Photos taken at Half Moon Bay, Saudi Arabia, 1990-1991, by Camela, who was stationed in the region during the period of the Persian Gulf War. From her accompanying description, sent via email and re-posted by permission:
The fish are kiosks at the beach, male on one side, female on the other. Half Moon was a resort where the military could go to for R & R. Every time the bus took us there it had to stop and tell some person how many women were on the bus; I asked the driver why and he had no answer.
If a woman wanted to swim in the pool she had to wear a cover up because if a young male waiter saw her skin and got a hard-on, it was the woman's fault. This has been the Muslim train of thought for centuries.
When we first got to Saudi and were walking to town with a couple of guys who'd been there for some time, we passed a man and he was scratching his genitals, a normal man thing, but the next one we passed was actually jerking off. When we got back to our hooch, retelling our experience, one of the girls said that since we didn't have our heads covered, we were whores to them and that is why they acted the way they did. After that episode, we wore scarfs to cover up when we went out.
It's been eighteen years since Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm; many civilian and military veterans have written about or told me stories from then (including dozens of community college students), but Camela's take has the added twist of a woman's wartime point of view. Many thanks to her for permission to post.
Today's Rune: Initiation.
5 comments:
Swine are swine no matter the reason, a pig can never be anything but a pig.
That is such a bias anti Islam post Erik. Saudi Arabia doesn't represent the 1.2 Billion Muslims in the world, and if she cared much why she didnt send messages to her congressmen to put pressure on the Saudi regime to stop such inhuman behaviour against women in that country. These things happen only in KSA, and its not part of our culture.
Ali, this is not meant to be an anti-Islamic post, but rather a firsthand account of what an American woman encountered in Saudi.
Ali, judging from your profile, your attitude will be different than say, a typical Saudi male who hasn't traveled outside the kingdom.
Amman is a cosmopolitan city, with a long history of finding ways to work with different types of people.
I personally found two studies published in 2005 in the US and 2007 in the UK quite horrifying. They document Saudi hate spew (the Wahhabi "keepers of the faith") disseminatated to US and UK mosques on how to be a good Muslim in the lands of the infidels. The fundamentalists have been appeased for far too long in KSA.
My neighbors are Muslim and I happen to really like them. If it looked like they were going all fundie on me, I might be nervous. I don't like religious fundamentalists of any brand, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, whatever.
Unfortunately there are idiots everywhere, across every geographic, racial & religious divide. So much for the much-touted, superior, human "intelligence." Sometimes I wish I were a tree.
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