Physical Education Forbidden for Saudi Girls' Schools

By Maha Akeel, Arab News

JEDDAH, 28 December 2005 — A few public girls’ schools in Jeddah submitted requests to have gymnasiums built, but their hopes for introducing physical education classes were dashed after the Ministry of Education announced that physical education for girls would not be allowed. Speculation in the media and among the public had circulated in the past year that the ministry would allow physical education in girls’ schools by this year, but the ministry refuted this “rumor” as baseless.
Some media reports indicated that Education Minister Abdullah Al-Obaid would introduce the subject in the curriculum due to its health and behavioral benefits. Two days ago the Ministry of Education stated that it “would not introduce physical education in girls’ schools” and requested that the media “respect religious, literary and national responsibility” in this regard, according to Arab News’ sister publication Asharq Al-Awsat.
The office of the director general of Girls’ Education Administration in Makkah region confirmed to Arab News that there have been no changes or discussions regarding this policy of forbidding physical education in girls’ schools.
Arab News contacted a girls’ high school that had submitted a request two months ago and had already set up a gymnasium with exercise machines for the girls to use in their spare time and was waiting for the approval. The school’s principal said that she was not allowed to speak to the media about this but she did not deny setting up the gym and submitting a request. “Religious men have a great influence on our education and the ministry listens only to those with certain views about women and their role and place in society,” said a source at the Education Administration of Makkah region.

Our 2005 Christmas in Saudi

This year’s Christmas in Saudi was really not one of my personal best. Our car developed a rusty water pipe and we took it to the shop on Dec. 22nd and, today, Dec. 26th it is still there. Normally, out here in Saudi land, on Dec. 22nd, we go over to Bahrain and shop/eat/and see a movie. This covers for Wedding Anniversary celebration and a joyous starter for the Christmas season. Bahrain Mall is a Christmas wonderland and it really feels like Christmas there.

Instead, on our 39th Anniversary this year we went out to dinner in Saudi with friends to AMICI RESTAURANT (This is their spelling). It is a pretty fancy Italian restaurant across from the Corniche in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. Food is high priced and presented artistically, but ‘ok’ in flavor.

What was fun was to walked, after dinner, through the furniture stores that are next door to AMICI’S! There are about three huge stores that have the most garish, massive, expensive furniture I have yet to see gathered in one place. Remember films that take place in English castles that have massive rooms and extremely ornate furniture? Well, that is what is being sold in these stores. Expensive Saudi cars were parked outside, while black veiled women floated through the stores picking out items for their palatial homes. We tried to control our gasps of humor and horror at these monstrous, garish and amazingly expensive pieces of furniture, chandeliers and Deco. pieces.

Jim had to work as usual on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. There are absolutely no signs of Christmas visible in this Muslim Saudi society except what private individuals create in their homes or what the small restaurants inside Western Compounds provide. However, Jim was wished “Merry Christmas” by some of his colleagues and students.

Last year, in the English Department at KFUPM, a Matawa (Religious Police), came in and posted a sign in Arabic on their large bulletin board for the students to see, stating that wishing or saying Merry Christmas or Happy New Year was “Haram” prohibited. One of the students, as he ripped the notice from the board, apologized to Tony, who works in the English Dept. here at KFUPM.

Around this time of year, it is not uncommon to see in the English Arab News paper, notices prohibiting verbal wishing of Merry Christmas or Happy New Year. Saudi citizens are reminded that this is “Haram”.

Anyway, the idea of taking a taxi and doing any Christmas shopping in Saudi did not appeal to me in the least this year, so Jim and I decided to just not share gifts with each other. Besides, Jim had so much work, and still does, that he really couldn’t get away for any extra outings right now without being mentally preoccupied with his work. I just didn’t feel like going out and about alone trying to re-create Christmas in this veiled, joyless society right now either.

We did go out to dinner with friends last night, Dec. 25th at the Blue Strawberry, which is a little Bistro located inside the Rezayat Western Residential Compound. It was very festive and they served their own homemade wine and had a very nice choice of food. We took the turkey and traditional Christmas pudding…minus the liquor that I believe is soaked into this pudding. We had “Poppers” at our plates that, when popped open, made a loud BANG and little toys and paper crown hats fell out. Jim and I are not too familiar on how these worked, so we pretty much mangled ours and never got the POP part. But, being a good sport, I put on my paper crown. Jim would have none of it.

When we got home from our Christmas dinner we placed our phone calls to our family and so very much enjoyed hearing about all their different celebrations and gifts.

There is a rumor that next year we may actually have the chance to be in the USA for Christmas. But, until that is for sure, we are not planning a thing! Rumors are such a part of this country, that unless we get a royal decree, we will not believe…and often even that decree is taken back and changed at the last minute.

OK, from now until Jan. 3rd I am going to focus on our big Hajj vacation trip to New Zealand. We leave Bahrain on Jan. 3rd and return to Saudi on Jan. 20th. Oh boy, we get to SEE GREEN and BE FREE!!! Life is pretty great!

Oh yes, the car needs a new water pipe and that is found only in the city of Jeddah. That store is closed for five days for inventory and Hajj. However, the shop here is going to try and get a temporary fix today by going to an iron-works place and have a new pipe made. Our fingers are crossed!

My Visit To The Saudi Medical Clinc

It was that time of year once again when I had to get the Pap’s Smear and Mammogram taken care of. No easy task out here in Saudi land. We have a clinic here on our compound, but there is no fancy x-ray machine for Mammograms at this clinic. The procedure is to go to our clinic, see the female doctor, and she will write out the request order for me to take to the King Faisal Teaching Hospital in the city. There I get all x-rays and treatment that the compound clinic can not do and I get it all for free.
I settled down in the ladies waiting room to wait to see the compound doctor in our clinic. What a stark room to wait in. About 7 other women were also waiting, all draped totally in black with faces veiled. There were a couple women with their maids who were tending the little children. On one wall was nailed a huge magazine rack, totally empty except for one copy of the Koran. No one had a book or anything to read, except me. I always travel with a book. This is not a reading society, except for tiny pocket-sized Korans/prayer books that the locals have. In clinics and hospitals or anywhere where locals are waiting, no one is EVER reading anything. Sometimes I see one or two reading their little prayer books, but usually they all just sit and stare, waiting to be called or answering cell phones. In our clinic there are no pictures on the wall or any decorations to make this waiting pleasant at all. Chairs are just lined along the walls in very ridged formation.
I did get my Pap’s test done, but only because I insisted. According to this doctor, I am too old to need one. According to my Internet studies, that is not the case. I have had to insist on them for the last couple of years here. Anyway, she signed the two necessary forms, for my mammogram at the hospital and I was finally done, after well over 2 hours.
Jim then drove me to the hospital in the city where I was to set up the x-ray appointment. Short wait there. I turned in my papers of request to the veiled lady x-ray technician. She looked them over, came back to me and said, “Sorry, we can not make the appointment, the doctor at KFUPM did not write the ‘reason’ for the x-ray.” She then handed back these 2 full pages of information and request. My melt-down started. No WAY was I going to meekly have Jim drive me all the way back to the university, wait another 2 hr. to see the doctor at the clinic again, so she could write, “annual exam” across a page and then drive all the way back into town to get this appointment. We really do risk our lives every time we drive off compound due to horrifically dangerous drivers here.
Still maintaining control, of sorts, and trying not to raise my voice too high, I asked her to just write “annual exam” across the page. NOPE, couldn’t do that, she is not the doctor. I told her this was my eighth visit for such an exam as their records will show. NOPE, makes no difference. There was no way they could call the clinic doctor and get this request over the phone. OK, I was loosing it! I asked her for a pen. She had none; I then went through the doors into the area where I was not to go and asked for a pen from a rather stunned gentleman technician standing there. He gave me his pen and I wrote, ANNUAL EXAM across the page, returned the pen, went back to the veiled lady technician and said, “Look, there it is, “Annual Exam”! Now, I would like to make the appointment. I got the appointment, and a couple of days later I had the x-ray.

A Saudi Woman Speaks Out.

I have recently discovered this amazing Saudi woman that writes for the local English Saudi press here. Her views are shared by many Saudis in this country. This article will also give you a glimps of the kind of censorship the local Saudi schools have to deal with. This is just the tip of the iceburg. I always wonder who really rules Saudi Arabia, the King or the Religious Police.
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It is an extraordinary phenomenon really when you come to think of it. They accompany Muhammad Abdo in his highly acclaimed concerts internationally and underscore much of the dramatic overtures greatly popularized in the Arab community. People grow sentimental when they listen to their soulful strains at once reflecting and enunciating the pain in the voice of Umm Kulthoom and yet, they are not allowed to unveil themselves in the written word.
Schoolchildren in this part of the world are permitted to hear them, but they are denied the privilege of knowing what they are called, so they probably have to refer to them with more convenient pseudonyms such as “those wooden curved boxes with strings” or “those contraptions that people hold under their chins while they fiddle them with a bow”. So much simpler than using the actual expression that has been ascribed to them in order to denote their essential qualities.
By this stage, ladies and gentlemen, you must be curious to ascertain what could possibly be the offensive nature of this term. How can a musical instrument that is used so plentifully in every Arabic orchestra in the region be considered so subversive that it must be blackened from the textbooks of our children? Does the word “violin” really constitute such a threat to these innocent minds that it needs to be eradicated from all printed material available? Such was the exasperation that pervaded my mind when I flicked through a copy of my daughter’s French textbook and found a whole series of utterances obliterated out of existence by varying shades and intensities of black pen.
What’s more is that being naturally curious and inquisitive, children tend to miss the entire point of the lesson they are being taught in favor of trying to guess what lies beneath the careful board marker scribble. After all, what is concealed is infinitely more provocative, enticing and alluring than what is exposed. Tell a child that they are not supposed to look at something and their interest in the forbidden fruit grows exponentially. It is just part of human nature. Which is why children being creative in circumventing the strictures placed upon them by adults go to all lengths to determine what the sacrilegious word is, thereby entirely defeating the point of covering it up in the first place. Whether they are tantalized by the names of musical instruments once they uncover them, I very much doubt. I myself have never seen any child musing upon the licentious properties of a piano.
There are practices here that defy all logic. The words “violin”, “music”, “musician”, “demon” and “kiss” have all been subjected to the same cruel fate of the indiscriminate and peculiar vicissitude of our system of censorship. So whereas we are allowed to listen to music, kiss each other as a matter of due course according to our cultural norms, eulogize musicians as is clearly evident in any Amr Diab extravaganza and confront our own demons as per our religious requirements, we are to be devoid of being able to name any of the aforementioned and must engage in the pretense of not knowing what these things are even though we hear them and see them loudly and clearly.
I remember watching in stunned amazement a cartoon being broadcast on Saudi TV’s Channel 2 some years ago in which there was a scene with children opening presents around a tree and a old jolly portly man sporting a long white beard and a red and white suit being addressed eagerly by the assembled throng as “Father Bleep! Father Bleep!” (By default of our clever censors we are not supposed to know who he is, just in case you may have missed the point entirely.)
Having worked at the national radio station, I had become so disillusioned by the ridiculous restrictions placed upon us as broadcasters that I eventually gave up. We were allowed to play popular music but I remember being chastised once for the word “bliss” appearing in one of the chart songs.
“What’s wrong with that?” I argued in vain.
“No, no,” retorted the man responsible for screening the programs before they were deemed fit for transmission. “You can’t have bliss here on earth. Bliss only belongs in heaven.” What he meant to say was that although you can experience a state of extreme happiness and be flooded by a paroxysm of ecstasy, you are just not allowed to call it that. Makes perfect sense? Smile, you’re in Saudi Arabia. And so the words “dance”, “party”, “sexist” and a whole plethora of others are excluded from the permissible vocabulary of public service announcers.
Ironically enough, it is startling how quite lascivious double talk and other associated ambiguities escape the notice of lexicographic vigilantes. Messages that are far more damaging to the sight, hearing and sensibilities of the populous are freely circulated whereas innocuous words that have no hidden meaning are scrutinized and left unchecked.
Personally I wonder why it is that entire pages are ripped out of magazines and newspapers when they are all freely available unadulterated through the Internet. Somehow, the desecration of the written word is nothing short of abhorrent. In order to understand the world and participate freely in matters that are pertinent to us, there appears to be little reward in adopting our ostrich-like repose and burying our heads in the sand.
Having said all this, I am not against the concept of censorship especially with regards to certain undesirable aberrations that I firmly believe children should be shielded from. However, it would help enormously if the process was executed judiciously and with logic rather than in the haphazard and fruitless manner in which it is conducted in now. It is absurd that words such as “heaven” and “hell” are excluded from the national vocabulary but concepts such as wide-eyed inebriated drug-crazed teenagers annihilating their parents in cold blood are not.
And for those of you who would be interested in procuring an insight into the mind of a censor and require answers to questions such as why it is that Celine Dion’s picture on her CD has been rendered unfit for public consumption, there will be more on the corrupting nature of such lascivious thought inducing imagery and its drawbacks next week.
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(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)

God, I am identifying with the retarded: Been in Saudi too long?

Today I watched a TV movie, "Winnie, My Life In An Institution". I usually get up very early in the mornings, and often I will just do some channel flicking over morning coffee. This movie was a true story about Winnie Sprockett, who at age 6 was adjudged moderately retarded and confined to an Iowa mental institution. She died in this institution at the age of 44.
When Winnie was a young woman, she was qualified to leave this institution and live in a group home situation. Morning coffee in hand, still in my PJ’s, and tucked away in a room with no windows, I had an emotional melt-down watching Winnie's life unfold in the group home. I hate it when strong emotions flare out of me, and catch me so unprepared.
There were several scenes where Winnie was relishing her freedoms in the outside world. Incredible as it may sound, I was right with her feeling the sun, riding the buses, playing with the dog (and I don’t really like dogs!), going into a wonderful USA library, walking along outside, on her own. Seriously, I actually felt the prickle of the grass she sat on to read a book outside! She was totally loving and appreciating every second of her freedoms for the first time in years away from the institution.
I so appreciate all my freedoms when I leave Saudi Arabia and this movie, in a few scenes, had me totally understanding how absolutely wonderful this character felt about being free.
I just did not expect to be drenched in the strong emotions which left me drained and spent from crying. It was HER story to that point and then it became OUR story.
Society couldn’t deal with Minnie, this retarded young woman that didn’t quite behave ‘normally’. Their disapproval and fear of her just became too much to bear. Winnie returned to the institution on her own because she felt society just wasn’t ready for her. She lived out the rest of her days, safely inside the walls of the institution. Inside the institution she wrote down all her thoughts and feelings and knew that no one could take away the freedoms of her mind.
Whew, there is horror in the loss of freedoms of all kinds.

My life in Saudi Arabia

Today I wanted to share an article straight from the Arab News that came out today. The article shows a bit of the world of the Saudi female's school world as well as the distorted thinking of what is right and fair in this society.
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RIYADH, 10 December 2005 — In some countries, mining is the most difficult job. In other countries crab fishing is the worst. In Saudi Arabia, being a girls-school gate guard is considered one of the most difficult and worst jobs: It brings a lot of suffering for a little pay.
Being a girls-school gate guard in Saudi Arabia is different than in other countries because of cultural and religious customs.
When people picture a girls-school gate guard here, they see an old man with a white beard. After all, to be a gate guard at a girls school you must be over 40, married, and accompanied by your wife who must work at the same school. You live with your wife in a cramped efficiency apartment on the grounds of the school.
The main job of the gate guard at a girls school is to control exit and entry to the school. Students and teachers cannot leave without the guard’s knowledge, and in most cases without his approval. He always holds the keys to the main gate. Not a paper or letter goes inside without his approval. The gate guard reviews permission request to release students or teachers early. Parents and husbands sometimes beg the guard to speed up the process of excusing their children or wives. Sometimes these confrontations end with fights and threats.
The guards face many difficulties, starting simply with trying to contact school administrators on the other side of the gate. They usually call their wives that work inside to deliver any messages.
The wives of the guards are the only connection to everything inside the school. The wife also plays an important role when a student or teacher is released. It is their job to verify if the man waiting outside is a relative, father or husband.
While the guard’s wife is verifying whether the man is related to the student or teacher inside, the gate guard stands waiting. Sometimes the man, waiting outside, berates the guard and accuses him for the delay. The gate guard is also responsible for making a final phone call to verify whether the student or the teacher released is related to the man waiting outside. He often guards the gate like a sentry waiting for someone to storm into the school.
Gate guards face another difficult problem when the girls are released from school at the end of the day. Their main job is to monitor every one of them, whether it’s a school of 50 students, or 1,000.
A female student is not allowed outside of the school until her father or relative is out there to pick her up. The guard sometimes threatens to use force to discipline students if they don’t listen to him.
Systematically, he calls for each female student, often by microphone, when the father or family member arrives. This system often turns to chaos when all of a sudden a dozen or so relatives are shouting at him to call for their daughters and sisters. This situation resembles an auction hall full of eager, impatient customers surrounding the auctioneer. Impatient relatives might snatch the microphone from him to call for their daughters themselves. This can end in fisticuffs between the gate guard and parents, or among parents themselves.
The biggest headaches for gate guards are teenage harassers. The guards tend to keep teens as far away as possible, even if that means using force. The most favorable time for teenage boys to visit female students is when they are released from school. This is the worst time for the gate guard.
Trying to control and organize what is going around him and to keep away those that want to make trouble is a daunting task. The only help that might come is a local enforcer of the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice.
The job does not end after all female students leave the school. The guard has to wait until all teachers leave, too. Some students are left behind because their parents did not pick them up. Gate guards stay sometimes an additional two hours until the school is empty, which means that they work from 6 a.m. to 3 p.m. every day.
And it doesn’t end after the last student leaves: The guard and his wife must also search the school for stragglers and ensure that all windows and doors are secure.
Despite all these problems, the girls-school guard continues to do his job. And he receives a low monthly salary, which ranges from SR1,500 to SR3,500. The poor salary forces them to continue doing the job to support their family and children.
The question remains: In this day and age, with such a low wage and such a challenging job who is going to replace these noble old men after they retire?