Abu Dhabi 2

Monday morning began with all groups working at a frantic pace to complete their presentations and papers for the afternoon deadline. As the Americans in my group had met the night before to discuss our presentation and really give it shape, a lot of the remaining work fell to our Arab counterparts so that they could fill in their thoughts and opinions on the slides. So while I was waiting around, I ended up giving an interview to a newspaperwoman… IN ARABIC. Granted, my grammar wasn’t perfect. I had to mentally reword a lot of the statements I wanted to say in order to have the vocabulary to get my message across. But when it came down to it, I was able to do this in Arabic without needing a translator. There’s no way I could have done this 6 weeks ago, and it was a great milestone to show me how far I’ve come in my study of the language. Now, to figure out when I can get a copy of the paper…(Katharine has just walked in and handed me a paper with a picture of me in it…I’ll read it later to see if I’m actually quoted, since it’s Arabic and would take forever).

Working with the Arab students has been an interesting experience in terms of efforts made. I have to say, and I don’t know if it was because we felt the pressure of being the first Westerners at such a conference, but the American side of my group pulled together and worked hard to get everything done well by the deadline. I don’t feel that we saw the same level of commitment from our counterparts. Maybe it’s just because they are used to these conferences and the way they work, or perhaps they anticipated delays in the timetable (my group was originally supposed to present Monday around 1:30 PM, and our actual time was about 5 PM Tuesday). Also, within our group, we all had to relinquish a bit of the control we might have liked and make concessions back and forth; one side might have liked a different background for the presentation, for instance, but on issues like that it’s important to have give and take and understand that the other side might have a completely different opinion on what flows best. You have this in any group work, obviously, but I think especially in this situation where everyone really wanted to get along and have harmony that compromise was an important factor to recognize.

We discussed so many different things in the dialogue that I can’t even begin to reiterate them- we bounced around from overly sexual images like the Paris Hilton commercial for BK to the portrayal of female leaders in both worlds. I just wanted to share a few of the most salient points.

The first was the focus in the Arab world (and this doesn’t mean everywhere, but in general- the Arab world is comprised of many diverse nations and obviously no statement will be applicable in every one of those cases) on responsible journalism; there is much less of a focus there on yellow journalism and dirt-digging. I’ve written about this before, about how tabloids and such are also a product of the wants of American consumers. But this is a different issue- I’m talking how Fox and MSNBC and the rest of the syndicates focus more on Hillary breaking down and crying or taking a tequila shot than on what she actually thinks. This is not as much of a phenomenon in the Arab world, and I wish we would head in that direction. I feel that as American citizens it would improve our world view to have less junk media (remember how Anna Nicole Smith was on the news for three weeks straight? That’s exactly the kind of crap news that makes the rest of the world see American citizens as insular unconcerned self-centered idiots- why weren’t we talking about Iran’s nuclear program or how to move forward in Iraq more than a dead model? No disrespect to the deceased, but if we don’t have bigger concerns than her...no wonder we’re where we are today).

This is a great segue into my next point- the fact that in the U.S., we don’t readily have access to international news media. Media all around the world is biased, it just happens. But we can’t just accept the word of American news stations if we actually want to have a comprehensive world view. This problem is a chicken and the egg problem- networks aren’t making international channels easily accessible (affordable might be a better word; I don’t want to pay a huge chunk of money for a better cable package just for BBC)…but that’s probably because American consumers don’t demand more channels. Anyway, we need to start looking outside of our country too for information.

Into the last point- the Arab world receives a lot more news and information from us than we do for them. They know so much about our country, our culture, our politics. How many of you reading this know the capital of Tunisia off the top of your head? It’s ok- I don’t either…but shouldn’t we be more aware? Coming here, it’s obvious that the Arab students don’t expect us to know jack about their countries and cultures. Or, at least, they don’t expect us to know much. It also seems that they assume we come with negative stereotypes that need to be broken- and this is the negative stereotype they have about us. I would actually say that the Arab students, because of this came to the conference with more preconceived notions than we did, because those of us here right now tried to come with an open mind. We also realized that we don’t know much, so we tried not to form preconceptions of veiled women or men in headdresses. Hopefully we helped to change their opinions of the American stereotype in that regard (also, not all the stereotypes they have of us are bad- many of the Arab girls told me that they love the image of the independent American girl and themselves try to live like that as well).

I can’t reiterate this enough- get rid of whatever notions you have of people in the Arab world, except for recognizing that they are people too. Every country here has a different history and a different culture- don’t think they are all the same. But at the same time, we are all humans, and that’s the most important thing.

After a ridiculously long day, we went down the street to an old palace which has been converted into a hotel and museum. We went to see a Picasso exhbit, which was really cool despite my relative lack of interest. Considering that I sometimes bash my own country’s culture, I’d like to point out something positive. You know how there’s that stereotype of the rude American? Not that some Americans aren’t rude, but I’m really happy to say that yesterday, the groups of people murmuring or outright conversing while our museum guide was speaking were in the main not Americans. I was actually surprised at how rude I considered the Arab students to be during the exam. Perhaps the concept of rudeness varies from culture to culture; in fact, I know it does. But I was glad to see that as Americans we represented ourselves well in that matter.

Tuesday morning, we were granted a few hours’ reprieve from the conference, and all 60 or so students went on a tour of several important places in Abu Dhabi. The first was the Sheikh Zayed Grand Mosque. It was the biggest mosque we’ve seen and far away the most elaborate. In fact, the ablutions centers were downstairs and those alone could supposedly hold 500 people, whereas the mosque itself has the capacity to hold 40,000 worshippers. Insane. Our experience there got me thinking a lot about Islam and the underpinnings of the religion (or some interpretations of the religion) once surface values are questioned. As girls, we were not allowed to enter the grounds without a headscarf and our arms and legs completely covered. OK, this isn’t terribly unusual and I don’t generally have much of a problem with it, although it was a bit unfair because some of the guys were wearing T-shirts with no issue. Then, to enter the inner sanctum of the mosque, us girls also had to put on gallibiyas, because even our loose-fitting clothes revealed too much about the shapes of our bodies. Even this I might have stomached; at that point I said to Mary that perhaps the underlying assumption in Islam is that men are weaker than women and need the women to be completely covered in order to worship without distraction. Mary said to me that she took a different view, that one of the underlying pretexts perhaps was that women are just so inherently sinful that they must be covered to be in a holy place, in order to hide some of this. And once I found out that women had a separate prayer room anyway and still had to wear gallibiyas there, I kind of agreed with her. Because if even while it’s just you and Allah (no men present) and you as a woman must still cover yourself completely, it’s not just an issue of your flesh being distracting to other humans. It’s that you are a sin and must be covered to be decent in the presence of God. So I’m still struggling with how I feel about this religion, because as we’d talked about with Mostafa, interpretation also plays a big role in religion, and not every mosque is like this one.

Next we visited the Abu Dhabi University, which is rather small right now but I’m sure will be a booming center of education in the Gulf within the next twenty years. We were given a presentation at the U, but exhaustion and the heat affected many students in the group, both Arabs and Americans alike, and you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who didn’t nod off sometime in the middle of it. Our final stop of the morning was the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies. This place basically monitors the news all around the world and makes recommendations to the UAE government on policy issues.

After a two hour rest, the final two groups presented their conference material. Saving the best for last, our group closed the conference. I was really happy with the way our presentation went, although it was difficult to cover an entire day’s debate in a 20 minute debriefing. We sparked some interesting comments and discussions afterwards, too, which was important. Closing remarks were made by both students and professors. The general tone from everyone was that this conference brought everyone together and helped forge new important ties between Arab and Western culture. I have to echo the sentiments expressed by everyone; this was such an amazing experience for me to have the chance to reflect on my own culture, both the positive and negative aspects, and especially to be exposed to the ideas of those from such a drastically different area of the world. Although studying abroad in the Dominican Republic in general was important in directing me down the right path, this conference was one of the two single-most important and impactful experiences I’ve ever had.

Our final group activity in Abu Dhabi took place the next morning, and was a visit to the General Women’s Union, which is a conglomerate of different women’s workshops that create products like palm leaf woven rugs, embroidered shirts, and other such things. This union was one of the brain children of the same woman who sponsored our conference, Sheikha Fatima Bint Mubarak. We received such hospitality there, as in all aspects of our stay here in Abu Dhabi. We also were able to try on traditional United Arab Emirates dress. Notice the gold mask-type thing on my face. Many traditional women there still wear these, and we received two different explanations for the significance. One person told us that these were simply a form of expressing modesty, by covering the face. But the other interpretation is that, when you look at the shape of the covering, it resembles a unibrow and mustache. So this person told us that it’s actually a way for females to demonstrate strength, by taking on these masculine features.

The final hours of my time in Abu Dhabi were spent enjoying the most comfortable bed I’ve ever known, as well as jumping on said bed and packing up. Saying goodbye to the Arab students was hard; although we’d only know them for a short time we were really able to connect on deep levels. Nassima from Algeria cried when we said goodbye! Once again, I have to say how great these people all were, how welcoming and accepting, and I know that they felt the same about us as well. I don’t think this conference could have been better, unless it was to have spent more time in Dubai like we were supposed to….see my next blog.