"Looking for an Arab for serious purposes only."

August 29, 2004 3:41 PM

Personal ads in the Arab world "Resident of the UAE, 28 years old, high-school diploma, looking for a veiled wife, a citizen of UAE or any other Gulf county. Will be allowed to continue working after marriage." ~ "Syrian, 36 years old, holds a government position, is interested to meet a tall, fair-skinned and green-eyed virgin, Lebanese or Moroccan."
posted by onlyconnect (21 comments total)

Wow, those are really different to *** MY PERSONAL AD ***. Fascinating.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 3:49 PM on August 29, 2004

Heh. You are exuding focking confidence and we like you.
posted by onlyconnect at 4:07 PM on August 29, 2004

pretty's like the Fonz, but more fetal ; >

this was weird: First of all, in this context, the word "Arab" refers only to the well-off sons of the Persian Gulf area, whereas Egyptians, Jordanians or Syrians, let alone Sudanese or Yemenis, are not included in this category.
Is that a general distinction in daily life too?
posted by amberglow at 4:28 PM on August 29, 2004

I don't mean to be ethnocentric... but damn...
posted by wfrgms at 4:32 PM on August 29, 2004

I'd be concerned about anyone looking for 72 virgins
posted by ElvisJesus at 4:43 PM on August 29, 2004

ElvisJesus - apparently it may well be a mistranslation of "raisins". Seriously.

Any chance of the 9/11 movie being called "72 Raisins"?
posted by Pretty_Generic at 4:49 PM on August 29, 2004

pretty generic-- "Slightly Hairy"? "Naked Mole Rat"? "Freeze frame/credits"? Ah, if I was only, uh, 22 years younger.
posted by jokeefe at 4:56 PM on August 29, 2004

amberglow> Every friend from the Middle East I have makes that distinction, so I would assume so. They're different ethnicities (and in the case of Egyptians, Syrians, Jordanians and the Lebanese, often different religinos), after all. They don't look or sound similar, either.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 4:57 PM on August 29, 2004

ahh...i never knew of the distinction--thanks Pseudo
posted by amberglow at 4:58 PM on August 29, 2004

One of the things that I appreciate about Islam is that it allows divorce, recognizing that just because a marriage fails it doesn't mean you are a sinner. The last page of the article touches on some creative uses of the doctrine by young people who don't want to have sex outside marriage.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 4:59 PM on August 29, 2004

Pseudo, you seemed to miss the phrase "well-off" in there, though. Shirley the word "Arab" applies to poor Saudis as well...
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:34 PM on August 29, 2004

Maybe all these people could use some help from Online Personal Ad Coaches, who will remove all your dumb references to exes and bad grammar and try to make you sound interesting. Or is it better to leave all the flaws in the ad of your own personal design out in the open? Don't know.

I thought maybe Pseudo was saying Arab applies to the richer countries (not people) out there, e.g., Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kuwait, etc?
posted by onlyconnect at 6:28 PM on August 29, 2004

Yeah, I meant that it applies to the places where the people who are ethnically Arab live. Which, yes, are Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait, Qatar, etc. Y'might as well call a Frenchman a German as an Egyptian an Arab.
posted by Pseudoephedrine at 6:36 PM on August 29, 2004

I got what Pseudoephedrine was saying, but I thought the odd thing about the original sentence wasn't the way it defined "Arab" by nationality, but the way it snuck in "well-off" as part of the definition of "Arab".
posted by Sidhedevil at 6:55 PM on August 29, 2004

I should file one of those..

sure.. i'm white and American, but it's not like I couldn't try
posted by RobbieFal at 7:41 PM on August 29, 2004

Hmmmm. This is all well and good for Arabs, but what is the appropriate dating market for soulless, consumptive young infidels?

Oh.
Never mind, I found it.
posted by dhoyt at 8:19 PM on August 29, 2004

for soulless, you'll have to wait for the white supremacist dating service. ugh.
posted by amberglow at 8:22 PM on August 29, 2004

Well, if you wish to meet Moslem, not necessarily Arab, girls, who are from relatively wealthy, urbane families, American University (D.C.) used to be a good place. I have a friend who met his Iranian wife there. He said most of them are pretty insistent about conversion before marriage, though.
He mentioned another guy, also dating an Iranian girl, who was really surprised at her un-Islamic manner. Duh!, she was a Zoroastrian. One of those 3rd date discoveries.
posted by kablam at 8:48 PM on August 29, 2004

interested to meet a tall, fair-skinned and green-eyed virgin, Lebanese or Moroccan

- me too!
posted by Pericles at 1:44 PM on August 30, 2004

Speaking of wrong interpretations, Pretty_Generic, here's a joke...

--
A new young monk arrives at the monastery.

He is assigned to help the other monks in copying the old canons and laws of the church by hand. He notices, however, that all of the monks are copying from copies, not from the original manuscript. So, the new monk goes to the head abbot to question this, pointing out that if someone made even a small error in the first copy, it would never be picked up. In fact, that error would be continued in all of the subsequent copies.

The head monk says, "We have been copying from the copies for centuries, but you make a good point, my son."

So, the abbot goes down into the dark caves underneath the monastery where the original manuscript is held in a locked vault that hasn't been opened for hundreds of years. Hours go by and nobody sees the old abbot.

The young monk gets worried and goes downstairs to look for him. He sees him banging his head against the wall. His forehead is all bloody and bruised and he is crying uncontrollably.

The young monk asks the old abbot, "What's wrong, father?"

With a choking voice, the old abbot replies, "The word is 'celebrate'."
--
posted by madman at 11:39 PM on August 30, 2004

amused
posted by Pretty_Generic at 12:10 PM on August 31, 2004