I know that sometimes I may have an unusual sense of humor and this is one of those occasions. I hope that as readers of my blog you’ll see this in the same humorous perspective as I do.
It just so happens that my husband and I have a phone number that had previously belonged to a dessert shop. As a result, we receive continual calls from people wanting to order sweets. 99.9 percent of these calls are from Saudi women. Of course when I answer the phone and advise in my broken Arabic that this is now a private home and not a dessert shop, the caller will usually say ‘thank you’ and hang up. Sometimes if they know English they have attempted to draw me into conversation, noting my western accent.
Now on the other hand, when my husband has answered the phone in Arabic and with his Saudi accent, they will oftentimes try to engage him in conversation after discerning the number really no longer belongs to a sweet shop. They’ll want to know who is he, how long did he have this number, where is he and so on! My husband jokingly commented that if one wished to engage in conversations with Saudi women, have a phone number the same or similar to one belonging to a popular establishment they like to frequent.
On the analytical side, I asked him why did he think these women were interested in engaging him in conversation. His perspective is that perhaps they felt it was safe in the sense of being impersonal phone contact so noone could see them. However a woman (Saudi or not) being too chatty or forward via a phone call should be careful because the recipient of her call could have caller-id and thereby acquire her phone number.
