Egyptian Marriages - the biggest of all culture crabs!

I had a couple of heated discussions about "marriage" the other day.
Well the first one was mainly about the whole point of marriage. You see, egyptians have a very intelligent reason for marriage ... they have a very famous saying for it: "Sunnet el 7ayah" ... it's life, or life's nature! Ya salaaaam ... so ppl just get married just because their parents did it, and they should also get married and have kids so that life'd continue. Ok, it a good reason BUT not the SOLE reason. Otherwise life would be just "botton taled wa ardon tabla3" ... just uteruses delivering babies and earth that swallows ... that's how they used to describe the days of "jaheleya" before islam by the way ... which is a very funny coincidence, since this means we are going back in time!
For Allah's sake ... it's not getting married just for the sake of getting married! DUH! I wanna marry smone who understands me ... who cares about what i think, what i wanna do in life ... i want to share my dreams with him, i wanna know his goals, help him reach it ... or better we reach a common goal together. i want a man who wants to raise his children to have independent thought, who'd make a difference in their world before OUR world ...Unfortunately, a lot,if not most, egyptian marriages never consider that. A guy proposes and the parents qualify him (basically on financial and mannarism levels) and the girl sees if he is good, have good thoughts ... etc. and that's it ... ok .. he's cool. Yalla!
hardly do they discuss things like: lifestyle, friendship, goals, concepts in life in general ... what they like to do, what they wanna achieve for short and long term goals, how they'd like to raise their children, what'd happen if they dis-agree on smthg ... etc. Somehow they miraculously skip all these details and they find about it laterz, then they find that they have to make compromises coz regarding these things, they simply do not match!
Smone once told me that marriage is an upgraded friendship. I WISH! look at friends ... they have many things in common, they like to hang out together, they support each other, they respect wut each want to do ... it's not just "friendship for the sake of friendship" DUH!

The second discussion had two points. The first point was concerning the choice. Why is it that a man is always the one who chooses the bride and not the other way around. In the egyptian culture, it's considered a shame if a girl says i like this guy and i'd like to have him as a husband. It's HIM who always have to take the first step. And i really cannot find anything islamic that says it cannot be the other way around. Take the story of the daughter of Al Khedr in the story of Moussa (pbuh). SHE saw that he was a well-mannered person and SHE showed her father that she admired him. (Decode: SHE was the one who first made the choice) In fact, lady Khadijah was the one who took the first step, sending her maid to ask the prophet (pbuh) for marriage. Smone told me: well, yeah ... but you are not anything like lady Khadijah and surely he cannot be anything like the prophet (pbuh). Oh C'mon! do u really buy this? First, i'm talking about the concept. It had nothing to do with the attributes or manners of the two persons. Second, the fact that such a thing could happen, BEFORE isalm, in the then strict closed arab society, proves that this was something normal and acceptable. (Decode: wut we have now in our culture, that it's a shame for a woman to show that she admires a man is just culture crab).
Now, don't get me wrong here ... i'm not saying: all you girls out there go and pick homsoever you want, grab them and take them back home to meet the parents. C'mon be reasonable.I'm simply thinking logical. Being a reasonable person, a girl can say that i like this man because he is so and so and i think he'd make a good husband and a good father for my children ... and if you look at it from the other side, it's not humiliation or that she's desperate or anything that culture crab would suggest ... it's simply saying that: this man is "well qualified" to deserve me ...In fact, this is more dignified than being a doll put up for exhibition where every now and then smone passes by, examines her manners and speech and then say yes or no. Cause this is how most marriages happen now in Egypt. The "arranged marriages" style. which i'm also not against. But if i had to choose between smone i know his qualities and i think he is good and between just "considering" smone i dunno at all but he happened to knock on the door ... hmm, the options doesn't take much thinking i guess!
well, that friend i was talking to said "did I tell you the 25% theory?" when a man proposes to a woman either of the cases can happen: either she likes him and he does not like her, the contrary, they both don't like each other or 25% probably they will both like each others! Subhannallah! then which is better?
The other point was the complications of marriage in Egypt. 100% culture crab! I remember once an american friend was telling about smthg. that happened to her when she went to visit her neighbours .. egyptian ones ... they were chatting and the american happened to mention smthg bout a friend - amrican of course- who's coming to egypt and trying to get sm help with finding an appartment and stuff anyways, the whole discussion turned into wut? the egyptian neighbour and her daughters turned against the american saying that foreign women come to Egypt to steel our men - ehem! btw, she was saying this to my american friend who is married to an egyptian :) ... stupidity is a gift! anyways, i remember that we discussed it and said that egyptians make sooo many complications for marriages ... while things are pretty much simpler with western ppl and that may be that's y egyptian men prefer to marry non-arabs!
I saw this with my own eyes. houses that are not fancy-furnished, even lacks a lot of wut egyptian classy ppl would consider as ESSENTIALS ... Take curtains for one thing; I entered the kitchen at work - yeah, that's not a typing error, we do have a nice kitchen at work ... tell you about how much i feel homy at E laters :P - and there were a bunch of guys who are either engaged or ex-engaged and they were talking about wut? the curtains! they say it's the worst bloody thing in marriage preparations ... endless search for the right color/style/material ... etc. and of course endless arguments between bride-groom, bride-mother in law, mother-mother in law ... !@$#@#%#$%#$!
For western ppl, may be they have these things, may be they wanna have these things, but they don't just make a big deal about it ... life for these ppl is just simple ... these things r trivial things and i think, mashaa Allah, all of them are really happy and content with wut they have and wut they don't have now, i guess, all comes to those who wait!I don't deny that when i go to a nice appartment i can admire the painting or the furniture or wutever, and i'd say to myself: yeah, i'd like to have that in my appartment inshaa Allah ... and i know that these western ppl probably think the same ... but i honestly don't give too much concern for these stuff khales ... if we can afford it then elhamdullelah, and if not, then some day we might inshaa Allah. What's the fun about having everything set and ready from the begining aslan. i'd like to build my home piece by piece. but i know i'm gonna go thru hell if i get married to an egyptian that's y i really favour western marriages.
The problem is that in egyptian society, ppl give very high consideration for wut other ppl - the society they say - would say or think about them. to me, this is just being coward and not true to oneself nor to Allah. How many of us would really think, when getting married, about how they'll be accounted infront of Allah on this family they're starting to build rather than think wut ppl who'd visit them would think about their appartment or wut they'd say about their wedding ceremony?why not just don't care wut ppl say? ... beauty is in the eye of the beholder ... i don't mind if ppl visit me and my walls are not painted or i don't have curtains! wut more or less does furniture and these stuff make of my marriage? nothing ... so y not concentrate on the real things that build up my marriage (i.e, me and my husband and our dreams and goals in life)?and don't we just contradict ourselves? The prophet (pbuh) says: etha ga2akom mn tardawna deenaho wa 2amanataho fa zawegoh ... if someone proposes whose religion and honesty satisfies you, let him marry ... he never said anything about the his money/appartment/car/furniture!
and how was the house of the prophet (pbuh) himself? He (pbuh) used to sleep on a bed of straw that left marks on his back (pbuh) ... ppl would say: well! that's the prophet ... well yeah ... DUH ... whose prophet? isn't it the same prophet that we are supposed to follow his footsteps or wut? I'm not saying we SHOULD sleep on a bed of straw, but if we cannot have a bed of feathers, we shouldn't go whinning about it and complaining that "oh mummy, he doesn't loooooove me ... i don't wanna marry him!" ... or "daughter, this guy is no good for you, he wants you to sleep on a normal bed? not a water bed? hell no!" ... subhannallah! we r just attached to materialistic culture crab and the disaster is: we just cannot not admit it!
Moreover, we r fooling ourselves by talking about a groom with "good manners" and a "good person" and "respectable family" and "modesty" .... coz when it's time for the real thing ... khalas .. forget about all this and start ... no, he should get a better shabka ... he should pay higher mahr, the furniture is still or modern? the colors of the appartment have to be changed ... etc.and if u look at it ... i don't want all this. ... simply because if he does get all this, he gets it from his parents money ... and i don't want my man to be dependant on anyone.how big can a guy's salary be to satisfy all this? Get real!
And Parents ... OOOH ... these are a whole other story. I think for quite a big percentage of marriage failures, the main reason behind it were the parents. Meet the Parents! There's a ground rule that have to be layed before going any step further. Parents should NEVER be allowed to interfer in couples' affairs. What happens bet. a husband an a wife keeps between them. Neither she should go and tell her parents he did so and so to me nor he should do the same. Simply, coz everything, every argument, every hard feeling can easily be mended bet. the couples, but never between the two families. Mothers have a God-given gift for keeping a whole partition of their memory chip in their brains TOTALLY dedicated to save every single word that's been said and retrieve it when necessary - usually whenever the inlaws are there or when the mother feels an urge to remind him of how good they've been to him for letting their daughter continue with himr after he said what he said! Of course this is on the bride's mother side. coz the husband's mother uses a different technique, just poisoning her son's thoughts against his wife/ family in law or both.Ppl might say i'm exagerrating ... well, things do happen. And on the minor scale, at least a simple argument would last for weeks or may be months with surrounding hard feelings just because parents were involved.
Anyways, Allah bless all the happy couples and help those who didn't get married yet have a smooth not-the-above-style-egyptian marriage.
signature:A traumatized eye-witness to egyptian marriages.