Saudi Jeans Turns Six

I celebrate the sixth anniversary of Saudi Jeans today. The blog that I started just for fun has claimed a life of its own, and has in many ways become central to my own life. It has been a great journey. Like a roller coaster, full of ups and downs, turns and twists, joy and fear. Sometimes fast, sometimes slow. Sometimes nice, sometimes nasty. But always, always interesting.

Some argue that although I say the goal of this blog is to push for change in Saudi Arabia, little has changed in the country and this little has nothing to do with Saudi Jeans or blogging. That could be true, and I’m okay with it. Changing a nation is too great of an endeavour for a humble blog like mine to meet. But for me the question is not if blogging has changed (or can change) Saudi Arabia or not. The question I keep asking myself is: is it wroth trying? And my answer is absolutely yes.

I know that I aim too high. That’s just me. I can’t settle for less, I want everything. I’m greedy like that, but I don’t accept injustice and I believe that we, as people, deserve better. My dreams are big and wild, but I will never suppress them. You can share those dreams, or laugh at them, but you can’t stop me, and you can’t shut me up.

What the future holds for Saudi Jeans? I don’t know, to be honest. After I wrote this blogpost on new year’s eve, some readers had the impression that I was laying the ground to announce later the end of the blog. It certainly wasn’t the case. Saudi Jeans will be around for at least one more year. There is a big chance I might leave the country in the coming few weeks. I will be away from KSA for a while, and I’m still unsure what is that going to mean for Saudi Jeans. I, however, plan to continue blogging from abroad.

Allow me in the end to express my gratitude to my family and friends for I’m nothing without them, and thank you readers for giving me some of your attention over these years.

The kid in the video is my little brother Mohammed. I took this video about two weeks ago in an amusement park here in Hofuf, east of Saudi Arabia.

I’m Not My Mom’s Guardian

Last year, I drove with my family to Qatar to see the Museum of Islamic Arts that was recently opened in Doha. On the Saudi border, the conversation went something like this:

Customs officer: who is the woman with you?
Me: that’s my mother.
CO: where is her travel permit?
Me: why does she need a travel permit? She is traveling with me, her eldest son, and as you can see my two little brothers are in the back seat as well.
CO: okay, but you still need to show a travel permit for her.
Me: she is traveling with me. You think she would travel with me without my permission?
CO: these are the rules.
Me: well, I don’t have a travel permit for her.
CO: I will let you go this time, but next time you have to bring a travel permit if she is to travel with you or you can’t cross the border.
Me: okay. Thank you.

We have not traveled outside the country since then, but my mom has been nagging me to get a travel permit so we don’t have to go through this next time we are about to go somewhere. I have been putting that off, partly because I’m lazy, but more importantly because of my despise to the male guardianship system. I do not believe that my mother needs my permission to travel, or do anything she wants for that matter. My mom is an adult woman who is capable of making her own decision. I am not her guardian. I simply reject this notion.

But my politically motivated procrastination came to an end yesterday, as I went to the passports department here in Hofuf to get the damn paper.

Me: I would like to get a travel permit for my mother, please.
Passport officer: can you show me the Family ID card?
Me: I don’t have a Family ID. My father has passed away. Here is my ID card. Here is also a paper from the court to prove that I’m the eldest son.
PO: Is Bebi your sister?
Me: No, she is my mother.

The officer took a glance at the papers. He signed the travel permit and stamped it, and gave it to me along my mom’s passport and the other papers. I was glad that it did not take long, but I left the building with mixed feelings. In one hand I felt ashamed because although I hate the male guardianship system, I had to accept it and practice it like this. I felt as if I was a complicit in a crime. On the other hand, what could I have done? Backward and ridiculous as it is, in the end this is the system which governs us and you have to deal with it. Refusing to deal with it would only make life more difficult for mom, and everyone else.

Saudi Arabia has signed CEDAW, with two reservations. But as with all of these sorts of treaties, there is no mechanism to force the government to abide by its protocols, especially that some people in the country still see this as a huge international conspiracy to change our social and religious values.

My Biggest Fear

… is this:

I don’t want to enter the cycle.

7

Last night we celebrated the seventh birthday of my little brother Mohammed. Don’t let the picture fool you, it was really fun :P

God, I love this kid.

Today’s Links

Note to Arab News: my last name is al-Omran, not al-Omranm. The way you misspelled my name makes it unpronounceable. Another thing: I don’t blog for Saudi Jeans. Saudi Jeans doesn’t pay me any money. Saudi Jeans is my blog. It’s the website where I blog. Also, don’t rephrase what I said and then put it in quote marks. Kthxbai.
Fellow blogger Najla Barasain is about to leave KSA soon heading to the US in order to continue her education. She is understandably worried.

Play

As a big brother, one of my duties is to make sure that my little brothers are entertained, even if I had to pay for it with severe headaches and never-ending arguments. I guess it’s probably just an essential part of a kid’s life to make adults suffer. The important thing is that they have had fun.

Back (to basics)

The past few weeks were difficult, but I’m glad they are over and behind me now. As you can see, I return with a new design (if you follow the blog using a feeds reader you may want to visit the site to check it out). The redesign is based on Sandbox, and it’s a throwback to the minimalism that inspired the look of Saudi Jeans in its first two years.

Longtime readers probably remember when I used to post a bunch of links to all kinds of stuff everyday. I kept doing something like this through the “shared items” on the right sidebar, but it was not exactly the same. As an experiment, I’m reintroducing the daily links in the main column of the blog with occasional context and/or commentary. However, these linky posts will not be open to comments initially. Based on how the experiment goes, this may or may not continue to be the case.

I’m mostly satisfied with the new design but it’s still kind of rough around the edges, so if you run into anything funny please let me know.