Surreeeeender

The best place and time to write a blog entry is in bed on a day off. You sleep in, stay in bed for fifteen minutes thinking about a couple of things you have been avoiding, quickly get up before they haunt your day, and have a good breakfast. Your father will be making all sorts of noise in the kitchen and you think you would pay a year of your life and be able to live on your own. Go to your room again, sit in bed with your computer on your lap, turn on the fan, play some music, and definitely use headphone or the same father will come to ask you “Where did you get this Bach concerto from? You know.. the first time I heard it. Your uncle Ahmed and I used to share the same room and he never liked classical music. But your uncle Hussein loved it. I was in high school when my dad insisted I had a violin tutor. You granny did not like it and told him “You’re going to ruin the boy’s future.” Have you heard Paganini’s … …”


Then you start writing. You have a topic on your mind and that is why you decided to write, no? Instead of being to the point, you start off writing an unnecessarily long introduction. You are still thinking about those same topics you thought you could avoid. You decide to go ahead and write.


Stop Bach and play Fayrouz. She is much more peaceful.


Last Friday, June 27th, at 5.30 pm, I was standing in front of her door. This meeting had been arranged two weeks earlier. I had received an e-mail titled ‘Muslim Female Study Circle.’ Having been looking for some place to attend Islamic lessons, I immediately e-mailed back.

Because the …


Oh no please not this song. Skip.


Because the e-mail was in English and sent by a lady studying at the American University, I assumed the meeting would differ in nature from those I dislike. At least people with good education do read a lot and tend to have a slightly more open-minded approach to religions, customs, and traditions.


I was received by the housekeeper. I walked in the living room to see five young ladies in their twenties. I said Salamo Alaykom and my name. They replied to my greeting and none said her name. I sat at the nearest chair although I wanted to sit on the floor.


It seemed it was one of my most silent days. I sat there saying nothing for almost thirty minutes not even engaging in their chat with eye contact. An hour later the hostess came in and I stood up to greet her and thank her for having me in her house.


She was a smiley lady in her mid fifties. If I was not told earlier she was Iranian, she would have undoubtedly passed for an Egyptian. She spoke very good English as she had lived in the States for over fifteen years. She was wearing a green embroidered dress and an olive green heard scarf. It took me a while to realize that she must have kept her head covered because there were a couple non-Muslim girls around.


By the time she started the lecture, we had become ten: two Americans, two German, five Egyptians, and one I did not know where she was from. She kept her eyes fixed to her feet and never uttered a word.


Oh, I love this song.


I decided to sit on the cushions scattered on the floor. I was now sitting on the side of the room that had the foreigners. It seemed that sitting there and having my hair styled into a funny way I was why I got asked if I were Egyptian!


The lecture was supposed to be on the ‘purification of the soul’. Half of it, though, was spent on how our hostess got married the first time and another time to a Sheikh who was already married to two other women and had nothing to offer. And how she accepted him because she wanted to learn about religion from him.


I had been warned by a couple of friends that this lady was so strict and judgmental. And before I came I decided not to throw in any of my ‘questions’ so that I do not generate digressions and confuse others. Besides, I was there to see if she was the kind of scholar I have been looking for.


“The happiest life you can ever have as a woman is one that is lead in accordance with what Allah has ordained for you. As Muslim women, surreeeeeender to God and do whatever He asks us to.” she said moving her arms in a gesture similar to that made by a boxing referee upon counting ten.


"So if Allah asks you to cover your head, you just do it because He knows what’s best for you. Allah says in His book …” and she recited a controversial verse from Quran.


I was about to jump in but the youngest among us was too fast. “But this verse was revealed only for the wives of Mohammed because Allah wanted them to be distinguished from other women,” she said. Her mom gave her that gaze apparently for daring to say something contrary to the hostess she had been videotaping.


“Yes, I know this incident and we will dedicate a whole lecture to Hijab later insha’allah” was the only reply.


“Your well being is like a triangle: physical well being, spiritual balance, and your mental peace. They are three tubes connected to each other. If there is a clog somewhere, you feel imbalanced.”


‘I like this tube idea. But what if some of your spiritual ideas cannot pass through the mental tube?’ I did not ask.


“If you were married and you spent six hours cooking a meal for your husband. When he comes home he says I do not like all this food. I would rather have a cheese sandwich. What do you do? You smile warmly, go the kitchen, and make him a sandwich. What if he looks at this wall and says that this tree in the painting depresses him? I would immediately walk to the painting even if I liked it and take it down.”


At this point, I and the three foreigners sitting around me had been nervously shaking our feet for too long. I felt the ‘feminist vein’, that someone once told me I had, starting to pulse harder. Again I was too slow. The lovely Italian next to me started talking nervously.


“But iif my moother or my faather diid not like anysing in zee house, any of zem will change it. Zey boos respect each oozer and listen to each oozer. It iiz not always my maama. Zey may joke aboutiit but she does not have to change the decoration only because she iiz zee wooman,” she said.


One of the Egyptians replied that the woman would do it out of love and in order to please her Lord.


The American by my side whose face had already turned tomato red said “But why doesn’t he do the same and respect her choice and also attempt to please HIS Lord?”


“I guess it goes both ways. But woman tend to compromise more in general. We have an Egyptian proverb that says ‘A ship with two captains will sink’. So if the woman always wants to be equal to a man in a relationship, things will never work. There are major decisions in life and those need a man to make them,” the Egyptian mom replied.


At this point I knew how the rest of the conversation will go. I walked over the hostess to thank her and kiss her goodbye.


“Thank you so much for having me over. I will try to be here next time insha’allah. I just wanted to tell you that you made a grammar mistake while reciting one of the verses in Quran and you know this is not really accepted at all. You either know the verse well or you say the meaning. And the Prophetic tradition you mentioned is weak one actually. You also gave a bad example to everyone here calling your first husband and the father of your children an ‘idiot’ three times. This is in no Islamic. And actually I think your lectures will do harm to those young Egyptians. You’re consolidating what their moms have been teaching them: be submissive to your man so that Allah is pleased with you. At the same time, you are confirming what those foreigners think of Arab and Muslim women.”


I only said the first two sentence and left in disappointment and frustration.