An update on my friend's pending nuptials -- apparently the contract has been finalized and presented by the two families to the Court. The Court has accepted the contract so, technically, he is now married!
Similar to when he announced when he was getting married he didn't make a big deal about this part of the process. My understanding is that, culturally speaking, he is not married until the ceremony/celebrations are completed, which may still be a while -- I do not think they have finalized a date yet. Guess there is still time to back out if either party wants to cancel. For now he goes to his fiancée’s (wife’s?) house to chat with her and have dinner with her family. He is also preparing a place where they will live once they have the marriage ceremony. It is good to hear things are going well.
I've been wanting to ask him what exactly is in the contract but I’ve refrained from doing so to respect his privacy. Arabs are generally a private people and can get uncomfortable with questions about their personal life, including asking them about family members. If I'm not mistaken Arabs generally consider it impolite for a man to ask another man about women in his family. Generally you would just ask a man how his family is doing, rather than asking about specific members such as his mother, sister, daughter, wife etc. I'm sure asking about what is in their marriage contract qualifies as very personal information.
As for the contract I do know that the contract has in it that she can work if she wishes to because she currently has a job and he mentioned that she will continue to work there, but I do not know much else. Maybe I will just ask him to give me what details he's willing to share with me (and you as well, he knows I'm blogging about this).
5 comments:
generally speaking it's safer not to ask about female relatives. but of course arabs vary from one individual to another. as far as the marriage contract is concerned, it's a legal document after all so it can't be that private - at least not where i come from :)
Ah, but where is that? Looks like maybe France :)
I did get some details about the contract (see a recent post). My friend did mention what was in his but I'm not telling - he knows I'm blogging about this.
nope, not french :) but i do wish there was some equivalent of the cafe de flore here in qatar.
by the way, it might be interesting to compare contracts between islamic-based and more secular arab governments.
I think in Turkey there's usually no contracts per se but I'll ask my Turkish friend.
turkey is not an arab country though :)
to give an example of contracts in an arab country governed by a secular regime, syrians simply fill in details of the spouses, dowry, and other stipulations - this is usually left blank.
hope that was helpful :)
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