Friday, January 25, 2008

Being Played... Again?

About a month ago perhaps, some girl called me up on my phone. She told her name was Zeina, that she was seventeen and lived in a neighbourhood on the other side of the city. And she'd ask me questions that I'd try not to answer honestly such as where do I study and where do I live. After I had told her what neighbourhood I lived she asked me where exactly. I didn't tell her where I lived exactly and rhetorically asked her if she was going to come and pay me a visit. And the whole time I was able to hear the beeps signaling that she was recording the conversation on her phone. We spoke on the phone a two or three times perhaps and then she disappeared.

A couple of nights ago she called again. And this time she said she wanted to meet up. I asked her if she meant a scenario in which she'd be walking through the shops with her family and in which we'd see each other from a distance but that wasn't what she had in mind, that she wanted us to hang out together and take it from there so to speak. I told her that I couldn't come and pick her up because my car doesn't work, so she said she'd come over to mine. Either way we wouldn't till the holidays start. We finished our conversation with the plan to call each other after midnight (calls after midnight are much cheaper). She was sleeping at her aunt's and when I called her they were still awake and so we didn't get to talk.

So that next day, I asked people about what should I do. Because on one hand this is the chance to get laid and on the other a ploy asking for trouble. It's hard to listen to advice when one's dick is shouting out that this a great chance to get laid. Enie said he thought it was indeed dodgy and that he could investigate her if I could remember what school she attended. Some other person told me that there have been kidnappings of guys done in such a manner. Suzy on the other hand told me to go ahead with it and that that's how that generation operates.

On my way back from college, I asked the cab driver that had said he used to work for intelligence and that on the way had told me the whole story of an Adel Imam movie. Adel Imam is the chief of police and discovers that the cause of husband's murdering their wives is caused by their impotence which is in turn caused by a government that does not take care of the quality of life of its population. The movie ends with a demonstration with people yelling "Enough, Enough" led by Adel Imam.

The cab driver said it would be okay if it wasn't for my wealth status. He suggested that I could stand her up and then the girl might spill out her intent. He also said I could skip the whole headache and just get a prostitute and that he could hook me up. So we swapped phone numbers. After that, I felt that I'm just asking for trouble from strangers.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

Shaggy,

Hey, you often talk about how some Iraqi women try to corner or trap guys into marriage. How common is that? You seem to be pretty wary of women who are just looking to get married. As you know, women in the West don't operate that way so much. If you have sex with a Western woman, it doesn't automatically mean you must get married. From what you've written, it sounds like this actually might be the case for some women in Iraq. Am I right about that or way off?

And what to you mean by the "wealth problem"? Are you considered a rich guy in Iraq or is she the one who might have rich parents?

Thanks in advance.

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Shaggy said...

Sorry for not being so clear... First off, kidnapping was the kind of 'trouble' I was referring to in this post.

Generally speaking, women here expect to get married and then have sex. I've explained this before... Essentially the attitude here is that girls are proud of their virginity and if they weren't it would be a black mark on their reputation in society.

So the reason why I'm wary of women that want to get married is that I don't expect it'll be possible to get any action from them.

Relatively speaking, I am well-off and I'd be a good enough catch for a gang of kidnappers.

Anonymous said...

Shaggy,

Thanks for clearing that up. So it sounds like pre-marital sex is a no-go, right? Back when I was in college, I lived with my then-girlfriend for a few years and regular sex was part of the package (we methodically worked our way through "The Joy of Sex," to tell you the truth, and that was one how-to bestseller here that even I liked). We never married and we later broke up and went our separate ways. Here in the States I don't think our situation was all that unusual. And this is probably the same in the UK, I imagine.

I guess you have a really different situation. I can see why young guys in Iraq might rely upon prostitutes and pornography.

Generally speaking, women here expect to get married and then have sex.

That's really not fair for a young man with raging hormones, is it?

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Don Cox said...

"And this is probably the same in the UK, I imagine." ___It is. And for most of Europe.

Anonymous said...

Don Cox,

I thought so. So my sympathy has to go out to the young Iraqi men and women who have the same biological mandates that the rest of us have around the world. Of course, back in the Fifties in the US, our young people were probably much closer to the scene in Shaggy's Baghdad today than our current laxity.

I recall one of Shaggy's entries in which he stepped into a drugstore, I think it was, to try to buy birth-control pills to feed to his pot plant (I hope I have that right). Here in the States (and I guess again in the UK) the advent of the birth-control pill was central to the Swinging Sixties. I was just a kid then, but in the Seventies my then-girlfriend and I benefited from the pill for sure because it took a lot of the fear of pregnancy out of our regular sex (and made sex much more tactile and enjoyable because I didn't have to use the dreaded CONDOM).

I guess this question is for Shaggy: If most young people in Iraq have to wait until they're married to have sex, then I guess birth-control pills have less utility there. If you're married, I guess you're going to have rug-rats anyway, so you might as well ditch the pills and chuck the condom in the wastebasket and go at it au naturel. That's one good argument, by the way, for marriage in Iraq.

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Anonymous said...

Shaggy,

I understood that kidnapping was the major part of your hesitation about hooking up with that particular woman, but I was thinking back on some of your other entries in which you talked about trying to meet women and the dynamics of those encounters. I was more curious about the general guy-girl hookup situation in Iraq and that's why I brought up that issue. You responded:

Generally speaking, women here expect to get married and then have sex. I've explained this before... Essentially the attitude here is that girls are proud of their virginity and if they weren't it would be a black mark on their reputation in society.

That helps me understand your situation a lot. Iraq is not the only country, of course, where these attitudes are dominant. I'm not sure, but probably around the world the situation in Iraq is more common than the situation in the UK and the States? Or maybe 50%/50%.

Hey, you went to high school, I think, in Lebanon, right? Is the dating scene the same in Lebanon as in Iraq? From the photos we in the West have seen of the Lebanese women, a lot of them are stunningly beautiful and hot-to-trot, but is this just a mirage?

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Shaggy said...

Heck, I've always been hopeless with women. And it was only towards the time I was about to leave Lebanon that I realised that it wasn't like Iraq over there. You know what... I really don't know what the deal was over there, I was high all the time.

Anonymous said...

Shaggy,

Heck, I've always been hopeless with women.

Listen, you're not alone on that issue. I've had a considerable amount of experience with women and I still don't understand them all that well myself. Heh heh.

And it was only towards the time I was about to leave Lebanon that I realised that it wasn't like Iraq over there.

Are you suggesting that Lebanese women are more willing to have sex before marriage than the women in Iraq? Those Lebanese chicks looked extremely hot in the photos, so it would be an awful shame if it was all show.

You know what... I really don't know what the deal was over there, I was high all the time.

For some, weed can shrivel the gonads (metaphorically speaking). For others, it's an aphrodisiac. By the way, my favorite stoner movie is "The Big Lebowski." Jeff Bridges and the Coen brothers. What's not to like?

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Iraqi Mojo said...

Shaggy, Jeffrey introduced me (the whole world, actually) to your blog and I love it!