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FORMATIVE YEARS CHAPTER 2       Part Two  

FORMATIVE YEARS CHAPTER 2 Part Two

MY MIDDLE EAST YEARS

When I arrived in country, I could not believe the heat, dust, and sand! I was a full fledged geologist and my job, among other duties, was to try to find new oil deposits. The first year was not so bad. I worked twelve to sixteen hours a day. That left little time for anything but sleep. Seven months of this rigid routine was broken by a three day R & R flight to Jerusalem where a brothel provided significant relief to the sexual tension that had built up in me to that point. Then I was back to the old grind and the denial of nearly all pleasure.

That was a relatively good thing because this was a Muslim country, a very conservative brand of Muslim country, where no booze was allowed; the women were off limits, even looking at them could cause no end of trouble; no smoking, in public at least, was allowed; no gambling was allowed; and in general, you name it and it was not allowed. Work and sleep is all there was, for a while.

That is, until I met "HER" again, shortly after the start of my second year in country. "HER" this time was a Muslim woman with the name, Ujhi. UJHI! Ah, what memories that name brings back!

Soon after our relationship began, she confirmed my suspicion that she was one of the "modern" Muslim women chafing under and seeking to rebel against, the gender restrictions of the literal and conservative interpretation of the Koran by her country's government.

The Muslim culture has an ironic situation: the culture not only portrays women as sexually desirous, but it sees them as more passionate than men. In fact, Muslims generally believe female desire to be so much greater than the male equivalent that the woman is viewed as the hunter and the man as her passive victim. Though believers feel little distress about sex acts as such, they are obsessed with the dangers posed by woman, the sexual predator, and thus representing the forces of unreason and disorder.

A woman's rampant desires and irresistible attractiveness gives her a power over men that even rival God's (Allah's). SHE MUST BE CONTAINED, for HER UNBRIDLED SEXUALTIY POSES A DIRECT DANGER TO THE SOCIAL ORDER! Symbolic of this, the Arab word Fitna means both civil disorder and beautiful woman. It is this understanding that has determined the place of women in traditional Muslim life.

Thus the entire Muslim social structure can be understood as the containment female sexuality. The culture goes to great lengths to separate the sexes and reduce contact between them. This explains such customs as the covering of women's faces and even their entire body, head to toe and the separation of women's residential quarters, or harem, from that of the men.

Many other institutions serve to reduce female power over men, such as her need for a male's permission to travel, work, marry, or divorce. Women also may not appear in public unveiled or without a family male escort, be it father, uncle, or brother.

The Muslim cultural anxiety persisted that women would try to break loose of their restrictions and bring perdition to the community. This anxiety and fear has only skyrocketed because of increasing contact with western culture as it spread through the Muslim world.

This is where I come into the picture. If contact between unmarried or even married Muslim women and men is extremely difficult, it is a near impossible occurrence between Muslim women and western men. Ninety-nine point nine per cent impossible but--it can happen.

Ujhi and I managed. That we managed was due mostly to her sympathetic mother and a sister or two. Those women were liberal minded, but not to the extent of such open rebellion as Ujhi. However, their empathy with Ujhi's chafing and rebellious nature was such that they would go so far as to surreptitiously aid and abet her in her rebellion. They made it possible for us to meet, albeit, clandestinely.

Ujhi and I first met on the street in an accident. I came down a stairs and through an open archway into the street in a hurry and, I literally knocked her off her feet, all a tangle in her voluminous veils and robe. I was sufficiently knowledgeable enough in the Muslim culture at that point to know that I needed to address the male escort, not the female and to stay strictly hands off her. Let the escort help her up. After he had done so, I profusely and unctuously apologized to him for the accident. He accepted my apology we shook hands, and went our separate ways.

Ujhi must have liked what she saw. How she found me, she never said, but a day later, I found a note for me in my mail box at my office at the work compound for the westerners. The note told me to follow its directions if I wanted to meet the girl I knocked off her feet.

That gave me pause. I knew that the conservative, literal interpretation of Muslim and Korari law stated the transgression of the cultural restrictions on women, especially fraternization with or worse, conjugal relations with westerners was--death by stoning or beheading. And that could also, and usually did, include the male offender, be he Muslim or not! Did I really want to literally risk my neck, or more to the point, my head, over this?

YES. I was game.

Following the directions, I found myself, late in a dark and moonless evening, at an outside doorway in a high wall. The door was locked. I knocked with the prescribed signal and heard a soft click in response. The door opened a crack and a veiled face peered at me and then opened the door farther and gestured for me to enter.

I found myself in a very dimly lit, exquisite, open air garden of hedges and flower beds, laid out in elegant geometric designs that must have been dazzling in the noon day sun. The veiled apparition led me to a secluded and dark corner where another veiled figure stood, waiting.

The waiting figure said, "I am Ujhi. Your escort is my sister Fatima. Please, let us sit here on the benches."

By nutbuster
Written by nutbuster (D C)
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