Enad al-Muteiri, left, and his friend Bandar al-Bedeiry in the desert on the outskirts of Riyadh

Young Saudis on Love and Marriage

By Michael Slackman
The New York Times, May 12, 2008

Edited by Andy Ross

What stands out in dozens of interviews with young men and women here in Saudi Arabia is how completely they have accepted the religious and cultural demands of the Muslim world's most conservative society. They may chafe against the rules, even at times try to evade them, but they can be merciless in their condemnation of those who flout them too brazenly.

Saudi Arabia's strict interpretation of Islam, largely uncontested at home by the next generation and spread abroad by Saudi money in a time of religious revival, is likely to shape how many Muslims around the world will live their faith. Young men are taught that they are the guardians of the family's reputation, expected to shield their female relatives from shame and avoid dishonoring their families by their own behavior.

Nader al-Mutairi is engaged to his cousin Enad al-Mutairi's 17-year-old sister, Sarah.

"One of the most important Arab traditions is honor," Enad said. "If my sister goes in the street and someone assaults her, she won't be able to protect herself. The nature of men is that men are more rational. Women are not rational. With one or two or three words, a man can get what he wants from a woman. If I call someone and a girl answers, I have to apologize. It's a huge deal. It is a violation of the house."

Enad is the alpha male, a 20-year-old police officer with an explosive temper and a fondness for teasing. Nader, 22, is soft-spoken, with a gentle smile and an inclination to follow rather than lead.

Enad and Nader are lifelong friends and confidants. They are among several dozen Mutairi cousins who since childhood have spent virtually all their free time together. That is often the case in Saudi Arabia, where families are frequently large and insular.

They are average young Saudi men, residents of the nation's conservative heartland, Riyadh. It is a flat, clean city of five million people that gleams with oil wealth. It offers young men very little in the way of entertainment, with no movie theaters and few sports facilities. If they are unmarried, they cannot even enter the malls where women shop.

Nader sank deep into a cushioned chair in a hotel cafe, sipping fresh orange juice, fiddling with his cellphone. Nader's cellphone is filled with pictures of pretty women taken from the Internet, tight face shots of singers and actresses.

"I'm very romantic," Nader said. "I don't like action movies. I like romance. Romance is love."

Three days later, in a nearby restaurant, Nader and Enad were concentrating on eating with utensils, feeling a bit awkward since they normally eat with their right hands.

Suddenly, the young men stopped focusing on their food. A woman had entered the restaurant, alone. She was completely draped in a black abaya, her face covered by a black veil, her hair and ears covered by a black cloth pulled tight.

"Look at the batman," Nader said derisively, snickering.

Enad pretended to toss his burning cigarette at the woman, who by now had been seated at a table. The glaring young men unnerved her, as though her parents had caught her doing something wrong.

"She is alone, without a man," Enad said, explaining why they were disgusted, not just with her, but with her male relatives, too, wherever they were.

When a man joined her at the table — someone they assumed was her husband — she removed her face veil, which fueled Enad and Nader's hostility. They continued to make mocking hand gestures and comments until the couple changed tables. Even then, the woman was so flustered she held the cloth self-consciously over her face throughout her meal.

"Thank God our women are at home," Enad said.

Nader and Enad pray five times a day, often stopping whatever they are doing to traipse off with their cousins to the nearest mosque.

Prayer is mandatory in the kingdom, and the religious police force all shops to shut during prayer times. But it is also casual, as routine for Nader and Enad as taking a coffee break.

To Nader and Enad, prayer is essential. In Enad's view, jihad is, too, not the more moderate approach that emphasizes doing good deeds, but the idea of picking up a weapon and fighting in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

"Jihad is not a crime; it is a duty," Enad said. "If someone comes into your house, will you stand there or will you fight them? Arab or Muslim lands are like one house."

The concept is so embedded in their psyches that they do not see any conflict between their belief in armed jihad and their work as security agents of the state. As a police officer, Enad helps conduct raids on suspected terrorist hideouts. Nader works in the military as a communications officer.

Each earns about 4,000 riyals a month, not nearly enough to become independent from their parents. But fathers are expected to provide for even their grown children, to ensure that they have a place to live and the means to get married. To many parents, providing money is seen as more central to their duty — their honor — than ensuring that their children get an education.

Each young man has the requisite mustache and goatee, and most of the time dresses in a traditional robe. But on weekends, they opt for the wild and crazy guy look, often wearing running pants, tight short-sleeved shirts, bright colors, stripes and plaids together, lots of Velcro and elastic on their shoes.

There are eight other children in the house where Enad lives with his father, his mother and his father's second wife. The apartment has little furniture, with nothing on the walls. The men and boys gather in a living room, sitting on soiled carpeting, watching a television. The women have a similar living room behind closed doors.

Enad and Nader were always close, but their relationship changed when Nader and Sarah became engaged. Enad's father agreed to let Nader marry one of his four daughters. Nader picked Sarah, he said, because he saw her face when she was a child and recalled that she was pretty.

They quickly signed a wedding contract, making them legally married, but by tradition they do not consider themselves so until the wedding party, set for this spring. During the intervening months, they are not allowed to see each other or spend any time together.

Nader said he expected to see his new wife for the first time after their wedding ceremony — which would also be segregated by sex — when they are photographed as husband and wife.

Soon his cellphone beeped, signaling a text message. Nader blushed and turned slightly away to read the message, which came from "My Love." He sneaks secret phone calls and messages with Sarah. When she calls, or writes a message, his phone flashes "My Love" over two interlocked red hearts. "I have a connection," he said, quietly, as he read, explaining how Sarah manages to communicate with him.

His connection is Enad, who secretly slipped Sarah a cellphone that Nader had bought for her. These conversations are taboo and could cause a dispute between two families.

Enad teases Nader, saying, "In a year you will find my sister with a mustache and him in the kitchen."

"Not true," Nader said, mustering as much defiance as he could. "I am a man."

Nader grew up in Riyadh, and his parents, like Enad's, are first cousins. Enad says his way of thinking was forged in the village of Najkh, 350 miles west of Riyadh, where he lived until he was 14 with his grandfather.

When he can, he has a cousin drive him to his grandfather's home, a one-story cement box in the desert, four miles from the nearest house. Inside there is no furniture, just a few cushions on the floor and a prayer rug. Enad and his cousins absentmindedly toss trash out the kitchen window, and around the yard. The "houseboy," a man named Nasreddin from India, cleans up after them.

Enad is quiet and hides his cigarettes when his grandfather comes through. He would never tell his father or grandfather that he smokes. Enad remains stone-faced when a cousin mentions that another of his cousins, a woman named Al Atti, 22, is interested in him. Another cousin, Raed, had asked Al Atti to marry him, and she refused.

Al Atti had let her sisters know that she liked Enad, but made it clear that she could never admit that publicly. So she asked a sister to spread the word from cousin to cousin, and ultimately to Enad. "It's forbidden to announce your love. It is impossible," she said.

Word finally reached Enad, who tried to stay cool but was clearly interested, and flattered. At that point Enad was himself whispering about Al Atti, trying to figure out a way to communicate with her without actually talking to her himself. He asked a female visitor to arrange a call, and then pass along a message of interest.

Enad said it was never his idea to pursue her, but that a man — a real man — could not reject a woman who wanted him. To get his cousin Raed out of the picture, he suggested that Al Atti's brother take Raed to hear Al Atti's refusal in person, at her house.

"From behind a wall," Enad said.
 

An Outrage Too Far

By Afif Sarhan in Basra and Caroline Davies
The Observer, May 11, 2008

Edited by Andy Ross

For Abdel-Qader Ali there is only one regret: that he did not kill his daughter at birth. "If I had realised then what she would become, I would have killed her the instant her mother delivered her," he said with no trace of remorse.

Two weeks after The Observer revealed the shocking story of Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, murdered because of her infatuation with a British solider in Basra, southern Iraq, her father is defiant. Sitting in the front garden of his well-kept home in the city's Al-Fursi district, he remains a free man, despite having stamped on, suffocated and then stabbed his student daughter to death.

Abdel-Qader, 46, a government employee, was initially arrested but released after two hours. Astonishingly, he said, police congratulated him on what he had done. "They are men and know what honour is," he said.

Rand, who was studying English at Basra University, was deemed to have brought shame on her family after becoming infatuated with a British soldier, 22, known only as Paul.

She died a virgin, according to her closest friend Zeinab. Indeed, her 'relationship' with Paul, which began when she worked as a volunteer helping displaced families and he was distributing water, appears to have consisted of snatched conversations over less than four months. But the young, impressionable Rand fell in love with him, confiding her feelings and daydreams to Zeinab, 19.

It was her first youthful infatuation and it would be her last. She died on 16 March after her father discovered she had been seen in public talking to Paul, considered to be the enemy, the invader and a Christian. Though her horrified mother, Leila Hussein, called Rand's two brothers, Hassan, 23, and Haydar, 21, to restrain Abdel-Qader as he choked her with his foot on her throat, they joined in. Her shrouded corpse was then tossed into a makeshift grave without ceremony as her uncles spat on it in disgust.

"Death was the least she deserved," said Abdel-Qader. "I don't regret it. I had the support of all my friends who are fathers, like me, and know what she did was unacceptable to any Muslim that honours his religion."
 

AR  I remember these attitudes all too vividly from teaching Arab students in London in the years 1980-87.