family

In our Arab society, the family is the center of a woman's attention. As a wife, she cares for her husband, his family, and her own. When she becomes a mother, her focus expands beyond her husband and their families to include her children, their relatives, friends, and their families. Even when her children grow up and start their own families, she becomes the primary caregiver for all the smaller families resulting from her marriage and the children born to her sons. As a daughter, wife, mother, mother-in-law, or grandmother, she is the center of everyone's attention.

In the past, not so long ago, women in our society were the focus of everyone's attention and respect. As a daughter, she was protected by her brothers and cared for by her father. When a woman marries, she becomes the focus of her husband's attention, protection, and care. Even in her old age and frailty, she finds from her children, grandchildren, and even her nephews and nieces a level of affection, care, and respect beyond description. In our Arab societies, a woman was provided with clothing, jewelry as gifts for every occasion, a dowry, and gold as a wedding present. She also had someone to furnish her home, with her husband and father sharing the cost of furnishing the house she would move into to start her new family.

When she marries, she becomes the center of her husband's attention, protection, and care. In the past, work, toil, and hardship outside the home were the domain of men, while wearing jewelry and fine clothes, arranging flowers, and managing the household with the help of maids were the domain of women, even in the humblest of classes. Civilized men would take their wives to parties and the opera, where they would wear evening gowns and jewelry. Their husbands would hold their wives' hands and treat them like queens, ensuring their safety wherever they went. They would allow them to board any means of transportation before them, and they would enter any place they visited first. In crowded places, they would shield their wives with their hands and bodies to prevent them from bumping into anyone, and they would follow them up any staircase.

In the past, homes were filled with the warmth of women, homes where the aroma of delicious homemade food, baked goods, and drinks filled the air. Each woman's recipes were passed down from grandmothers to mothers, and each woman developed and innovated to leave her own unique mark on the food, imbuing it with her passion for her family, her love, and her attention to the details that mattered to each member.

In the past, homes were filled with the warmth of women, homes where the aroma of delicious food, baked goods, and drinks filled the air. Then came the modern era, and the devils in human form needed human intellect. They spread their poisonous ideas among the women of our society, convincing them that they were slaves and servants to men and that they must demand freedom, independence, and liberation. They urged them to leave the house to work and achieve self-realization, reject male guardianship, and stop submitting to their husbands because they spent money on gifts, jewelry, food, houses, and clothes, paying for the luxurious and refined life enjoyed by women of that time. Unfortunately, women were gradually swept along by this trend until they became obsessed with it. Little by little, men withdrew from their roles, and the women of our society began to suffer a conflict between the need to reclaim their femininity and the pursuit of their dreams and the lie of self-realization. Women abandoned their homes, leaving children with nannies without supervision, and became more consumers of processed foods. Luxurious clothing was replaced by jeans and t-shirts, and jewelry and evening wear disappeared. Men no longer worried about women in crowds, and women, of their own free will, became slaves to a false and mere ambition. A cog in the daily grind of misery, she has been transformed from someone who showered everyone with love, care, attention, and delicious homemade food into a weary, irritable working woman burdened by the weight of responsibilities piling up on her shoulders between home, children, work, and social obligations.

Even men have abandoned their homes, seeking warmth outside, each according to their means and religious beliefs. Even children now live with their phones and friends, oblivious to what's happening even within their own homes. The warmth, love, and affection shared among family members have also deserted homes, leaving them cold and desolate, resembling hotels or even restaurants, as everyone eats fast food outside to avoid returning home to a place devoid of companionship. Divorce rates have skyrocketed, and nursing homes have proliferated—a practice once considered shameful. Unhealthy relationships have become widespread, and misery permeates every corner of society.