A very pretty Christian Palestinian who works in my building has kindly taken it upon herself to teach me Arabic. We get on well and there has been a little flirting. I bought her some mud back from the Dead Sea, as well as a tiny ornamental Easter chick. (I think she was more impressed with that than the mud, which was disappointing!)
I've been seeing her most days for about two months, and in one way it's great as I study harder because I want to impress her, but in another way it's rather frustrating because I can't ask her out or anything. Why, you might ask? Here is the list:
Not really any concept of dating here, and if there is it would have to be very covert. I would have to marry her fairly quickly and I'm not ready to do that and settle here.
If I express any hint that I like her she could tell others / her family who might want to hurt me for being a decadent and lascivious interloper - also my students would never let me hear the end of it.
I think she's going off me anyway (why? I am an interesting and exotic foreigner!) and I get the idea that she has an admirer or two.
And the number one reason - she comes from a village where there was an honour killing about a year ago - some arsehole had filmed a girl giving him oral sex on his mobile phone, he showed it to everybody and pressure piled on her Dad to do away with her. (Both he and the arsehole are still walking around of course, there are about 20-30 such killings a year here in Palestine and little is done about it).
But on the plus side my Arabic is coming along!
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