Avert Your Eyes

Making eye contact with people in Saudi can be problematic. A woman certainly shouldn't do so when walking around the streets, shops, or malls. Saudi men of all ages, and unfortunately many of the "guest workers" as well, interpret this as a thinly veiled invitation for sex (veiled, ha!).

Conservative Saudis, which comprises a good part of them, hold the same beliefs that many christian fundamentalists do, that women are to blame for men not being able to control themselves, for acting like feral animals whenever they are around women. Thus women shouldn't be seen or heard in public or private if at all possible (and thus the shrouding abaya). The laboring expats take their cues from their overlords (shit always rolls downhill).

Of course, the bad behavior of the Saudi men is fundamentally a matter of cultural/religious indoctrination (they are the same thing in Saudi Arabia). They too take cues from their parents, their imams, their peers. You see this dismissive, aggressive attitude towards women, including their mothers, manifesting even in boys of four and five years.

To avoid the unpleasantness, I found it best to cultivate a tool used and refined by the Japanese that I was introduced to over 20 years ago when I traveled there for a scientific conference and holiday. When you get good at it, you can even be in a room with others and simply not see or hear them. It's a defensive mechanism but also one that smooths public interactions. It isn't a matter of ignoring others. Once you fall into this zone, the other people in the room really don't exist for you. In that way, the illusion of privacy for everyone is maintained.

I got pretty good at this while living in Saudi. As a result, it was always a bit of a shock to me when I left the Magic Kingdom to go anywhere else--people talk to each other in the shops and streets. Women are everywhere, conducting their business without harassment (for the most part; this post isn't going to take on all dragons). It takes a few days to relax the habit.

It's a strange feeling to realize that I don't have to continue mentally averting my eyes.