Waffen durch Mittagsessen?

This afternoon, I attended a Working Women's "business luncheon" at a local restaurant in town. I was a bit nervous about going, but ultimately, the Lord provided the people that needed to be there at the luncheon and it made for 2.5 hours of laughter, good food, and discovery.

I was apprehensive that I wouldn't be able to find my place at the luncheon, as I was the only singleton, the only under 30-ling, and the only Christian at the event. MS, a colleague of mine, had invited me to the luncheon, and I was very grateful to have her as a buffer, along with the Syrian woman instructor at the center where I take Arabic courses. Because I was wearing hijab before the soup started and these women were previously introduced to my faux doppelgaenger at work at a different event from before, many of them assumed I was Muslima and recently married (which prompted polite assurances on my part that I wasn't the personage that they thought I was). It wasn't until I prayed at the soup and explained why I had taught in Lithuania for a summer that the invisible vinyl disc came to a complete stop with my lunch table interlocutor, "And what religious affiliation are you with?"

Nevertheless, they were all pleasantly welcoming to me, and I enjoyed learning about their lives and small business pursuits here in the Kingdom. Most of the women are American Muslims who have lived in either Egypt, Saudi, or both for nearly 15 years or more. Their children have lived the majority of their lives in Saudi, but will soon "return" to the States for higher education. The community that these women have created and sustained with each other is pretty remarkable. What left an impression on me the most was their behavior when we played some party games -- the pocketbook game and "give yourself points if you..." Some of these women are very cheeky, and you must watch them like hawks (in a good-humored way) to make sure they don't cheat for more points.

Most notable and bizarre was this scene during the pocketbook game:

Event organizer: Does anybody have scissors in their purse?

Everyone scrounges in her respective purse; Um M puts an expression on her face as if a light bulb has switched on in her mind, and says, "Does a credit card knife count?"

MS and I look at each other, give a pregnant pause, then say, "Does a WHAT count?!"

After a half-minute of scrounging, sure enough, Um M pulls out a credit-card sized and shaped pocket "knife" that acts as a mirror, bottle opener, mini saw, nail file, and knife. Awesome!


A general observation of the event for me was that the whole afternoon reminded me of the UMW lunches that the West Rupert Methodist Church used to have in the church basement. The party games, the poking fun banter from middle-aged woman to middle-aged woman, the appreciation of the food, and the love everyone demonstrated to each other. What a small, yet beautiful glimpse at a universal of women getting together without men.