Not Without My Daughter

I have to say that I think we have had good fortune. Living as we live on a compound, not speaking Arabic, and our children not attending a national school, we have had the good fortune of meeting some Saudi nationals. Today the grand total is four. We live in Saudi Arabia and we know four Arabs and I am not sure if one of them counts. They are all men. Three of whom are married to non-Saudis. All of whom are living here in Saudi Arabia.

We were talking to one of the wives the other night and she told us about the story of her moving here from the US. Of course her family's first reaction was panic (not unlike my family's reaction). At this I said,

"They've probably been watching too much Not Without My Daughter"

"Yes", she replies, "when they start to worry or wonder what we are up to they always call my husband with accusation in their voices" Even though they've been married for several years and have half-grown children, the family at home in the US still worries that the Arab is going to harm their daughter.

I started thinking, what if people believed that all American's

only eat at McDonalds
are obese
are racist
are violent
...etc, etc

Many people do believe these things about Americans and what a warped view of the US these people must have...A country of 300 million obese individuals, eating breakfast, lunch and dinner at McDonalds, hating others because of their race, all the while violence running rampant. Doesn't sound like a very nice place to me.

But really, I couldn't remember what actually happened in Not Without My Daughter...Sally Field was married to a man from the middle east, I think I remember that he seemed a kind man. He then wants to move the family to his home country and there he turns into a crazy man who pretty much imprisons the wife and child in their own home..is that how it went?

It made me wonder what we think when met by a piece of work out of Hollywood or even the news:

Sensational or undramatic

Deviant or average

Extreme or normal

Don't they call them dramatizations for a reason?

In reality,

CBS Healthwatch wrote an article about fast food in 2001. In the article, they write that 25% of Americans eat fast food. If 25% eat fast food that means that 75% don't.. So at least 75% of the US population does not eat at McDonalds.

According to the CDC, the US state with the highest rate of obesity is Mississippi (2009). Here, the obesity rate is 34.4%. This may be high and we may have a lot of feelings about it but this is far from every American...in fact, most Americans are not obese.

You get the point.

But this idea of all Arab men being untrustworthy and all women in the middle east being what we in the west would consider abused to some extent...how do we ourselves measure up on this score? According to the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence:

1 in 4 women in the US will fall victim to DV in their lifetimes

1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year

85% of DV victims are women

Most cases of DV are never reported to the police

So, isn't that the pot calling the kettle black