Raguil

This evening, I went with a colleague and 3 of the security guards to the city to watch them play a pick-up soccer game. As the only woman among a bunch of Middle Eastern men- 1 Lebanese and 3 Kurds- I was really touched when they went out of their way to treat me “like a lady”. As we were loading the car, they insisted that I sit in the front, saying they knew what Westerners thought of the way Middle Eastern men treat their women, and they wanted me to go back to the States and tell them (you!) it's not true of all Middle Eastern men. 

The drive into town was really lovely. The sun was setting in pastel tones into a hazy atmosphere that made the mountains in the distance appear smeared and faint, like the stuff of dreams. We were driving with the windows down and I could feel all the pressures of the week blowing away with the wind as we sped dangerously down the untamed highways and alleys of Erbil, swerving around stray dogs and people, and around fellow reckless drivers (actually, ”reckless drivers” is redundant around here; you either drive recklessly, or you don't drive at all). 

The game took place in a fenced-off rectangular field with a dirt turf, located in some random ghetto spot in the city, across the street from a grocery and a huge abandoned building. I spent most of the time trying to get a decent picture of my friends with the bad lighting that was available, and the rest of the time cheering them on. It was a short game with a lot of unnecessary fouls called, and according to a disappointed A (my colleague), completely lacking in teamwork. But I found it exciting anyway and was impressed by what I saw, being a complete novice myself in the world of soccer. 

As usual in Hawler (the local name for Erbil), bats fluttered and sped about overhead beyond the netted ceiling, and as the game went on, random people who lived or happened to be in the neighborhood dropped by to watch. Next to me, on the other side of the fence, an ancient looking goateed man in a long white robe stood with a young boy with huge dark eyes, their fingers laced through the fence holes, quiet, invisible spectators of the game. 

A man sat still as a statue on a crate just off the side of the road, a lone dark figure set against the luminous backdrop of the brightly-lit grocery across the street. Boys who were too young to play tossed around and juggled their own soccer ball in the out of bounds area where I was sitting. A dude pulled up on his motorcycle and joined the silent spectators. 

Watching the spectators as much as the game, I began to be distinctly aware of the fact that there were no other women around, watching, playing or even just taking a stroll around the neighborhood on this pleasant weekend evening. I knew some of the players were married, and no doubt others had girlfriends. Where did the wives and girlfriends go when their men came here for a pick-up soccer game? Did they ever come along to watch and cheer on their boyfriends and husbands? I would guess that the answer is no, or rarely. 

And yet, they behaved with the utmost chivalry toward me. One of them ran across the street during the game to get me an ice-cold bottle of water from the grocery. Before the game began, K (the security guard) waved me over to join him and A in kicking the ball around for warm-up. And later after the game, when we stopped by K's house where his father offered us a giant platter of tamar, he piled a dish full of the dried, sweet-pulped fruit for me to take home because I tasted one and expressed how delicious it was. On our way out, he paused by his mother's garden, picked a couple fragrant flowers from it, and handed them to me. 

During the car ride home, they taught me a word in Arabic, “raguil” which, I can't think of the word for it in English, though I'm sure it exists somewhere in literature, but it means a man who has all the qualities that a man “should” have: chivalry, courage, the heart of a lion as well as a lamb- a gentleman as well as a white knight. My colleague pointed out that even if one possessed all these qualities, though, one can't be a raguil without a certain other thing. Justly spoken: I could never be a raguil no matter the state of my heart because of my lack of herr. 

This evening, the guys were living proof that one could find qualities of an Arthurian knight in today's Middle Eastern men. Not only did they treat me as their equal, but over and beyond that, as someone special. Chivalry and romance are not essential for a man to be a good person, or for a woman to be happy with her man, and sometimes, acts like insisting that the girl sit in the front of the car, or waiting for her to get out of the elevator first, or picking flowers for her seem phony and may even make situations more cumbersome for the girl, rather than comfortable. And clearly, chivalry is a total double standard, and some ardent feminists get very huffy about how it emboldens the divide between men and women, rather than helping to elevate our status to equal that of men. But I think it's sweet because all these acts are physical manifestations of his thoughts, which are on you. Chivalry and romance may be unnecessary, but like fine art, this is exactly the quality that make them so endearing.