Qanta A. Ahmed Quotes

Yet I couldn't connect this racial purity with the warmth of the toothless, lined Bedouin women who showed me such affection in the hospital. I thought about the Bedouin patients I had attended in Riyadh and what they had taught me of acceptance. Surely these Bedouin were the purest Saudis of all, Daughters of Arabia, borne of tribal forebears who had roamed Arabia before the slick of oil wealth suffocated their culture, washing them up like half-dead seagulls into the new urban metropolis of modern Saudi Arabia. I decided it had to be wealth which made the stark difference. All I had to do was think back to the "real" Saudis I had met in Riyadh, so different than the women sharing this tent with me.

Majeed was a self-confessed Holocaust denier. I had witnessed his indignant nihilism about the six million condemned to be extinguished infinitely in countless narrow minds like his. Despite his intelligence, he possessed capacities I had never previously encountered. I

I don't think this is a good idea. We all live on one planet so we cannot segregate the genders. If the Holy Mosque in Makkah, which is the holiest place on earth, does not segregate women, then why would the Ministry of Health want to segregate them?"
She also went on to object to the selection of a physician based only on gender and not competence, expressing her disdain as follows: "I prefer doctors who are professional in studying my situation and solving my problem, regardless of whether they are male or female. I cannot imagine a men's hospital without female nurses and doctors, and I also cannot imagine women's hospitals without men playing a role in them.

Here at Hajj, I was experiencing a taste of the same poison. While the women in my tent weren't nearly as wealthy or polished as the bewitching woman at al-Multaqa, they subscribed to the same view, deciding (based on skin color and ethnicity) that I surely must be a handmaid or at best nanny to a poor Saudi family who couldn't afford the much better Filipina maids, having instead to resort to Pakistani or worse, Bengali help. In fact I did remember one Saudi woman in the tent asking me if I was Bengali.

I remember being thirteen years old, sitting in my room all night, listening to the same song over and over. I thought that if I could write something beautiful, something honest, I could make someone love me.