Newsletter 25 - 7 July 2006

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Jul 7, 2006 8:07 AM

Newsletter 25

I've actually written a recent Newsletter, which is attached!  In it,

I answer some questions asked recently by a Newsletter recipient.  I

welcome your questions and will do my best to answer them in a

newsletter.  Also attached is a Word Document containing three photos

to illustrate Emirati male dress that I address in the Newsletter.  I

hope you are able to open it.  Let me know if you have any problems

with it; it's kind of large because I couldn't figure out how to make

the photos smaller.

We're having a cold snap here.  Highs have only been between 107 and

109.  It's really been quite refreshing and there has been a nice

strong wind, too, to help us cool off when outside.  I think we'll be

back to highs in the 111-114 range soon, though.

 I'll be leaving in the wee hours of 19 July for my three week

vacation to SC.  My six little grandchildren, or at least the four who are old

enough to talk, have said they are very excited to see me and I am

excited to see them, even the non-talkers who are by no means silent!

I'll leave SC on 8 August to return.

On Sunday 23 July we will gather at Gina's for a birthday celebration

for my sister, Diane, who will be, well, one year older than last year.  My youngest brother Dave and

his wife Betsy will join us; Diane and husband Ray will come in for the day from the

Charleston, SC, area where Ray is now working.  Diane will be visiting

from MI, where she is currently recovering from helping daughter

Angela and family (including a newborn!) move from Utah.

I want to express my sympathy and sorrow to my dear daughter-in-law

Ranee and her family on the recent death of her beloved Grandpa, who

passed away last week in a hospital in Sumter, SC.  Nae, her father,

her brother who was fortuitously on leave from the Army, and assorted

other family and friends were able to be at his bedside when the end

came.  Her Grandpa was a fine man and I know he will be greatly missed

by Nae and her family.

I hope you enjoy the Newsletter and the photos

(if you can open them).

7 July 2006

If women do not shop, what are their responsibilities other than having and raising children and cooking?

Although many men do the shopping for the family, even buying clothing or fabric for tailor-made clothing for their family members, women do shop, either with their husbands or families or in groups of females. It is one of their favourite pastimes to be together with their female relatives/friends and shop for perfume, jewellery, etc. The national women don’t do much cooking or housework because almost everyone has a maid who takes care of those things and child care. The maids are Southeast Asia expats, some as young as twelve years old.

I can understand the women's clothing while doing business with men that are not family members. However, how do men dress? Do they also cover appropriately so as not to be enticing to a woman?

National men wear the dishdash, a long white closed robe with front closure and long sleeves. The dishdashes are always flawlessly ironed and stiffly starched; I’ve rarely seen one wrinkled, even after a full day’s wear. Occasionally the dishdash is worn in colors other than white. I remember the first time I saw the Libraries’ Dean wearing a black one; it nearly bowled me over because it was so unexpected. I’ve also seen them in colors of light to dark tan (I always think of them as being sand colors although in the Arabian Desert, sand comes in a whole range of non-tan colors!); but by far, white is the color of choice and tradition for men. On their heads, they wear a tatted-looking white skull cap covered by a long square scarf fastened with an agal, a black rope formed into two circles with ends that hang down partway down the back. I learned that there is a historic tradition associated with the agal. In days when the people lived in the desert and travelled by camel, the agal was used at night to hobble the camels so they wouldn’t wander. Hence the two circles, one for each forefoot of the camel. The circles are so close together the camel cannot even take one step. The scarf is usually of stiff white fabric, but now that it’s summer more men wear longer, draping white scarves that they kind of wrap around their heads or tie in an elaborate twist. I’ve also seen quite a few draping ones of red-and-white hounds tooth check, and occasionally brown and white hounds tooth. I’ve even seen men use the ends of the draping ones to wipe their eyes or noses (not blow their noses, just wipe). I’ve tried to attach a few photos at the end of the newsletter to show males wearing the white dishdash, a stiff white scarf with agal, a draping red and white hounds tooth scarf and use of the scarf for wiping. I’m sure there’s a name for the scarf; I just don’t know what it is. So, in answer to the question, there is almost as little of the male visible as with the females. The only difference is that the men never cover their faces unless it is to protect them from blowing sand.

Are marriages arranged? Is dating allowed?

Marriages are arranged, and what we Americans know as dating is not culturally acceptable in any form. One of the young female library staff told me that after she was engaged via her parents and his, she and her fiancé were allowed to have conversations together to discuss their future. They always talked in her parents’ home with family members present. This is quite unusual traditionally but perhaps is starting to become more common. Another female staffer, an Egyptian Muslim, who overheard the conversation was scandalized that the two were together in this manner before marriage. Interestingly, the scandalized one was married for a short time last year and then divorced; her arranged marriage to someone she didn’t know had not worked out so well!

A young female Emirati library staffer who married earlier this year very calmly told me, “I trust my parents,” when I asked, before the wedding, how she felt about marrying a stranger. She seems deliriously happy now that she is married. The other married Emirati female staffers seem content with their married state and when they speak of their husbands, it is with calm, quiet affection which is nothing like American women when talking about husbands they love.

Are men allowed to have more than one wife?

Muslim men are allowed legally and by religious practice to have as many as four wives. The actual practice or having four is not often practiced here in the UAE, I’m told by my female Emirati colleagues, but I’ve heard of cases of two wives. One university teacher of first- and second-year students told me that two of her young female students in one class were wives of one man and they hated each other; they often argued in class, avoided each other when possible, etc. One story I’ve heard in connection with a huge, very elaborate and beautiful house here in Al Ain has to do with multiple wives. The man had one wife and, apparently some un-legal wives (concubines?). He was influential (had a lot of “wasta”) and so he got away with it. He started having this huge house built and something like the day after it was finished, he died. His “unofficial” wives and their children were left out in the cold as far as inheriting anything, unless he had specified certain legacies before he died. One of the children was a woman who worked at the Library a few years ago and she was left without anything. A related interesting custom is divorce. For a Muslim man to divorce his wife, he needs only say, “I divorce you,” three times in the presence of his wife and a witness (I’m not sure if the witness needs to be a religious or legal authority or not). This is what happened in the case of the library staffer I mentioned before. A woman can divorce her husband but must go through a process (i.e., a lot of hoops) of which I do not know the details but can find out.

Are women active or working in government?

Increasingly, women are entering the workforce and even government; one of the government ministers is a woman who is highly respected; and Sheikha Fatima, the widow of Sheikh Zayed, late President and Founder of the UAE, is also highly respected and has done much on a national level and elsewhere to advance the causes of women and families in the UAE and abroad. Being a wife and mother, however, are considered a woman’s crowning achievement - a sentiment with which I wholeheartedly agree, BTW - and remain the most important aspects of a female’s life. (Sheikha Fatima herself is the mother of nine sons and an undisclosed number of daughters by Sheikh Zayed and was greatly loved by him.) The national government policy now is “Emiratization,” which is the push to hire Emiratis in all businesses and government agencies. Of course, they will be doing customer service, supervisory and management, not manual labor or sales clerk things, which are work for Southeast Asia expats.

I have realized something since being here that I attribute to Sheikh Zayed, whom I admire greatly. In addition to creating a nation, he also managed to create a people, a feat that rarely occurs when a nation is formed and which usually takes generations if not centuries to achieve, if at all, and usually at the expense of costly and bloody internecine warfare. But, by decreeing that certain privileges and benefits are given only, or almost exclusively, to people whose families have lived in the area now included in the UAE, he created a group of people who are known as Emiratis by setting in motion forces that required them to think of themselves and of each other as equals. They had to transition in their thinking from identifying themselves as members of a tribe with its internal loyalties and conflicts or competitions with other tribes and their members, to thinking of themselves as Emiratis, as equals, as one group. The privileges and benefits include being given citizenship and having UAE passports, receiving land and money upon marriage to another Emirati, free health benefits, reduced costs of utilities and other essentials, free university education and preferential treatment in many ways. The extent to which this is true is shown by the example of one Emirati female library staffer from a very powerful tribe who is pregnant with her fourth child. She said to me, “It is important for us to have many children because we (i.e., Emiratis) are so few. We are encouraged to build up our people.” Perhaps that also explains why she did not terminate a tubal pregnancy last summer, preferring to wait upon the will of Allah. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage but that did not stop her from becoming pregnant again; she is due in September

The photos of Emirati males are on a separate Word Document, also attached to the email. The sources of photos: Yahoo! News via Alltheweb Pictures search: Emirati; 3 July 2006.