Why Emirati men marry foreign women
Saturday, May 17th, 2008Najla Al Awadhi; 16/5/08
I was with my sister at a department store, and I saw an Emirati man with what I assumed was his wife. He was holding her hand and she was dressed in an abaya (the black cloak that most of us Emirati women wear) and the shaylah (head scarf). In fact, she wore this traditional dress like the Emirati women. Had they not stopped close by me, I would have never known that his wife was not Emirati but Eastern European (which I detected from her accent). As my sister spoke of what she was going to buy, my mind went into a series of questions about the implications of the growing number of Emirati men marrying foreign women. In the case of this couple I wondered, what would the identity of their children be? As a mother plays a critical role in building a child’s character, specifically their sense of religion, language, heritage and identity.
