What a Lovely Day...

Today I got out of work in the morning to deposit money into my father’s account in another bank. This was my first time walking in the street that I drive on everyday. It felt very different, I felt like I had never been there before. I enjoyed the sunny weather while I walked past the shops that sold things like electronics, laundry machines, TVs, toys, clothes and so on. I got to the bank and filled out a deposit slip and waited in line with the rest of the people; suddenly I heared a man calling me and telling me to stand outside the line in the front so I can be served before the rest. I looked around me and saw that in fact I was the only female customer in the bank. It was a long queue; there were somewhere around 14 people in front of me with only 3 tellers and I was lucky enough to be a girl. This is one of the many advantages of being a female in this part of the world. Who said woman rights was good?? I would rather be treated as a woman than an equal to a man. Why would I want to give up not standing at a long queue in places such as ministries, banks, ticket stands etc? Why wouldn’t I want men opening doors for me and letting me go in and out first? Why wouldn’t I want to be treated better than men by men?…

While I was walking back to the office I saw men coming out of the mosques, they had just finished their afternoon prayer and looked so refreshed and happy. The pigeons next to Bab-Al-Bahrain were eating up the left over rice from the shops around the street. The traffic was heavy, but everyone seemed to be smiling and everyone was happy to be there. Walking down the centre of Bahrain, the different smells amazed me. On the same street you could smell perfume odor from people, the odor of stinky armpits, carbon monoxide from cars, newly sprung flowers, smell of food being prepared for lunch and much more.

I felt good about myself, I felt good about Bahrain and I suddenly felt sad. I will really miss this when I leave. I will miss t he smells, miss the preferences to woman, miss the pigeons; miss the security guards I always say hi to. But I know I will be experiencing newer things, things that I might miss even more if I come back home.

Hijab

While I was walking from the parking lot to the office today, I saw a guy walking past me stare at my breasts. I felt very bad; I wasn’t even wearing anything tight or revealing. I just wanted to go up to him and ask him what was wrong with him. I felt like slapping him across the face…

I’m not a religious person; I don’t pray and I only attend religious events because it is more cultural to me than it is religious. There is one part of Islam that I used to disagree with, and that is the part of the hijab. I never used to see the point of having a hijab in this time and age and to some extents I still don’t, but the funny thing is that I have thought about wearing it a million times. It is not the aspect of just covering your hair and neck that I want to follow, but what I respect is the fact of covering my body and respecting my body and not allowing men or women to look down at it or look at it as a sex object.

I am a person of jeans and t-shirts (seen as very casual and ‘just don’t give a shit’ attitude) but even though, some men still check out my private parts and that seriously pisses me off. I keep playing with the idea of me wearing loose long shirts with pants and something to cover my neck and ears, but I get frightened of that image easily. It is something that will make me feel comfortable, but will also mean taking away my true identity. Then comes the question of which is more important? My true identity? Or my comfort? To me I say both but mostly my identity and who I am. Funny enough though is that I am not living my true identity here in Bahrain, I do restrict myself to certain things because of family reputation and so on.

Another issue that I have to be careful with is if I wear the hijab, then I have to live my whole life a certain way. This mean no more partying all night if I am outside the country, no more hanging around with my friends (boys) the way I do now, no more doing AIESEC dances wherever I want, no more singing in the office and making everyone feel good and certainly no more doing random crazy things like dressing up as Santa on Christmas and walking in the streets.

So what do I do?! I don’t know. Will I be able to cover myself up while people still see me as the same person or should I just continue being the same way and just deal with the fact that people like checking each other out?

Where my heart is

These couple of weeks, I have been flooded with work as usual but one thing is always on my mind; Iran. My love for Iran is growing day by day and I never really knew how much I loved this country until now. My last trip there was almost a year and half ago but it feels like ages.

Meeting people from AIESEC at IPM and MENALDS who were starting up AIESEC in Iran started something inside me. Should I really go there and help out? I told my parents about it and they completely disagreed with me; they told me that would the stupidest decision I would make. Life is not easy there; I know, but the self satisfaction that I will have if I actually do something for my second home would be amazing.

I know for now that I am not experienced enough to go there, I would rather spend the time I have now learning from stronger countries and later invest myself in Iran. I will go there again for sure and hopefully next time not just for a mere trip to my family but to stay there for a bit longer.

Iranian Flag

This one is dedicated to John Westgarth.

Some of you might be wondering what is up with the Iranian flag (mostly people in the US or Europe might be seeing this) One day it has a lion on it and the next day something circular. Well my friends this is politics!! The current Iranian flag was developed in 1980 after the Islamic revolution. Usually this flag is used by Iranians within Iran and also a very few Iranians outside Iran who are with the revolution.

The other flag is called the sheer o khorsheed meaning the lion and sun. When this flag is used, it means that the person is against the Islamic revolution and wants it to be overthrown. Some of these people want the last Shah’s son Reza Pahlavi to take over while most of them want a new regime to come up.

My Friend Laila

I met a very special girl last summer, a girl that now I call a sister. We had days where we would laugh together for no reason and days we both felt like crap. We met last year during the summer leadership program in the U.S. Most of the time we were arguing about almost everything, but we always seemed to understand where the other person came from and why they would act the way they did. We talked about very sensitive issues together and most of the time disagreed but there was always something special between us that I till this day don’t understand. Laila is my sister from Palestine; she has the most amazing personality but at times gets on my nerves. She has a very strong personality and always sticks to what she has to say (not necessarily always a good point). We had a lot in common yet we were very different; a lot of our friends never seem to understand why we were friends because we would fight all the time (believe me I have no clue either).
There were nights where we would sit together and laugh at the most random things in the world, we would both start crying for the most stupid thing ever, we got angry together and almost had the same emotions most of the time. During our whole stay in the U.S we had a REAL argument once and that day I could not even concentrate. It was our argument in Memphis when we left her and two other girls at the hotel (something out of my control). The next day was our flight back to Delaware and everyone knew we had a quarrel. That day I woke up late, left a lot of things back at Memphis, I even forgot my passport at the hotel and was very close to missing the plane. While I was waiting for Prof. Cox to go back to the hotel and get my passport, Laila stay with me. For the first half hour we did not say a word, we slowly started discussing what had gone wrong and got to understand what the other person was REALLY thinking. After that it was like the pervious day never had happened.
I miss my Laila very much and I love her even more than ever. This Blog is for my Laila, my friend, my sister, my roommate in Egypt, my inspiration.

Here are some memories:

Angry

Yesterday we had our AIESEC recruitment interviews. It was a very hectic but fun day; we interviewed around 40 people from 9am till 8pm. I saw people who were really motivated, shy people, scared people, aggressive people, dumb people, very intelligent people and normal people.

It was our last round and I only had two more people to interview and I was done for the day. If only I could wipe out these two interviews from my head, I think I would have enjoyed the whole day. The ignorance and foolishness that I found in these two people was enough to get anyone depressed for the rest of their lives. Both of them were English literature majors and both of them were looking to do some kind of educational or development training in Africa or a poor country. I asked one of them if she would go to an Asian country like china or Pakistan or Singapore to teach English for 3 months and she just freaked out. She was like “NO NO I don’t want to go there” and normally I asked her why not and she simply answered because I don’t like their food and they stink. Thank God Ali was with me to control me otherwise I was going to break my laptop on her head. An example of the other girl was when she was telling us a story about her trip to the UAE with a German guy sitting next to her on the plane. She told us that the guy had asked her what the thing over her head was (hijab) and she felt like he was ignorant and didn’t know anything about Islam. After a while Ali asked her if she was sent to another country and her roommate was a homosexual Jewish girl, what would be her reaction? (that was the craziest question ever, believe me I know!!) She grimaced her face and said she would be very scared and would not be able to sleep at night because she would be afraid that she would kill her. At that point I asked her why she thought that would happen and she said “because Jewish people hate Muslims.” I asked her if that was a fact or was just her assumption and she said you can ask anyone. I told her she was wrong and she should actually meet someone Jewish and then make that judgment.

I did something stupid that I shouldn’t have had but I could not control myself anymore. I told her in the interview that she was as ignorant as the German guy she met on the plane (I wanted to tell her she was worse because he at least asked about it and not just assumed like she did).

I’m all angry again …