Dogs

Here’s a post between the posts. It’s not too much about what I’ve been doing the last days, but I figured I needed an own post about the Muslim gender division. I am in Aswan, doing fine. You’ll get more about the last days on Sunday.

When I came to Amman, hungry and tired, and in addition lost my keys, it was a pleasant thing to come to Ragnhild’s Flat, the pizza already served. There I met Carling, a sweet girl from Canada. We left at the same time, so I thought it would be appropriate to follow this little girl home, so the wild Arabs would leave her alone. When we walked down the stairs from the flat we conversated about something more or less important (most likely the latter), but as soon as she came out of the door her normally brown and mild eyes turned red, and smoke came out of here nose, and she snarled: “we can’t be seen together”, and off she went like a rocket.

Sometime later, I understood the significance of what she said. It sums up the Muslim woman-culture to me. It’s about not being seen, not about not being. Girls have to be extremely careful with what signals they give. What they do plays a minor role, but what people think they do plays a big one. Ragnhild says, “how can we be good examples, and reach out to people with our message as Christians, if people don’t respect us?” -and she is right.

The question is, why would Ragnhild not be respected if she showed me downtown Amman (in the middle of the day), and thus would be seen together with me? People must have an extreme imagination.

I talked with a hitchhiker, and we came to talk about having several wives, and he noted that the girls had to be virgins if they hoped to get a proper man. Since virginity (as far as I know) not always is that easy to prove, I guess this is where the rumor becomes really important. If you have had a boy in your flat with no one else at home, then you have “lost your virginity”, and thus can’t find a proper mach, and in further extend have ruined your life. What a gossip society!

Another story; my first night in Syria, I slept at the parking of the Saladin’s castle. The next morning, the castle was to open at 9 am, and as normal, I was up at 6 am, so I had some waiting to do. Twenty past nine the openers came. They parked, and we started to walk up to the gate.  One of the tree men was lagging behind, and with a grin one of the others commented: “he is tired, he has three wives”. I recon I grinned too, but when I think about it, there was nothing much funny with it.

How backwards is the society when a man has three wives he (presumably) can’t even please? A man can do more or less what he wants. His virginity plays no role, and if he can afford it, he can take up to four wives. It is not uncommon that they have girlfriends too, and in Zanzibar they were completely open about it.

The hitchhiker defended the legality of having several wives by saying that since there were fewer men than women among the Arabs, the men did the women a favor by taking several wives, because it is sure worse not to get a husband, than sharing him with someone else. I am not sure if I agree. It seems to me that the Muslim world has a long way to go on gender equality.

My reflections above are made upon random situations and represent the opinions of me and the people I have met. Someone else might have met other people, and come to other conclusions. Ragnhild also noted, that the part of Amman they lived in was the conservative part, and that things were different in North-West-Amman.