Same place, same time – Meshal and I began talking
like we were old friends, it seemed like! Going off our last conversation about
smoking hookah, we transitioned into another family-friendly topic: discussing the
joys and sorrows of gambling. Gambling is illegal in Saudi Arabia, apparently, and
it is considered a vice. The reason gambling came up was that he told me he was
heading to Lubbock during spring break to see his cousin because he wasn’t able
to go to Las Vegas (seems like a fair trade, right?). Never having been to
Vegas (though he’d heard wonderful tales from his brother on the city) he
wondered if I had ever gambled, and so I shared with him my experiences with
good ol’ Winstar World Casino and Resort, one of my favorite night-out
destinations. I described to him the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of shining,
blinking, chiming slot machines stretching a mile across with poker tables and black-jack
tables and roulette wheels interspersed, how the place unfortunately reeks of
smoke (which Meshal is used to since his brothers smoke), and how much fun it is
to win $8 from a $0.40 spin on the Cash Wizard machine, one of my personal favorites.
Meshal and his brothers started the moving process,
going from a cramped apartment to an actual house today, about which he was
very excited since it means he will have his own room and won’t have to sleep
on the couch in the living room. When I asked him if he was helping he said, “No
way, we have a moving company… we Saudis: we are all lazy!”
Laughing, I asked him if he really
thought that, to which he replied, “Oh, I know it. Easier is better.” This
launched us into a conversation about free time and college life. I didn’t
remember what free time was, but he convinced me it was very real and not a figment
of my imagination, since he let me know he had plenty of it to spare. He goes to
class from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., and after that he has nothing to do, really,
unless he needs to prepare for a class the next day. He was curious as to why I
had no free time, and I told him about the bustling life of a college student,
about joining organizations and clubs, and about the work it takes to go
through school. He was told to enjoy the free time while he has it in the IEP, and
he plans on doing so before he starts school here!
Toward the tail end of our meeting
we saw Ashlyn and Kristin walk in with their partners, both of whom Meshal knew
from his classes. He was explaining to me that Ashlyn’s partner, the woman, was
accompanied by her husband – both from Saudi Arabia. He then went into why the husband
was there – apparently in Saudi Arabia, wives are thought of as “queens” i.e. they must be driven around by the husband/a
male relative, they are not to be left alone by the husband. I found this very
interesting since my overall view of the Arab world was that it was a vastly
male-predominating society in which women have little to no rights – not even the
right to show their faces in public! But from what Meshal told me, there must be
a great deal of trust between a Saudi husband and wife and a certain amount of
doting upon from the husband. After this explanation he exclaimed that he didn’t
want to get married – he would much rather be a bachelor and continue with free
time, not worrying about having to follow a woman around everywhere she goes
since it is part of the job of a husband!
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