Donne Arabe

In honour of International Women's Day coming up next Sunday (and fellas, I think, given the feminist spirit of the day--and justly so, you would best honour the day by not objectifying a single woman, nor engaging in anything remotely smacking of patriarchy or mysogyny, including holding the door and using the expressions "better half," "fairer sex," or "hot chick"--unless you are referring to your own wife, and that with written, notarised permission), I decided I should comment on women.

Not much to say, really: they're semi-liberated, increasingly restless, smart as whips (if whips were, you know, capable of ratiocination and not merely manipulated by some human's hand and arm so they can snap or whoosh or save Indiana Jones from death once more), and, depending on who you talk to, frustrated with or without political "progress."

But I don't want to talk about any of that. No, my topic today is how they move.

Three classes: gliders, striders, and hiders.

Gliders are austere, or appear to be: each Emirati woman with wasta (connection/influence) seems rarely to touch the ground. The effect is managed because of the abaya, I think: the garment is meant to touch the ground in order to cover all skin, and so not only does it hide the feet, it also requires careful, measured, slow steps to avoid entanglements in the hem.

Gliders are often also completely veiled, which makes ambulation all the more precarious--it requires steadiness and singularity of gaze, an attitude that results in both haughty and oblivious appearances, neither of which is necessarily the case, but when you're stuck behind a glider in a narrow aisle, or cut off by one in the street, they all seem cut from the same I'll-thank-you-to-step-off cloth.

Striders lack either the general grace or the indolent indifference of the gliders. These tend to be ambitious in purpose and confident in personhood. Abaya or no, they move without aggression and without fear, beside a man rather than behind him, or by themselves and the world to the devil. Heads are un- as often as covered, abayas worn will stream behind like the black-crow gown of Oxbridge. Striders leave hope in their wake.

Hiders--often those of lower rank or ex-pat muslims from other eastern countries--try hard to lay low. They cling together, downcast either from modesty or timidity, or in some cases fear. They move with a hyperkinetic agitatus, skittish like deer, shy as bunnies.


On a serious note:
The life of this country, like that of every nation, is the burden of its women, even those that don't know it: it is the burden of the haughty, high-bosomed phantasms; it is the burden of those burning with passion for life and learning, dreams blazing; and it is even the burden of the mousey ones afraid of their own shadows. They are collectively the life and limbs of the nation: they row it afloat, they cure it like smoke. May God bless them--masha'allah--and keep them moving forward, wherever they want forward to take them.

Happy International Women's Day.