Westerners (and particularly Americans) in and outside of Saudi Arabia are viewed to be very open and friendly.  They can also be seen as approachable.  However this post is oriented for the expatriate woman who may be new to Saudi Arabia and is getting to know some Saudi women.

Saudis will be very friendly and hospitable yet will retain privacy when it comes to family and home.  Even members within a Saudi family such as siblings will not know personal details of each other such as salaries, for example.

Yet for some reason, when a Western woman is with Saudi women, she may be asked questions she would not be expecting.  Some of these questions may include:

If she is the one working, how much does she make.

If her husband is the one working, how much does he make.

How often does her husband travel?

How much is the rent where she lives?

How much does she pay her housemaid?

How much does she pay her driver?

How much do different items inside the home cost?

How much did her abaya cost?

Of course she will likely be asked if she or her husband is Muslim.

The responses can either be straightforward and direct or she can politely decline to answer such personal questions.  Surprisingly a lot of Western women have answered such personal questions for fear of offending.  I think that is part of what has encouraged these kind of questions to continue to be asked of expatriate women.

Saudi women will typically not gossip of such details about each other but if an expatriate woman responds to such questions, then that is fair game for discussion.

If unsure how to respond to such personal questions, an expatriate woman can smile kindly and say, “I’m sorry but I don’t reveal such personal information.  Do you?”  Of course the Saudi woman will agree with the expatriate woman and the topic is dropped.

The majority of Muslims and Christians really do want to get together to break down walls and build bridges.  Yet for many the question is, how to start?  This is where the Peace Catalyst International Grace and Truth project comes in.  Peace Catalyst International is an organization which gives priority to bringing reconciliation and understanding between Christians and Muslims.

The Grace and Truth project includes a series of documents and a study guide with thought provoking questions for groups to answer.  By following the guidelines of the Grace and Truth project it should be easier and smoother for Christians and Muslims to approach one another and build firm bridges.

For those interested, here are the related documents and study guide/questions for the Grace and Truth project:

intro-to-gt

gt-exposition

gt-affirmation

gt-study-guide

Obviously there is not a large enough contingent of Saudis in Iceland since the nearest Saudi Embassy which oversees Iceland is the Saudi Embassy in Stockholm.

However, the following articles, (provided by a friend who is originally from Iceland) although a little bit dated, are very interesting in regards to the Muslims in Iceland.

Conflict Between Two Muslim Groups Delaying Mosque Project

10.12.2010

Words by Paul Nikolov

Photos by

The city of Reykjavík has decided that it can only give one plot of land for building a mosque, although two separate Muslim groups want one. The chairman of the Muslim Society of Iceland says the situation is “like asking the national church to be with the Jehovah’s Witnesses”.

Fréttablaðið reported that Anna Kristinsdóttir, the director of human rights for the city, said that there are indeed two separate Muslim groups in Iceland: the Muslim Society of Iceland numbering 373 members, and another group numbering 218. Both groups have asked for their own plot of land on which they intend to build their own mosques.

The response from the city, however, has been that the two groups are too small to each get their own plot, and should therefore share one. “We have of course not asked the two groups to combine into one,” she said in part, “but that they could possibly form an umbrella organisation, under which they can operate separately.”

Karim Askari, the chairman of the latter Muslim group, told Fréttablaðið that he wasn’t against sharing a mosque with the Muslim Society of Iceland. Salmann Tamimi, the society’s chairman, disagrees, pointing out that his group has waited 12 years for a mosque of their own, and that the city is responding as if all Muslims believe the same things and worship in the same way.

“Our application is completely different from theirs,” Salmann said in part. “This is like asking the national church to be with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”

As neither the city nor the Muslim Society of Iceland do not seem to want to budge on the matter, the issue is deadlocked for the time being.

http://www.islamiccci.com/about-us-in-eglish.php Icelandic Council for Endowment in Iceland

 http://www.islam.is/podlinki/english/english.htm Muslim Association of Iceland

The Saudi Embassy for Iceland is in Stockholm. state.gov estimates 800-1000 muslims in Iceland.

“This is like asking the national church to be with the Jehovah’s Witnesses.”  I find that comment especially amusing, interjects American Bedu.

New Muslim Organization in Iceland

31.5.2010

Words by Paul Nikolov

Photos by

Sulaiman Abdullah Alshiddi and Hussein Al Daoudi, from Saudi Arabia and Sweden respectively, have established an organization called The Islamic Endowment in Iceland, Vísir (an Ircelandic newspaper) reports.
:
The purpose of the group is twofold. On the one hand, to help Muslims in Iceland maintain the characteristics of Islam, and to help Muslim children hold onto their faith and traditions. On the other hand, the group also wants to encourage Muslims in Iceland to learn both Arabic and Icelandic. They also want to teach Muslims Iceland’s laws and societal mores, their rights and responsibilities, and to get Icelanders better acquainted with what Muslims believe.

Salmann Tamimi, the chairman of the Muslim Society of Iceland, told Vísir that the group has not been in contact with him yet, but that he does know they have branches in Sweden, where they engage in charity and educational work. “Hopefully this new group can help us get a mosque in Iceland,” he added.

There are about 600 registered members of the Muslim Society of Iceland, who have been waiting about 11 years for approval for a plot of land to build a mosque in Reykjavík from city council. That approval is still pending.

Only in Saudi Arabia!

Thank you Alexander for agreeing to this interview.  I’d like to begin with some questions about you such as where are you from?  What nationality are you?

I’m British. My name’s Scottish but I was born in England. I once had a meeting in Riyadh where the guy asked what my name meant – he knew that the Scottish ‘Mac’ was the same as the Arabic ‘Bin’. I explained it means son of the abbot (nabba being Celtic for abbot). He didn’t understand ‘abbot’ so I explained – the head of a monastery. Nope. Like a mullah, a holy man. Long silence. Then he slammed his hand down on the desk, pointed accusingly at me and shouted, “Only ONE man is holy and you are NOT his son!”

Exit one bewildered Brit…

When did you begin to write?  What gave you your inspiration?

I’ve always been an avid reader and realized one day that I’d written millions of words of copy in my career as a magazine editor and publisher as well as my years working in communications. I’d written speeches, op-eds, letters and white papers on behalf of CEOs, Sheikhs and Kings so I thought I might as well have a go at writing a book. My first book was a spoof thriller called Space, which was very funny but probably very badly written. It took over 100 rejections from British literary agents for me to get the point!

Have you traveled to the Middle East?  If so, please share where you have been and some of your memorable experiences.

Oh, I’ve lived here in Sharjah for 18 years now. I first travelled to the region in 1986, a long business trip to Saudi Arabia working for a UK based publishing company that specialized in technology-related titles for the Middle East market. I was 21 and had never been out of Europe before. It was an enormous culture shock, an insane experience, everything was so strange and I loved the amazing anarchy of it all. I’ve travelled around the region since, meeting a variety of colorful characters and getting into all sorts of scrapes. I have loved every single minute of it, even the difficult times form part of the kaleidoscope of experiences that have left me with no regrets but a great deal of memories to treasure – and many friends around the region. As for memorable experiences, how long have you got?

How did you get the idea to write ‘Olives?’  How long did it take you to complete the book?

Some of the agents who had bothered to actually respond when I submitted Space to them (most just send a copied ‘form rejection) had said humour doesn’t sell, so I resolved my next book would be serious. We like to go to sleep listening to music, nothing too hectic obviously, and one of my favorite musicians is the American composer and pianist George Winston. I went to sleep listening to ‘February Sea’ from his ‘Winter into Spring’ and it made me think of a girl dancing in the rain. The next morning I woke up with a book laid out in my head and for the next four weeks dashed it all down. Then I spent seven years editing it!

That’s not strictly true, actually. Olives was rejected by a number of agents and I put it in a desk drawer and entered Space, the funny book, into Harper Collins’ peer-reviewed writers’ site, Authonomy, where it topped out and gained what they call a ‘full read’ from a Harper editor, which didn’t lead to anything. But I made many writer friends from the site and learned a lot about the ‘craft’ of writing, which made me go back and revisit Olives, editing it and rewriting elements. I sent the revised Olives out to agents and they rejected it again, so I sat down to write another book, a spy thriller called Beirut. This eventually landed me an agent, but publishers didn’t buy the idea of the book in the current extremely uncertain market. In all, over the past ten years, I’ve collected something like 250 rejections from the publishing industry. I’ve watched publishing transform from being a gatekeeper-led industry to a bunch of scared looking guys in boardrooms wondering what on earth they’re going to do to stay relevant in the digital age. Writer friends who landed contracts had found themselves unsupported and under-marketed. And so I eventually sat myself down and said, ‘the hell with them all. I’m going to publish myself’.

How did you develop your characters?  Were any of them modeled after real individuals?

Writing turns you into a thief; you’re always stealing situations, nuances, phrases. You might drive up a street and think this would be a good location for this scene or that, maybe see a situation outside a shop or catch a smell on the wind. So the end result becomes a sort of patchwork quilt of things, combined with your own flights of fancy. The characters tend to come to life and start influencing events themselves. You eventually become helpless, just led along by them!

Gerald Lynch was born from a successful Irish man in Dubai telling me, ‘I don’t like people calling me Gerry, I’ve been twenty years escaping being Gerry.’ Many of the more callow British journalists I’ve dealt with over the years influence Paul. I have been unusually fortunate in that for the past fifteen-odd years I’ve worked with a team of extremely smart women from around the Arab world. They sort of helped with Aisha!

Who was your favorite character and why?

Well, Gerald Lynch goes on to become the main character in Beirut, which certainly speaks to the fact he had most room to develop into a bigger character. But I think we all agree on Aisha – she’s the girl everyone falls in love with, and that’s intentional on my part. Her story and her life are what Olives really celebrates. I’m also quite fond of Mariam, Aisha’s grandmother. She’s not got a big role, but I think you end up admiring her.

I realize that ‘Olives’ is a work of fiction but I am curious about Gerald Lynch, the British Intelligence agent.  Is it common for British Intelligence to coerce their citizens abroad to cooperate or was this part of the fictional story?

I think any intelligence service confronted with a need for information and a potential source of that information will do anything it can to obtain it. Lynch has a British journalist positioned nicely within the Ministry and close to Daoud Dajani and he takes the opportunity presented to him. He could have asked nicely, but Paul had already made it clear he wasn’t really the co-operating type…

Was it easy to get the background information with the emotions you captured in your book about the situation between Israel and Palestine?

I’ve spent a lot of time in Jordan over the years and have long worked with a team of people from around the Arab World, many of whom have become friends, so you end up sort of living with people’s attitudes and reactions. One of the challenges, which I hope I’ve met, in writing Olives was to keep it balanced and part of Paul’s role in the book is not to ‘buy’ the emotional reactions of the Arabs to the history and conflict. Paul is influenced by the people around him, though, and sort of ‘goes local’ through the course of events.

Do you see ‘Olives’ more as a romance novel or a political novel?  Please explain your answer.

That’s a hard one! I think part of the reason agents didn’t take to it is the book doesn’t really sit neatly in a pigeonhole – it’s part romance, part thriller, part political. I think we could perhaps say it’s a romance that makes a political point. How’s that?

What audience do you envision ‘Olives’ appealing to?  Why?

It was written for a British audience, with the intention of getting people to look beyond the broad brush media image of a very black and white situation and perhaps take some time to consider the nuances. I’ve always been struck that the French resistance were freedom fighters but the Iraqis were insurgents and the Palestinians are terrorists. So Olives set out to explore that theme – Paul is a news addict who finds himself pulled into the very headlines he watches every day as their news becomes his reality.

Something that has surprised me deeply is how strongly Arab readers have reacted to the book. I had actually expected to lose Arab friends over it, yet instead I have found people relate to it very strongly indeed. So I now think it probably has a ready readership among expatriate Arabs around the world. What’s perhaps interesting is that reaching such a scattered global audience would have been virtually impossible with ‘traditional’ publishing but is very easy indeed with today’s digital publishing – both with e-books and printed books.

Is ‘Olives’ available in any other languages besides English?

No, although I would love to see it in Arabic. One publisher is reading it right now with a view to taking it on as a translation project, so I have my fingers crossed.

Do you have another book in the works?  If so, please share the gist of what is about.  Does it feature any of the same characters from ‘Olives?’

Two, in fact. Beirut is a finished work, which I think may see the light of day this September. The main character in Beirut is Gerald Lynch, although Paul Stokes does make a brief cameo appearance at the beginning. I’m currently working on a third novel, roughly contiguous with Beirut and Olives, called Hartmoor. And Gerald Lynch shouldered his way into that book, too. Beirut is much a ‘harder’ action/spy thriller than Olives, while Hartmoor has perhaps a little more of the gentler spirit of Olives. As Lynch would say, Beirut is mad altogether.

How easy is it for you to sit and develop a story?

They keep popping up in my head. It’s amazing, it’s like an illness. Some of them are duffers, others just bob about in there and pop up every now and then with an extra bit added or another approach. These are the ones that won’t go away and so one day will turn into a book, or perhaps a short story. The odd thing is I’ve been so busy writing books, I haven’t had time for short stories!

What advice would you give to budding authors?  How should they start?

With a good sharp pencil and a piece of paper! It’s important to have an audience and genre in mind before you start, because that’s the thing publishers look for when you’re finished – I’ve made life a lot harder for myself with Olives simply because it doesn’t sit easily in a particular genre. Of course, you can always say ‘to hell with the rule book’ and self publish, which is what I’ve done. If you do that straight away, you’ll bypass the ten years I took to learn that lesson! Once you’re clear on what type of book interests you, use the pencil and paper to sketch out the plot of your book and the characters.

I actually wrote a blog post about this, it’s here:

http://fakeplasticsouks.blogspot.com/2012/01/how-to-write-book.html

Do you think writing fiction or non-fiction is easier?  Why?

They both have their quirks – and both can demand insane amounts of research. I think they’re both hard to do well and easy to do badly, but I think badly written fiction is easier to spot and more distracting for the reader. I think (and hope I achieve!) the reader should forget the writer is there and never be reminded of that third party intrusion into the story.

How has the publication of ‘Olives’ changed your life?

It’s certainly made me busy – I hadn’t realized quite how much hard work self publishing would be, and yet every step of the way has been paved with good wishes, smiles and kindness from people. After years of plugging away and slamming my head against the brick wall of publishing, to actually be meeting people who’ve read my work and enjoyed it, to whom it matters and from whom it provokes a strong emotional response, is sheer bliss.

Where can American Bedu readers purchase their own copy of ‘Olives’ or any other books from you?

You can go to www.olivesthebook.com where there are links to buy the book or you can get it from Amazon in the US as a print or Kindle book, Amazon UK, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, iBooks and other online outlets. If you’re in the UAE you can buy it from all good bookshops and soon that’ll be the case in Lebanon too.

US Kindle: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0065HHZG4

Print edition: www.amazon.com/Olives-Alexander-McNabb/dp/1466465719/

UK Kindle: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Olives-ebook/dp/B0065HHZG4

B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/olives-alexander-mcnabb/1107712272

Kobo: http://www.kobobooks.com/ebook/Olives/book-vLzIy_-hYEWul5zZilVcxQ/page1.html

Are there any additional comments you’d like to add?

I think that’s pretty much covered it! Just a quick thank you for the opportunity to chat and for taking such an interest in Olives!

Thank you Alexander for this interview and sharing with American Bedu readers.

When a couple is newly married there is a period of discovery and exploration.  This is especially true in Saudi Arabia when a couple may have had an arranged marriage and therefore not have had much time prior to the marriage to get to know one another.

The old quote that ‘you don’t know somebody until you live with them’ is quite true!  It’s not a surprise that every individual has multiple faces such as the face that is put on in public, the private face and the natural face that is the essence of the individual.

Newlyweds want to make the best impression on each other and will put on their best face.  However there are some common pitfalls that can cause dissent between couples.

This link identifies ten of the most common issues that can cause dissent between a couple.   Personally, Abdullah and I usually had different views on numbers 1 and 3 in the list!  How about you?

An American Bedu reader posed a very good question.  This reader wanted to know what do Saudi families do for entertainment when so many activities are segregated.

Can families swim together in Saudi Arabia?  The answer is yes, they can.  However the family will enjoy swimming together as a family at a private pool.  If a family does not own a home which has a swimming pool, they have the option to rent an estraha (farm) where they have privacy and can enjoy themselves.  In addition to swimming, families can play soccer, volleyball, badmitton and have wonderful bbq’s at the estraha.  Since the estraha is behind high walls women can go uncovered and enjoy the mixed time with family.

  For families who live in the coastal cities of Jeddah or Damman they can enjoy jaunts out on the sea.  Women generally do enter and exit the boat wearing an abaya and maybe covering her hair.  However once away from the shore she is free to remove her abaya and any head coverings if she chooses.  The family may simply enjoy a leisurely boat ride and/or fishing.

There are some areas of Saudi Arabia which are ideal for hiking or have nature trails.  Families can and do enjoy these pastimes together.  However if there is a likelihood of encountering others, the Saudi women would likely remain covered.

Geo-tracking or geo-caching is a popular activity families enjoy in Saudi Arabia.  The geocaching web site provides coordinates of caches one can explore and discover in the Kingdom.  This is an excellent outing for families and teaches children navigational skills too.

Spelunking, otherwise known as exploring caves  is yet another activity that Saudi families can enjoy.  But if others are at the cave sites, Saudi women will likely remain in their abayas in spite of an uneven terrain. 

Four Wheeling and riding or driving an SUV over the sand dunes is probably one of the most popular activities of Saudi families.  My Saudi family and I enjoyed these activities numerous times!  If one is in a relatively private area of the desert it is not unusual for the women to drive the SUV across and up and down the rolling dunes.

Outside of Riyadh is a facility where Saudis can go and learn to fly small aircraft or skydive.  This facility is open to Saudi families and men and women alike can participate.

Activities that one is unlikely to see in Saudi, and in particular as a participating Saudi family, is bicycling or inline skating.  The terrain (and culture) of Saudi is not set up for such activities.

During the 2011 holiday season I was very fortunate to receive several books from authors to read and review.  All the books are either about Saudi Arabia or the region.

The first book which I have finished reading is ‘Olives’  by Alexander McNabb.  Olives is described as a violent romance and takes place in Jordan.  It is a story of fiction but gives insights to the undercurrents which take place in the region and particularly between Israel and Palestine.

The book features British journalist Paul Stokes who arrives in Jordan to work on a contract with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Jordanian national of Palestinian origins, Aisha Dajani.

Paul and Aisha work together at the Ministry and a romance blossoms between the two of them.  However Paul is informed by British Intelligence agent, Gerald Lynch, that Aisha and her family may not be all that they seem.

Paul is coerced by Lynch to spy on the Dajani family.  He is directed to gain information on Aisha’s brother, Daoud, who heads up a consortium which is bidding on a contract on how to replenish and save dwindling water resources as Jordan and Palestine face drought.  However, Daoud’s solution to this crisis is at a loss to the Israelis.

Olives takes one into the life of the Dajani’s and the history of their family, including how they became displaced from their native Palestine.  The book describes vivid details on the politics and emotions which reign between Israel and Palestine.

The book is set against a backdrop of a romance, which is violent at times, political intrigue, customs of the Middle East and espionage.

If you would like to know more about Olives, visit the website:

www.olivesthebook.com

Olives is an American Bedu recommended read.

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I discovered this video while browsing youtube.  Although it is more than a year old at this time, it still gives a good perspective on the lives and challenges of Saudi women from different social classes in the Kingdom.

I personally do not agree with some of the opening comments by the reporter but I found the series of interviews with Saudi women and men to be enlightening.