ArabComment » family

The Radical Notion That Parents Are People

April 9, 2008 – 10:17 am

When my mother was young she was taught that, until she married, she should defer to her father in all important decisions. “Your elders know best” – was what she was told (this was usually followed up with a “and when you’re married, your husband will know best,” but I will not get into that right now).

Today, many people are busy lamenting the breakdown of such traditions. They exist on many levels of my native society, but there is also the fear that they will disintegrate. Alarmists paint a typically dystopian scenario: “elders” no longer exist and society is in shambles. Five-year-olds are snorting crushed Viagra pills, and houses of worship have been converted to seedy “massage parlors.”

I would like to take a critical look at traditional relationships between parents and children without falling victim to reactionary rhetoric that has little in common with reality.

Now, it is true that parents usually want what’s best for their child. However, do parents always know what’s best? If you have been around the block a few times, you know what the answer is.

Parents are people, and people make mistakes. This has been true since the beginning of time, and it will be true in any age and any culture.

When I was younger, my father was convinced that I needed to study engineering or medicine for the sake of having a stable career. It did not matter that I had absolutely no talents when it came to either one of these esteemed fields of study.

I shudder to think as to how miserably I would have failed if I didn’t stand up for myself at a crucial moment, and rejected my father’s well-meaning advice.

Am I a bad daughter?

By Feature Writer | Posted in parenting, society | Comments (0)

My Reading Wife

March 23, 2008 – 2:20 pm

Mine is a “reading wife.” She loves to read practically anything and everything that comes by her way. Her reading habits are interesting, since she comes from a society that puts less premium on reading and more on verbal communications and images.

She is a persistent reader despite the fact that our kind of society may even look down upon people who read, because reading is not yet an integral part of our social, cultural, and psychological make up.

While in other societies it is common to see people holding books and newspapers in public places, such a sight is rare in Jordan, or, for that matter, in the different parts of the Arab world where I have also lived in. This is why I look with curiosity upon my “reading wife” simply because the reading culture or the book culture is not there to support her. In spite of that, she would munch through myriads of words, as if their meanings and extrapolations were Turkish delight.

She was socialized in a “readersless” society and had the tenacity to pick up books, opening her mind and indulge in a literature that took her far from her roots, though she continues to value our Arabic and Islamic traditions.

In between getting the house chores done, taking the kids to and from school, cooking, cleaning, and taking them (and, occasionally, me) to doctors, the flow of her reading today remains at a constant pace, a steady momentum that only she can control.

I don’t really know how she manages to find the time, but she closes herself in, finding “reading time” whenever she can. When she reads about something that really matters to her she might discuss it with me, but most modern novels, some that may be wrongly described as pulp, she leaves to herself.

I don’t mind me telling you she is putting all of us to shame, since we rarely read and looking at words on a page is not really in our blood, despite the fact our Holy Koran has instructed us it to read, and fathom knowledge; even if we have to go to China to acquire it, as the saying goes! Read More »

Muslim Couples and Infertility: Plan Ahead!

March 17, 2008 – 5:37 am

My friend, Noha, sat across from me weeping. She had requested to meet for coffee early that day, it sounded urgent from her voice. I’m not one to pry in someone else’s affairs, if Noha wanted to talk, I knew she eventually would.

And she did.

“I can’t have children,” she said, tears streaming down her cheeks. She looked like a child who just learned that they had lost their parent forever. I didn’t know what to say to comfort her. I’ve only heard of such personal affairs in the old Egyptian classic movies I watched as a child. In one movie, the lead actress, Amina Rizk, gives up her true love and decides to share her husband with another, Huda Sultan, in hopes that her husband’s name will be passed on.

Noha calmed down once the waiter brought our food. She explained that the doctor determined that her husband was the infertile one, not her as they initially presumed. I confess, I was shocked. In Arab culture, infertility is always blamed on the female.

Even if a woman is strong enough to challenge her society and demand that the man take a fertility test, he almost would always refuse. Noha’s husband had a different view, thus the unfortunate results of the test.

I didn’t know what to say: “should I advise her to leave him or encourage her to just accept her destiny/test from God?” Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in religion, romance, society | Comments (23)

The Phone Call from Kayfoun

March 8, 2008 – 6:01 pm

It was three o’clock in the morning when the phone rang. Sirena sat up in her bed when she heard the second trill break the quiet evening air, and an anxious feeling filled her stomach. There was only one place she hoped that call wouldn’t be coming from: Lebanon, the place her father called “back home.”

There was a war over there.

Her father had once stood with her and spun their globe. His finger covered the entire country. He pointed it out with the white crescent at the top of one nail. Sirena had squinted at the small blot, its name printed in a nearby sea. She imagined that the whole country was probably the size of her elementary school and pictured the blue and red hallways packed with tall men and women who looked just like her dad.

Sirena couldn’t remember when the war had begun. Her father said it started a long time ago. Her sister Aisha was ten now, two years older than Sirena. Aisha couldn’t remember when the war started either, but she said she was six when the first phone call came, and she could remember how things were before it happened. Aisha said Baba smiled a lot more and he used to read stories and sing songs before bedtime. Now he just tucked the covers around you and said, “I love you, baby. Sleep well,” before flipping down the light switch and pulling the door almost shut.

“The war,” Aisha had said, and she said it with authority, “changed everything.” In the last four years, there had been five phone calls, each reporting the death of yet another cousin, aunt or uncle that the girls would never meet. Of the calls, Sirena could only remember two. She was afraid this might be the third phone call she would come to remember. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, lebanon | Comments (1)

Love in a Time of Video Games

February 24, 2008 – 11:48 am

My wife is cheating on me with our Playstation.

Fine, I exaggerate. However, sometimes I wonder if she is more emotionally committed to the latest installment of “Grand Theft Auto” than to me. Of course, I was the one who irritated her with my obsessive devotion to “Final Fantasy.”

Revenge is sweet.

I would like to see some type of statistical study on the kind of damage that video games can do to a marriage. Forget setting up romantic dinners or remembering her second cousin’s wife’s birthday: the real challenge to many committed couples today is making sure you don’t kill each other while arguing about whether or not “Assassin’s Creed” lived up to its hype (I say yes, she says no).

It chokes me, but I have to admit that my wife is a better gamer. To be perfectly honest, she even has a better relationship with my parents than I, their son, do (”why can’t you be more like Dina*, son?” – a question I hear almost as often as the “when are you going to give us grandchildren?” inquiry). Maybe, she is better at living.

Does my wife have to make a mockery of my high scores? My knowledge of elaborate cheats? My commitment to the art of gaming?

The answer, I am discovering, is affirmative.

I have no one to blame. I created this situation. Once, I made a horrible blunder. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in entertainment, humor, science & technology, video games | Comments (1)

The Rape and What Came After

February 6, 2008 – 4:25 pm

My cousin did not leave a suicide note. They spoke of it as if it had been an accident. She had accidentally taken half a bottle of pills. Every family has secrets, you see.

And I should have known.

Her husband never struck her, and never smiled at her. She was grateful to him. He re-married quickly.

I should have known.

Her old classmate came to me years later, in a different city, where the air thankfully did not smell of her hair. Did I want to have a cup of coffee? Did I want to know the truth about my cousin? “My cousin had an accident.”

She had so many. Starting at age twelve.

I should have known. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in arts and literature, muslim women, parenting | Comments (4)

In the Name of Hijab?

December 26, 2007 – 7:09 am

As an American Muslim woman who chooses the hijab, I was shocked, enraged, and saddened to hear of the murder of 16-year-old Aqsa Parvez in Mississauga, Canada. Aqsa was a young Muslim girl struggling to balance the more traditional values of her family with Western culture.

This brave young girl was allegedly killed at the hands of the man that should have been protecting her: her own father. Canadian media has reported that the 16 year old argued with her father about wearing the hijab, or traditional Islamic headscarf. Friends said she would leave the house in traditional dress and change into western-style clothing when she arrived at school.

Her father, Muhammad Parvez, called 911 to report that he had killed his daughter on Monday, December 11th. She died from her injuries only hours later. Her 26 year old brother has been charged with obstruction of justice for failing to cooperate with police. To me, Aqsa is a martyr for the freedom of individual choice.

I am especially distraught that this alleged murder happened in Canada, home of “Little Mosque on the Prairie,” a TV sitcom produced by a brilliant Canadian Muslim director, Zarqa Nawaz. In the episode, “The Barrier,” first aired earlier this year; the teenage girl, Layla and her very conservative father, Baber, disagreed about her attire. She was an active girl and didn’t want to be restricted by her garments. She hid the fact that she had had her period—a traditional moment when girls are encouraged to begin covering their hair–for fear that her father would want her to wear a headscarf. While the two fundamentally disagreed about the issue, as is the case in most civilized families (Muslim or not), violence was never an option.

To some zealots, there is no place in heaven for a Muslim woman who doesn’t cover her hair. For some, it is an ancient patriarchal tradition that should be abolished. But American Muslim teens themselves are embracing the autonomy that Islam and America afford individuals. In recently released The American Muslim Teenager’s Handbook, Yasmine Hafiz, her brother, Imran Hafiz, and their mother, Dilara Hafiz, of Phoenix, Arizona, advise teens (and parents): “According to the Quran, as long as Muslims are dressed modestly and behave respectably, no specific dress code is required… modest behavior is also encouraged, therefore ogling the cute boy in Chemistry class or leering at the cheerleaders is definitely out! …Each person must read the Quran for herself and form her own opinion.”

Teens and others are turning to interpretations of Islam that assert that there isn’t one way to look if you’re a Muslim girl or woman. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in current affairs, muslim women, religion | Comments (9)

Things Don’t Work Out

September 5, 2007 – 12:20 pm

I knew when I was in my teens that I wanted to have kids. I would raise them right, they’d grow up to be productive and moral people, and I would feel proud of having raised perfect children.

When I started having kids in 1988, I read the right books, fed them the right foods, bought them the right toys, always put them in a car-seat and went to church every Sunday. And everything went well. They did well in school, they had friends, and people congratulated me on my well behaved children.

And then, something happened. I’m still not sure what, but something definitely happened. My perfect 1st golden boy decided to go his own way. My perfect second boy knew beyond any doubt that he knew more about stuff than I did. My charming and attractive third boy was diagnosed with ADHD, had to repeat the second grade, and endured several summer school sessions in order to proceed to the next grade. Read More »

By Feature Writer | Posted in parenting, society | Comments (0)

Motorcycle Diaries Part II

August 16, 2006 – 12:01 pm

(This article was originally published in Jordan’s Living Well magazine)

Vroom… vroom, roared the Harley before its engine was turned off outside the pharmacy on duty in Geneva one quiet Sunday morning a few years ago in September. The six foot ‘quelque chose’ rider dismounted the daunting machine, took off his intimidating German helmet, neatly tucked it under his left arm, and walked slowly inside the drugstore.

Click…clack, he steadily thumped his way across the aisles in his huge boots and leathery attire. Elderly Sunday morning shoppers could not hide their disquiet at the site of this unusual visitor with his menacing looks, but pretended to mind their business. With the dark sunglasses carefully hiding hung-over eyes, but betraying weekend stubble, disheveled hair and an overgrown goatee, he placed his helmet on the counter. Read More »

By Zaid Nabulsi | Posted in egypt, entertainment, humor, islam | Comments (0)