Written by khatlo: Anne Turner Bruno

There is an old Arab proverb, "It is better to eat your own barley than to buy foreign wheat," but when it comes to Arab women a lot of men disagree.


Not everyone would go as far as one American free-lance writer who proclaims forcefully that the Arab woman is "one vastly superior creature," but then not everyone has a wife to match his: a handsome, stylish, intelligent woman who has two children, speaks three languages, edits several publications, serves as a board member of a worldwide organization and has traveled throughout Europe and America.


Such women?usually well-to-do and products of European and American educations?are by no means the norm in the Middle East, but neither are they rare. Western men who have married them praise them lavishly. Such girls, they say, combine beauty and sophistication with a very eastern desire to please her man.


Many western men not married to Arab women find them alluring. Some rave about the charm of girls who are naturally exotic, boldly stylish yet genuinely shy and even innocent. One man says that as soon as the Arab woman discovers dieting her beauty will explode on the international scene the way once equally robust Italian and German beauties did during the lean years after World War II.


The single man in the Arab East is less enthusiastic. He does say that the educated, westernized Arab girl is often more attractive, usually more sophisticated and always better dressed than most American girls, but adds wistfully that it is almost impossible to meet and get to know them. One American bachelor who worked in the Middle East for 10 years says of the Arab women he meets at diplomatic functions and dinners in Cairo, Beirut and Amman: "Generally the wealthy, upper class women are de-tribalized as a result of education and travel, but when you drop down the social ladder, it is almost impossible to meet the average Arab woman. And even with the upper class, there is a conservative streak. The old families invite you to tea, cocktails and dinner, but you can never invite their daughter out to dinner after dark. They stay close to daddy and the hearth after dark."


A British newspaperman in his early thirties, who covers the Middle East for a news agency, agrees. "If a girl takes her family seriously, one can't really talk to her, get to know her, at any length. In any possible friendship, there is a tension, not the relaxed atmosphere as with a western girl in London. One never gets close enough to know any of them?except those who have trained or lived in Europe. It is a shame. The women of Lebanon and Egypt are so beautiful, but you cannot get to know them."


John Riddle, a forthright, 22-year-old American photographer, who studied Islamic history and culture in the United States and Lebanon, dated an Arab girl every day, but usually at her family's.


"The principal problem for a girl dating a westerner is that of reputation and family honor," Mr. Riddle says. "The family is closer and worries more about her. They want to know exactly what a man is doing here and how much money he is making." One girl, he said, was so close to her family that she told a suitor "I don't know if I should marry you or not. I don't want to leave my brothers and sisters." One point most western men agree on is that Arab girls are more feminine than American and English girls. "I admit I am annoyed at not being able to see girls alone," says an American diplomat, "but I never see an Arab girl in curlers either."


Bob Smith, an Arabic language student at the American University of Cairo, likes Arab women for their more feminine attitude and appearance, but adds that sometimes an Arab girl's sub-missiveness may have an element of deceit in it because she plans to rule the man indirectly later. Students he knows have an "illusory attitude toward love," he says. "They see someone and stare across a room and think they are in love, but it is not a sustained emotion. And with this over-romanticism, their parents force a materialistic preoccupation which favors older, financially-established men. They have marriage on their minds, but also are in confusion as to their role and relationship with men." He concurs with American girl students at AUC that Arab girls of 18 are not as emotionally mature as his sister citizens.


Some western males remark that though the Arab woman is initially more exotic than a western woman, her interests and personality are shallow and in a sustained relationship she is less intriguing. Her lack of casualness and flexibility, they say, prevents her from wearing well. They feel that while a submissive attitude may make a man feel more masculine at first, after a long time flattery can be cloying.


All Arab girls, of course, are, ecstatically happy about being married to western husbands, all of whom are handsome, intelligent, urbane, kind, loving, generous and considerate. I know they are because their husbands told me so.