Sunday was an interesting day for me this week – I had a bit of a cultural crash course in some social traditions that I hadn’t had experience of before.
After a full day at work I went first to a Mubaraka. One of Os cousins has recently had a beautiful baby girl – when I say recently, she isn’t even a month old and is a perfect bundle of pinkness and sleep – and she was welcomed to the world with a party in her honour. It was much like a baby shower, only we got to coo over the baby herself and there were a lot of women there – of all different ages and with different relationships to the mother of the baby.
It was a great time, with lots of gossip as people came and went, new people to meet and old faces to catch up with. There was a lot of food and waitresses constantly circulating with drinks. Some people were only able to stay for a short time, while others were there all night, the important thing was to go and kiss the mother and see the baby (who was also circulated at intervals between feeding and sleeping). As each person left they were given a gift and as many special baby-themed chocolates as they could carry.
It was a joyous occasion, and I’m enjoying these events more and more as I’m getting to know more people in Abu Dhabi and learning the proper dress-codes and etiquettes. Unfortunately I couldn’t stay as long as I might have wished, because I had to leave this lovely Welcome to go to a Farewell.
O and I are incredibly lucky with our neighbours, there are just two apartments on a floor so it’s just us and them. We live opposite a couple who have three children that are around our age. One daughter still lives at home and we are quite friendly with her. They are lovely people, incredibly generous and friendly and warm. They had us over for iftar during Ramadan and treated us as one of the family.
Very sadly, we found out that our neighbour’s father passed away on Saturday morning after a protracted illness that had left him in intensive care for a long time. She went every day to visit him, most days twice a day. It was very sad news for both me and O.
When someone passes, there is an 3aza, a period of mourning during which the family of the deceased opens their house to receive visitors. In some cases the men and women are in different rooms (and in rare cases they will be in different buildings). People dress modestly and in black, and sit for enough time to drink a cup of coffee and then go. If you are close to the family you might stay longer, but the important thing is to go and share in the grief of the family, even if it’s just for a short time. The 3aza might last for two or three days, for three or four hours each day, and during this time there is a constant stream of tea and coffee being made, glasses of water being passed around and prayers from the Quran being read out or played in the visiting rooms.
So after the mubaraka I headed home, did a quick change into some black clothes, took my jewellery off and went across the hall to sit for a while. There were a lot of women there but I was able to pay my respects and I sat with the daughter and her friends for a while.
So it was an emotionally charged evening, starting with an extremely happy welcoming and then a very sad farewell.
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