On September 5 my host mother’s sister had a large group over for dinner, and it was there that I met another one of her sisters. Crowded, we pushed past the men, who sat in the foremost living room of the house, and into the larger living area where I could see a large gathering of women spread throughout the room. For the entrance to the room I could see a woman seated on a couch in the corner, she was dressed in a black abaya, just like all the other women—expect for me and the other American student at the party. Capturing children in her arms as they ran past, the woman seemed to be playfully more concerned with the activities of the children than the adults in the room. Women clustered near the couch, but no one acknowledged the woman. After ten or so minutes, the woman began to scream unintelligibly, as if she were speaking to someone. The other women in the room simply ignored the screaming woman and went about their conversations. Immediately, I began to judge the situation without proper information.
Strangely, I seemed to be the only person in the room who acknowledged the irregularity of having someone scream out for no obvious reason. I inferred that the woman might have a mental disability, or a psychological problem. I also wondered if she might have been bitten by a bug, or encountered some sort of sharp object, but I was sure that the other women would have acknowledged her if that were the case. In my opinion, it seemed clear that the woman’s actions were somewhat normal to the family, or at least not abnormal enough to cause any alarm.
Later, after we had joined together to break the fast, the men sat eating as the women waited their turn. The woman sat on one side of the same couch as before, but now an older woman sat next to her and the rest of the women in the room clustered closely around this couch. However, still no one acknowledged the woman, as she playfully cooed and attempted to catch the attention of several women within an arms length from her. Once again, she began to scream, but this time my sister, Maryam, caught my attention after seeing that I was looking at the screaming woman.
“She’s deaf,” Maryam explained to me, and pretended to make typing motions with her hands and then a circle in the air in the direction of the woman who acted out indistinguishable actions in our direction. “She can’t hear or speak,” Maryam clarified as she got up to go into the kitchen.
Later Maryam would explain that this woman was actually my host mother’s sister, and lived with Maryam’s grandmother. They came for dinner at our house the following evening. Going into the dinner party my attention had been dedicated to ensure that I hold off on judgments and try to seek a deeper understanding that asks why things are done differently in Omani culture. In the case of this woman, who has yet to be called by her name or introduced in my presence, I found it difficult not to jump to an evaluation. In some ways, I see great strides toward development and progress in this country, but other cultural norms seem unbelievably antiquated—like in the case of dealing with hearing impaired individuals. In an attempt to prevent myself from judging the whole of Oman’s population, and their understanding of physical disabilities, by one example, I am willing to simply evaluate this situation as surprisingly different from how I would have expected my host family to respond.
