Saudi Hypocrisy

Global Voices reported today the response from other countries in the Middle East and North Africa to their recent ban on young Moroccan women coming to the Kingdom to perform omrah, the pilgrimage that takes place during Ramadan rather than during the Great Feast a month or so later. These women, apparently, have been decided to be a threat to the sanctity of Saudi male morality as they might be prostitutes (and one must assume, of course, that the required male accompanying them would be their pimp). To say that the Moroccans are a bit miffed is a major understatement. This is a blanket indictment of Moroccan society by a group of people who are notorious for their travels throughout the region for the purpose of sexual enjoyment.

In Egypt, there are villages outside of Giza and Cairo where male Saudi tourists have made a tradition of offering young girls sizable (for the girls of course, peanuts to the Saudis) amounts of money for the "privilege" of an informal marriage to the tourist for the summer months. The girls are then left to fend for themselves, and the fortunate ones find someone who is practical enough to appreciate a girl with some money to start a life with. Not a pretty picture. Apparently, this is common enough practice in Morocco as well to cause Moroccan legislators to pass a law requiring Saudi wives to be informed of these marriages before the marriage can take place. Since the law was passed in 2007, this ban is probably not in retaliation.

The assumption that Moroccan women are looser in their morality and thus probably prostitutes is highly offensive to all Moroccans. Morocco is less strait-laced than Saudi, to be sure, but then the Saudi's are notoriously less strait-laced the second they set foot off Saudi soil as well. It seems to me to be a serious case of the pot calling the kettle black. An article in the Guardian looks at the stereotyping involved. By the same kind of logic of "loose morality", given the stereotypes of North American and European women, one would have to ask if Muslim women from these areas have special problems going on pilrimages as well...and why are Egyptian women not banned? Maybe that's the point. These pilgrimages are getting to be very crowded, so perhaps it's better to make them gender-specific and cut the crowds down?




copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Busyness

It's the day after Shem el Nessimand we are all sitting around feeling entirely too well fed. This year the Coptic and Western Easters fell on the same day with Shem el Nessim the day after..three Easters in two days is definitely a record. Shem el Nessim is the official start to summer here and the mannequins at the malls are showing signs of summer readiness. All of this catches me a bit by surprise since we really didn't have a winter this year.

It's been a winter full of riding, mostly in tshirts with just the odd light jacket. No winter winds whistling down the dunes from the North Coast this year, although we did get a spectacular sound and light show one night when a thunderstorm brought the first hail in about 20 years to Cairo. We had a lot of internet issues after the storm, I suspect brought on by lightning strikes to the monster palm trees that are used to disguise relay towers here.

We've had our share of interesting visitors this spring. Steve Edwards who trains mules in Arizona came to visit my friend Bill the mule man here. Bill attended clinics at Steve's place and brought a saddle for our mule Amira. This saddle is so much more complicated than a horse saddle that we were all delighted to have Steve come out to show us how to use and adjust it properly. He also gave us mule-training tips and taught the staff how to make three and four strand rope out of old baling twine.

Steve and his wife Susan were filming the action here to be shown on RFD-TV in the US and to use on a cd about mule training. I rode out to the pyramids of Abu Sir on Figgy while Steve rode Amira, so now Figgy gets to join his big brother in being a film star. Next week I have some endurance friends from Michigan joining us, Maggie and Nelson Mieske, who are currently in Qatar where Maggie is teaching English at the university in Doha while Nelson works with horses there. Maggie is planning to do some riding with me as I have a mother and daughter visiting Egypt on a riding holiday here, while Nelson will be set up with some of the local farriers to help them hone their skills. Life is fun.
copyright 2010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Worth A Read

A lot of my friends are younger than I am, though each year that is easier and easier. The post that can be read by clicking on the title here is one by a very thoughtful young woman who I'm very pleased to count as one of my friends...as are her mother and younger sister. Maybe it's the teacher in me that gets all warm and fuzzy when I see the lights shining in the young, but whatever it is, I wanted to share it.

copyright 20010 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

The Importance of Staying In Touch

I recently took a brief holiday to the US to see my kids. When I got back to Egypt, I arrived to find my niece from California, along with her five year old daughter, a fellow teacher, and ten high school students, happily installed at an alternative school not far from the farm where they would be staying for a two week visit to Egypt as a part of their school program. I also had an old friend from New Zealand who came to think out some major life decisions at the farm and within a couple of days, another friend and her daughter from California had arrived via Luxor. If I'd been rested after two weeks of bouncing between Boston and New York, a matter of conjecture only since I certainly wasn't after a flight home on a plane carrying every small child in the US with an Egyptian grandparent to visit over the summer, I wasn't rested once I got home. My animals apparently miss me a bit when I'm gone and the greeting from the dog pack was riotous to say the least, but it was later in the evening that I noticed a real difference. When I sat down...and later when I went to bed...I found that all the dogs, even the big ones, had to sit or lie close enough to me to touch me. With temperatures during the day of over 90 F/38 C, this could get to be a burden. Night time temperatures in the high 70's/high 20's, made things a bit better but I didn't get much sleep the first few nights. It was as if the dogs needed to reassure themselves that I wasn't going to vanish again while they were sleeping. Silly dogs...but are they?

When I spent some time talking to my niece and catching up on family happenings, I was astonished to find that I'd missed some pretty important events abroad. Living on the opposite side of the globe, more or less, from part of my family and a minimum of 11 hours flying time from the kids, I rely on internet communications a lot. Emails, chat, Skype, even Facebook are all helpful in keeping up with family and friends who are wandering the globe, but in the end, we only know what others tell us about their lives, and they only know what we are willing to disclose. That can be a problem. "Oh, I didn't want to worry you." "Well, I figured that it would blow over." How many times have we all used this excuse as a reason to keep our problems to ourselves? We all do it. We share the good times and hide the bad ones, but at what cost?

When my husband died, I soldiered on. I sat through years of horribly confusing negotiations, miserable meetings, and generally disabling work in fields that I really had no experience with. It was not fun. Without a group of women friends who gathered around me, held me as I cried, and encouraged me when I wanted to just give up and run away, I would never have made it. Ladies, I salute you and I would never have survived without you. A core group were also going through some pretty gut-wrenching life changes...divorces, separations, career issues...and we would meet about weekly for a meal and an exchange of woes. How depressing...but not really...and how therapeutic. An Irish grad student friend of mine used to tell me, while we were suffering from being the first major influx of women grad students in our department in Canada with all the weirdness that entailed, that a problem shared is a problem halved. It isn't really that other people are going to solve the problem for you as it is that simply carrying the burden of our problem alone adds to its weight.

So the dumb animals aren't so dumb at all. They understand the need to be with the ones that they care about even if they can't speak in words. Years and years ago, AT&T, the American telephone company ran an ad campaign to boost long distance calling (I'm not so naive as to think that they approached it as a public service!) that featured someone saying "Reach out and touch someone." It's good advice. And don't only share the good news. It really is okay to say, "I know you can't do anything about this, but just knowing that someone is thinking about it with me helps...." And if you are on the receiving end, know that hearing about a problem doesn't necessarily mean that you have to rush out to slay a dragon. Sometimes just swatting a fly will do.
Oh, and the dogs? It only took a few days of sitting on me for them to decide that I'd returned for the duration and to go back to giving me space to breathe...thank heaven.

copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani

Journeying

When you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that the road is long,
full of adventure, full of knowledge …
visit many Egyptian cities,
to learn and learn from scholars.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
To arrive there is your ultimate goal.
But do not hurry the voyage at all.
It is better to let it last for many years;
and to anchor at the island when you are old,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will offer you riches.
Ithaca has given you the beautiful voyage.

C.P. Cavafy was a Greek Alexandrian who was born in the late 1800's and lived into the 20th century writing poetry that was inspired by his Greek heritage and his Egyptian upbringing. He wrote in English and Greek and likely spoke Arabic rather badly if at all, having been raised some of the his youth in the UK. He's always been one of my favourite poets. This poem seems important to me right now because at the end of the month I will be traveling to the US for two weeks to see my children who are both at the beginning of their travels, although they probably don't see things that way. My son is completing his graduate studies and going to work for at least a while in the US and my daughter is just at the start of her graduate studies which will likely take her to some fairly interesting places.

I am more than happy to be here on my farm enjoying the flow of visitors and the changes of seasons. I know that the children will be in that flow as often as they can arrange it, partly to keep an eye on their old mom who has a tendency to do odd things even at her advanced age and partly because Egypt with her Nile and desert is part of their being. Like my Greek friend, my Ithaca is here under the palms and the endless sun of Egypt. I don't know where my children's Ithaca will be, but I hope that the journey is a long one.



copyright 2008 Maryanne Stroud Gabbani