Defying Friedrich! “Everything in woman is a riddle, and everything in woman has one solution—that is pregnancy. Man is for woman a means: the purpose is always the child. But what is woman for man?!" Thus spake Nietzsche over a century ago about the relation between man and women! I'm certainly not about to dive into the meaning behind the passage behind the man/philosopher, but more about the woman now in an ever-changing society. For there she is between independence and obedience, traditions and trends, walking forward and stepping back, standing up and standing still in Time/Place. So'aad: I am not happy! Noor: What are you talking about! You literally got everything! So'aad: I feel cornered, shackled. Though my wings are free. Noor: We don't appreciate things until we lose'em! So'aad: how can I lose what I don't possess?! So'aad is a Qatari girl in her mid twenties. She makes good grades at her College, and runs a successful small business from her home. When you meet So'aad for the first time, you'd feel a bit intimidated! Her features whisper a precise staidness and her speech holds a bit of bitterness and sadness. As for So'aad dilemma, it is the dilemma of most Qatari women who lived the 90s of the past century as teenagers: Social schizophrenia! Social schizophrenia is a state of psychological tension created within a person due to rapid, unexpected, surprising change in the way a person should perceive its surroundings and visa-versa. A good example would be drawn from So'aad's personal experience when she got her driving license "it is socially accepted for a young girl to be driving around, getting things done and all, but it is not!" she said. Some would acclaim that So'aad's "crisis" emerges from the depth of Qatar's core tradition as a masculine society, but that is just pure ignorance.
The Qatari society has never been unjust to its feminine side historically speaking. Qatari women have always represented honor, knighthood, generosity, giving, and love the same way men were represented, but the role differences and the awful mix between some bare traditions and religion led to the atrophy women's soul, and the retreat from their leading role in the middle of the past century. Gradually since then until the years of the first leap in the metamorphosis of Qatar's society, women have gained ground and faced the shiny side of the social mirror, but kept a bit of weakness and feelings of defeat from the memories of a time passed on the shore of a raging gulf that couldn't care back then; that is what keeps So'aad, Hissa, and Jameela awake some long nights. The last trilogy (60s"downfall"-70s"first leap"-90s"2nd leap") of Qatari women, and how the other look at her through a prejudicial thick glass. Who am I; here? A question-as old as the desert- which So'aad has been searching for its answer‌. An ever-changing society‌..between the masculinity of Nietzsche's quotes and the probabilities of the far seductive future. Noor: What are you looking for So'aad? So'aad: no worries, found it!
By: Fahad Al-Mursel