Jeddah "Ghair"est.

Carnival

Jeddah, Saudi Arabia

photo by aphroditeshari

Who is the "ghair-est" of them all?

If there's one thing about Jeddah, it's that it is always on the brink of something great. Something huge and life-changing is always JUST about to happen. This feeling of anticipation, and dare I say it, HOPE, is what makes the Jeddah culture and its people inch slowly towards that sky they long to touch: Change.

This movement is so slow that people barely notice it. It is only when you stand still and look hard at the sky that you see the world move.

Jeddah is, by all means, an exclusive community. Its people bristle at the slightest negative remark made by anyone considered an outsider, whether or not the remark has some truth in it. They defend its culture with one eyebrow raised, rhetorical questions, and a touch of condescenscion: "How long have you been living here? 6 months? Ah."

Because clearly, you wouldn't understand. You don't know the change the city has gone through in the last 15, 20 years. You are not allowed to compare these advancements to those that you know, because it just isn't the same.

And yet these are the same people who complain no end about the lifestyle here. There's always something to be outraged about. There's always something happening that is so beyond ridiculous.

I suppose it is because of the lack of "clear rules". Some people might get away with one thing, others might get in big trouble for the same.

In all fairness, it's not very easy to maintain a balance between tradition and modernity, especially with a tradition that is not very modern-friendly. And yet, Jeddah has achieved it. People are quick to assume that the only kind of change that is good is the standard kind: the most popular one, being Westernized. In this place, the good kind of change is the maintenance of this balance.

I can proceed to site examples of how exactly we manage to maintain this balance in this city, but that would take more than a blog post. One has only to follow other bloggers from this region to get a glimpse of the multi-cultured household that is Jeddah.

Jeddah's parents are from 2 different cultures. And like children of which this is true, it has maintained a balance between the two. People from this city don't live by black and white, they live by the gray, hazy lines.

And again, like children of parents from differenet worlds, it would be wrong to say that these people have succeeded in keeping the moderation DESPITE their super strict dad and a liberal mom.

It is BECAUSE of these "parents" that they are able to make the best of two worlds.

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This blog post written for Hning and her blog carnival.