Author: JC

Iraqi Beauty Queens

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If I say Iraq, what comes to your mind? Most people might not associate it with the Miss Iraq Beauty Competition. This competition started in 1947 with Renee Dangoor as Miss Iraq and has since been held annually and was preceded by the Miss Baghdad competition that started as early as 1934.

Renee was Jewish, and scrolling through the winners the differences reveal a society that hosted plural religions and ethnicities, where a certain  name or background didn’t hold you back from public achievements.

During the centuries the competition developed accordingly with the surrounding world; it became a scholarship program; in the 70s the swimming suit part was removed in response to the feminist movement (although reintroduced later on); and in 2002 an attempt was being made to merge it with an Iraqi Eurovision song context. As time had it’s influence – in 2003 when the society started to collapse and extremist groups began their ruling by fear, it became impossible to hold the competitions inside Iraq. Since then it has been staged abroad: in Kenya, France and Turkey. Wealthy liberal Iraqis outside the country set up the competition and young Iraqi women in exile participated. Iraqis I know often speak about the good old times, when Iraq was a dynamic and rich society, not the sad and messy country we are so used to from the news today. The struggle for the Iraqi beauty competitions might be a reminder for people whos country no longer is.

In the last years, the circumstances around the competition has taken a new turn: the participants consists of less and less women of Iraqi descents. In 2006 the newly crowned miss Iraq Tamar Goregian resigned after four days – she had been threatened by an extremist group calling her “the queen of infidels”. Before taking the decision to step down, when still hopeful, Tamara bravely said: “Maybe beauty is the final step to end violence and preach world peace after all. The power of beauty surpasses the ugly face of politics and greed.” Other participants pulled out after her. Even though being outside, they didn’t feel safe. Now white women from former Yugoslavia and Spain have taken the places of the Iraqis.

No matter what one might think about beauty pageants, in a free world everyone should have the right to join one or demonstrate against it. I hope the Iraqi women will come back one day and claim their rightsome place.

Malmö Arab Film Festival 2013

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MAFF

Two years ago my city Malmö started an annual film festival with many interesting movies from all around the Arab world. In Sweden it’s mostly Iranian culture that has been representing the Middle East, maybe because of the big Iranian diaspora that established Sweden in the 70s and 80s, with many well-educated Iranians that brought with them movies and music.

But also the Arab world has a rich tradition of arts and culture, why I think it’s wonderful that a film festival of this kind has now reached our industrial-city-turned-college-town. In 2012 Malmö Arab Film Festival offered live talks with directors of several movies, among them the movie Cairo 678 that is discussing the taboo topic about sexual harassment in Egypt. I’m sure 2013’s edition will launch more great opportunities.

The festival is also seeking volunteers that can help out preparing for the fall. Have a look!

Photo credit: Malmö Arab Film Festival

Riham – on Changing the Society

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When Riham started the Kuwait Eating Disorder Awareness Campaign in 2012, it was the first of its kind.

“The general idea about eating disorders here is that it’s about girls wanting to be thin”, she says. “But it’s more than weight, it’s an addiction. A Kuwaiti girl saying she’s struggling with an eating disorder is hard.”

It was when Riham was 12 and watched an American movie where a young girl has an eating disorder, when the idea struck her: “I think that’s what I have”. It was in the early 90s and she was in the US where her father was a diplomat. Although Riham seemed to have a word for the rules she put up for herself around eating – she was only allowed to eat a certain number of foods, the food couldn’t touch either on the plate – she kept it to herself.

The family moved back to Kuwait and things got worse. Riham started overeating and quickly gained a lot of weight. She didn’t speak Arabic very well and her self-esteem dropped with her new extra kilos and the struggle with the new surroundings. Eating disorder was recognized internationally but in Kuwait the issue was not recognized, just like other mental health problems was often a taboo, even though many of the country’s inhabitants were suffering from psychological problems after the Gulf War. Still, Riham’s father paid attention to her problems: “On the contrary to what people think about fathers in the Middle East, my father saw exactly what was going on.”

Riham’s father made her see a psychiatrist when she was 21, but the doctor didn’t understand that her binging and vomiting was nothing that she could just stop doing, and although remaining in therapy her eating disorder remained unchanged for several years. To her great sorrow she lost her father at the age of 25, before she had been able to progress: “He never saw me getting better.”

A few years later she found information about Timberline Knolls Treatment Center in US online, and gave the support line a call just to see what they would say. The person on the other side of the line made Riham open up, and she felt trust. She decided that she wanted to have the treatment at the treatment residential center, to finally try and come to terms with her disorder. Riham’s family agreed on paying for the quite expensive treatment in Illinois. Two weeks later she was on a flight to the US.

In the center she lived with 35 other women that suffered from the same problems as she did. In short time she learned to overcome and master her disease that she had been battling since the age of 10. Her family took part in the regular therapy sessions by phone, even if that meant them having to get up in the middle of the night to participate. Riham improved quickly: “It was residential treatment that I needed. It completely changed my life.”

Three months later she signed out from the center and returned home, where she was to take another important step in her new life.

Not only were there no groups or therapies for people suffering from eating disorders in Kuwait before Riham’s campaign started – in all of the Middle East there is no residential treatment center for eating disorders, why many young girls and boys are left on their own. It was in such an environment Riham came of age, and this was what she wanted to change.

Upon her return from Illinois she started a training to be an eating disorder specialist. She describes herself as healthy and in recovery, with a lot of support from her “conservative, typical Kuwaiti family” – a family that is very happy to see a grown-up Riham helping other young women overcome what haunted her for years.

“My ultimate goal is to open a residential center in Kuwait or the Middle East. When you talk about it you kill the secrecy around the eating disorder.”

Her first step, the campaign, received a lot of attention when launched. Riham became a member of Middle East Eating Disorder Association, was soon in the board of directors, and chosen to be the Kuwaiti representative. She started a support group that now hold meetings every Sunday and have a number of young women attending. As her new mission started to take up most of her time, Riham quit her previous job to work full time towards changing the society by raising the awareness, not only regarding eating disorders, and maybe not only in her own country, but in all of the Middle East:

“There is a stigma around mental health issues here that I want to change. A person with these problems is not the crazy person walking around in the street; it’s someone like you and me.”

Photo: Copyright Sweden and the Middle East Blog

My Friendship With a Man From Kurdistan

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Nabaz

During a night out in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, I ended up sitting next to a man in the crowded garden of the Deutsche Hof, the kind of pub that pops up wherever American troops make their way into countries: the smoky garden made a healthy person develop asthma and at the other table a group of soldiers pounded their glasses on the table, chanting army songs. I didn’t think the evening would provide the starting point for a friendship, and I might not have thought that I as a European woman could be close friends with a man from Kurdistan – but your own prejudices sometimes prove you wrong.

The man was not as happy in Erbil as I was. I soon realized that a life of sudden escapes and being a refugee didn’t create a positive atmosphere around a place.

“I’m quite a negative person”, Nabaz bravely introduced himself. “I always expect the worst.”

Despite our different perspectives on things we started to talk. His stories from Baghdad where he grew up made me curious – he was obviously not the regular young guy showing off his money in this newly wealthy area. He had finished a degree in security studies, politics and sociology were his passion, and he had received a scholarship to do his master in UK. We talked politics and travels, mocking the quick development of Kurdistan that created a new bar in every corner, but with a lack of printed books that made students develop eye problems from too much staring on their Ipads.

It was fun to hang out with Nabaz and his friends, they mixed easily women and men from different ethnic backgrounds, but it was Nabaz that I came to be close with. He cared about his friends – his girlfriends without car he picked up and drove back home in the evenings, sometimes spending hours touring around the city, not to leave anyone out. We went to the café Tche Tche’s for a sheesha with friends, spent evenings in the garden of the magnificent Lebanese restaurant, or hung out in the car, driving around the city talking.

“I don’t know how we would have survived if civilians didn’t help us”, he once told me about the bombings of Kurdistan in his childhood. “People just poured over the border to Iran and the families on the other side of the Iranian border took us in.”

He remembered seeing women holding up their babies to overcrowded trucks, begging them to take only the babies, but there was no place. Other stories he told me, on love and control in a society that I was just to get to know, amazed me. Few men I know dare to open up so much about their emotions.

How could it be that a woman that had travelled all over and had all sorts of relationships, lent on a younger man for support? A guess is that his experiences provided a depth of knowledge on how life can treat or mistreat you, and therefore how situations might be solved. I found myself texting at different times for advice. He was always ready to talk (except from when he was in trouble himself and went off to get drunk somewhere. Hopefully the roles could be reversed at such times): A man that didn’t call back? He was just insecure next to an independent woman. A meeting with an old friend that ended in disappointment? “Jenny, people change. Usually to the worse”. I couldn’t have paid a counselor to get the life advice Nabaz provided me with.

In this blog I’m writing about women that have made an impression on me, but when it comes to women’s rights it’s important also to mention the men. To me Nabaz is an example of someone who empowers the women around him. To this day I’m also surprised with the fact that a person is willing to invest so much in a friendship with someone who only touches base in their hometown, a person that it will take time to get to know. I hope I’ll be able to provide the same response to someone else one day, on an evening when I don’t expect to meet someone new. At least I’ll be keeping my guards down; not thinking a friendship cannot be possible.

Photo: Copyright Sweden and the Middle East Blog

Women’s Rights Magazine in Iraqi Kurdistan

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Warvin magazine

There are several women’s rights NGOs in Iraqi Kurdistan, and one of the most radical ones is Warvin Foundation for Women’s issues, a news agency consisting of both female and male journalists.

There’s a lot of talk about women’s rights worldwide, and in Iraq you will meet few NGOs or government officials that won’t say that they support it. Well who would, when the international funding depends on it? Instead, bring up a ban on domestic violence. Or joint custody for the children after a divorce. To be really provocative, say something about sexual liberty for women. The response will never be as enthusiastic.

Warvin’s feminist approach make them stand out. They bring up all kinds of violations against women in Iraq, that many other organizations and local media shy away from, such as self-immolations and domestic murder. But they also cover the steps forward for women’s rights in the region that you might not hear about in international media. Have a look for example on the news about the first brigade of Kurdish women soldiers or how women’s issues are brought up on agenda even in the most troubled Iraqi regions such as Kirkuk.

It’s easy to say you’re a feminist in Sweden, quite more difficult in a patriarchal society such as Iraq. I genuinely admire the women and men who do. Check Warvin’s website out, or their Facebooksite, I guarantee you’ll learn something new. Maybe you can even share their page to support them?

Photo credit: Warvin Magazine

Blogger in Saudi Arabia

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This is a blog that I follow regularly, written by a Saudi man that wants to enlighten the world about Saudi Arabia. I think it’s well-written, even though it’s deliberately provocative and might not touch upon a lot of relevant subjects regarding the Gulf.

It has recently been banned in the Saudi kingdom, which says something about the level of democracy in the country. Check it out before the authorities has been able to take it down completely:

Sex and Beyond: Saudi Arabia

Lava and the Swedish Beauty Salon

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Lava Marof at her university graduation

I first heard about Lava when given a ride by a young man in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, after a job meeting.

“My cousin is also from Sweden”, he said. “She moved back here with her Swedish husband a while ago and opened a beauty salon”.

Not knowing many Kurdish girls marrying to Swedish men, I was hesitant to believe it. But Erbil is like a village despite its size, and many people mentioned Lava and her beauty salon. After an incident at a hair salon where my haircut came out awful, I scanned the city for someone to fix it, and found a salon called En-Vy behind shaded doors in the area Ainkawa. In the back of the salon was a girl in hip square glasses, mixing colors and chatting in Kurdish. It happened to be Lava that people were talking about; a Kurdish girl from Sweden who spoke my dialect of Swedish. I became a regular customer at En-Vy’s, their style being so different. En-Vy was a place for many open-minded women to hang out and drink coffee while having hair extensions inserted for the weekend or makeup done before weddings. After a while I also got to know more about Lava.

Deciding to move back to Kurdistan with her family in 2004 after graduating from high school, to a city someone described as “the Wild West” – at that time there were hardly no streets, bars or cafés – Lava Marof was determined to be a part of the process of rebuilding her country.

“I felt like wow, I can be a part of building this country”, she tells me on Skype from Malaysia, where she now lives.

She held down several jobs; one of them at Ministry of Education, revising the English material for schools, and she pursued her university studies at the same time. It wasn’t easy being a girl from Sweden, obviously independent.

“Your daughter is out all the time”, the neighbors would complain to Lava’s mother.

“She’s out all the time because she has three jobs”, the mother would reply.

“Why does she need to have three jobs?” the neighbors would ask, puzzled. “Is she not going to get married?”

Nevertheless Lava stayed put. She was proud of being Kurdish and determined to be a part of the newly independent Kurdistan Autonomous Region. After graduating from Salahaddin University she went back to Sweden where she met her future husband to be, Alex. Quickly she decided to bring him to Kurdistan to visit her family.

“I told Alex he had to ask my father for my hand”, she said. “There are certain things in my culture that are precious and that I want to maintain.”

They married and moved together to Erbil. Alex free-lanced within digital media and Lava fulfilled her dream of opening a beauty salon with European standard, importing all products from Italy, the staff being both men and women. I asked how this was possible with many veiled customers.

“Some accept the male staff cutting their hair, some don’t, and they might go somewhere else”, Lava said, also explaining that the shaded doors protected from view from the outside and that male customers was not welcome – this mix between conservative and Western oriented customer service obviously being enough to keep a large group of women coming to the salon.

As it has not been to walk her own path between two countries and cultures, I ask Lava about the worst thing she has experienced and she retells a story on how she and Alex together with a group of friends checked in to a resort in Rawanduz. The receptionist demanded to see the marriage certificate, and upon seeing it, asked Lava if there had been no Kurdish men left for her so that she was forced to marry to a European. Lava snapped back: ‘Yeah right, since all Kurdish men are thinking like you’.

“Sometimes you just have to show who’s in charge”, she concludes.

Photo credit: Lava Maroof

Gulf and the Slavery

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I admit it, I have a thing for the Gulf. I like the music; the drums and the monotone singing, the tales of pearlfishing, the culture and the desert. I sincerely appreciated living in the Gulf, being one of few. But the one thing that makes me hesitate to ever go back to live there is the modern day slavery, now spreading over the Middle East, that now is so plain that most people have grown numb to it.

I’ve heard the arguments before, I’ll give them to you before you give them to me: the guestworkers would have made much less in their own countries, now they can put their own children in school. You have to take their passport away from them, otherwise they will run away before the contract is over. They’re poor people that don’t know anything – therefore you have to lock them in overnight, they have to know their place. The horrifying stories I have heard reminds me of tales from American slavery – anonymous people that looses their identity and name.

I’ve heard the other side too, from people who want to be good: we pay her flight ticket to go visit her family, we give her one day off when she’s free, then she can go whereever she likes, our maids can eat as much as they want. As if  giving someone what is supposedly their human right is “being good”.

If you’re Asian or African in the Middle East, you might have nails pushed into your body, you might be abused publicly with noone intervening but filming the abuse instead, you might be killed and the killing will be called an “accident“. Yes, I am giving you some of the worst examples, but you know what? It’s when we start having maids that calls us “sir” and “ma’am”, that the degrading and depersonalisation process starts. And this is the reason it’s so hard for me to see myself go back. I don’t want to grow as numb as many already did.

Women

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There are many perceptions about women in the Middle East among us in the Western part of the world, me included. I’ve come across quite a few cool women during my travels that has turned my own ideas upside down. So I thought, why not introduce a few women that I know, that got something to tell us?

Stay tuned for the first post in this category, coming soon…

Introduction

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Having lived in several different places in the Middle East, and having been able to be active in Middle Eastern issues in Sweden, I want to blog about my and other whereabouts in this issues. The merging of Swedish cultures and those from the Middle East is quite an interesting phenomenon in my view – Sweden being one of the most socially liberal countries in Europe in many aspects; secular with a strong women’s movement. In this blog I give you my and other people’s take on things. Welcome!