Page 169 - UAE Truncal States

Chapter Four

the majlis male visitors are received by the male members of the
family and no females who have reached the age of puberty may enter
the majlis while there are guests. If the guest is a distant relative, a
neighbour or a very close friend of the head of the family, he can
speak to the women of the household through the door or by raising
his voice while sitting inside the majlis.
Only the father, a brother, a son and possibly other very close male
relatives and also a foster-brother42 may proceed beyond the majlis to
sit and speak face to face with the women of the house.43 The
courtyard, the kitchen area, the separate room or rooms for the older
generation of the family and the room where the women of the
household gather and the head of the family sleeps at night are thus
part of the harm 1. In densely built up areas none of these rooms nor
the courtyard walls have windows at eye-level to the outside; in
towns there is often a curtain wall opposite the rear door to guard
against people seeing into the yard when the door is opened. In this
way, rather than being confined to one room or a small area, the
women go about their daily routine within the family compound even
while strangers are visiting.
There are many different patterns of separation between the majlis
and the harlm area, depending on the type of accommodation which
the family can afford, on the social status of the family, on the number
of non-related visitors which the family can expect, and on the
importance which the head of the family attaches to strictness of
segregation and the necessity to guard against the possibility of a
stranger catching a glimpse of the women’s faces.
The institution itself, the harlm, is largely a symbol of the position
of women within society: they are not members of the community as
much as they belong to the private lives of the man on whom they
depend most at a particular stage in their lives (father, husband or
brother). Within the domestic scene, as anywhere else in the world,
however, women often dominate. In particular an older woman who
is known to be a devout Muslim may become very much the person
who lays down the rules for the entire household with regard to strict
observance of praying and fasting, concerning marriages of members
of the household and the social contacts of the family, which in some
cases amounts also to the measure of political involvement of the
family in the affairs of the community. Women are protected from the
male world by the institution of the harlm; they are secure within its
boundaries and this security they carry with them in the form of the

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