Happy Birthday to You, Happy Birthday to You ...

The west gets it wrong again.  Image taken from: here

Age Numbering System
In the western world when you're born, you're aged 0 and become 1 on your first birthday, whilst in the Arab world a baby is born aged 1 and becomes 2 a year later.  It seemed strange until I realised it's just a different way to label the same thing; an additional year is given in one of two places, the beginning or the end, depending on which system you're using.


Date of Birth
Because births went unrecorded until about 70 or 80 years ago, many older Arabs don't know when they were born and can only guess at their age and date of birth.  Not so with the younger ones and anyone who is about 60 years old or younger knows which day they were born on, even if they don’t celebrate it.

Date of Birth on the Passport
GCC passports (or at the very least Bahraini passports) state the holder's date of birth as being on the first of January, of which ever year you think you were born. For example, 01-01-28.  Husband knows his date of birth, but in his passport it's stated as being January 1st or 01-01, the same day as everyone else who was born in that particular year, in Bahrain.

Image taken from: here

Birthday Celebrations
I remember a headline in a British newspaper in March 2007 saying, "Bin Laden celebrates his birthday today" even Reuters, who should know better, said more or less the same thing here.

WRONG.

Birthdays in the Arab world are not celebrated in the same way as they are in the west. In Islamic terms, birthdays are not celebrated because it's thought the only thing that should be celebrated is God.

However, with the advent of greater worldwide communication and travel, children’s birthdays are being celebrated more and more often.  Parents will often buy a cake, invite the family and friends over and give presents to the child/ren. In Gulf countries where Christmas decorations are sold {see wgaw blog post: banned} these will be bought and put up, either in the house or in the garden. Happy Birthday is sung in English and the child/ren will blow out the candles on their birthday cake.

If it is decided not to hold the birthday party in the house then a party is often arranged at a local fast food restaurant.

How hot did you say it was?

One of my favourite stories about the heat happened whilst we were in Jordan:

We were having breakfast in our hotel restaurant when a little girl from England threw her entire 3 foot body at the window and pressed herself as close as she could get to it. She raised her arms above her head and continued to press or wriggle her entire body into the window. Finally when she was sure of her vision and the warmth she was feeling, she turned around and said with some astonishment in her voice, "Daddy, Dad-dy, it's still sunny".


Summer's Here
It's the 11th July and summer is here.  Instead of talking about how hot it is and how it's impossible to do anything outside, today's post lists some of the ways you know summer has arrived:


1. In the lift you can’t tell if the fan is on or off, the temperature feels the same either way

2. The sweat starts building up on the top of your head and runs down your face, taking your make-up with it, then runs past your armpits and down the small of your back and ends up in puddles around your backside. Then if it’s really hot, it continues to run down your legs and past the backs of your knees

3. The temperature feels the same whether you are standing in the shade (55oC/ 130oF) or the sun

4. If when you open your car door you look at the shadows on the ground you can watch the heat leaving the car in curls. Then you enter the car, sit down and burn your bottom on the seat. You attempt to turn the steering wheel but it is so hot it burns the skin off the palms of your hand. And you think about wearing gloves so you can touch the steering wheel, but it’s so hot your hands have swelled and the gloves are now too small to put on. When you finally manage to sit on the seat you find all your CDs have melted in the heat so now you can’t play your music and the plastic ballpoint pens have bent in half so you can’t write with them.

5. The birds in the garden have their beaks open and are panting

6. The water in the open air swimming pool is too hot to swim in after 10am in the morning

7. Your glasses steam up when you go inside and hit the air conditioning

8. The windows in your house are full of condensation because there is such a difference in temperature between inside and outside

9. When you go to the toilet you can feel the heat on your bottom coming off the water because the water is so hot

10. You switch off the water heater and use the water from outside

11. The pavements are so hot they burn your feet through your shoes

12. When you enter your office building you’re soaked to the skin and everybody sympathizes with you over the heat. And they’ll also be able to tell you the last day it was cooler and will compare today’s heat with yesterday’s heat

13. You think you’re going to die from heat exhaustion

Calendars: Islamic & Western

Image of a astrolabe, made by al-Sarraj in the Islamic year 628

taken from: www.aljazeera.com/news/newsfull.php?newid=62325

Years

In the west we tend to use the Gregorian [gree-gor-re-ann] calendar system to mark time and dates. The Gregorian calendar marks the birth of Christ as being year 0 and we’re currently in the year 2008. The start of the year is always 1st January and the end of the year is always 31st December, 365 days. It is a system based on the phases of the sun and has months which are 30 or 31 days long (except for February).

In the Arab world there are two different calendar systems in use; the Gregorian and also the Hijira [hij-jee-rraH] which is based on the moon phases. This means each month is 28 days long (very occasionally 29) and consequently a Hijira year is about 354 days long, or 10 or 11 days shorter than a Gregorian year. This calendar marks the flight of the Prophet Mohammed from Mecca to Medina as being year 1 and we are currently in the year 1429. 1430 will start on approximately 29th December, 2008.

The Arabic calendar appears to ‘move forward’ each year when compared to the Gregorian calendar. However, the order of the months never changes and the year always starts with month 1 or Muharram [moe-haa-ram]. It takes about 33 years for the Hijaria calendar to rotate around an entire Gregorian calendar and because of this, Hijaria calendars are not generally used in agriculture.

When writing, the Hijira year date is indicated by an H after the year, for example; 1422 H or the year 2000.

A joint Hijrah/Gregorian calendar image for the year AD 2008
taken from: http://sukukbay.com/index_files/image3231.jpg

Days
In the west we start our days at sunrise, whereas traditionally, in the Arab world, a new day will start with the sunset. This can cause some confusion; Tuesday evening to a westerner can be a Wednesday evening for an Arab. In general it has to be said the Arab method is loosing ground rapidly to the western way.


Weekends
In Saudi Arabia weekends fall on Thursdays and Fridays. In 2007 Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the UAE changed - weekends now fall on Fridays and Saturdays in these five countries.

Urban Legend
Years ago I worked with an expatriate man who could not get his head around the difference between the working week in Europe and the Middle East. At the time the weekend fell on Thursdays and Fridays. Having been confused several times by his use of the word Tuesday (he meant the second working day of the week; at that time Sunday) or Thursday (the fourth working day of the week: at that time Tuesday) we started to use a new system. Saturday became day 1, Sunday became day 2, Monday became day 3 and so on. This system resolved all sorts of problems and everyone was happy using it.