These days, mobile phones are discussed at every kind of gathering. I was at a dinner party last night — hosted by that rarest of Saudi males: one who cooked the entire meal himself. I soon felt left out because of the terms being thrown around: “Blue tooth,” “compatibility,” and “memory stick,” were heard as much as “reform,” “progress” and “election.” Everyone at the party had a mobile; some even had two or three which were justified as being for “work,” “personal,” or “other.” They all had much to say about their darling little jawals.
Not long ago, during such conversations, I was little more than a congenial mute. My recent purchase of one of the latest mobiles, however, now entitles me to express an opinion. It has been a strange transformation, from not having a mobile and being denigrated to possessing one of the most desirable and sought-after ones in the market.
Our host began serving while three people were rudely engaged in animated jawal conversations. I of course willed my little jawal to perform like its rivals. “Ring! Ring! Why don’t you ring? You always ring when I don’t want you to and now that I am in super-cool company you refuse to ring!” (There is also a correlation between your conceit in society and how many calls you receive at a dinner party. I received not a single call all evening.)
One new-age man complained: “I bought this one,” he pointed at something that looked like the remains of a Star Trek set, something you could quite effortlessly beam Scottie up with, “but you know it’s just too big! But what can I do? It’s the only one that can store all my phone numbers.”
“Why don’t you just write them down?” I asked in earnest, failing to realize that “writing things down” has become a thing of the past, having been supplanted by “storage,” “capacity” and other equally frightening words. I am a type-A technophobe, although admitting this in public is decidedly unfashionable to say the least.
In order to disguise my ignorance, I piped up, “Well, why don’t you use an ipaq?” The word tripped off my tongue so authoritatively that I was almost unaware of the glares of consternation in my direction.
“An ipaq? But that’s even bigger than my phone!!!” (My father gave me an ipaq last summer, but I never took it out of the box so still don’t know its size.) Desperate to cover my ignorance, I hedged my bets and retorted, “Well how many phone numbers do you have? Surely you could store them all in a regular mobile!” New-age man, however, was far from impressed. “Look,” he explained, “when I have to call Mr. X, he may be in London, Cairo, Madrid, Paris, New York or at any of the offices in the Kingdom. Can you imagine how many numbers I have for this one person alone? Multiply that by all my business associates and you can quickly see that I wouldn’t be able to get all the numbers in a normal mobile.” Said I, “Oh well, in that case you probably do need some extra memory. So why don’t you get a memory stick?”
“I did get a memory stick. That’s why I carry so big a mobile because they are the only ones with memory sticks!!”
You may be surprised at my lack of knowledge but is knowing these things the IQ-determiner for the new millennium? Or is too much importance being attached to mobile phones? I mean, what is a mobile phone except a portable — and perhaps convenient — means of communication? Should it be relied upon to wake you — alarm clock function; tell you what day it is — calendar function; remind you that it’s your wife’s birthday — synchronization function; and record the golden moments in your life — camera function? What next? Perhaps there should be a tea or coffee function introduced for caffeine junkies.
And what of the new-age man and his technophile friends, you may be wondering? Well, they were soon discussing the new “communicator,” which I concluded was a radical alternative to the all-pervasive jawal. Some kind of clever microchip surgically inserted into the brain that would enable cyber junkies to glance at a phone number, memorize it, dial it and send electromagnetic thought patterns all over the world. Need I tell you that the “communicator” is just another mobile phone? I was quiet for the rest of the evening.
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)
