On Being Sterile

Having a child is seen as an essential part of life here and you are deemed extremely unlucky if you ~have scrambled eggs~ are unable to have children.


Urban Legends
1.
A friend remembers walking through the suq on her way to work and being stopped by one of her co-workers, a Bahraini. He had stuck his head out of the office door as she walked past and had shouted, at the top of his voice,
“Hello”

She stopped, turned around and replied,
“Hello”.

He shouted back,
"Where are your children?”

To which she replied,
“I don’t have any.”

Leaning further out of his office door he continued to shout,
"No eggs, that’s what it is, no eggs.”

She said she was rather glad no one else was about at the time and made her excuses to leave.

As she walked further into the suq she had no choice but to listen as he continued to shout at her back,
"My wife has a friend who has no eggs, she went to a doctor, do you want to meet my wife’s friend? I can arrange it. She had no eggs and she only paid, it was very cheap, she only paid SR 10,000 and now she has four babies. She had four babies all at the same time. I can arrange it, why don’t you come and meet her? My wife wouldn’t mind.”

At which point she went and hid in a shop.


2
Another friend's husband was talking with a Wahabi {see wgaw blog archive: Creeds of Islam} business colleague. As they were talking the colleague asked my friend's husband why he didn’t have children.  Her husband replied it was because,

"My wife is unable to have children.”

Quick as a flash the man suggested a solution,
"Take another wife then. Have two wives, one for sex and the other one for babies.”