What Happens Next?
I love reading the paper in a foreign country. It often reveals a different way of thinking. Often I am mystified; there is a context in which the article is written that you may “get” while I do not. As I read the Kuwait Times there are many times I wonder “what happens next?” Rarely do we get any follow up, rarely do we know the ultimate outcome of these incidents. These are all from today’s paper(24 Jan 2007):
1. The ‘Other’ Woman
A woman after suspecting her husband of infidelity, decided to keep tabs on him, and followed him to a spring camp in the Jdailiyat area and was shocked when she found her fears had turned into reality when she caught him red-handed in the arms of the ‘other’ woman. The wife immediately summoned police who rushed to the camp and also found out that he was under the influence of alcohol. In a fit of rage, he also smashed the police car’s windowpane to smithereens. He was referred to the relevant authorities.
My comment/questions: Infidelity is a painfully personal kind of behavior. Why would the police be called? Would you call the police if you want to salvage a relationship, or bury it? Does involving the police help in a divorce settlement? Will the husband normally be shamed and repentant, or angry and defiant? Are there processes to help a husband and wife save their marriage? And what happens to the other woman? Does it depend on who she is and what her nationality is? And wouldn’t a wife be afraid to confront her husband in that situation, would she be placing herself in physical danger?
2. Daughter Reveals Affair
A 47-year old Kuwaiti woman lodged a complaint with Mubarak Al Kabeer police that another Kuwaiti who works for the National Guard had several sexual intercourses with her 16 year old daughter in her own room, whenever she went out on errands. She said that her daughter confessed to her and revealed her affair our of her fear that she might be pregnant after which her lover might dump her. The man is being summoned for further interrogation.
My comment/questions: Why does it matter how old the woman is making the complaint? Why is that on the public record? If the girl is pregnant, what happens next? Can she raise her child as a single mother here in Kuwait? Is there a possibility that the girl will marry her National Guard lover? If not, what are her chances for marriage? Can she continue school if she is pregnant?
3. Mother Accused of Kidnapping
A 60 year old Arab lodged a complaint with Jabriya police that his 55 year old Iraqi divorcee had kidnapped their two sons. He produced a court order that authorized him custody of the boys and that their divorced mother showed up in his absence, along with her older sons from an earlier marriage and took the boys away. The father filed a kidnap case against his ex-wife althought Kuwaiti family laws do not under any circumstance permit accusing a mother of kidnapping her own children, even if the father had the legal custody rights.
My comment/questions: Why list the ages of the complaintant and his wife, but not the ages of the boys? How can the father file a case, if Kuwaiti law specifically states a mother cannot kidnap her own children? Do the boys have any choice of which parent they would want to live with? If the wife is 55, isn’t it likely that the youngest “boy” is around 15? (I would think it’s pretty hard to kidnap teenage boys.) Do parents often have heated contests over their children in Kuwait? Does shared custody work here?
Weather Underground
We all have routines that get us through the things we do every day, things we do almost without thinking. You get up, you take care of your morning ablutions, fix some coffee, and then, in my case, you check e-mails, read the day’s selections from the lectionary, check the blog, and check the weather.
Part of my routine is Weather Underground. I like it so much, I added it to my blogroll, over there to the right. When I click, I get Kuwait Weather, first thing, but over on the left are all my favorite cities where I have family and friends – Seattle, Pensacola, Doha (Qatar), Mfuwe (Zambia), Colorado Springs, Zanzibar . . . all at a glance. With one click, I can see what the weather will be there, too.
And for any other city I’m travelling to, I can just type it in and it will take me there.
When my son was getting married, I could check the weather for many years back to see how hot it generally gets on that day in that city – it gave me a range for which to pack.
I’ve tried a lot of other weather sites, but this one has the things I need. It’s part of my daily routine. You can find it here.
BBC: Dog Owners Lead Healthier Lives
(See Statistics: “Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics” below for perspective. Ask “who did the study? What was the purpose of the study? Who profits?”)
This article is from today’s BBC News online. You can read the whole report here.
Dogs can provide companionship
If you want to live a healthier life get a dog, research suggests.
The companionship offered by many pets is thought to be good for you, but the benefits of owning a dog outstrip those of cat owners, the study says.
A psychologist from Queen’s University, Belfast, said dog owners tended to have lower blood pressure and cholesterol.
Writing in the British Journal of Health Psychology, she says that regular ‘walkies’ may partly explain the difference.
Dr Deborah Wells reviewed dozens of earlier research papers which looked at the health benefits of pet ownership.
In some cases, the social support offered by an animal is greater than the support than another human could offer
Dr June McNicholas
Health psychologist
She confirmed that pet owners tended in general to be healthier than the average member of the population.
However, her research suggested that dog ownership produced more positive influence than cat ownership.
As well as lower blood pressure and cholesterol, she said dog-owners suffered fewer minor ailments and serious medical problems.
There was also the suggestion that dogs could aid recovery from serious illnesses such as heart attacks, and act as ‘early warning’ to detect an approaching epileptic seizure.
Stress-busting
Dr Wells said the precise reason for the benefits was not totally clear.
“It is possible that dogs can directly promote our well-being by buffering us from stress, one of the major risk factors associated with ill-health.
read the rest here.
My comment: I hate a study that says dog owners are healthier than cat owners, but they say that the regular walking might be a factor. Have to admit, that is true. I have a leash for my cat. When I tried to put the body harness on him, some primitive switch deep inside switched on, and the Qatteri Cat went bat-crazy, clawing, biting, twisting, hissing . . . never tried it again.
We tried walking a cat once – we’ve been told it can be done. Our experience we called “taking the cat for a drag.” I’ve never met a cat who would happily take to a leash.
And I never met a dog who wouldn’t go for a walk with great enthusiasm. They wiggle with uncontrollable delight when they see the leash, wiggle so hard you can barely get the leash attached. They bolt out the door, sniff the air, and prance as you race to keep up.
You see life differently when you walk a dog. It’s all “go! go! go!” and then all of a sudden it’s “Hey! What’s this? Some dog peed here! Woooof!” You really do see the world in a blade of grass, when you are a dog, or a hedge, or a pile of cat poop. (“No! No! You can’t eat that!! No!”) Their love of life is infectious, and probably even the stop and go kind of walking you do with a dog is better than no walking at all.
Taking “Normal” for Granted
Today a good friend sent a story about a guy driving a very expensive car and a kid hitting the car by throwing a brick. The guy stops his car, ready to kill, and the kid cries and says it was the only way he had to get his attention, he needs help getting his brother back into his wheelchair. The guy instantly goes from raging anger to compassion, and keeps the dent in the side of his car to remind himself that it shouldn’t take a brick to get his attention.
In the story, it says sometimes God uses a brick to get our attention.
I know, I know, you wonder where I am going with this.
It brings two very simple things to my mind. First, I have bored you more than once with my woes of jet lagging. Right now, I am sleeping great, although I am still falling asleep around nine at night, I am sleeping through the night. Thanks be to God! I wake up in the morning thankful for something so simple – a good night’s sleep.
Sleep isn’t so simple for those who suffer sleep deprivation – and their name is legion. My heart especially goes out to young mothers with their first baby . . . no one tells you how sleep deprivation can change your life. You think you can handle anything. Sleep deprivation is a big brick thrown into your life – it really gets your attention. Without adequate high quality sleep, life loses its lustre, and the simplest thing can be overwhelming.
Second, this is the time of year when many blogs feature colds and flu and lingering illnesses. I rarely get sick, but when I do – oh, I am such a baby. I don’t want concerned people around, I just want to be left alone to suffer. I just want the sickness to be OVER. And then, one day when it is gone – oh! how good it feels, just to be NOT sick! And I thank God for the every day blessing of good health!
We take so much for granted as we go through our daily lives. We forget how really good just being “normal” can be.
But maybe these are the bricks being thrown into our lives to get our attention, to help us to be thankful for our blessings?
Maybe slowing us down helps us to see things we might otherwise speed right by in the busy-ness of our active lives?
Maybe this is all a part of being thankful for the bad things that come into our lives, as well as the good? Alhamd’allah!
I think this is the first day of the Islamic New Year. If so, wishing my Moslem friends all the blessings of a new and, God willing, abundant and peaceful year.
Qatteri Cat’s Babies
Last night, we had just gotten to sleep, when we could hear the Qatteri Cat crying. We know that cry. It’s his “rounding up the babies” cry. He got a new baby yesterday, a small white bear, and now he is responsible for four babies. This is what we found on our bed this morning:
He has had a very busy week, helping me with my projects, and keeping track of all the goings-ons in the neighborhood.
Outrage: Rape Reporting from Monrovia and Iran
My energy is back. I felt so blessed – today I started my photo albums. I had it all organized, but just couldn’t make myself DO it. Today was a new day, woke up at a reasonable hour with energy! Alhamdallah!
Back in my workshop, Qatteri Cat helping, BBC on to keep me company . . . and two separate reports come on BBC News (radio). I can sit, or I can share my outrage with you. Here I am . . .
The report from Monrovia is about the continuous rape of children, even infants under one year. They are only now documenting it is happening, and to what extent. Before, it was deny, deny, deny.
Here is a direct quote from the program: “Rape is so entrenched in the society.” They haven’t begun to study WHY it is happening, only documenting that it IS happening. To children, the weakest, least powerful segment of society. And in other African countries, societal studies have shown that there is a belief that having sex with virgins, uncontaminated, can cure AIDS. So ignorant. So selfish. And as the virgins become fewer, the victims get younger. Who would rape an infant? Who would be so desperate and so depraved? It makes me shake, it makes me so angry, this violation of the most innocent.
The second case is about an Iranian woman, Norouzi, who killed a man who was attempting to rape her. Convicted of murder, and given the death penalty, the court said she had used “too much force” in defending herself.
So, in your experience, what happens if you defend yourself but leave your attacker still capable? Your self-defense only makes him/her more angry, more lethal, and raises your probability of ending up dead yourself. Hmmmmm. . . . experience rape and likely death, or kill my attacker?? I know, in a heartbeat, which I would choose.
The family has forgiven her IF she pays the blood money of nearly $63,000 dollars. Pay $63,000 for the SCUM that tried to rape her??
Share my outrage. You can read the entire story on the BBC website, here.
A quote from this newsarticle:
Women’s rights activist and lawyer Sara Irani told The Associated Press news agency she welcomed the resolution of the case.
“Norouzi’s freedom will give new breath to women to find the courage to stand up for their rights and defend themselves,” she said.
In Iran, a married woman who is raped risks the death penalty for adultery if she cannot prove she was violated.
If she kills her attacker, she may also face the death sentence for murder.
You may wonder why I tag this a political issue. Politics is all about power. This woman, and these children are victims because 1) they are physically weaker than their attackers and 2) their attackers don’t believe there will be any repercussions; they believe they are entitled to what they take and that there will be no penalty. It’s about power. It’s political until there are laws strong enough to protect the weak and innocent against their attackers, and those laws are enforced.
Unexpected Pleasure
As I was leaving Seattle, my niece, Little Diamond, passed a book along to me. It’s part of our family culture – we read, and we pass along.
When my son was in university, I remember him telling me that I had addicted him to books. His first memory of books was living in Tunis, and when we would be going on a long trip, or when he had done something particularly good, I would pull down a new book from the shelf high up in my closet. Knowing he was approaching reading age, I had stocked up on books before we left.
As a student, he told me that as he approached final exams at university, he would motivate himself by telling himself that as soon as his last final was over, he could go to the bookstore and buy whatever the newest book out was that he was eager to read. Reading – for fun – during his school breaks was his great reward.
It’s that way for all of us. Before any trip, we stock up on good books to read. Before I left Seattle, I stocked up books for my Mother to read! We seek out places like Half Price Books (I do NOT own stock in Half Price Books) and Amazon.com to feed our habits. In our concern against running out of good books, we all have piles by our bed of books we intend to read. Some of my books have been there almost a year – since I moved to Kuwait!
So I accepted the book, Snake Hips: Belly Dancing and How I Found True Love, although I looked at the cover in dismay, and actually took it off for the trip. It’s about a Lebanese-American girl who goes in search of her ethnic roots. While at first I didn’t like her, I kept reading in spite of myself – the book drew me in. Little Diamond reviews the book here, (as well as several others that sound really good.)
This book was an unexpected pleasure – as are many of the books my book-voracious niece reads. The main character in this book has an unexpected wryly objective view of herself, is painfully honest, and you find yourself hoping she will find herself, and true love, in spite of her clumsy attempts.
Horror Movies: Night of the Living Dead
I used to love horror movies. At university, we would gather together late at night and watch the scariest movies we could find. I slept great. None of them really influenced me, none of them frightened me. Or . . . if they did, I guess I liked it.
And then a friend told me to go see The Night of the Living Dead. The Night of the Living Dead is a horror-genre cult movie, by George Romero. It was a low budget movie, filmed (if I remember correctly) in black and white. It wasn’t a smooth film, it had a lot of the same pseudo-authenticity of The Blair Witch Project, shot years later with hand held cameras.
It was a shocking movie. It crossed a lot of boundaries. While compared to the violence of Tarantino, it might appear mild, it was gruesome for its time. Woven through the movie were what we now call “issues.” Black/white issues, marital issues, death taboo issues, subtle incestuous references.
You may never have heard of it, but years after it was made, there were making sequels – Night of the Living Dead 2, Return of the Living Dead, etc. The movie has been re-done, I hear, I have never seen another.
Night of the Living Dead was too real for me. It’s related to Training Joke #2 which really isn’t very funny if you read it closely. it describes a world of “me first” when facing an enemy with whom you cannot reason. It’s supposed to illustrate the benefits of maintaining a low profile when living or working in a country where you may face hostility, but what makes it “funny” is the unexpected treacherousness of one friend to another.
And, as the bear in the training joke, the zombies were not malicious, they were just hungry. You can’t charm them out of their hunger, you can’t intimidate them. They have no compassion, no pity, no feelings whatsoever. Just hunger, a driving hunger, for flesh.
The zombies in Night of the Living Dead were occasionally known by the non-dead humans. Survival was based on recognizing that the zombie was no longer the person they had once known and loved – getting away, or killing the zombie, overcoming the emotions wrapped up in the person the zombie had been before death and re-activation.
One of the things I like about the movie is that they never really adequately explain how this all happened. There is speculation, and there is dealing with the immediate problem, but there is no real resolution as to cause. Just like real life, where we scramble to deal with things, but often, even years later, fail to understand what we were really dealing with.
And I have met a human zombie or two. No, they are not undead, but neither are they really living. About as close to emotion as they come is a curiousity about why feeling people feel as we do, and a mild niggling feeling that they might be missing something. If they are psychopathic, they can appear to be normal, but underneath is a great void. They know who they are. Sometimes, in an effort to feel, they inflict pain, the way a cat will toy with a mouse before killing and eating it. And, just as you can’t blame a cat for being a cat, I think these people are born that way, and can’t take responsibility for what they are – or are not. Scary people. Stay away, far far away.
Blame it on the Rain
(I apologize to Milli Vanilli, whose music and look I really liked, even though they were totally frauds.)
I thought I had it beat. I am getting about six hours of sleep a night, pretty normal, not bad. But . . . wide awake around four every morning – four if I am lucky, 3, 3:30 sometimes. So up at 4 this morning, do you know how quiet it is in Kuwait at four in the morning? Its like quiet-squared. Stopped by the French bakery for some goodies, spent time with a good friend from 8 – 10, we had intended to walk but too much rain! We explored photo management and uploads for a while and then I headed home.
I didn’t intend to nap. The Qatteri Cat got cozy and the next thing I knew . . . I had slept from noon to 4:30, slept like a dead person. Of course now I am WIDE AWAKE. I can’t imagine how I will sleep tonight. When will this end, when will I be back on local time??
January Projects
When our son and daughter-in-law were visiting, she was telling me our son has routines he adapts to insure he gets everything done. As she was telling me this, I was squirming in my chair. I am not exactly obsessive-compulsive, but because I could have a tendency to scatter my energies, I do the same thing, I have little routines I run to make sure that the important things get taken care of before I have fun.
One of these routines is to use January to get organized so that I can goof off the rest of the year. I try to get tax things in order, I try to make sure all the paperwork is filed or tossed . . . and I do photo albums for the preceding year, two albums if we went to Africa, which we have been doing nearly every year.
But last January I moved. And then, just about every other month, I was back in the States, either of a wedding or to see my parents. The albums never got done.
So yesterday, I gathered all the photos. Fortunately, I had kept them in different places, so they were not all mixed up. I have to do four albums. For the 2006 family album, I still need to get photos printed, and that alone takes time and organization. The other photos, I just needed to get in order. That took a whole day.
So this is for my friend – you know who you are – with twenty something years of photos she still hasn’t posted. I apologize! I apologize for all the times I told you how easy it is, and to just DO it. I am only one year behind, and already I can’t remember where this photo was taken, why that photo was taken, or what sequence these photos should be in. It is a daunting task, and I am only working on two years. I apologize again, dear friend, I grovel in mortification at my arrogance and lack of sympathy. God, in his mighty wisdon, has humbled me by showing me how fragile my memory is, and how unfounded my pride in organization. Aarrgh! Forgive me!
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