Meahz
Posts: 6
Joined: 8/17/2005
Status: offline
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Well first of all, thank you for sharing this quite interesting story. I have to admit when you said “Lebanese subs” I don’t know why, but I had them figured as male. Before I comment on the rest of your post, please allow me to share my 10 cents on the “they were sold to certain husbands”.
My grandmother was married to my grandfather at the age of 14, but they kind of had a fairy tale story, my grandfather took great care of my grandmother (and still does) and they had 8 children (4 boys, 4 girls). My mom was married 1 year before she graduated college and now has 5 children. My sister graduated 2 years ago from college and is still unmarried and that’s not even something we talk about. What I’m trying to point out is the winds of change are moving forward. Before at the ages of 14-15 it was very normal for a girl to get married and to quit school. While the women of my mom’s generation were often married after they graduate. Right now it’s really differs from family to family; some families have men waiting to marry their daughter as soon as they graduate, but not all of them. And it’s not even the process that you think. First men come and start visiting, if the girl likes him, and the parents ok him, they will get engaged and start spending some time alone. They usually agree on how long they will remain engaged before they get married.
And even when they are supposedly sold, they are married to men who take care of them a lot. And I do admit that there’s no love when it starts, but the love eventually comes, usually during engagement days. And the traditional marriage is by far a very different marriage from the average marriage outside arab countries. First of all, it depends on the country/religion. And when I say religion, Sunni & Shite have different types of traditions when it comes to marriage. (Islam is split into Sunnis & shites). A typical Sunni marriage means the guy has to have a house/car/good job and parents of the bride pay for the wedding ceremony, for the dress of the bride, and often pay for the bedroom and dining room. Shites have men pay for everything, in Jordan same thing. So basically you’re marrying somebody who is able to take care of you. And in some sense, they are not really sold because the woman has to OK the groom. Now of course I’m talking about Middle/High class families, of course in poor families you don’t have all that. In addition if the man mistreats his lady, she’ll go to her parent’s house and you would have the parents intervening, of course a husband beater would pass in poor families. Although I’m defending these types of marriages, I’m not really sold on them. But you also have to accept the fact that meeting a woman that fits you isn’t so easy, so meeting and eventually marrying a woman this way doesn’t sound too bad. Of course the case with you is quite different, a lot of the woman I know (including my aunt) who first got married didn’t know how to cook and clean and really had an attitude problem. My aunt rejected over 20 rich grooms because they asked her to quit her job and stay at home, my aunt told them she didn’t study 4 years of college and do 3 years of training (you have to do 3 years of unpaid training to become a lawyer here) so I can quit everything and take care of the kids! Ironically when she finally married, she quit her job on her own because she wants to spend time with her children, and the salary wasn’t worth wasting her time.
As for the “man of the house” that is a very common thing, when a woman wants to talk, she talks to the woman of the house, and the man talks to the man of the house. The notion of the man of the house is a very common thing. Although it’s quite retro, but most of these things are only appearances. Although my dad might be the man of the house, mom usually had the “final word” on most of the finance issues of the house. You would be surprised that my mom took my dad’s salary every month and she handled the spending.
Concerning the arrangement that they had about your services, I would have to say that’s quite interesting! I’ll keep you in mind whenever I decide to get married. *KIDDING* I’m quite confident that they both learned a lot under your hand, and maybe the first learned a lot on your knees?
As for Lebanon, what you said is quite true. Lebanon actually suffers from too much diversity, we are a small country that probably has the most number of religion factions (Shiite/Sunni from Islam for example, I forgot the exact word). And we have a ridiculous amount of political parties for our population. And infact the difference in upraising is huge from different religions. So when you meet a Lebanese don’t really expect to find everybody like that person, we’re too much diversified for our own sake!
You had Israeli and Lebanese flags in the same Neighborhood? WAW, I’m glad everybody took their flags down. I’m actually surprised that the Lebanese would accept that Israeli flag, I know my half Lebanese would go crazy about that, and my half Palestinian would hate it too. The funny part is being an American citizen I would have to live with that flag… I just hate it when you just can’t kill somebody who annoys you! Those damn laws!! *kidding*
So tell me one thing, you’re expecting having the children of those two young ladies anytime soon for maybe another long training session?
I think the main problem with wrong western assumptions, is that they meet a group of Arabs that really don’t represent the real Arabs. I know I have written a lot, but let me elaborate, last summer most of my friends traveled the world during their training program (so did I). I found out a lot of things, like Swedish people hate Arabs! The weird part is they can’t be blamed. The Arabs that live in Sweden are the crap of the crap of the crap of the society, criminals and low lives. So once they meet an Arab they assume he’s similar to the Arabs they know in their own country. My friend told me they would hate us, but as soon as they knew we were Engineering students from a prestigious university their whole approach to us would differ. My 2 friends went to Michigan Ann Arbor, the people they met there thought that Lebanese women cover themselves in black and you can’t even see the eyes: S They should come see what we have in my university. Some of my friends met people that were shocked that we have cars, so you know where I’m going with this….
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RE: why hard to find Mistress in Middle East - 
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