SHAKING UP THE OLD BOYS IN THE ARAB WORLD
Courtesy gccwomen.org
I see another place to watch the play of light and shadow.
Could this be a face of the new Saudi Arabia and/or a face that is trying to create a new Saudi Arabia?
Courtesy saudiarab11
Princess Al-Taweel, known as Princess Amira, is
as she says a "common girl" but married to Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, the nephew of the King of Saudi Arabia. Princess Amira, a magna cum laude graduate of the University of New Haven is an advocate for women's empowerment. She is outspoken in her call for equal rights for women in education, the work force and voting rights.
Those are difficult and challenging issues for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the royal family. Her "outspokenness" has been challenged by her uncle, another of the royal princes.
Amira says women have the right to come out of the burkas, if they wish, it should their choice and not a man's or the government to make.
Her husband is fully supportive. He is a power in his own right, being the chairman of the Kingdom Holding Corporation, essentially the investment arm of all those Saudi billions. She is involved in the business and in promoting interfaith dialogue.
Both the Prince and Princess are at some risk from Saudi and other Arab parties who are less modern. She considers herself a devout Muslim and her very openness for dialogue also has earned her enmity. She has defied some archaic edict by driving and then talking about it.
Soft spoken, articulate and emphatic this is one Princess
with fairy tale wealth who is challenging a great evil of the real world. She could just as easily live the good life but
she has chosen to battle ignorance, repression, prejudice and cultural chauvinism. We wish her well and hope for a
happily ever after for Arab women. The 21st Century belongs to them as well! Talk about a shift in the balance of power.
DAY BOOK
A FENCE
An artist friend who is also an avid gardener told Lana that a fence can do wonderful things for a garden. She told her "it defines space."
So, Lana will have more defined space and the world will
have one more barrier to the marauding killer deer of Cambria. I'm hopeful the wild turkeys will also be blockaded.
Don't write me off as a wild life hating old grump, but merely a guy who has seen his wife's loving efforts at providing the world with blooms and beauty be devastated by the marauding killer deer. Year after year. "They" say that some things are deer proof. Ha!
As for the turkey's-while they are fun to watch, unless you are one of our terrified cats, they leave one of the world's most noxious calling cards. It's not enough they uproot plants and scatter dirt over walkways. Those little traces of themselves they leave behind are not little and probably could rate as a weapon class substance. What do they eat-kryptonite?
So, we've joined the fence builders of the world.
The fence has forced us to "recover" a back hill top
for more gardening and for a meditation spot with a
wonderful long vista of Green Valley.
Our good neighbors David and Lois reworked a portion
of their privacy wall and tied it in nicely with our fence.
See you down the trail.
PS-Oh yea, there is plenty of open acreage for the killer deer and dirty turkeys.
"Killer deer and dirty turkeys." Spoken like a true Sierra Club-er.
ReplyDeleteBut that doesn't look like a fence. It more resembles a Chinese wall!
When I lived in Cambridge, there were few young Saudi's in my building. Two of girls were BU students and lived with their Aunt. They drove, went clubbing and loved belly shirts. I asked a young Saudi Prince (really) a pal of mine from our in house carwash (he had 4 cars, an S Class, an E-55, a diesel Ford pickup to tow his trailed Porsche RUF 911 track day car. The Prince and his other Saudi pals would rent New Hampshire International Speedway a couple of times a year.) what the girls would do when they went home. His answer, "they sell out, they will live in a big house, they will go on vacation and when the family jet leaves the ground off comes the abaya and you'll see them in short skirts, tight jeans. They will drink inside the walls of their home, swim naked in their pool and drive in the desert.
ReplyDeleteThe Prince was in graduate school at MIT, had gone to Oxford and Sandhurst before he came to Boston. And like me he like to wash his own car! Pretty good guy. BTW the girls were very modest when Mom and Dad came for a visit.
Bruce-
ReplyDeleteWhatever it takes to keep them out--in this case at least 5 feet because they can jump.
would it be a "great wall?"
Bob-from College days we had a
similar experience as well. They lived a "liberal" life when here. One of our fellow BSU students had a birth mother who was but one of his father's many wives. Back at that time, we had trouble getting our minds around that concept.
Thanks for the input.
Love the new "fence" although it looks like the entrance to Japanese Tea House. What's the over-under on when the first deer leaps the fence?
ReplyDeleteKatherine has wanted to practice doing a field dress. Maybe?
ReplyDeleteAs far as fences go, this is a rather nice one.
ReplyDelete