Rajaa Alsanea - Girls of Riyadh

Why had none of her relatives, male or female, gotten involved in a political cause, supporting it with their very souls as had been the case when Ghazi and Turki were young? Why was it that young people these days had no interest in foreign politics unless it was the scandalous behavior of Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky? Or, in domestic politics, only the flagrant corruption at the Saudi Telecom Company? It wasn’t just her, Sadeem—all of her classmates and everyone at their age were on the margins when it came to political life. They had no role, no importance. If only she understood politics! If only she had a particular cause to defend or one to oppose! Then she would have something to keep her occupied and to turn her away from thinking about Waleed the bast…!

11.

To: seerehwenfadha7et@yahoogroups.com

From: “seerehwenfadha7et”

Date: April 23, 2004

Subject: Um Nuwayyir’s Classification of Human Populations

There is no God but Allah, the Mighty and the Clement One. There is no God but Allah, Lord of the Great Throne. There is no God but Allah, Lord of the Heavens and Lord of the Earth and Lord of the Throne most gracious. Everliving, Everlasting, there is no God but You; and in Your mercy we seek succor. —Prayer to release worry, trouble and grief

Over the past two weeks, I have read what has been said about me in some of the famous Saudi Internet forums. Some of the talk was as soft as the granules in my daily facial soap but some of it was as rough as the black stone I use on my perennially problem knees. As I followed these discussions swirling like a sandstorm around me , I felt as though I were watching a bullfight—that is, two bulls fighting. Can any of you out there believe that someone would call for my blood? Well, fine, that’s enough to deal with, but then there is the one who claims to be my sister, which is a whole other deal! She claims to have observed that, every Friday, starting early in the morning, her sister secludes herself in her room, in front of her computer screen. One time when this sister of hers was out of the way, the “sister” who is writing says she searched through her sister’s files for evidence that would confirm her suspicions. And, listen to this! She stumbled across all thirty e-mails. And she is ready to sell them to the highest bidder!

After reading Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Essentials of Psychoanalysis, Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, On Narcissism and Totem and Taboo, Sadeem gradually realized that Freud, with all his totems, tomatoes, cucumbers and green salad vegetables, was not going to be much help in solving her problem! Sigmund was not about to yield an explanation of why Waleed had left her.

Sadeem had stumbled across two of Freud’s works, translated, in the Jarir Bookstore in Riyadh. The rest she had asked a university friend to bring her from Lebanon before her own departure for London.

She did not find Sigmund Freud’s thought nearly as convincing—at least, not in explaining Waleed’s behavior—as she had found Um Nuwayyir’s classification of human groups. In a happier time, with Sadeem as her audience, Um Nuwayyir had explained her own analysis of men and women in the Gulf states. It was a complicated system of groups and subgroups that covered just about every personality type, and Sadeem had taken notes so she could remember it all.

Um Nuwayyir classified people of the Gulf and Arabs in general based on a number of factors, including strength of personality, self-confidence, good looks and so forth. These general categories applied to both men and women and were then further subdivided.

For example, “strength of personality” is subdivided into two groups: the strong and the weak. In general the strong usually show a lot of motivation for economic self-improvement. These people watch the examples of success they see around them and seize their opportunity to benefit. The weak, led-by-the-nose types lack initiative and only get off their butts when their family or their entire environment gets an upward kick. But these groups are also subdivided as follows:

1. The Strong

A.The logical type who respects the views of everyone he (or she) encounters even when he has a different point of view.

B.The person who has to have his own way and doesn’t care about the views of others.

2. The Weak

A.The person whose family can easily bend him (or her) one way or the other. This person is incapable of acting independently because, as Um Nuwayyir points out, “Without his family he isn’t worth a penny.”

B.The person who is easily swayed by his friends and can’t stop swaying. This case is even worse than the first one because this person is convinced that his family is against him and only trusts his friends, who, in general, are likely to be in even worse shape than he is.

Um Nuwayyir worked out the same kind of analysis under the heading of “self confidence.” Here also there are two main groups, the secure and the insecure, and, of course, each group is divided by Um Nuwayyir into subgroups as follows:

1. The Secure

A.The sensible type. People belonging to this group are at peace with themselves, displaying a clear degree of confidence that makes everyone respect them and even hold them in awe. But at the same time, they maintain the love and affection of others due to their modesty and genuine accomplishment.

B.The Overconfident

This includes people who really don’t have anything to be proud of. They have an excess of self-confidence, though they lack any reason for it; no great achievements or outstanding personality or even appealing looks. This type is abominable and, unfortunately, more common than the first one. But both A and B together are less common than the second main group:

2. The Insecure

A.Those who claim to be secure. They affect a self-confident pose that isn’t matched by any sincere belief on their part. They take every word said to them with extraordinary sensitivity and reply with great aggressiveness, shielding their failures with their loud personalities. They make mountains out of molehills, or, as we say, “a dome out of a seed.”

B.Those who are really insecure. People in this group don’t act or claim to be something they’re not. It’s apparent from the first that they are pitiful and they make you feel sorry for them. Sometimes they have an obvious physical problem that lowers their self-esteem, like obesity, short height or even a big nose. Or it could be a social problem like poverty or even a mental one like stupidity. Or sometimes it could be a hidden problem that no one else is aware of, like a broken heart from a lost love that never healed.

Sadeem’s favorite classification was that of “religious types before and after marriage,” and this was the only one that strictly separated men and women. There were three categories: The extremely religious type, the rational moderate religious type and the wild type, who mostly ignored the strictures of their religion. The men and women are mirror images of each other. Let’s look at the men first:

1. The Extremely Religious Type

A.He was once wild but he turns religious.

B.He fears wildness so he becomes religious.

Both fear they will degenerate morally after marriage, so they often end up in polygamous marriages, preferring their wives to be at least as zealous as they are.