Checkmate

Today I saw a heading in someone’s facebook wall that caught my attention “Saudi woman driver's lashing revoked” for me it was almost instinctively the reaction of click on the link to read what it was all about and basically the news were about a woman who was condemned to 10 lashes for driving in Saudi Arabia where driving is banned for women, and whose sentence was finally forgiven.

At first, it was very difficult for me to try to understand the situation, not because of the fact that women may not drive in Saudi (they were not even allowed to do it in ancient times when camels were the only way of transportation), but for the sentence itself. When I finished reading the article I was really baffled, even though I’d been getting to know the Saudi culture along my stay in Auckland.

I realized women are not allowed neither to drive nor to walk on their own in Saudi when I start having a friendship with a Saudi. We spent hours and hours arguing about a lot of other things about Muslim culture and its differences with mine. However, today it was hard for me to recognize that all those things my friend have told to me are, in fact, more than just stories; those are real life and the real life of thousands or millions of women who live in Saudi.

Thinking that although people in Muslim religion is banned to do almost everything (drink, smoke, bet, having sex before marriage, men are not allowed to talk to women and in the other way around, and so on), might not be easy for most people of the western world, where, compared with middle east and even other cultures we have more freedom that we figure out.

In spite of it, Muslim people seem to be certainly happy. That’s how they’ve been brought up, that’s their way of life and what they are used to living day by day. Then, those kinds of prohibitions mustn’t be as hard to cope for them as it would be for me for example.

For me has been a rollercoaster getting to know about Saudi culture, mostly because even though Colombian and Saudis we have many things in common, it’s also true that we have tremendous cultural gaps and  the piece of news I read today is one of the long list of them.

Of course, I couldn’t help to open my mouth to complain about it in front of Omar, my friend, whose answer was like a pail of cold water threw towards me.

Me- How come it might be possible to sentence a woman to be lashed just for merely drive a car?

To what Omar answered like this

O - She deserves it?

Me- Sorry? What do you mean?

O- Yes, sure, she deserves it, I can’t see anything wrong about women driving, but those are the rules of my country and therefore you must respect them. If you want to do something about it, you can do the right thing writing a letter signed by the ones who are in disagreement with the established law. But fooling around about things that mustn’t be done is insane.

Me- You might be right, but why do they have to use punishment methods such as primitives as that?

O- Simple, people in Saudi are rich and if they sentence other types of punishment such as jail or fines it would be easy for them to pay. So, government chooses that kind of punishment to show that not everything can be bought and if you behave wrongly not even the money will repair the things you have done.

After that explanation I think there’s nothing left to say. I had to remain in silence trying to figure out some way to beat his point but I couldn’t, I just keep on saying that it was excessive for me, and finally Omar made his last intervention to our argument.

O- Look, people in my country are really focused in their work, they are being paid for it and they do it well, everything has been written in the Qur’an, even the smallest things and the Qur’an show us the guidelines for our existence.

What I should have said to him? For me it was checkmate, although I keep on thinking that kind of sentence is barbarous, I couldn't fight against his arguments because they are really well-founded and in some way valid.

Sometimes, and after that discussion I wonder myself if that kind of barbarism is what this world needs to run well.