A Different View on Independence

When I met Mohammed the second time (in the workshop again) he arrived in a Mercedes. Last time he drove me around in a BMW to get the parts I needed for the repair of Lola. When asked, he told me this was his son’s car. But he’s surely not that old that his son would drive a car??? No, his son is 10. Ah, one of those! I have seen some small boys, way younger than 16, driving a car on several occasions. And big cars!!
Around the dinner table that evening I asked Dawud’s wife if he was teaching her to drive as well, not only their son, that boy. Very small for his age. In a Merc! No, she says, many years ago Dawud taught her to drive, but as she was legally not allowed to drive, she could never really practice and so lost her confidence and interest. Does she not want to get around easier? No, there is no need, Dawud drives her wherever she wants, mostly he does the groceries and all the errands (I started to feel sorry for those husbands!). If she wants to visit friends or for other outings, she takes her driver. Many families use a permanent driver to drive their women. This kind of gets around the men/woman separation whereby a woman would never be allowed to drive with a man not being a member of the family. Drivers somehow don’t fall into this category and women of course always sit in the back.
When asked what she thinks about western women and their independence she laughs at me: oh, Hamdullillah, she is happy she does not need to work and bring up children, like me, a single mum. That would be too hard and exhausting. Why would she want that?
Talking about single mums. In another family, I meet one grown-up daughter with a child and no man in sight. It was explained to me that she had divorced her husband and returned to her family, where her parents and her brothers were looking after her. Divorce doesn’t seem to bear any stigma and is not that unusual. Still, my question about children out of wedlock remains unresolved.Read more