Dubai

Ejo #23 – Arranged Marriages in Dubai; Or How I Tried To Find Leewin A Suitable Wife

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Allow me to introduce you to Leewin Nainan, another colleague of mine.  His family is from Kerala, India and today he is turning 31 years old.  Leewin is funny, intelligent, sensitive, thoughtful, easy-going, handsome and nice to his mother.  He’s interesting, sporty and sociable.  He’s also really good at his job (which is to provide assistance and support to the air traffic controllers at Al Maktoum International Airport).  Working with him is a real pleasure as he’s very switched on – which makes my job a lot easier.  Leewin (pronounced LEE-ven) is currently single and well, to be honest, he’s quite a catch!

 

 

Does what I’ve written so far sound like a single’s ad?  Well, it kind of is.  You see, Leewin is looking for a wife.  Hang on, that’s not quite right.  It’s Leewin’s family that are looking for a wife for him.  Yep, Leewin is in the market for an arranged marriage.

 

Now, before I go on, I want to emphasise that not all marriages arranged by family are for the greater good.  Often, a young bride is betrothed against her will to a man as payment or reward or some other, less than savoury, reason.  I think everyone would agree that this is wrong.  But it would also be wrong to condemn arranged marriages on the basis of these incidents.  They are not the same thing and it’s not what I’m discussing here.

 

OK, so let me tell you a bit more about Leewin.  He was born and raised in Dubai to Indian parents.  Mum, Saramma, was a nurse.  Dad, Nainan, worked for the Department of Civil Aviation (DCA).  He has one brother and one sister, both older.  After graduating from high school, Leewin enrolled in a Bachelor of Commerce degree at a local university.  Sadly, in 1999, just six months into Leewin’s degree his father passed away and it was left to Leewin to support the family, meaning that he had to drop out of school (it was decided that it would make more sense for his older brother, who was in his final year of university, to finish his degree).  Leewin was able to get a job with DCA through his Dad’s connections and over the years he has gained experience in several different areas within the department.  His current role as an air traffic control assistant rounds off this experience, putting him in the unique position of having a broad overview of the entire system.  Coupled with his intelligence and ambition, I have no doubt that he’ll be very successful.

 

The pressure to get married started when Leewin was 25 years old.  But at that stage it was just gentle, nudging encouragement.  After all, his older brother had just married so there was no real rush.  Family members were just interested to know when he too would start looking for a wife.  Leewin, however, was in the first flush of romance with a girl he’d been friends with for a few years.  He was more interested in exploring that relationship than thinking about getting married.  Unfortunately though, it was doomed from the beginning as Leewin is Christian and his girlfriend was Muslim.  Neither of their families approved of the relationship because of their different religious beliefs.

Naturally, the topic of marriage was raised during the three years they were together, however in the end the pressure exerted by their families became too great and they broke up.  He was not welcome at her house, and if she wanted to spend time with him she had to lie to her family about where she was.  Leewin and his girlfriend loved each other but the strain just got too much and they decided to call it quits.  He’s been single for the last two years.

 

Over the years, the pressure to get married has intensified.  When Leewin turned 30 however, it escalated to the point where he was no longer being asked to get married, but being told.  He’s not too happy about that, but he is a good son and feels obligated to fulfil the wishes of his mother and their extended family.  If he refuses he risks being disowned and outcast, bringing shame on his mother.  It’d be considered a selfish act and the entire clan would be disappointed and humiliated.  So, he has agreed to go along with it.  His brother, who also now lives in Dubai, immediately sprang into action and registered Leewin to a number of matrimonial websites (check out www.m4marry.com to get an idea), the marriage equivalent of “online dating”.  The same premise applies.  You advertise yourself – your age, height, build, education, religion, profession, hobbies and interests.  And you can also specify what you are looking for in a prospective partner.  The only difference is that the “first date” does not involve the guy and girl meeting over coffee, or a candlelit dinner.  Instead, they meet accompanied by both families.  And as opposed to the Western version, talking about marriage and babies on a first date is NOT considered a social faux pas.  It is, in fact, encouraged.

 

So, whilst Leewin has acquiesced to his family’s demands that he actively search for a wife, he is steadfast in his determination that he do it his way.  He was not raised in the small town of Pathanapuram, Kerala with the attendant small town mentality.  He’s big-city, born and bred, and he’s been exposed to big city ideas, influenced by the modern, Western world.  So the woman he weds must also have the same liberal viewpoint (otherwise it couldn’t work, right?).  He’s insistent that the first meeting between him and the girl be arranged by the two of them, without any interference from her family.  Also, he’d like to meet the girl without their entourages, over a coffee or perhaps lunch.  This, to most people I know, seems perfectly reasonable.  However, the culture that Leewin is from deems it unacceptable.

 

Leewin has kindly shown me the profiles of a couple of the girls that have taken his fancy on the m4marry.com website.  But so far, he hasn’t had much luck.  When (as is customary) his brother made the initial, introductory phone call to the parents of one of the girls, they rejected his request for Leewin to contact her directly.  As far as Leewin is concerned, that’s instant disqualification.  He doesn’t want to marry into a family so restrictive.  His brother approached the family of another girl who’d caught Leewin’s eye but they rejected him because, even though he is Christian, he is not a “born again” Christian.  Huh?  It seems that the girls out there (or, more likely, their parents) are extraordinarily picky and demanding.  Fair enough – but sometimes their demands are unreasonable.  Almost all require that the future groom be university educated with the majority insisting on at least a Masters.  That’s fine.  But when they demand that the guy’s parents also be educated to this level, it’s not only silly but eliminates a lot of hopefuls (Leewin being one of them).  The irony is that a great many of these “desirably educated” men will end up as bank clerks, while Leewin (who only has a high school diploma) will almost certainly be successful at whatever he puts his mind to.  Ultimately though, he’s not bothered by the extreme conditional requirements as it simply buys him more time as a free man.

 

Leewin is not alone in his enforced quest to find a wife.  All his friends around his age are also now being “persuaded” to marry.  One friend recently went back home to Kerala to meet a girl that his parents had lined up.  After the meeting he told his family he’d need time to think about it but they told him that the girl’s parents had given him only two days to decide.  When those two days were over, his parents asked him again what he thought of her and he told them that she seemed nice.  Unbeknownst to him they took this to mean that he approved and they started proceedings for the marriage to go ahead.  By the time he found out, it was too late to back out.  The engagement ceremony is scheduled for this month and he is getting married in January.  He hopes that his quickly formed assessment of his future wife is accurate.  Too bad if it’s not.  (Incidentally, he found out afterwards that the reason her family had wanted an answer so quickly was that if he hadn’t been interested, they had another guy waiting in the sidelines.  If you think the Western dating scene is a meat market, you ain’t seen nothing!)

 

At a recent gathering of people he’s known since he was a child, Leewin was told by one older gentleman that if he wanted to attract a wife he would have to cut his hair (which he’s actually growing long).  His reply of “I don’t want to marry any of your daughters, so what do you care?” didn’t go down too well.  But the incident demonstrates that if his own people are so willing to judge him on the way he looks, any young woman’s family are likely to do the same.  If they can’t get past the long hair, they’ll never find out about his character, which is above reproach.  And unfortunately, the arranged marriage process allows for only a perfunctory (and thus shallow) examination of a potential partner’s attributes.  Looks, education and interests are usually considered just a starting point where I come from.  It’s then normal to take the time to actually learn more about that person before committing to marrying them.  But in Leewin’s world, it is these characteristics which decide whether a marriage will go ahead or not.  Learning about your partner occurs after the wedding.

 

Is there any way of saying which is the better method for forming a union between two people?  It depends on your definition of a successful marriage.  If it is to join two families together, and to further develop and strengthen that coupling by having children, then arranged marriages probably make a lot of sense – you aren’t just marrying one person but their entire family.  If, however, your notion of a successful marriage is to find a soul mate, someone to share the rest of your life with and (if you so choose) to make your own family with, then the very idea of someone picking your partner for you is abhorrent.  In the West it is seen as a freedom and a right to choose for yourself.

 

And that, fundamentally, is where the two schools diverge.  In Leewin’s world, marriage is not a selfish endeavor where you get to select someone because you are attracted to them (the way they look or the kind of person that they are).  It is a pursuit for the greater good of the entire family (taking into consideration, of course, that if you have common interests and backgrounds you will, over time and with effort (yes, effort!), come to love each other).  We all know that romantic love does not last.  The honeymoon period is just that, a period.  Even the most in-love couple in the world will need to compromise and work at the relationship in order to make a marriage last the distance.  Euphoria and lust are pleasant but they aren’t enough.

 

What the arranged marriage does is remove the trippy flirtation of those initial, heady emotions.  When they’re taken out of the equation, both types of marriages are left with the same amount of work to succeed.  But in the West, we are raised to crave those emotions and to believe that they are in fact what constitutes love.   When it fades, we sometimes believe that the love has also faded, and the union is doomed.  And whilst an arranged marriage has no guarantee of success, the incidence of divorce is significantly lower than the 30-40% divorce rate in countries such as USA, UK, Europe and Australia.

 

I have divided Leewin and myself into the very different categories of East and West but it’s not entirely accurate to do so.  Just one generation ago, in Greece, my Mum was faced with the prospect of an arranged marriage.  Let me tell you her story.  My mother comes from a very poor family that lived in a small village in Greece.  As a young girl her family couldn’t afford to send her to school so she worked as a shepherdess, tending the family’s sheep.  From the time she was about fifteen, her father would bring men home to look her over as a prospective wife.  At first she didn’t realise that was what was happening, but soon her mother started asking her what she thought of the men.  My Mum retorted that she thought nothing of them – they were old.  And ugly to boot!

 

By the time she was sixteen though, her parents were desperate to marry her off as young as possible because they didn’t have the money for a dowry (which it was necessary for the bride’s family to provide to the groom’s).  My Mum would pretend to forget that a man had been scheduled to visit, and stay at her cousin’s house as late as possible chatting over whatever it was sixteen year olds chatted about back then.

 

When my mother turned seventeen her father told her, in no uncertain terms, that she must accept the marriage proposal offered from an older business man who was involved in a deal to buy some of the family’s sheep.  If she didn’t accept, they told her, they were going to have to ship her off to Australia so she could earn more money to send home.  My mother was angry, sad and scared but she decided she would rather immigrate to a strange country than marry a disgusting old dude.

 

The day she left her home to go to Australia she sat in the taxi, crying her eyes out.  Her father took her in his arms and told her she didn’t have to go.  My Mum just looked at him and said, “I’ll be OK,” before being driven away.  It took many years to heal the fractured relationship with her parents.  She felt betrayed and abandoned by them, and they had thought she was acting selfishly.  They were all wrong.  My mother’s parents loved her but they didn’t have the means to marry her without a dowry and they didn’t want her to end up poor, alone and unhappy.

 

Whilst it must have been a horrible experience for my mother to go through at such a young age, I must admit I’m glad that she said no to the arranged marriage and went to Australia –after all, if she hadn’t I wouldn’t be here today and you wouldn’t be reading this.  I think we should all be grateful, really!!!

 

Leewin is now in the unenviable position of having to fulfil an obligation to his family to get married which clashes with his own desire to marry someone of his own choosing in his own time.  This month’s ejo serves not only to explore the topic of arranged marriages but also to put Leewin’s story out there in the hope that perhaps a young, modern, Indian girl with liberal views and realistic expectations will notice him and give him a chance.  That way, both his and his family’s needs can be met, and everyone will be happy.  He really is a great guy and will make some lucky girl a wonderful husband.  If you think that girl might be you, please get in touch with me (via a comment) and I’d be happy to (just this once) play matchmaker.

 

 

Ejo #21 – Dangerous Doug Narrowly Avoids Death (By Shopping Trolley)

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This month’s ejo is a relatively short one as David and I have been travelling (yes again!) – this time to Spain for three weeks.  I’ll be writing a bit about that in a future ejo but in the meantime, if you are interested in checking out my new photographic series, titled “The Balconies Of Madrid”, you can do so here: The Balconies Of Madrid.

 

In other news, you’ll be pleased to know that I’ve been chatting to my friend and colleague, Doug, about another of his interesting “life experiences”.  When he was living in the neighbouring emirate of Sharjah several years ago, he would often drive into Dubai to do his weekly grocery shop, as the supermarkets here are larger and better stocked.  One hot summer morning, about ten years ago, he made the 20 minute commute to the Carrefour supermarket at Deira City Centre Mall – shopping list in hand, ready to stock up for the coming week.

 

He shopped up a storm, filling his shopping trolley with groceries.  Walking past the fish section, he noticed that they had a really good discount on fresh salmon – his favourite!!!  He jumped at the chance to buy a whole (three foot long) salmon as, even though he loved it, he rarely bought it since it was usually so expensive.  He was very excited at the prospect of several salmon dinners, and smiled contentedly as the fishmonger cut up the fish into 25 steaks, wrapping the whole lot up in paper.

 

After picking up a few more items, he made his way to the register and paid for his shopping, pushing his fully laden trolley out of the supermarket into the busy mall.  Now, Doug assures me that in those days, in Dubai, you could take a trolley onto a step escalator – there were no poles barring the way.  So he did what he always did, which was push the trolley onto the down escalator, holding the front of the trolley up.  Usually this worked.  But for some reason his trolley was fuller and heavier than usual and he was having a bit of trouble holding it up (maybe it was the extra 5kgs of salmon?).  No problem, he thought, and very carefully lowered the front of the trolley down until it rested on the step below – which was quite a steep angle but made it much easier to hold.  Problem solved.

 

He made the journey to the bottom of the escalator without incident.  However (and you were kinda hoping there’d be a ‘however’, weren’t you?), when he got to the bottom, before he had a chance to lift up the front of the shopping cart, it jammed in the lip of the escalator and got stuck.  The escalator, of course, kept moving.  Somehow, in attempting to lift the heavy trolley up and over the lip, Doug lost his balance and fell down, and before he knew it he was carried under the trolley by the force of the forward movement.  In a split second he was trapped under the trolley with the metal bar pushing up against his neck – unable to push the trolley up and over his body and inexorably being dragged forward by the moving escalator.  He saw his life flash before his eyes.

 

Luckily for Doug (and for us all, really), a guy who had been about to step onto the other escalator going up, noticed that Doug was about to meet his maker and jumped over the partition onto the other side.  He lifted the trolley up, freeing both it and Doug from almost certain death (or at least serious injury).  Our friend was unceremoniously dumped in a quivering heap with several of his groceries at the bottom of the escalator.  By Doug’s estimation, if the guy had been another two seconds it may have been too late.

 

He profusely (and sheepishly) thanked the good Samaritan and, quickly gathering up his strewn groceries, got the hell out of there to avoid any more unwanted attention.  His whole body was shaking with adrenalin as he pushed the trolley to his little Astra and unloaded the shopping into the boot.  He carefully drove home, still quivering and thanking his lucky stars for his narrow escape.  He couldn’t help running the scenario in his mind, over and over again – thinking of just how close he had come to perhaps dying under a supermarket trolley in a crowded mall.

 

When he got home he tried to shake the whole thing off and, even though it was just after lunchtime he poured himself a soothing glass of scotch to help calm his nerves.  He’d just had a near-death experience after all.  It was medicinal.  Anyway, he spent the rest of the day relaxing and taking it easy.

 

The next day Doug was rostered to work an afternoon shift, so after lunch he went down to his car to head over to the airport.   Approaching the car park he noticed a foul smelling odour, but thought nothing of it.  It was the middle of summer after all and sometimes the heat makes things pretty stinky.  As he got closer to his car, however, the stench became more and more unbearable.  And when he opened his car door and sat inside, he slowly came to the realisation that the smell was coming from inside the vehicle.  He got out and opened the boot after it finally dawned on him that, in his shaken state the day before, he had neglected to unload his groceries from the car.  What he could smell was the decaying funk of five kilograms of putrid salmon that had been left in the car for close to a day and a half.  And not just the salmon, but fruit and vegetables, milk, cheese and yoghurt.  Everything perishable had gone terribly, terribly off in the 40°C (104°F) heat.  Doug threw the rancid contents of his boot away and drove to work, gagging the whole way.  In fact it took close to a week of driving with the windows down to get rid of the smell (and it never really totally disappeared).

 

Two weeks later, Doug went back to the mall only to find that barrier poles had been placed in front of the escalators to prevent trolleys being pushed onto them.  Doug reckons some security guard had seen his incident on CCTV and initiated the safety measure.  Not that he would have been in a hurry to repeat his performance anyway, but it was probably a very good idea!

Ejo #20 – A Few Thoughts On Islam (And What It Means To Be Muslim)

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“Beware! Whoever is cruel and hard on a non-Muslim, or curtails their rights, or burdens them with more than they can bear, or takes anything from them against their free will; I will complain against that person on the Day of Judgement.”  So said the Prophet Mohammed, preaching tolerance, kindness and understanding towards us heretics.  It isn’t the picture most people have in their minds of the Islamic faith – and that is, perhaps, unfortunate.  The reason could be related to the rising number of acts of aggression against the western world, ostensibly in the name of Islam.  But as many Muslims would be at great pains to point out, these acts of terrorism strike against the very kernel of what it is to be a member of the Islamic faith.

 

I’m not religious in the least but I have always been curious about the concept. When I moved to Dubai I was able to learn a little bit about Islam.  I could probably write 20 ejos on the subject, but I won’t.  What I’d like to do is shed some light on a belief system and way of life that is sometimes shrouded in mystery, and quite often veiled by misinterpretation.  If I can bust just one myth or clear up one misconception for anyone that’ll make me happy.  I’m hardly an expert though; what follows is just a few personal observations backed up with a bit of research.

 

Let us begin.  The reason Muslims call their deity Allah is to differentiate him from other gods – it is the personal name of Islam’s one true god.  Whereas the word “god” can be pluralised and genderised, the word Allah cannot.  Allah is merciful and compassionate, and really just a very nice god indeed.  For instance, if you intend to do a bad deed and then don’t actually go through with it, he won’t hold it against you (even though, of course, he is fully aware that you did think about it).  It is only when you act on the intention that it counts against you.  Furthermore, if you truly regret what you did, the slate automatically wipes clean.  The simple act of repentance leads to Allah’s forgiveness.

 

Some people wonder about the importance of the Prophet Mohammed in the faith.  He was just one of many thousands of prophets, but Mohammed is the greatest of them all because he was the last prophet, the one that completed all of Allah’s revelations and sealed them together to create the teachings of Islam as they have been known, unaltered, for the last 1400 years.  He is second only to Allah in importance.

 

The word Muslim means “to submit” and Islam is based on its believers living out the will of Allah, as far as humanly possible.  It is founded on five pillars.  They are:

1) testimony of faith, i.e. accepting that there is no god but Allah, and Mohammed is his messenger.

2) praying five times a day;

3) Zakat, which is the giving back to the community of a certain amount of money, usually as a charitable donation;

4) fasting during Ramadan; and

5) pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca at least once during a Muslim’s lifetime (for those who are physically and financially able).

 

The second pillar of Islam is prayer.  Muslims are required to pray five times a day– furthermore they must be “clean” when they do so.  A ritual ablution occurs before the prayer and this includes washing the face, arms and feet so as to be pure when presenting themselves to Allah.  To facilitate this in Dubai, every toilet (private and public) has a long hose and nozzle in it so that wherever they may find themselves at prayertime, a Muslim is able to wash in preparation.  It is also why, sometimes, when entering a bathroom after a Muslim you may find it absolutely soaking wet.  I guess in striving to become clean, it is sometimes necessary to create a mess.  You get used to it.

 

Zakat is the requirement to donate to charity or to give to those less fortunate. Muslims are obligated to give 2.5% of any income they’ve earned for the year which is surplus to their family’s requirements.  This is usually collected and distributed during Ramadan.

 

Ramadan is the month of the Islamic calendar during which Muslims must fast – refraining from eating, drinking, smoking, having impure thoughts or engaging in sexual activity during daylight hours.  These sacrifices transcend physical discipline and bring the faster closer to Allah.  This year Ramadan has fallen during August, which happens to be the hottest time of year. Fasters have been going without food and water for up to 15 long hours a day, which as you can imagine is super difficult.  Hunger and thirst remind fasters of others who are less fortunate and who go hungry and thirsty everyday.  It also serves as a trigger to commune with Allah, to give thanks, and also to atone for any sins committed during the year.  It is an extremely important time of year for all Muslims.  To read more about Ramadan check out Ejo #9 – Ramadan In Dubai (What It Means And What To Expect).

 

As with all religions, some things are considered right, and others wrong.  “Halal”encompasses everything which is good (and thus permitted in the eyes of God), whereas “haram” describes the opposite – all which is harmful (and thus forbidden).  The word halal actually refers to a wide spectrum of things, but is most commonly used to describe meat that has been prepared in an approved way. A lot of animals these days are killed by electrocution – but this method is deemed haram by Muslims.  The animal suffers and so it is forbidden to eat its meat.  To be considered humane, the knife that will kill the animal must not be sharpened in front of it.  Animals should be killed quickly, and as comfortably as possible, and one animal must never witness the slaughter of another as this would frighten it, making the meat haram.  The animal should be well fed and watered despite the fact that it shall soon be lunch.

 

Intoxicants, such as alcohol, are considered haram – the reason being that alcohol decreases your ability to control your own mind and body.  There is an old Islamic fable: “A man was told to either rip up the Holy Quran, or murder a child, or bow in worship to an idol, or drink one cup of alcohol, or sleep with a woman.  He thought the least sinful thing to do was drink the cup, so he drank it.  Then he slept with the woman, killed the child, tore up the Quran and bowed in worship to the idol”.  Being a Muslim is all about controlling your impulses and you attain closeness to God when you restrain yourself from physical and mental urges.  Alcohol takes away all of that restraint, rendering one vulnerable to the temptations of the devil (and anyone who’s ever been drunk can surely attest to that – I know I can!).

 

The Quran clearly refers to men and women as being equal.  Oppression of women tends to be more culturally and nationalistically based, than theistically.  But often the culture fostering the oppression is so closely entwined in an Islamic identity it is difficult to separate the two.  Although women are thought of as being equal to men, the physical differences between them has been taken into account and because of this women have been granted the right of protection by (and from) men. One of the major components of Islam is modesty (for both sexes, albeit predominantly for women).  As such, men are required to not look upon women sexually and women are required to cover up in public.  Islam sees the covering up of a woman’s body as the opposite of female repression. Because it hides her womanliness they believe that it is really a form of female liberation, allowing her to be appreciated for her character and mind, and not just for her body.  Nowhere in the Quran or in the prophet’s messages does it state that women must cover their faces – to force a woman to do so (as the Taliban do in Afghanistan) goes against the very spirit of Islam.

 

Even with all this covering up though, occasionally a person might find themselves sexually aroused in a public place by a person who is not their spouse. Hey, it happens!  One of my favourite of prophet Mohammed’s recommendations is that, should this occur to you, you must immediately hurry home to your husband (or wife) and satisfy that sexual urge honourably.  Yipee!

 

While men and women are created equal, they most definitely have different roles to play in marriage and family life.  The husband is expected to provide for the family and the wife is expected to look after him and the household (including children when/if they have them).  This doesn’t mean a woman can’t go out and work if she wants to.  She can, but she must still fulfil her obligations at home too (what else is new, right?).  The role of housewife and mother is regarded as one of the most honourable occupations in Islam.  Staying home to raise a family garners the greatest respect from the community, because it is arguably one of the most difficult jobs to do.

 

Polygamy is permitted in Islam but not in the way most people imagine.  Men are allowed to marry up to only four women, and there are many restrictions.  For instance, a man can only marry another woman if he can afford to keep her in the same way he keeps his first wife; giving them the same amount of food, clothing, leisure, living space, time and compassion.  Plus, he actually needs the permission of his first wife in order to take another.  Theoretically, anyway.  Polygamy was sanctioned, initially, with the intention of providing security and a stable family life for the women left behind after the first Islamic war. Rather than leave the many widows and orphans to fend for themselves it was encouraged for families to give them a home – and since a woman and a man who are not married are forbidden from living under the same roof, marriage was the solution.  Today, however, women are able to support themselves.  This negates the requirement for a man to marry multiple women.  Governments look after those in need, providing welfare to ensure financial stability and security.  The burden of this responsibility has been removed from the man, however polygamy (of course) still occurs.

 

Well, that’s just a drop in the ocean.  If you have any questions about Islam please feel free to ask and I will try and get an informed answer from one of my Muslim colleagues.  Look out next month for another episode from The Misadventures Of Dangerous Doug.