Cruising for chicks, Saudi Arabian style
Katherine Zoepf of the NY Times goes out driving one evening with group of teenage boys in Saudi Arabia hoping to get phone numbers of girls in cars.
A phone number written out on a piece of cardboard is “the classic approach,” Fahad said, but most of the time he and his friends use Bluetooth to try to send their phone numbers directly to the cell phones of girls in the vicinity. Usually this means chasing cars containing women, but sometimes Fahad and his friends drive past the entrances of shopping malls where women wait for their drivers. It’s not easy to tell which of the black-shrouded shapes might be young women, Fahad admitted, but there are a few tricks.Link“You look at the style of the abaya, the way she holds her bag,” Fahad explained. “See that one there, how thin she is, and how carefully she’s covered up her face?”
He pointed out a slight figure with a pastel handbag. Sure enough, a pair of girlish-looking sneakers were just visible beneath the hem of her abaya.
“I’d say that maybe 3 out of 10 nights of numbering,we have some success,” Fahad explained.
“You mean that 3 out of 10 nights you get a girl to talk to you?” I asked.
“No, no,” Fahad laughed. “Maybe 3 out of 10 nights we get one phone number. Getting a girl to actually talk to you on the phone is much rarer. But it happens, so we’re always hoping.”
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“I’d say that maybe 3 out of 10 nights of numbering,we have some success,” Fahad explained.
"You mean that 3 out of 10 nights you get a girl to talk to you?” I asked.
“No, no,” Fahad laughed. “Maybe 3 out of 10 nights we get one phone number. Getting a girl to actually talk to you on the phone is much rarer. But it happens, so we’re always hoping.”
That's got to be one of the saddest posts I've ever read on Boingboing. What an awful place.
is much as i am against this kind of over the top, government enforced, "morality", it does seem a bit romantic.
don't get me wrong, i wouldn't wish this sort of life on even the most adamant Hagee follower, but there is just something about the story that seems exciting.
its probably the fact that many people find it extremely exhilarating to have to sneak around and hide their love.
lord knows Juliette's interest in Romeo wouldn't have endured the fatal blow which is "dad's approval".
@#2: "its probably the fact that many people find it extremely exhilarating to have to sneak around and hide their love."
Wow, this is about love? I thought that this was cruising - hajj-style.
And I thought I had a difficult time talking to women. That's a whole new league of obstacles...
Ouch.
@3: ok good point, but what what is cruising if it's not about finding love, especially in a society that is not going to allow you get anywhere near each other before you are married?
and anyway, the word love can be replaced with the word lust, and that sentence has the same if not stronger meaning.
I grew up Saudi Arabia and Egypt as a young woman, and the line that I find most resonant with my experience is this one:
“Sometimes the girls get really scared, there are so many cars chasing them. Sometimes they’re in their car, crying and screaming for us to go away. It’s fun to make girls angry.”
This immature and childish attitude was the way that every young man treated me there...and why wouldn't they? Your school, home, and workplace is segregated and steeped in misogyny's, so why should you how to treat women? It's infuriating but understandable.
Here's another item from the NYT about Saudi Arabian attitudes to women...
"Then I would rape you."
#5
"what what is cruising if it's not about finding love,"
How wonderfully, beautifully innocent :)
MAJORAM's insight makes this post.
#7: Keep building your sociological assessments based on anecdotes told by young people. Margaret Mead approves.
Sounds like getting a date while playing D&D in 1977. All I can say is Good luck!!!
I guess it's fine to think of this as a romantic comedy as long as you don't have to read the unwritten story, where a young woman from a strictly traditional family is beaten, raped, or killed when the unauthorized contact information of an unrelated male is discovered in her phone.
How is it possible to read an item like this with anything but horror?
Thanks for your insight, Marjoram.
Thanks for your comments, Majoram.
Really, what could be hotter than knowing that talking to a girl could get her beheaded? You flirt; she dies. That's amore.
These guys are harassing women to the point of nearly running them off the road and causing them to scream and cry, and then they expect the girls to want to risk their lives to call them and talk to them? What the hell is wrong with these people?
the public radio show Marketplace did a story on cell-phone flirting a couple months back, only from the women's perspective. It was, on the whole, rather sweet, but it ended on a note very much in line with the incident Marjoram cites. Even so, the optimist in me wants to hope that young women with cell phones and car keys may eventually lead to cracks in the Saudi patriarchy.
Careful you don't pick up Michael Jackson...
Now we need an article about women in Full hijab going to Spring Break,Just for y,know cultural perspective.