I know I was not updating regularly during the past month. The posts were not few, but they were far between. This was because there is no internet connection available in the dorm. I think I’m going to go to Dr. Cafe or Starbucks to use the WiFi net connection when I’m stuck here in Riyadh.

Anyway, my exams start next week. I will not be blogging for a while. I will be back on the second week of January.

During the fourth national dialogue forum in Dahran, a reporter for Asharq Al-Awsat tried to convince two young men of Islamists that men and women can set in the same place together to discuss. This is so ironic!

What would you do if you caught your daughter listening to Um Kulthoum’s romantic songs? Marry her off. In her words: “I was 16. I was in the kitchen listening to Um Kulthoum and singing along with her loudly, when my brother came in. He told my parents. They asked me if I was in love with someone, and I told them I was not but they did not believe me. A month after that, they married me off to someone I never knew and never loved.” Now, eight years after that insane marriage, Noura has two daughters, and she is getting divorced.

You are sitting at your favorite coffee shop. Drinking coffee, smoking, and watching TV. Nothing serious, really. A bearded man will enter the place, turn off the TV, tell you to stop what you are doing, and start lecturing you about your Muslim brothers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He also may suggest that you should leave the place and go to do some jihad somewhere. I suggest “Don’t Panic!” You are in Riyadh. Just keep that in mind, try to ignore him, and wait till he leave. When he’s gone, pretend that nothing happened, and try to continue whatever you were doing.

Why there are no cinema theaters in Saudi Arabia? No one exactly knows. “There are no rules banning cinema theaters,” Badr Kurraiem, member of the Shoura Council, told Asharq Al-Awsat.

Unlike satellite channels, movies can be easily censored to suit the conservative minds of Saudis. However, this is not the problem. “It is not about the content. It is about mixing of men and women,” a sociologist said. “But I think time is changing, and it is possible solve the problem now,” he added.

Okay, but what about the Islamists? “Even if men and women were separated, I won’t let my children go there,” a consultant to the minister of Islamic affairs, said. “I would let my children go, provided that I go with them.” However, the man eats his own words. You know, “I’m a bearded man, adhered to Sunnah. It is a shame on me to go there and set next to someone who smokes or laughs out loud,” (!!) he added. “I avoid places like that, and therefore I would like my children to do so,” he said. He thinks that locations of youths’ gatherings “must be under strict monitoring.”

Director Hayfaa Al-Mansour says she noticed a lot of Saudi boys who go to Bahrain to watch movies. Actually, I’m one of those boys. I occasionally go to Bahrain to enjoy the latest movies. Do I expect to see cinema theaters here? Not sure, but I think eventually there will be. I’m jut not optimistic that will happen anytime soon.

Remember that stupid hospital thing? A similar stupid thing happened to me today.

This morning, I went to the court to sign some papers. I was supposed to meet my little brother there. I arrived earlier, and when I tried to enter the building, the soldier on the entrance told me he can’t let me in because I’m not wearing a shmagh. I was just like “are you serious?” “I’m wearing a thobe, what the shmagh is for?” I asked him. He told me “these are the rules.”

While I was cursing the rules and the people who put them, my brother arrived from college, wearing a navy pair of jeans and a lab coat. I told him what happened, and when he turned his face toward the soldier, and before saying anything, the stupid soldier with his stupid cold smile told my brother “you can get in.”

I could not believe it. “He can get in but I can’t because I’m not wearing a shmagh?” I asked the soldier, and he said “yes!” I did not want to go back home just to put that ugly piece of clothes on my head, so I borrowed one from another man. It was really unpleasant to have someone else’s shmagh on my head, but I was so angry to think about it.

I never have been to the court before. I was thinking about something like Alley McBeal. However, the real image was shockingly different. It was an old, dirty, smelly, small building. The walls were filled with strokes of blue ink from people dirty enough to clean up their fingers on the wall after they used them to stamp the papers. In addition to that, some girls shamelessly wrote their names and phone numbers on the walls. What kind of a girl that is looking for love in such place?

I was there for only 40 minutes, but it was an awful experience. I hope I’ll never need to go there again.

While we were on the way back from Zara, my friend Mo sparkled this discussion. I will put some blasts from this discussion here. I don’t want to go on details about who said what. I will just try to write down what impressed me the most.

Why can’t I have a lifestyle that is similar to other students’ lifestyle? They will never miss a chance to go to coffee shops between classes, they will finish the classes and go to spend the few remaining hours of morning in malls, and they usually have some plan to meet later in the evening at the fancy Attahlia street (This is the street’s old name. The government has named it after some prince now, but this name still sounds way much better and it’s actually more popular) or somewhere else where they can hang out and have a good time.

I do nothing here. When I was back home in Hassa, I used to go out every other night or so. Maybe Hassa does not have Starbucks or Olaya St., but at least somehow I could manage to have a good time. Is it because I’m a bit different? Or is it simply because I don’t know how to fit in with Riyadh boys? I know being Shi’ite in a city like Riyadh is not helping, but I don’t think it is a major reason for this situation.

I could think of plenty of reasons. I come from a socially different background. Also, I come from a different class. I belong to the middle-class, and I can say I always had a good life. However, it seems to me that the mid-class here in Riyadh has much better level of living than the one I had back in Hassa.

Sometimes, my class-mates invite me to go out with them, and even without all the above in mind, I tend to say “sorry, I can’t come with you guys.” There is always something deep inside me that tells me not to join them. Is it because I’m really different and it will be really hard for me to fit in, or is it just better not to enter a world that could be not suitable to a boy like me?

Sometimes, it is really hard to find answers.