Welcome back to ‘Eyb, my newsletter in which I write frankly on topics that as a young Arab woman I would be told are ‘eyb, or shameful, to speak openly about. I also share my life anecdotes, what I am working on, and what I have been reading, watching, and listening to, with you.
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It’s been a long time since I have shared one of my crazy life anecdotes, of which there are many, and you’ll particularly know this if you have read my semi-autobiographical novel, Hijab and Red Lipstick.
I am now quite open about the fact I was raped when I was 21 years old. It has taken me a long time to write about this publicly as I still held a lot of shame and guilt right up until last year. But for some reason, since I had my son last year, I have become a lot braver.
When my father found out I had been raped, one of the first things he said was, “you’ll never get married.” Living in the Middle East, and in particular the Gulf, there is still an obsession with virginity and men wanting to marry a virgin - even if in many cases they have had sex before marriage themselves. A woman’s hymen is still symbolic of her and her family’s honour, despite scientific arguments that a hymen is no indication of virginity.
My parents would watch our neighbours’ daughters leave their homes on their wedding days and shake their heads sorrowfully and say, “you’ll never have that.”
Arab society had conditioned me, and the young women around me, to believe that the most monumental thing to ever happen in a woman’s life is her wedding day, and if that day did not come then her life was not worth living.
In my early twenties when I did get marriage proposals here and there, I always decided that honesty was the best policy. Whenever I confided in the potential man who wanted to marry me that I had been raped, our courting would always abruptly come to an end. The Iraqi gynaecologist at the private clinic I had gone to for various tests and treatment advised me to keep it a secret in the future.
When I graduated from Qatar University in 2010 with my degree in International Relations, it took me over two years to find a job. I used to spend entire days searching online for vacancies and filling out applications; applying for a job had become a job within itself. I signed up to dozens of free job hunting websites and contacted local recruitment agencies, but months had passed and I had not gotten a single interview.
I then took a more aggressive approach and called companies directly, and even printed out dozens of copies of my CV and went around the city in a taxi, handing in my CV to companies in person. This more direct approach was a waste of time because I would just get told to go back to the company’s website and apply online.
Once, I had come close to getting a job as a research assistant at a think tank that had recently opened, just the kind of job I had been hoping for with my degree, and after weeks of being on tenterhooks after being told I had gotten the job but just needed final approval from their HR managers, I was told at the end that I had not gotten it because they had decided it should go to a Qatari applicant on the basis of prioritizing Qatari applicants first.
I decided to soldier on – I really did not have any other option unless I wanted to stay at home and be bored and broke. One day, I opened my email inbox to find an email from a professor at the university. He was a professor in the School of Social Sciences, and although I had never taken a module with him, I knew him because he had helped me with an anthropology project I had done during my freshman year on Qatari marriage. Whenever we bumped into each other on campus, he would always greet me and stop to chat for a few minutes. He was a Qatari professor, but his mother was Egyptian. Let’s call him Dr Falah.
In his email Dr Falah told me that he needed a module assistant for the following academic year, that he thought I was the perfect fit for the role, and would I send him my updated CV. I jumped at the chance and hurriedly updated my CV with the completion date of my degree and emailed it to him right away. He emailed me back straight away asking if I could come to his office on campus for an informal interview.
At the age of 39, Dr Falah was seventeen years older than me, but I swear you wouldn’t have thought he was a day older than 31. He looked like an Arab Adam Sandler and he kept his face clean shaven, unlike the majority of Qatari men that sported either a moustache with a goatee, or a well-groomed beard. He looked happy to see me and gave me a warm welcome when I entered his office.
Due to his youthful good looks, Dr Falah was popular with the female students, but he seemed unfazed by it. A group of them were loitering outside his office door and I was surprised when he told them to go away sharply, couldn’t they see he had a guest. “I do not like Qatari women,” he told me as he sat back down on his office chair. I couldn’t hide my shock that he was openly telling me, someone that was only an acquaintance, that he did not like the women of his own country.
I was particularly surprised at this statement since I knew he was pro women’s rights. “Aren’t you married to one?” I asked him, remembering that he had once mentioned that he had a son and a daughter. “We are separated,” he replied, “because I couldn’t stand her. It was an arranged marriage.” I quickly changed the subject and steered the topic of the conversation to the reason I was there to meet him – a job.
He told me it would be quite easy and it was just a matter of paperwork, and that he could persuade the university management that he specifically needed me to fill the role. He seemed convinced about what he was saying and so I went home excited and hopeful that after a year of being bored at home, spending my time binge-watching TV shows, that I would soon be joining the workforce and earning my own money.
Dr Falah emailed me regularly to tell me that he was just waiting for so-and-so’s approval and that it would not be long now. And then one day I received a text message from him. “I hope you don’t mind,” the text message read, “I took your phone number from your CV.” Thinking little of it, I texted back that it was fine, and that it was probably easier to stay in touch by text.
I then made the very bold and brave decision of telling my parents that I had a mobile phone, as up until that point I had not been allowed one, and explained to them that I needed a phone so that recruiting agencies and companies could contact me. “But we have a landline, they can contact you on that,” was my father’s reply, but at the end, he relented and let me keep the phone.
Finally, at the ripe old age of 22, I had a phone which was no longer a secret. It was only an old Nokia, not an iPhone or a BlackBerry which everyone had those days, but at least I now openly had a mobile phone.
Two months had passed and Dr Falah had still not come back to me to say that his request to employ me had been approved. I was not too worried as I knew people who had waited as long as nine months to get approval for employment in the country’s biggest companies. Then the text messages and emails went from being about working at the university to being personal. He would email me with stories about his years in the UK, how he had dated English women, how he had even worked as a bouncer there, and had wanted to marry an English woman but it had not worked out.
He then asked me if I was married to which I replied no. And then, opening my big mouth as usual, I mentioned that I had dated Qataris in the past with the intention of getting married, and it was as if that had given him the green light.
“I really think you are beautiful,” said one text. And then I got a long email from him. “I think I am falling in love with you,” he said in that email, “My wife and I agreed years ago that when the kids become teenagers we will get officially divorced, and now my son is thirteen and my daughter is eleven. If I propose to you, would you accept to be my wife, despite the age gap and despite the fact you would be my second wife temporarily? Me and her, we don’t live together anymore, and the kids are living with her.”
At first I was surprised. I mean, we had not even been out together on a date yet. He would keep texting me to ask when I was free for a coffee date, and we would set a date, time and location, and then a day or two before the date he would cancel. But then, I started to actually consider his proposal. I thought to myself on one hand yes, he is seventeen years older than me, and yes I had promised myself never to be someone’s second wife, but on the other hand, he looks really young for his age, he is getting divorced in a year or two so I won’t be his second wife for long; plus, he is a professor, and his mother is from the same country as my father. In addition, as I was no longer a virgin, this was probably the best I could do. This is how I justified it to myself.
If he was actually serious, I would consider his proposal, and might even say yes. I was almost certain that my father would agree to let me marry Dr Falah since he openly kept saying how I was now damaged goods and could never hope for anyone to marry me. Plus, my father would love showing off to people that his daughter had married a professor. And so, I replied to the email and said that if he was really serious, that I could persuade my parents to accept his proposal and that my answer to his question was yes.
Not long after that, Dr Falah called me back to his office on campus for another meeting. He closed the door as he always did whenever I visited his office, to stop students from eavesdropping in the doorway. “I wanted to tell you in person,” he said, “that the university wouldn’t accept my request. They have changed their employment requirements. A module assistant has to have at least a Master’s degree now. I am so sorry. If it was up to me, you would already be working with me.” It felt like a serious blow. It also felt like at this rate, after being jobless for a year, becoming this man’s wife was an increasingly attractive idea.
“I will let you in on a secret,” he continued, “I am planning to resign from here. I have a job offer at the country’s first women’s refuge. I will tell them there that I want to employ you as my secretary.” “Okay, and what about your marriage proposal?” I asked, “Are you still serious about that? Because if you are, I think it is time for me to speak to my parents about it.” “Yes I am serious,” Dr Falah replied, “I just have a few things I need to sort out first. And I also want to get you a job. I want you to always be with me, at home and at work.”
This all sounded very romantic. Perhaps I would fall in love with this man someday, and have him to take care of me and be by my side. It was true that when I reached the age of thirty he would be nearly fifty. And at the age of forty he would be nearly sixty. But I did not have to think about that now. We had a good decade of youth still ahead of us.
The emailing and texting to and fro continued for another couple of months. One day, Dr Falah sent a text asking if I would like to meet him at a small hotel that was in an area close to where I lived, let’s call it Villa Arabia. I was confused. This three star hotel had a reputation. It was the place Qatari men, mainly professional footballers, took girls to sleep with, and they would give a little extra in cash to the hotel management so that they would turn a blind eye. Naively, I texted back, “Do you want to go there for lunch?” “No, I was thinking about booking a room for the two of us there. To be honest, I really fancy you and want to shag you,” was his reply.
I do not think I had been more disappointed in a man in my life. I was an idiot. I had really thought he had genuinely liked me, and had honest intentions. I thought that since he was a professor he must be a respectable man. He was just another Gulf man who wanted to sleep with me under the guise of loving me and wanting to marry me. Forever the polite person I was, instead of texting him back telling him exactly what I thought of him, all I replied with was, “No thank you, I do not fancy a shag. I really thought you actually wanted to marry me.”
“You have completely misunderstood me,” he quickly replied, “I do want to marry you. But I also fancy you. I thought you would be fine with it, with you being half English.”
There it was again. The English card. And I was surprised it was coming from him, he who had said he had lived for a decade in England. He was no better than the Gulf men who had never stepped outside of their country, and who thought that women from the West would drop their knickers and spread their legs at the snap of a finger.
I stopped replying to his texts and emails. Text after text and email after email came from him, all begging me to reply, telling me how much he loved me and could not stop thinking about me, and how cruel I was to make him feel this way and ignore him, until almost a year later – yes a year – he stopped, only sending me a short email saying Eid Mubarak on Eid.
And so that’s the short story of the Professor who loved me - or who had said he loved me.
What I’ve been writing…
Illustration copyright of The New Arab
We are now in September (my birthday month) but I still wanted to share my round-up of 10 revolutionary books written by female Arab authors for August’s Women in Translation Month for The New Arab. Read Celebrate Women in Translation Month with these 10 must-read books by female Arab authors and add the books to your list!
Also for The New Arab I wrote two op-eds:
How The Economist’s feature “Why women are fatter than men in the Arab world” is hypocritical - while it’s body positivity in the West, in the eyes of Western media it’s another indicator of the ills of Arab society when it comes to the Middle East. Read it here.
Why Gulf guardianship laws are about patriarchy and not Shari’ah. I argue that high rates of women in higher education and female entrepreneurship mean nothing if male guardianship laws still exist. Read it here.
What I’ve been watching…
Image from Netflix
I’m almost done watching Mo, the semi-autobiographical dramedy by Palestinian American comedian Mo Amer, written along with his friend, fellow comedian Ramy Youssef of the hit comedy Ramy (which Mo appeared in). It feels so good watching a show in which the Arab representation is just so authentic! Mo is the tale of a Palestinian Texan refugee’s plight to provide for his family and to win his asylum case, and the crazy run-ins he has along the way. There’s also great Latinx representation and neurodiversity representation.
What I’ve been reading…
Speaking of Mo, I loved Tariq Raouf’s piece on Mo for The New Arab, Netflix’s Mo is a love letter to Houston and Palestinian heritage.
Author of the brilliant Muslim romcom Finding Mr Perfectly Fine (I have not laughed out so hard when reading as I did with this book!) Tasneem Abdulrasheed included me in her very important piece on the burden of Muslim representation in literature for Amaliah. Read “Is It My Responsibility to Represent 1.9 Billion Muslims in My Writing?”
I had my own experience with severe hair loss in my mid-20s and was glad that journalist Beth Ashley raised awareness in Metro for Hair Loss Awareness Month in ‘It was difficult to cope with how different I looked:’ What it’s like to lose your hair in your 20’s.
Was psyched that one of my favourite newsletters, Mixed Messages, interviewed one of my favourite authors, Kit de Waal, on being Irish and Caribbean. Read Kit de Waal: “Now, I go everywhere as this whole me - not bits of me.”
Also check out the brilliant Alya Mooro’s book, newsletters, articles, and podcast recommendations in her latest edition of The Greater Conversation newsletter.
Finally, if you enjoy my work and want to support me, consider buying a copy of my semi-autobiographical novel, Hijab and Red Lipstick, published by Hashtag Press.
Longlisted for The Diverse Book Awards 2021, Hijab and Red Lipstick is a rare insight into what life is like as a young Arab woman growing up in the Arab Gulf. Find it on Amazon, Waterstones, Blackwells, and worldwide on the Book Depository.