RECENTLY the media have addressed the increasing number of assaults against Saudi nurses.
Paradoxically, women commit most of these attacks against other women. It seems the chivalry of Saudi men prevents them from using their own hands to slap the weak nurses so they ask their wives or relatives to do it on their behalf. They want to give Saudi nurses a lesson on how to treat the “noble Saudi family.”
This of course is one aspect of the “specialty” of our dear Saudi society, which is coveted for its strict adherence to Islam and its refined ethics. As usual, there will be opponents and attackers to anyone who dares to criticize our “specialty” claiming that these are individual cases and not a phenomenon.
These cases, which some of us like to undermine by saying they are rare and isolated include, among others:
• Maltreatment of foreign housemaids, humiliating them and depriving them of their monthly payments.
• Financial scams by Saudi tenants that will neither pay rents nor evacuate the apartments.
• Abusing children and physically torturing them and their mothers.
• Addiction to drugs and the “very little problems” resulting from these addictions.
• The fatal traffic accidents that result from speeding and other violations.
This is enough. Everything else — thank God — is one hundred percent perfect. Even assaults against Saudi nurses are few and far between. These aggressions will, however, continue until the eradication of Saudi nurses. Then it will be the turn of the qualified foreign nurses. When these are done with, we will bring unqualified foreign nurses with fake certificates who will answer attacks verbally or physically.
One of the Saudi nurses who had been abused said she was astonished that some Saudi men will only allow Saudi nurses to examine their wives, yet they treat them with utter disrespect.
No doubt that this paradox is a characteristic of our “specialty.”
