Surrealism And My Mother: A Phone Conversation

A telephone call from Doha:

"What did you do today, darling?"

"I finished an essay for uni, Mum.  Went to a party last night.  Not much.  You?"

"Oh, I insulted a suspected mass murderer at a dinner party about his stance on women's rights."

"Ah.  So same old same old, really."

If parents are meant by duty to instill a sense of perspective in their children, mine are succeeding admirably, though perhaps not in the way the platitude intends.  A background: my Australian, Caucasian, atheist father works as a director of an architectural firm in the (usually) safer countries of the Middle East, building projects which go from the sublime to the ridiculous to the frankly absurd.  I have no idea how he does it.  I could tell you stories of culture clash that defy imagination: sheikhs quite seriously demanding flying cities or stadiums shaped like gigantic tents isn't even the half of it. 

That, however, is not the point of this particular post.  The point is that sometimes my mother accompanies him.

My mother is around five feet seven, blonde, and the approximate weight of a healthy 14-year-old.  She is not an intimidating person physically.  She is, however, a self-described hellion.  This, considering that she is operating in a cultural environment which to varying degrees sees women as private beings without right of access to education and power, occasionally causes, um, diplomatic problems.

In the past, for instance, she fought with a sheikh over his insistence that his son had the right to go to study in London while his daughter did not- and possibly made the sheikh even firmer in his belief that educated women are terrifying creatures, if they're going to fearlessly dismantle his beliefs over a dinner table.  Today, however, she shared a story that was so extraordinary the only logical next step was to tell the internet. 

Somehow, due to the colossal oddness of the Arabian wealth 'scene' where most of my father's clients percolate, she ended up at a dinner party sitting next to a condescending elderly man whom she worked out, through a combination of memory and talking to his faintly indiscreet wife, to have once been a senior member of a political regime infamous for its colossal bloodiness.  I will not mention which one because I don't want to cause trouble, but we're talking significant genocidal crimes against humanity here.  I have no idea what he was doing in the Middle East.  This was a man who, based on the evidence, is likely to have committed stuff the International Human Rights Tribunal normally has conniptions about.  BAD THINGS.

And, of course, my mother, noticing during the (understandably strained) conversation that his wife and daughter did everything for him- served his food, poured his tea, translated when he decided not to speak English- decided to ask him whether he was capable of pouring his own tea or doing anything for himself. 

"That is what women are for," responded Probable Mass Murderer, and my father promptly averted his eyes.

The conversation fortunately did not escalate to anything explicitly undiplomatic, but this was the parting exchange: the man, who apparently was Muslim, said he would teach my heathen mother to pray, to which she responded that she thanked him, and to show her gratitude she would bring along some rubber gloves and teach him how to wash up.

If anybody asks what my mother does for a living, I think I may answer "professional hell-raiser."  I doubt she would object.