Ever wonder what
you are really made of? Go on vacation
with a loved one. Even better, rent your house to a large family from a foreign country
where few speak your language and you are living in very close quarters. That
is what I did last week. Complicate
things with adding a very practicing Muslim family with a menopausal feminist Spiritualist
and there could not have been two more polar opposite families on the
planet. It was like a scene right out of “Wife
Swap”.
I always
attempts to speak my mind, albeit with discretion and compassion but you have
me host a burka wearing Muslim matriarch, two daughters with her four male
counterparts all in shorts and contemporary wear and all my fears and social
injustices surface. You can’t even
imagine the mismatch with me traipsing around in my shorts and skimpy tops in
this 30+ stifling hot, summer days. Please
understand that what I write will initially seem politically incorrect but
there is a happy ending.
The B&B booking started off
rocky. I advertise my whole house rental
and in large print, that “I LIVE THERE”.
When any groups asks if I can go somewhere else and leave my home, my hackles
rise because I don’t have another place to stay at and for insurance purposes,
I am only covered if I sleep there. I
assure them that I can fade into the woodwork and give them their privacy and
always, when we meet, they relax but they have put the doubt into my mind and I
feel unwelcome. The stage has been set
and it’s on wobbly supports.
The next concern was if I was married
or had a boyfriend or family as their women could not be alone with another
man. Sadly, this would not be a problem.
Sigh. To add insult to injury, a week ago I injured my shoulder and it had
become a useless wing until it healed. I pride myself on always making a full
breakfast for all my guests including the Airbnb crowd who don't expect it but
I was afraid I would have to disappoint for the first time ever in two years and
for 5 full nights!
The first 24 hours were rough. You
know how it is when you are not in a good frame of mind and the season has been
so long and so busy so I am weary running this place all alone and then small
little things happen. Six out of the 7 don’t
close the exterior doors and we are having a heat wave so all my a/c is gone
and flies are swarming in my house. I
hate flies, and I’m menopausal so the heat is making me crusty and crazy. All the cork bathroom plank floors are coated
in water and I worry about them swelling and having to be replaced. What on earth is going on here?
On a more tension releasing note, I
recently put on my door, Please Remove Your Shoes. When they arrived, I saw seven large adult
all barefooted. They entered and I
quickly went outside to bring in their shoes, asking what they would do if it
started raining. Guess the sign needs
more work.
Only two of the seven seem to speak English so being in a room with all the others is very
isolating. There's now a big one foot scrape on my cork floor from one of the
chairs they were sitting in. My fault yes I know- I should have fixed the felt
but it’s been added to the crabby list.
They refused to
eat any of my food saying, “let us take care of you. Canadian food is boring
and we like very spicy we will cook you traditional meals.” I finally decided
okay I will not cook for them because my arm hurts too much and this will be a
real treat. So I had a morning snack and waited and waited and waited. The
parents get up around 4 or 5 to pray but all five of their grown children sleep
in till noon or 1:00pm. At this point I'm ravenous. They were all starting to
look like pork chops. I ended up cooking
breakfast for seven but only two breakfasts were eaten. That okay- they did warn me. Just before they
go away to sightsee for the day, the dad says we might only stay here for a
couple of days okay? Airbnb has taken all their money and I know it can be done
easily and with all of my being I'm thinking yes just go. I don't have Arabic
TV or radio so it's total silence when they are on the main floor. I have 5
days of this. I can't wait till it's over with. And the worst of it they are a wonderful
family. It's so weird not being happy with the booking when you really can't
pinpoint exactly why but it just didn’t feel like a good fit. Rant over with. Was I ever off base!
After the first 24 hours, everybody
relaxed and I learned their lifestyle challenged all of my most deeply
engrained thoughts from self-care to socializing, faith and bringing up
kids. I found out that four of the seven
actually spoke English and on the final day, the mom even said a few words in
English. She was holding out on me that
sneaky devil. My greatest relief was
when the mother and daughters took over cutting up everything I provided so
that my arm would not hurt. They were a very delightful family who stopped
leaving doors open for the flies, and were very respectful. Guess I jumped the
gun as I often do. They decided to stay the full five day and I was happy.
I found out all about their faith by
asking the dad questions and it was fascinating. I knew they prayed a lot but it’s only when
you are around it day by day that you get to question all the intricacies of
their faith. The men pray together 5x a
day and the women separately, on their own time. When the men bend over and are on the ground,
they are getting a small exercise routine as they do everything 3-5x per
session five times a day. Something odd
happens with their shorts… they pull them down to cover their knees while on
the floor because their knees to just above the belly button must be covered
but its ok if they show their underwear to strange women- me! Woohoo! (I hope that's not blasphemy). Even stranger still, they just
spontaneously break off into almost silent prayer no matter who is around so I
had a front row experience, without the popcorn. One will start and like a silent radar
frequency, that only the men can hear, they start to congregate. The first time it happened, the eldest boy
was in the living room and bent over as if to find something. His brother came in and started looking
to. When the next two came in, I almost
asked what they were looking for and then I realized, they weren’t looking for
anything. Glad I held my tongue for a
change.
Women have to have their arms and
legs covered to the ankle and wrist for their solitary worship. I was frustrated by our lack of a shared
language with the mom who wears a black burka back home but her husband told
her not to here as it scares Canadians.
He might be right. She always had
to cover up her entire body and face to get something from the car. I almost gasped when she returned the first
time because all I saw was a nose.
I solved the puzzle of the wet
bathroom floors. On an unrelated note, it
seems many overseas people don’t know they can flush the toilet paper but they
do now. In their home country, they use
bum guns to clean their posteriors. It’s a version of the bidet with a sprayer,
hand held. I now remember how messy the
Thailand bathrooms were, always soaked so here was too. In Canada, they had equipped each bathroom
with a small water bottle and it worked but it was not a perfect fix. I used a
lot of towels to soak up the floors. I
won’t miss that.
I always ask my guests what music
they like to listen to but Galaxy doesn’t seem to have their tunes. The house is ungodly quiet as I don’t have
any Saudi language TV or radio. I loudly
jokingly said at one dinner preparation time, I sure wish I could hear Saudi
music and they all started to talk at once.
It was the mom speaking that made me think I could understood Saudi. What was I thinking I could understand, and
assumed she was saying they don’t like her music, (yes, I was projecting, and I
nodded and agreed and smiled. My kids hate my music too). What she had said was that day was a Muslim
holy day and music is forbidden. Oh my, I
was so embarrassed. I was able to hear
some on the final morning, on the cell phone, but it was “church chanting”, not
exactly the lively dance music I was hoping for.
Meals were a trial. I
did not get the memo that they eat breakfast late and supper even later like
everyone else on the planet already seem to know. I serve the traditional NA meal at a mutually
agreed time and if they say 8am, I get up 1½ hours earlier and pull it all
together. They say they eat everything
but that is just a conceptual thing. On
the first morning, they told me to do NOTHING and that was agony. They all had their mini espresso style coffees
together in the back yard so I brought out a plate of pineapple, then
watermelon, and other finger food and they were like locusts, esp the three
twenty something boys. That set the
stage for me thinking, I know better, I should serve proper meals. That night, I made an egg pizza and put it in
the fridge. They came home and saw it
and dad almost convinced them that they had to be polite and eat it as a late
night snack until mom said “don’t you dare touch it”. Moms are so smart. Imagine my horror when I would realize there
was no breakfast the next day. Wouldn’t
have mattered… only two ate it. What was
I doing wrong?
On the final two days,
they said they were in charge of breakfast and then I saw the error of my
ways. Store bought hummus, but not my
homemade stuff, pita bread, two kinds of olives, boiled eggs, BUT NEVER PEELED
eggs or they won’t touch it, and some garden fresh tomatoes I had ready. That’s it, that’s all. I can’t survive on that but that is what they
eat every single day. I would feel like such a failure of a B&B
owner if I only ever served just that.
On the last day, they went sightseeing
so before they left, I heckled the dad saying, “Well, Canadian food is all I’ve
ever tasted. Sigh.” They left and when
it poured all day, I just knew they would be coming home early and cooking me
supper. Woohoo, I was right. They made a critical couple of errors
though. They all went to the store
hungry, and mom and dad went to do some other shopping and left the five grown
kids to buy the meats. OMG hilarious! Upon returning, he asked me seriously if I
thought we would have enough meat to BBQ.
I could not stop laughing. There
are 8 of us. They bought 8 huge steaks
plus 2 extra-large packages of round steak.
And some wanted chicken so they bought two large club pack trays of
chicken breasts, about 16 -20 in total and someone threw in a large bag of
shrimp. The meat alone was over the top hilarious. Because they eat late, they stave off their
hunger with a huge bowl of regular strength ice cream; no lite or low fat for
them. Supper was great but the first
night we ate at 11:45 pfreakinm. Who
does that? Have they never been to a
Weight Watchers meeting who tell them to stop eating after 6? I went to bed and collapsed 15 minutes later
with mounds of half desiccated food festering in my belly. You can be sure I didn’t weigh myself the
next day or the day after. And for the
record, their food is quite bland but there is not a fattie among them. The last night, we ate at a respectable hour,
according to them, at 10:30 pm.
Now let’s discuss how they bring up
their kids. One of my “fondest” memories
of my teenagers was the phone call at work with the younger crying hysterically
into the phone for me to return home because the older one had a butcher knife
and was threatening to kill her. Of
course I couldn’t leave so I was a train wreck.
While these Saudi kids/adults may have a bad habit of sleeping till most
of the day is gone, as soon as they get up, they kiss dad, then mom and then
every sister younger than them, as a sign of respect. Wow! They are well educated. Their father is very close to the kids,
especially the boys and constantly coaches them on how to be good
citizens.
Alcohol is a huge issue in my culture, both when I grew up
and now that my girls are adults. Saudi
kids don’t drink, at least until they go away from home to America and then
they might drink responsibly. The boys
all attend universities in the states and then return home. They like North American women and will date
them but realize that they will only marry Saudi women because it would
complicate their lives with different cultures, languages and faiths. Smart boys.
If the parents only knew the conversations I had with the eldest one and
making sure he used condoms if he was going out to prowl.
The day before they left, they
invited me to the beach. We took
separate cars as they left earlier. What
they did was get there before me and run like maniacs to the furthest part of
the island under a grouping of trees so I would never be able to find
them. I did and the boys all went
wandering, then the girls to use the bathroom and that left mom and I….awkward! We spoke not a word and I waded ankle deep in
the water in my shorts and sleeveless shirt while she was completely covered
again.
I was never able to connect with the young
teenaged girls and mom and I struggled with to communicate.
After many talks, the dad jokingly suggested I become an
honourary Muslim and I could dress like them. We both chuckled. Dad was quite progressive and did say he felt
badly that the women wore burkas and knew the clothing was hot. He also told me that men can have up to seven
wives. Now that initially really irritated
me. He explained that with all the war,
quite often, the widows had no one to take care of them so the men would marry
more to keep them safe and fed. That
kind of made sense but I did not become his second wife. He assured me that his current wife would not
like it one bit if he remarried BUT, she would be the cherished one, no matter
how many he had. Nope, still not
interested in sharing.
On the last day, moments before
departure, I told them I had changed my mind and asked if it would be rude of
me to ask their mom to wrap me up in their burka attire and they agreed. I ran to get my wraps and she began. She wrapped the shawl many, many times around
me until I started to get claustrophobic and panicky. How do they breathe like that? I saw her eyes and nose but only a small wet
spot where she was breathing thru the cloth. I asked if they could take a
picture of us and she started speaking and gesturing to my arms. I know, I know so I put on another shawl to
cover the trampy arms. Then she gestured
to my legs and tore another strip off of my dignity as a harlot. I know, I know, they can take the picture above
my knees. She put her glasses on and
there we were, two Muslim ladies; one comfortable and one wanting to scream, “Get
me out of this”. They were very kind to
allow me this. In “our” old country, I would have to wear sunglasses too.
I knew I would not survive converting mostly because of the heavy clothes so suddenly,
running the bed and breakfast alone did not seem like such a burden and I will
be grateful for what I have. I feel so
privileged to have spent this week with them, sharing cultures and faiths.
