I was not going to mention this on my blog because since morning; only a couple of friends remembered that it is my Birthday today and one of them was so kind as to post about it, thank you Ramroom. Not even family members recognized the date which was expected, I guess!

What I did not know till an hour ago, that all my colleagues in Jeeran were planning a surprise party for me when I did not even know that they were aware of the BD thing!

Not only they invited me for lunch, but everyone was there and they have even brought me a cake and gave me a BD card that held all their kind wishes and signatures; frankly; I did not see this coming!

Thank you Jeeran team for making this day special, memorable and enjoyable!!

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This is a title of a featured article in VIVA Magazine for March issue. The author of the article is discussing the emerging phenomenon into our society that is becoming more lenient and is tolerating the idea of dating and adults being their own matchmakers.

I liked the ideas presented in the article because this evolution is bound to happen. One of the things mentioned is that the idea of dating is not a new one; for many generations now; men and women have been dating and establishing long relationships before marriage, although secretly. What is important now though; is when and how to bring this forward and have these relationships in the open?

It makes me wonder if our parents and the older generation would be accepting to this idea, and how willing are they to embrace it and allow their adult children to act on their own and find their matches through dating, socializing and mingling with the opposite sex in open and honest contexts.

The author met and discussed this concept with many people and got some very interesting feedback; it seems that more people are becoming accepting to the idea and are willing to embrace it in their lives in order to find the right person that they will spend the rest of their lives with.

However; she points out that although dating has a positive impact in the society, it is not risk free at all. For starters; the double standards ruling our community where men get away with things that they judge their women peers for. Applying this to the dating game; a man can go out on as many dates; has many relationships before he is ready to settle down, but when he is ready; he goes after someone who does not date or whom he met in a family gathering or something of the sort. Of course; this does not apply to all men in our community, but it certainly is the norm.

By chance; the magazine features another article by a bachelor who is defending the dating game saying that it has become a need in our society; people are getting married at a later age than before and they only have one shot at marriage, so, dating became necessary for them to understand themselves and what they want in their future spouses. He also points out that some men do abuse this freedom by dating many women and dumping them along the way till he is ready, and when he is finally ready to marry; he will go for someone with a pristine past because reputable girls don’t date. I have to wonder here is this is not an excuse more than a learning curve for the man to play around and keep himself busy till he is ready to tie the knot.

Going back to the article subject of this post; the author also points out a downside for the dating social system, which is the emotional side. When you embrace the concept of dating; you are putting yourself and your feelings on the line and you will be susceptible to get heartbroken, especially if you fall in love with that person or in the least get attached to them.

Breaking up can cause so much heartache and pain; if you are not ready to accept all the possibilities, you are in trouble.

Another issue comes to mind here; what are the guidelines and rules of dating? How do you meet each other and where? Do you go out on real dates or you prefer group gatherings? When do you consider yourself exclusive or going steady with someone? How do you announce it to the people around you? If you ever breakup, do you continue seeing each other in the social circles you are used to, or do you stay away from the whole scene? Are we mature enough to take in this whole dating system and accept it with all its good and bad sides?

As for me, I do not consider it wrong for two people to get to know each other before they start thinking of marriage; however; being in our society and culture, I cannot but wonder if this is even possible. I know for a fact that my parents will not be accepting for the whole idea. Of course I have been in relationships before, and I never hid them as well. I had clashes with my parents about this, but we finally reached an understanding that this is my life and as long as I am not doing anything wrong, then they have nothing to worry about; so far, this is working just fine although I am not a solid believer in the integrity of men in our community, well, not anymore anyway! No offense guys!!

In conclusion; this article by Laura Haddad is a must read; it sheds light on an urgent matter of this emerging phenomenon that is forcing itself in our society whether we like it or not. I must say here: VIVA Magazine Rocks!

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So we all were tagged by Hareega; he simply copied and pasted the JP list of citizens to include all in it. He stated in his post that his tag questions might be perceived as perverted while his sole objective was to end the tagging craze.  

Frankly; I found this tag to be humorous and in no way offending; otherwise I wouldn’t have engaged in it and answered it publicly which caused some of my readers to get angry and send me some comments expressing their anger and disappointment.

As a sign of respect to their opinions; I removed the post and sent them an apology; however; I don’t feel that I did something outrageous and to be honest; I am not quite sure as to why they got offended in the first place??!

I saw this tag dare funny; it is not a crime to make fun of ourselves every once in a while and not take ourselves too seriously. The questions were daring; I can’t deny that, but in no way I found them offending religiously or anything … so lighten up guys and consider this a break from all the seriousness around us!

This is my opinion only; and I do apologize for those who do not share it. I always speak my mind and defend my beliefs, so I think that some have overreacted on something that could have been brushed off as a light hearted fun, or oops; I forgot that we are not allowed to have some fun!!!

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I am not quite sure if this is a phenomenon in the Arab world or that it is a normal thing that men did since ages; all I know is that this is really strange and certainly needs some focus.  

Most Arab men marry for the wrong reason and at the wrong time, however; they don’t realize that they turned their life around by taking a decision when they were not in the least ready for it and its consequences. He wakes up one day to find that he is married to a woman that he does not love and a load of responsibilities lie on his shoulders; not only that, but he is the sole provider for the whole bunch.

Somewhere along the way to this point; he has lost the connection to the woman that he chose to be his lifetime partner; that is assuming he had one to begin with. He realizes that he cannot talk to her or share with her concerns that fill his mind on daily basis; routine kills all initiatives he might have to make life exciting one more time.

Married couples in our part of the world see marriage as the end of freedom and fun, and the beginning of a life full of responsibilities and work load that never ends. He has to provide for the welfare of the whole family as he is the protector. On the other hand, she has responsibilities of her own; the house, the kids and many other duties that fill her days. They fail to recognize marriage as a start rather than an end, and instead of merging their lives into one, each goes on living his/her life separately leaving their common interests or sharing points to be limited to duties that marital life forces on them.

When boredom hits them real hard, they start looking for an escape or a way out to vent and feel alive one more time. Since our society is male dominated no doubt, and since men in our community get away with almost anything; they seek friendship from the opposite sex, convincing themselves and their friends that it is very innocent and it will not hurt anyone; they just need this friendship, hence; the phenomenon of married men with girlfriends.

I have come across many of those; and I always ask them why can’t they be their wives’ friends? Why do they not include their wives in their social circles? Why do they not introduce this so called girlfriend to their wives if it was as innocent as they claim? Why do they need a girlfriend to begin with? Do they think that there is no solution to the situation they have? Lots of questions and they almost always have no convincing answers. Most of the ones I discussed this with; they say that their wives do not understand them and that there is nothing in common between the, they made a mistake when they married them and now that they have kids, they are staying with the wife because of the kids, blah blah blah

I am not against friendship in the concept; but I never feel comfortable when some married guys want to take a casual acquaintance to another level of exclusive friendship, claiming that the wife does not understand them and that they need someone who does. The problem is that they don’t understand this as respect for the woman who is in the dark on all of this, but they take it as a sign of playing hard to get in the hopes of having something more than a friendship.

Women in our community tend to take their marriages and husbands for granted; and when finally the man breaks free; she starts complaining and blaming her bad luck on the jerk of a husband she ended up with, but the reality is that she played as much of a role in destroying the bond as he did. Once she gets married, she stops paying attention to herself like she did before, she dresses up to go out but not for her husband, make up and perfume are for occasions and not for calm evenings with the man of the house. When she talks to him it is almost always about problems they are facing, or about his family, i.e. his mother, or about the kids and what they need; she does not discuss his work with him or even put the effort to share his concerns with him.

Let’s face it ladies; we bare the responsibility of this one! Men need a lot more than a clean house, clean clothes, food, etc. Men need partners to go through the hardships of life; they need to discuss politics, football, news, stocks and everything that interests them, and if he cannot find this at home, he will look elsewhere, so you better work on your conversational skills, become your husband’s best friend and relief him of the guilt that he has to live with when he takes a girlfriend that speaks to his mind.

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Who doesn’t know Amina from the famous novel by Najib Mahfouz; Qasr El Shoq? This great novel talks about the life of an Egyptian family during occupation years. It tells the story of a tough man “Sayed Ahmad” who was ruling his household with great cruelty and force; Amina was his wife.

We saw how this powerful feared man used to live two separate lives with two completely different women. First woman was his simple wife, Amina. She obeyed him or one can say that she worshipped him, taking everything he says as an order that she must follow religiously. She never ate in front of him, instead; she stood beside the table waiting for his instructions. She never looked at him when he gave her the orders; she kept her eyes on the ground. Going out of the house was out of the question; she was only allowed to visit her mother with previous permission from him. She dedicated her time to keep him happy and made sure that he has everything he needed at any point of time.

Second woman was the famous artist and belly dancer Zbaida. She was quite the opposite of Amina; she was the naughty playful female, who makes a living from entertaining men. She was the mistress of this powerful man; he lived with her a secret life full of fantasies and wild nights. He led these two lives separately and made sure that they did not mix in any way.

Mahfouz gave us two extreme representations of women in the Arab World, moreover; he showed us how the same man treated this extremely different to because of the double standards that the Arab man was drowning in at that time.

This story took place in the thirties, but I can’t help but think that nothing much has changed ever since. We still have Amina’s and Zbaida’s and the double standards still rule to date.

A couple of days ago, I posted about this issue and got very interesting comments from my dear readers. Some blamed women of the Arab World on men’s double standard attitude, some blamed men and the rest blamed both. Reading the comments on that post made me think of this great work of Mahfouz’s; it made me think of the huge inheritance that reached us from our great grandfathers and grandmothers, and I can’t help but believe that each Arab man has “Si El Sayyed” inside him and each Arab woman has both “Amina” and “Zbaida” inside her struggling for one of them to emerge to the surface and dominate the other.

Moderate women of today have somewhat gained control over their Amina, however; more often than not; when Si El Sayyed emerges to the surface in their men; Amina takes over and becomes in control. It perplexes me how men in our Arab World live the two personalities and master their roles with an Oscar performance.

We witness many examples of the double standards in our community and we don’t know when or how this will end. One guy goes out with girls, loves them and become loved by them, takes them out and gets them gifts. With his girlfriend; he is Romeo, showers her with love words and makes sure she is always happy. Same guy goes home and bullies his sisters, orders them around, never shows them any love or respect and dare one of them get herself a boyfriend and practice the same rights her brother gave to himself or the community gave to him because he is a guy. If she is discovered; hell breaks loose and she can lose her life in the process because her honorable brother could not handle the shame she brought upon him and the family.

Our community gives men the right to do whatever they like and the lame explanation is that they are men and they will not be affected by these relationships. Just because it does not have any apparent effects on a man to lose virginity or get pregnant, God forbid, the community gives him a green light to indulge in taboo things that are not even allowed to be discussed. What makes things worse is that when he is discovered; no one looks at it as a shameful thing; rather it becomes a need and men have needs, right?

Same community forces reasonable and unreasonable restraints on girls suppressing them and depriving them from their freedom to choose. We see girls resorting to lying and going around the rules to practice their rights in life.

Before I get accused of encouraging girls to have forbidden relationships; let me make it clear that not all girls in our society are after this particular right; believe it or not; we think in a complete different manner than men. What is the core issue of this post is the deprivation of the right to choose, and the right to live a normal life that is free from lies and fear. Why can’t men accept the women in their families are humans and have the right to choose the way they want to live? Why don’t they encourage them to lead their lives freely and in the open where they can supervise and give advice? Why do they force them to resort to lying and deceiving them?

Women bare a large part of the responsibility in this situation; she is the one raising the man and teaching him how to deal with women starting from home. If she teaches him that his sisters have feelings and should not act as his servants just because they are girls, he will start having a deep respect to the woman as a woman. If the father respects his wife and gives her a special rank in the family; children will grow to understand that this is a partnership and that it is not a master – slave relationship where the woman is the slave for the mere fact that she is a woman. So, for all the mothers and fathers out there; stop treating your sons as Gods and your daughters as slaves, instead; treat them as humans who are equal regardless of gender so that they would have deep respect to each other.

In past times; women did not go out of their housed to work side by side with the man, she did not have to participate in providing for the household, she did not have to be a super woman who divides herself between rules of working woman, wife, mother and housekeeper. She did not have to struggle 24/7 to raise her kids and teach them right from wrong. She did not have to be the prime bread provider for the house in many cases, and yet what shocks me is that men still insist to be treated as masters, they still want to be kings of the house.

Bottom line is that some women have evolved and grown, they know their rights and more importantly know how to get them, they no longer accept to be slaves and they chose to kill Amina once and for all, they got rid of the fear and they are honest with themselves and their surroundings. The question is; are men afraid of such women? Do they choose Amina over this woman or does he find pleasure in transforming this woman into Amina using his authority given to him by God and community? What is it with you guys that makes you scared of giving women some freedom and empower them to take their own decisions?

I wish that as many guys participate in this discussion to help us all understand what they want.

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