Friday, November 03, 2006
Confrontations.
I was at my close friend's house on Wednesday. She had a get together of a few classmates. I not quite sure how it started but one of the girls brought up a topic about some girl in her uni, bad news for her is that my very very outspoken sister happened to be there:
Her: Yeah that girl you should see her! She has this funny hairstyle and she's a 3bda (a slave).
My sis: what do u mean 3bda?
The girl looked like she had swallowed a lemon; my sis and I knew perfectly well that she is talking about someone with dark skin. I guess cuz we don't go to Arabic school anymore you don't really hear that thing a lot, there are not that many Saudi girls in my school and the ones that are there are way to open minded to say that kind of thing especially in front of a black person, HELLO.
My sis: Exactly what do u mean by the term 3bda? 3bda means a slave and I don't think its right to call people slaves or are you saying that because she's black?
Girl: No I didn't mean it like that, she is a dawsreya and they were actually slaves for the princes.
My sis: Yeah but they are not slaves anymore, mara 7aram 3laykiy to call her a 3bda do u know that?
There was this embarrassed silence and everyone was looking everywhere except for at each other, excluding my sis who was staring at the girl she was talking to look she was going to kill her.
Girl: they are still slaves now, loads kman. There was this prince that had a daughter with a slave and he didn't own up to her. Then when her cousin grew up he went and married her so her father would have to own up and he did.
My sis: That's good but don't call people 3bda again its just wrong.
Whatever I know that, that bull about there being loads of slaves in Saudi Arabia is a bunch of crap she was trying to justify her comment before, I mean who the hell would stay a slave in the time and age we live in.
You know what amazed most about this conversation wasn't the fact that she referred to the girl as 3bda I've lived in this country for 10 years. It's the fact that she was so awkward when my sister asked her what she meant by the term 3bda. All these years I took it for granted that they used to say those stupid racist thing about Sudanis, Pakistanis and Indonesians out of shear ignorance. I can now tell that innocence is soooo overrated, they know exactly what they are doing and saying.
I've always told my sis that a career in medicine is wasting her talents at being I'm-so-gonna-say-what-i-think-to hell-with-u attitude, politics is a much more fitting profession, guess she'll realize sooner or later.
She also got into another fight with another girl (i swear i don't know, what she smoked before we went there, she was in a mood) about girls here not getting treated the same as their brothers and how people here are so sexist.
But thats a whole nother story.
4:06 AM
Ace
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