Letter from Dhahran: Winds of change blow traditions away

Very rarely do I venture out to the Al Rashid Mall in Al Khobar, reportedly the largest in the region, or some other shopping malls in the city, on the weekends. These are the most frequented spots for bachelors and families alike - both Saudis and expatriates, especially on the weekends, for simple reasons.

Despite the fact that the attractions inside the huge, mega malls in the city still carry charm and fascination for me as well, issues such as getting the right parking slot, prompt me to opt for some other pastime over the weekends.

But there are also some other reasons for trying to avoid such public places on the weekend. Frankly speaking I feel myself unfit to be in companion with the 'Shabab spirit' prevalent out there. The environment is simply too electric. I have heard of many stories of incidents taking place at these spots.

I have not experienced these incidents personally. It is often said that the 'shababs,' often in groups, who frequent these public places in large numbers, are a cause of nuisance to many, like me, who are past their shabab - prime.

Complaints exist that young boys and girls, in their teens, scribble their cell phone numbers on pieces of paper, throw them at the opposite number and hope for a call.

I now vividly recollect, when the mobile phone era had just arrived on the scene, some 10 years back, a former colleague of mine told me how a teenage girl asked to make a call from his mobile. Realising that it could be some emergency situation, my colleague handed the mobile over to the young girl.

To his horror, he later told me, she dialled the number of a young boy, hardly in his twenties, standing some 100 yards away, and who had a few minutes back dropped randomly his telephone number. That was the emergency!

A woman journalist in the eastern province had some time back written of the ordeal she had to face, when she went to one of these shopping malls. And this all happened while her son, already 13 or 14 by then, was accompanying her.

I had always taken such stories with a grain of a salt. But one of these weekends, as I entered the Panda-Azizia shopping mall just in front of the compound where I live on the Sports City road running from Dhahran to Dammam, I was overtaken by awe and - even chill. I don't have the exact answer, why?

Conspicuous

Scores of young men, in groups of four and five, sporting jeans and T-shirts and with their exposed well-built arm muscles, were present in their expensive automobiles. A number of the big, probably the 750 CC engine Harlow and Davidson motorbikes, were also conspicuous at the entrance points.

When I entered the area, I knew I had committed a grave mistake. The area was simply not for me. It was not easy for an unaccompanied woman, especially the younger ones, to pass through the mess. But I felt even some senior women felt uneasy passing by.

No one could have dared objected to them, the young, and apparently well-connected ruffians, scions of well established, affluent families.

Saudi Arabia by any standards is a conservative society. Like any other traditional society, it is also passing through an evolutionary process. But some do feel that changes taking place in any society have to take into account long-established traditions and norms.

Responsible

The articulate khateeb at the mosque in the nearby Doha area, where I usually go for my Friday prayers, often exhorts the parents and the elders to look after how their wards spend their leisure time.

He invokes them that they are responsible for the deeds - and the misdeeds - of their children and they need to rear them in a proper, Islamic and traditional way. They need to keep an eye on their activities, he strongly argues in the light of saying of the Prophet (PBUH) and his sunnah.