Last night, after dark, as I was getting into my sister Balquees’s car after a nice evening at the Mueleh City Center Mall getting a manicure and pedicure and a soft new abaya, I was greeted by a frazzled woman. My 24-year-old Omani host sister was noticeably distressed. Immediately as I plopped into the passenger-side leather seat, I did not need to ask her what was wrong, she had already begun her short story of the embarrassing incident.
She explained that she was early to pick me up so she had been waiting for me outside of the mall in her car in the dark. She was filing her nails in the parking lot when an Omani man kept pacing back and forth. He appeared to be speaking on his mobile phone or he was pretending to me. The more the seconds passed, the more she believed he was pretending to be on the phone.
She huffed out a breathe of air and continued. “I was calling Shihab (her especially protective brother) and I was so scared that I called him while the phone was in my lap and I turned the speakerphone on so he could hear me and I would not have to put the phone up to my ear”... “I did not want the scary man to see me calling my brother or anyone”. I asked her why she was so worried and why she did not just drive away and she responded that it is not normal for a man, especially an Omani man to be hanging around a car that a woman is waiting in. It is even more strange that the man would then approach her she explained.
Balquees continued the story;“Shihab heard my story and was just asking exactly where I was and asking where Laurel was and to make sure Laurel is okay as well and he was really worried about us”. I asked why Shihab would be so alarmed to hear this? Apparently he is especially protective as a brother but this is a pretty strange situation to be in in Oman as an Omani woman between an Omani man is what I understood from my sister Balquees. I was kind of confused because I didn’t realize that my sister was so constrained from speaking to men outside of her social circle of family, her music teachers, and my friends who are American guys. She speaks with them all freely if they are around and so the thought of her not feeling it was acceptable that a man would approach her to ask her a question about her car struck my curiosity.
Overall, the man who may or may not have been trying to be creepy at all but came off very strange to Balquees ended up approaching her at her car window and asking if her car was for sale. She responded with a “no”. He then handed her his phone number and asked if she will sell the car, that she should call him or if she needs anything. Balquees said that she told Shihab and he protectively demanded her to, “give me the phone number and I will go to the police and they will straighten the man out”.
Balquees vaguely explained that it’s basically very wrong to approach an Omani women and hand her your phone number if you are a male Omani and it’s even more wrong for that woman to accept the phone number by taking the piece of paper it is written on. Balquees was saying she did not want Shihab to have the number because she had accepted it (apparently because she was not thinking) and then felt it would make her look bad if she went to the police.
I’m not entirely sure what exactly occurred in terms of why this was made into the big deal it seemed to be but I hope that in my research and further observation of women and the culture in general here, I can better understand this type of experience in the Sultanate in the future.
In a culture that still has ultra-conservative gender segregation methods in most public areas which are especially noticeable in restaurants, that usually have a separate seating area for women and their families that are confined in four tall walls, I was not surprised to hear that it’s not okay for a woman to accept a phone number from an Omani man who is not their family. But, I am trying to judge the level of strangeness of this occurrence in Oman and between native Omanis of the opposite sex.
The questions I wish I could have answered are: Why was my sister so distressed over this incident? The man did not do anything to physically harm her and he left after handing her the number from what I understand. Why was my host brother so upset and why did his protective instincts kick in so strongly when he heard this? He sounded like he was worried about both myself and Balquees being harmed by this guy. Is there a worry about human trafficking here of regular citizens and American students? Would it be easy for us both to be kidnapped and sold into the sex or slave trade? Is this why he was so worried? Why did Balquees not just drive away when she sensed the man was up to no good? Was she looking for a little excitement so she decided to make the experience more of a bigger deal than it was? Or is there something I’m missing here.
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