Wednesday, May 1, 2013

An apology from the rest of us.....atleast one Arab apologises ..has heart and guts

There r many cases where one of our own hurts / misbehaves with person
from other community.  Not many folks apologise like this. If one or
many from own community get up like this Arab did then healing can be
faster and relationship betweens communities can improve.

An apology from the rest of us

Posted: 29 Apr 2013 10:04 PM PDT

By Tariq A. Al-Maeena

I was going through comments from expatriates when I came upon a story
that turned my stomach upside down. In the comments, an expatriate
executive working for one of the leading banks in Jeddah described an
incident that happened to him and his wife at the hands of a Saudi
couple while they were out shopping for groceries at a supermarket in
Jeddah.

In his own words to the supermarket management (edited): “We regularly
visit this supermarket for grocery shopping and on this particular
date we had completed the grocery shopping and my wife, with the kids,
went to a checkout counter while I was getting the vegetables tagged.
After that I joined my wife who was already in the queue and was
putting her stuff on the counter for checkout.

“Behind her was a Saudi lady who pushed her cart forward preventing me
from putting the tagged vegetables in my hand on the counter. My wife
politely told her ‘I am in a queue and he’s my husband and this is our
stuff,’ to which the Saudi lady replied, ‘shut up and leave, this is
our country’. My wife replied, ‘Sorry, we are not leaving, we are
already in the queue.’

“There was a heated verbal exchange between my wife and her after
which the Saudi lady grabbed my wife’s wrist and told her: ‘Hit me,
you will hit me?’ to which my wife, slightly taken aback by this
reaction, replied, ‘Sorry, why should I hit you?’

“Meanwhile, the Saudi woman’s husband who was standing behind her also
jumped into the argument. I told him that if ‘the women are arguing,
why are you jumping into it? Instead we should try to solve the
problem and get going.’ He then started quarreling with me
unnecessarily. During the loud exchange of heated words, no one from
the superrmarket management or security came to resolve the issue.

“We were finally able to complete our checkout and I was about to
complete the transaction by taking out my card to pay the bill, but
again that lady for no reason at all started shouting, ‘quickly,
quickly’ in Arabic. I asked her to be patient as we are doing it as
quickly as we could, but again the husband jumped into the situation
and started quarreling with me.

“My wife grabbed my hand to say let’s just go, and at that moment the
Saudi man pushed my wife which really was too much to bear. I was
angry with him and shouted at him, ‘How dare you touch my wife!’ At
that moment two or three other men, apparently all Saudis, grabbed and
restrained me while the Saudi husband was still shouting at my wife.
My wife told the man, ‘How dare you push me?’ and he shoved her again
and this time so hard that my younger son fell to the floor and my
wife’s foot was injured and sprained badly.

“During the whole scenario nobody from the supermarket came to our
rescue and I was loudly pleading for security or the police as that
guy was now getting openly physical. My wife was all tears. Finally
someone from the store called security who took us to their offices. I
demanded that either the police are called to see the CCTV footage of
the incident or this man apologize to us. After some time, the
security let the man and his wife go while his wife continued yelling
at us that this was her country. I asked the security officer if he
had taken the man’s ID details to which he shrugged and replied ‘why?’

“We then went back to the supermarket to speak to the management and
asked why they did not interfere as the whole episode happened on
their premises. To this the manager explained that they had the whole
footage of the incident and if we requested the police or their higher
management then they could provide us the recording. However, he
implied that it would be futile as everyone will favor Saudi’s version
rather than give a fair hearing. I was devastated.
“I feel that the management owes us an apology for the unnecessary
humiliation. We are bringing this to your notice as now we are
somewhat traumatized to go to any supermarket as there is no guarantee
that such an incident would not happen against the expat community.
Signed — A.K.A.”

A similar incident befell an American lady married to a Saudi last
year in Riyadh, and at the hands of Saudis.

The comments by the expatriate said that “all the negative press over
the past few months in the local news has escalated this problem and
Saudis feel more hostile to the expatriates. The expatriates have
become Saudi Arabia’s scapegoats! Maybe this hatred is also an
indication of underlying issues and a way of people expressing their
frustrations.”

Perhaps it is so, but that in itself is no excuse for such despicable
behavior. The expatriates are our guests and should be treated with
utmost hospitality. There was no justification for such unprovoked
behavior on the part of the Saudi couple, or on the other Saudi males
who just stood by watching.

And if the supermarket management fails to apologize to this
expatriate and to his wife for the trauma they went through, then let
me be the first among many Saudis to offer my personal apologies. Such
rude behavior is certainly not within most of us.

[The author can be reached at talmaeena@aol.com and followed on
Twitter @Talmaeena.]

(Courtesy: Saudi Gazette)

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