I’m not one for poetry and all that but couldn’t resist this. Bob Dylan’s The Times They Are A-Changin’ which he wrote as an artist/civil rights activist in 1963. It resonated with me.
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.
Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.
The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
Saudiwoman's Weblog 
Bad day + bad comment =
This is in reply to a comment made by um Maraym in the previous post:
Salam Um Maryam
Just by your “kinya” I can tell you are one of those “reverts” who treat Islam as though it was a cult or an exclusive club that is defined by outer appearances ( tent like abaya) and completely confuse religion and Arab culture.
No those women who you say:
“rather than your religious police, the only people who I find ridiculous are a particular class of saudi woman. One sees them at the Kingdom center or the Faisalyah, aimlessly wandering around, caked in makeup.They way they wear their abyas, would make a western prostitute blush, I’m not sure why they are so shallow, perhaps its lack of education, or its the inbreeding, or perhaps its the free money from the govenrment that has lead to this dysfunctional social pathology.”These women are never going to be written about on my blog because these women have never banned others from driving their own cars and have never jailed and deported 75 year old widows because they had bread delivered by an unrelated man…etc. It’s your like and your Saudi versions who work against their own sisters. Tell your point of view to the Saudi women who are forced to guard toilets for money while next door in the same mall a foreign man is brought into the country for the sole purpose of selling lingerie for three times the salary she gets. And express your adoration of muttawas to the countless women I know who have been harassed, stalked, traumatized and publicly insulted by them. Why would I write about women minding their own business when I can write about women like you who judge them. Why don’t you say the same about the desperate pathetic men who troll around the malls in the latest designer wear and reeking of expensive perfumes? Why don’t I write about my cousins who have had to borrow thousands in order to get out of abusive marriages when Islamic shariah law clearly states that women who are abused are allowed divorce. And what about writing about how a friend of mine was asked by a taxi driver if she would like him to pimp her out? A respectable woman whose only problem is that she had to resort to a daily taxi because she is banned from driving her own car. And how about newly appointed teachers who monthly pay half their salary just for a ride to work?
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