Looking for Love in Jeddah

If you, like my colleague Cicero, almost exclusively "turn to Fox News" and outlets like it to find out what's going on, many of your notions about the world are likely to be misplaced. (I hope that this is the only sentence I ever write that could have come from the shrill, Eleanor Clift-like "mind" of Janeane Garofalo.)

Take the Arab world, for example. Those who live there, according to stereotypical portrayals, must be either Death-to-America wack-jobs in need of a one-way ticket to Cuba; heroic leaders of burgeoning pro-democracy movements under attack; or super-pious, culturally and socially insular shoe gazers. There are three kinds of people in the Arab world, and those are them.

Of course that is bullshit, as English-language outlets like Arab News show us. Interests and pursuits of those in the Arab world are as varied as those in other countries. And, as recent news from abroad shows, cultural pursuits, technology, sex, love, drugs, and cross-dressing belly dancers -- along with a knack for navigating around myriad regulations in order to get at the meat of life -- play key roles in the everday life of your average 23-year-old in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia just like they do with your average 23-year-old in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

In Saudi Arabia, with its severe restrictions on men and women appearing together in public, it's difficult to meet and flirt with new people. Enter the coffeeshops of Jeddah.

“The low lighting and the partitions that some coffee shops afford customers make them a perfect place to meet a female friend, away from society’s iron fist,” Ali Al-Harbi confessed. [...]

“The choices of places to hang around in Jeddah are limited,” said Nahla Ali. Her friend, Sarah Al-Gonami, added: “It’s malls, restaurants and malls again; there is no cinema or even a park. Everyone who is hip and cool has to go to these places and show off in front of others.”

Women "show off," often from behind a veil, mostly by smoking from the hubbly bubbly (commonly known as a hookah pipe).

“It’s very relieving,” Nora Gassan admitted.

“I have become very addicted to the smell of the flavored smoke, blowing it out in circles; it feels so liberating and relaxing at the same time,” a nearby girl added.

Just like in America, showing off leads to flirting, and vice versa. But in the closed Saudi society, flirting is done subtly -- with eye contact -- and electronically, through the use of networked wireless devices.

Another current practice in coffee shops is for customers to exchange Bluetooth messages. Just by sitting there turning on the Bluetooth device in your mobile, you come across various weird and even funny IDs e.g. “the millionaire,” “miss-fussy,” “lonely bird,” “rebel without a cause” and the list goes on.

As I sat down in one of the trendiest coffee shops looking closely at all the people, I received a Bluetooth message, “I’m so bored; please say anything!”

Although the coffee shop was crowded, people laughing out loud, pop music playing and everybody seeming to have it all, it still did not conceal the loneliness and emptiness coffee shop customers are often hiding behind their masks.

A little PDA courtesy of the PDA, if you will. But what of this loneliness?

For an answer, we leave the Arab cafe and travel next to the Arab Lounge, an American-based website devoted to "Connecting Arabs Worldwide" -- and one that looks very much like a tyipcal American personals site. Arab Lounge sports the same mix of Arabs looking for love, sex, drugs and flirtation as found at the Jeddah cafe -- and more openly so. The Saudi-based entries of men seeking women, for example, include candid comments on things like drinking alcohol ("on special occasions," "sometimes," and "often") and sex (including one man's search for "a beautiful girl who licks my lolipop tonight if not tomorrow!")

If the "Arab Street" has indeed been retired as a useless non-descriptor, which Christopher Hitchens capably claims, then it's time to let the accompanying narrow view of the faces on that street die a quick death as well. It's places like the cafes of Jeddah and the Arab Lounge -- where social and civil society flourish in spite of the ball and chain of (in the case of Saudi Arabia) a repressive religious state -- where Americans and our media should turn for our understanding of an Arab world. We'll learn that this world is neither mononlithic nor prudish, neither democratic nor anti-democratic, but is instead peopled by individuals seeking and living the human experiences we all long for.