File Under: You've Got to Be F'ng Kidding

Daddy made you do it. Made you dress up in an abeya and go into a girl's school to collect the pay of your three sisters who are workers there. Calling B.S. on the story. The boy said he "didn't want to do it, but his father demanded that he try to collect the money." Someone tell me what is wrong with men in this country?!! They are either marrying their little eight-year-old daughters off for money... or not letting their daughter's get married because they depend on the income the daughter brings in [and making their brother do the dirty work to collect the cash]. Here's a novel idea: Get a job and become self-supportive. [Yeah, I know. That would require actually working in a lot of cases, but perhaps you could become a travel agent at the Qatar office in Khobar. Those men, but for Agent M and Agent X, don't seem to be required to do anything more than play on their mobiles and do the sudoku in the paper.]

A small part of me wants to feel sorry for this woman. It is a very, very small part of me. The other part of me - the much, much larger one - has no sympathy whatsoever for her. Perhaps I've just become to 'desensitized' over the past decade. Haven't we all? A Saudi woman who goes by Umm Faisal [that means mother of Faisal - nothing more - not her real name] "has accused her sons of beating her and throwing her out of her house after calling her crazy." The "crazy" part I am inclined to believe... Her "sad story started when she married one of her relatives..." Lady, that's how all "sad" stories start. Put your big girl panties on.

Apparently "her husband's family did not get along with her and [she] alleges that her brother-in-law used to beat her." That's where I lost even the smallest iota of sympathy in this "sad" big fish tale saga. Her BROTHER-IN-LAW used to beat her. What?!? Is this normal? Do brother-in-law's here, in The Sandbox, routinely beat women who are NOT their wives? Have you lost your freaking mind??? What kind of woman allows her brother-in-law to beat her? I have several brother-in-laws. First of all, it would never happen - none of them would even contemplate raising a hand at me; and second of all, if they ever did contemplate it and then actually struck me - they better cold-clock me on that first hit. After that, game is on. Grab a candle stick, a lamp, a damn kitchen knife, but don't let it happen and don't tell me you don't have the power to make it stop. [Well. Okay. Maybe here, you don't. And again, you've brought it upon yourselves - this man / woman / do as you're told / must obey or get beat crap - you own it. No sympathy. None.]

Then UF [for Umm Faisal or U F^ctard - you choose] says "her husband decided to move to the Eastern Province where he found a job." Couldn't find a job anywhere else? Did he work in Khobar, at a travel agency, perhaps? Never mind. They lived there for a long time and she had FOURTEEN kids! FOURTEEN!!! One day - out of the blue and totally unexpectedly - her "husband got sick and, because of this, was fired." Yeah right. You can't be fired if you are not an ex-pat, in this country. Everybody knows that. The "financial situation became so bad that [she] was forced to ask three of [her] sons who had jobs" for financial help. Why didn't you ask the other four? Or one of your seven daughters? Marry them off - you can raise a boat load of money that way. Sell 'em to the highest bidder. Financial situation solved. You're welcome. I can't go on. It is just too sad [/sarc off]. Read it for yourself and tell me that this isn't one of the biggest loads of NYT-style crap you've read in a long time - don't forget to read the comments - apparently only two of the ten feel the same way about it as I do. Oh, and when you're done reading it, blame it all on President Bush. Surely this is all his fault. Everything else wrong in the world seems to be.

A little two-year-old girl has been beaten to death. Her parents were just trying to get the jinn out of her. I'm not up on the whole jinn thing and will admit to knowing very, very little about it. I was under the impression that it wasn't really something that many still believed in, here, though. Guess I was wrong.