ASMA from Jeddah writes: “You are a well-known writer who champions the cause of women. You are always willing to suggest solutions for their problems. My present request is that you give us women some insight into men’s true nature so that our quest for happiness and security becomes easier. I am anxious to know what effect women produces upon men. You should also tell me if men are clever enough to realize all the varied feminine tricks. The most important information I want concerns men’s attitudes toward their responsibilities such as their commitment to their wives and their trust in her.
“I am also curious to know about their attitudes toward success in work as well as their own ideas of manhood. Are they really interested in national and local issues? Let me also have an insight into their thinking processes. Do they have the same silly thoughts as we women sometimes do? Of course, I also want to know about their preoccupation and priorities in general. The most important matter that concerns me is how women can make men happy. Are they really pleased with what we do for them or are we just wasting our time? If you can provide some answers to my questions, you will no doubt give us the key to the closed gate of human happiness.”
My dear Asma, I am sorry to say that you ask me to undertake an impossible task. You ask me to discuss the totality of human relations. It might be a coincidence that I recently wrote an article dealing with some of the points you brought up. Men and women, in my view, do not differ much except that women have the ability to conceive, carry and bear children. Their emotions are very similar. Both man and woman experience the same feelings of love and jealousy. Man needs woman to boost his self-confidence and the reverse is also true. A normal man is conscious of his responsibility toward his family just as a normal woman is. An understanding man or woman shares the feelings of his fellow men in society.
A woman, who is aware of these facts, has no difficulty in winning a man’s heart. Don’t worry about tales of women’s tricks. Men too like to emphasize how they managed to deceive the opposite sex but these matters are seldom serious.
If I am seen to take a greater interest in women’s issues, it is because I am spurred by a sense of responsibility toward Arab women. They are currently experiencing a period of social transition that requires society’s support and encouragement. For the past 20 years I have supported them and my objective in doing so is to help them achieve a better life both socially and legally.
Final thought: The wife who treats her husband like a baby is actually giving him an opportunity to run away from her just as he first ran away from his mother.
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DON’T travel with your wife to a country that offers asylum to foreigners on non-political grounds. You know why? You might wake up one morning to find her not beside you. Later in the day you discover that she has gone to an agency which helps women and children who have allegedly been badly treated to obtain asylum. These agencies are usually run by women who have themselves been victims of male tyranny. These individuals will be overwhelmed with pity if the asylum-seeking woman can manage to shed a few tears to season the narrative of persecution at her husband’s hands. If your wife can produce a witness or a copy of a police report to support her story, then you are in real trouble. The official at the agency may use this opportunity to take revenge upon you as a lesson to all other erring husbands.
I am not being funny. There are several hundred women who have fled to the United States seeking asylum against ill-treatment by males in their home countries. The recent request for asylum by a Turkish woman in the US sparked a controversy. The woman said that she wanted to stay in the US as returning to Turkey meant a return to persecutions.
We know that many countries grant asylum on political grounds — that is when a person is oppressed in his homeland. On the other hand, a man’s ill-treatment of his wife is a social and legal issue rather than a political one. The Turkish woman’s appeal has in fact reopened a controversy that first made news in the US in 1996 when a woman from Guatemala sought asylum on the grounds of her husband’s ill-treatment. Since then, the number of asylum-seekers on humanitarian grounds has been on the increase. In such circumstances as these, I call upon all husbands — including myself — to promote domestic tourism as traveling abroad has become increasingly risky.
