JEDDAH, 23 February 2005 — Muhammad is a 26-year-old who wanted to marry his friend’s sister. He was told that she was right for him and would be a great match. The night before he planned to propose, Muhammad was given some advice. A friend told him to ask the family’s watchman about the girl. Initially he laughed but when his friend insisted, he decided to take his advice. To say the least, he was shocked at what he heard when he inquired about the girl and her family. The watchman told him, “Every day at noon a car comes and picks her up. It brings her back before 4 p.m. which is when her father is taking a nap.” It was a great surprise for Muhammad to hear from the family watchman that the girl he wanted to marry was a serious flirt and in the end, he canceled his wedding plans.

Muhammad told Arab News that he was feeling so depressed that he didn’t think he would ever trust a girl again. “I can’t believe that my friend’s sister is carrying on like that behind her parents’ back,” said Muhammad.

When asked why he believed the watchman, Muhammad said both time and experience had shown that a good source of information about any family is the watchman.

Saeed, a 28 year-old teacher from Makkah, said he had had a similar experience. He was about to marry a girl from Makkah but decided not to when he saw the girl riding alone with the driver. “I don’t trust any girl who rides alone in a car with the driver. I think her family is trusting her too much and she doesn’t deserve it. Her driver told me that she was not a good girl,” said Saeed who bribed the driver with cigarettes and got the information from him.

On the other hand, some families have had to get rid of their drivers and watchmen because the men were “leaking” family secrets to those outside the family.

Amr, who has three daughters and a son, told Arab News how he wanted to kill his driver after discovering that all the family secrets were being spread around by the man.

“While he was driving my family, he listened carefully to all their conversations and also to their phone calls. The next day we found the stories in our neighbors’ houses as well as in our relatives’.” The driver naturally sits with the neighbors’ and relatives’ drivers who are his friends and talks about his employers and what he knows about them.

Amr continued, “My daughter had an accident which caused her to lose her virginity. I was shocked when one of our relatives called to ask about the incident; it would have been out of the question for any family member to talk about this so I knew it had to be the driver.”

The driver had taken Amr and his daughter to the hospital several times.

Arab News went around Jeddah and met a number of watchmen and building guards and heard some amazing stories. One woman got a divorce from her husband and now she is seeing someone every week; another woman meets her neighbor after her husband goes to work at 6 a.m. and the neighbor himself always comes home with a different girl. And the story goes on.

From one building to another, there is a huge number of stories for the watchmen to tell and they usually find good listeners. Sheikh Abdul Aziz Al-Maiman of Makkah Court said it was wrong to take the word of watchmen or drivers when asking about families, especially when it comes to marriage.

“This driver or watchman could have personal problems with his sponsor and he could be giving false information,” said Sheikh Abdul Aziz, who stated that families don’t have to inform the watchmen where they are going or what they are doing.

Referring to what the man told Muhammad about the girl leaving every day at noon, he said: “She could have been going to classes, or maybe the gym. No one should talk about an innocent girl like that and Muhammad should have been asking the proper source for such information,” added the sheikh, who stressed that suspicion and accusation is forbidden in Islam. “If Muhammad or Saeed or any one else wanted to ask about a girl or a family, then they ought to ask people they trust who actually know the family and not someone like a watchman or a driver,” the sheikh said.