I had an amusing
morning yesterday. First, I was walking across the street by Dawar Dah Lieh and two
female cops stopped me. It took a little while for me to figure out what they
wanted, but I finally realized that they were asking me where I had bought my
pants and how much they cost. I told them that I got them in the Balad and they
seemed to think that I actually meant the country instead of West Al Balad, but
we finally cleared that up. I hope they get some. That would be awesome.
Then I was walking
through the Balad on the way to the next service station and some guys were yelling
and hitting each other with metal poles (the long stick ones with hooks that they use
to hang things.) I think only a few hits were actually received, but the guy aggravating everyone
almost seemed drunk except that it was morning and I’m in a Muslim country. So that was weird. Everyone was lined down the street watching, but I left once they started moving towards me.
Then I was walking in
Ashrafiya on the way to work and I saw the worst make-up I have ever seen in my
life. Women here sometimes wear a lot of whiter make-up that so that they will look more white because apparently that is more attractive. Some of them cake it on a lot, but it isn’t as bad as if a girl in the States did it
because they don’t have a make-up line because
they wear hijabs, but a lot of them you can still tell. Anyway, this lady was
not even Arab dark, she was black and she was wearing make-up lighter than what I
wear. I could see her hands and they were black. She looked like Tracy Jordan
in his white woman make-up. Also, she looked like skeletor. It was distressing.
Then I arrived at the
orphanage and it was awkward because all the girls were in the main room
with a bunch of middle-aged women. One woman was in the middle of the
room and was talking to all of the girls and asking them questions like if they
liked their teachers. They said no of course. Haha. A lot of the women came to
ask me questions and offer me the candy they were giving the girls. I told them
that I was from America and they told this teenage girl who was with them and
she came over to talk to me because she speaks pretty decent English. She translated
some of the things that the woman in the middle of the room was saying. A lot
of the women there had weird looking hijabs, so I stared at them for a while
and realized that they were probably niqabs that they had just put on top of
their heads while they were just with girls. I asked the girl about them and
she misunderstood me and said that Allah only requires that they cover
everything but their faces and hands. Some women just do more, but Allah does
not require that of all women. So that was interesting.
It was a pretty conservative group because about 5 of them wore niqabs and they were all
wearing black and a few were wearing some white. Only the girl I talked to and her little sister were wearing colors. But it was crazy
cool to see niqabed women without their niqabs. I wonder if they walk by each
other in the street and have no idea who one another is and just keep walking
even though they're BFFs
