KUWAIT, 22 June 2003 — Sodoof is the No. 1 matchmaker in the Gulf. A former flight attendant, she brings together couples from across the region, working tirelessly — and at times for free — to arrange what she says is the most important thing to her: Happy marriages.
In an extensive interview with Sayidaty, a sister publication of Arab News, she described the demands of her profession in a rapidly changing world.
She claims to have joined a record 6,150 couples together in matrimony, 1,140 of them through the mail. The oldest client was a 65-year-old Kuwaiti woman, whom she united with a foreigner. “Most couples take four or five months to decide they want to get married,” she explains.
Many of her customers are not rich, she insists. “They depend very much on their salary. They are looking to find a simple girl with a good personality,” she says.
Some rich men do approach her, however. “They are willing to marry old women, so long as they’re rich. All they care about is money, and I refuse to work with these people.” There are a range of motivations for marriage. “There are Kuwaitis married to foreigners who are looking for a Kuwaiti wife to get their hands on a house or a government loan.”
In Kuwait, the government will give men who marry native women 4,000 Kuwaiti dinars. “A man came to me there, and said he wanted a wife. Now I told the girl to think before she made the decision. But she only asked her friends at work what they thought, and then she got married. A few months later she finds out that the man was married already, to a foreigner, and was only after her money,” she recalls. “Needless to say they divorced, but he kept the money.”
The most important thing to her, she says, is not money but seeing a man and woman joined in happy union. “There are families who give me a commission, of course there are,” she admits. “And there are families who can’t. There are poor families, and I do it (arrange a match), I find them a nice girl. All I ask is that they pray for me. I have put so many couples together without seeing a penny.”
So what about the most important question: What do men and women want? “Time was, women only wanted a man to take care of them and protect them. They didn’t care how much money he made.” But not any more. “Now, most girls think about how much money the husband is making before they marry them. They want a rich husband to give them a nice home and take them places.”
Some want a good-looking husband, she says, but others just want a rich one and don’t care what he looks like.
Men can be picky in different ways. “Some men want teachers, believe it or not. Others of course want housewives. And then there are men who want their wife to look like one of those liberal women you see on Lebanese TV, all corkscrew locks and lipstick, skirts up to here.”
What is her reaction? “Yes, I am a matchmaker. But I tell them, look, I can’t work magic. Some of these specifications just can’t be found. It’s impossible.”
In the Islamic world, where men are allowed to marry four times, inevitably she comes across requests for second wives.
“I will work for married men, but only in extreme cases,” she clarifies. “Say the first wife is sick, and then the husband’s got to show me some documentation. I want to see some certificates that prove she’s sick and he can’t live with her any more.”
But her most important work is with young people marrying for the first time, she says. Requests from Kuwait top the list, followed by Saudi Arabia, then the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Egypt, with Lebanon and Syria trailing behind.
“If I knew that putting my own daughter’s picture on my list of candidates would lead to happiness, I would do it,” she affirms.
