Two great women

As a part of Muscat Festival there are a series of workshops and lectures being held throughout February. You may not have heard a lot about them because they haven't yet been well advertised...that might just be because they are not properly organised yet, as I've heard this is a trait of the festival!


Anyway there are two ladies I am really excited about...actually I'm desperate to go to see them. Arundhati Roy (on the 12th Feb) and Fatima Mernissi (on the 14th). For those who don't know Arundhati Roy is a novelist and political activist. Her only novel was The God of Small Things and she has published a lot of her essays and speeches. I read something about her being examined for sedition in India. No surprise, she's very outspoken but incredibly articulate.


Fatima Mernissi is a Moroccan Islamic feminist. Her work on Muslim women is amazing and she has written many books from her research.


To show the kind of women they are and their areas of interest I'm putting in some of my favourite quotes of theirs:

Arundhati Roy:

To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.

To call someone 'anti-American', indeed to be anti-American, (or for that matter anti-Indian or andti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, its a failure of the imagination.

The mullahs of the Islamic world and the mullahs of the Hindu world and the mullahs of the Christian world are all on the same side. And we are against them all.

The only thing worth globalizing is dissent.

Fatima Mernissi:

In the Orient, femininity is under control. Like time, women are still and quiet. They can dance and dream, but not think. Thinking might interfere with men's pleasure.

The most subversive of all is the educated unveiled woman who can write independently and produce and disseminate information, because she breaks the Muslim ruler's monopoly over communication.

Is it possible that Islam's message had only a limited and superficial effect on deeply superstitious seventh-century Arabs who failed to integrate its novel approaches to the world and to women? Is it possible that the hijab, the attempt to veil women, that is claimed today to be a basic Muslim identity, is nothing but the expression of the persistence of the pre-Islamic mentality, the jahiliya mentality that Islam was supposed to annihilate?

(Note: The picture above is called Women Empowerment)

Bits and Bobs

So after a bit of a dry, or should I say lazy, spell I've become productive again. In fact I thought of several topics to jot down so I'll just put them all into one post.

1) Apparently the government is planning to install traffic cameras at all of the major road junctions in the country. I'm just glad they're making further efforts to combat reckless driving. (I'll save my full rant for another post).

2) There is an exhibition showing rare photos of Oman in 1971 by French photographer Bruno Barbey. It is open everyday between 9am and 6pm at Bait al Baranda, Muttrah. I've also seen the book in Borders.

3) A couple of articles in the Times of Oman today made me smile. Firstly an article discussing the rise of spinsters in Oman and suggesting reasons both women and men are becoming more reluctant to marry. The second article commented on men's mistreatment of women; how they don't help around the house, even when a woman is working and perhaps even earning more money than her husband. Amusing...perhaps they should have used the second article to answer the first! : )

(I have to note though that it was nice to see the second article was written by a man).

4) On a personal note I've been travelling Oman some more, this time between Muscat and the Sharqiyah region; Sur, Ras al Hadd, Sharqiyah Sands and everywhere in between. The weather was amazing and it felt so good to get out of the city. Here are someof my favourite photos:

p.s. I'm getting incredibly frustrated...there is something wrong with Blogger that every time I try to fix the design of a post it doesn't work so things aren't spaced how I want them etc. I might end up throwing my laptop through the window. If you don't hear from me for a while you'll know why.

Wikiflood

There's no need for me to write a big article on the recent Wikileaks revelations of US diplomatic messages, when Muscat Confidential has done an excellent job here. I'll just mention some highlights which I found interesting.

Many world leaders haven't come off too well, although from what I've read I can't say much of it was shocking. Who knows why one of the stories most hitting the headlines is of a leak which mentions Libyan leader Gaddafi's relationship with his Ukranian nurse?! Exposed and embarrassed, the White House are condemning Wikileaks, one congressman even calling for it to be treated as a terrorist organisation!

Sultan Qaboos and Oman however have come off well. The Sultan's comments on international affairs such as Iraq and Iran show great wisdom and ration.

An excerpt in which he mentions women struck me the most; he said "Omani women were stuck in tradition and needed to be empowered to "take more charge" and to "be less shy". "Some customs (regarding women) shouldn't be kept".

The Sultan's views on the development of women are no secret; the progress he has pioneered says everything. The support and encouragement Omani women get is unique in this area of the world and its a great shame for any women who don't seize the opportunities given to them by this enlightened man.

Long live Sultan Qaboos and his Oman.

Impressive Dresses

I am going to use this post to honour a new love of mine...the Dhofari thobe. The Dhofari Thobe is, to those that don't know, a very loose-fitting dress with the back trailing and the front being approximately shin-height. It is teamed with a lossi (a big rectangle of fabric worn over the head) and sometimes a pair of leggings, called Sarwal. I'm sure other styles of Omani thobe are just as nice but as my family is Dhofari, Dhofari thobes are what I wear.

There are many reasons why this ensemble is so amazing. It's very feminine and elegant being so flowy and trailing. It is available in any material you like, for every single occasion. For example, wedding thobes are usually in velvet with intricate embroidery and crystals on. Beautiful silk thobes are often worn for occasions and my favourite for everyday is cotton or this stretchy heavy fabric (I'm not sure what it's called so maybe someone else can tell me).



With thobes you don't have to worry whether you are a size 10 or a size 18 because they are very loose fitting and don't display all your lumps and bumps. They are also nice and cool to wear. But their most economical feature is that they are cheap (I'm mostly talking about the everyday ones now). It's refreshing to see that those who are wealthy go to the same shops and buy the same 3 Rial thobe and lossi set that those who are poorer do. Ideally, you can just have a small selection of thobes in different colours and then just keep buying different lossi's...for 1 Rial each! My first shopping trip to the street in Salalah where all the thobe shops are (I know it as Al Gharbiya) was heaven!

I must just mention one drawback...the Dhofari thobe doesn't appear to be intended for those who are particularly active. I have struggled to achieve household chores while wearing one, constantly sucking up a corner in the vacuum cleaner or tripping over the tail. And I have nightmares about setting myself on fire while cooking. But they are so very pretty....

Dodgy Drivers?!

One thing that really bugs me about Oman is that there is still a misconception around that women are worse, and more dangerous drivers than men. This is a bit of an outdated opinion as we are afterall in 2010 and women have been driving for a considerable amount of time. I'm not going to argue that women are better drivers than men but that they are equally capable. In fact, considering Oman's horrendous accident rates (28 in 100,000 people in comparison to the global average of 19) it seems that neither women nor men have the right to be cocky!

So as I have been persistently informed that women cause more accidents I thought, perhaps Omani women just can't drive, because this is certainly not the case in the UK (in fact there is more literature than not arguing that women are safer drivers). But this just doesn't seem plausible. So I had a little look into it. I couldn't actually find statistics on the cause of accidents by gender but I did find in The Oman Fatality Statistics 2008 that 86% of deaths caused by road accidents are men as well as 75% of injuries. Interpret these statistics as you will.

Anyway, after my many rants about the fact that there are car insurance companies in the UK which provide women with cheaper insurance because they deem them to be safer drivers, I was happy when I found an advert in Y magazine for car insurance exclusively for women. I'm hoping this one has the same sentiment, showing support for women drivers in Oman, although I suspect its just a marketing ploy.

(It's probably best to look ahead of you)