation of the family’s surname! The worst thing is, Saudi men do not really fight for their love. It is easy for them to accept and get led by their parents. And they call it following the tradition!
The problem is many Islamic countries even do not consider Turkey a muslim country, which can be fine. We are secular, we do not have an official religion. It does not show that we are very tolerant to non-muslims and minorities though!
They do not think we are strict enough, as for them their way of living is what the Islamic holy book Kor’an wants them to be. Us Turks, we drink. Okay, not everybody but many of the
Turks do not hesitate to drink. Even, the most conservative city of Turkey is the city where Rakı is bought the most. We FLIRT, yes may be not in each region of Turkey, the youth has the same atmosphere but people are allowed to flirt, even conservative ones DO flirt… Between man and woman there is more equality ( not enough but the lesser of two evils), e.g: We can swim together! Even conservative women wear a hashema and swim…Forget about Saudi Arabia, even Egypt, which seems to be the liberal Arabic country among with Lebanon, is not very tolerant with this. My aunt who travels to the US a lot, once came across to an Egyptian taxi driver, who was also studying Medicine in New York and as they chatted a bit and the man was shocked that my aunt considers herself Muslim when she drinks time to time and swims with other gender. He thought that us Turks do seperate the beaches in two where each gender swims with his/her species. The Arab League does not 100% know Turkey, I guess they just ‘estimate’.
