Conversation Between H2B &amp; OPNO

H2B: "With anyone from my tribe you can't..... bla blah blah blah."

OPNO: "Mmmmmhmmm? [Skeptical eyebrows raised]. Boqh." [Arabic equivelant of ''blah blah blah' meant to denote a lack of caring for what the person you are speaking with has said].

H2B: [exasperated] "I don't really care but you will if you become the only thing all your neighbors are concerned about. I won't hand you tissue when you are balling your eyes out if you bring it on yourself."

OPNO: "You wouldn't love me if I thought it is was right to act the way you want me to act."

H2B: "I didn't say you were wrong or that I don't agree with you, but women don't wear colour, they dont wear make-up, they don't move too quickly, or talk when men can hear them in my tribe and that's just how it is. I don't want you to get hurt so we can live wherever you like but if you want to live with my family... [He bites his lip, and looks like he is thinking really, really hard].

OPNO [to herself, silently]: 'He doesn't think I can do this!' [to H2B] "As long as I complain as much as I like I will act however they like, WHILE LIVING THERE. You want me to change the system anyways."

H2B: "When you have enough respect from them to do so, yes."

OPNO: [narrows her eyes at H2B] "Will that be, like, when I'm eighty, and I am waddling around, and everyone younger has to listen to me out of respect not because they care to hear me at all?"

H2B: [Laughs at an unconvinced OPNO] "InshaAllah not that long. Like when you are thirty."

OPNO: "Thirty is AWFULLY old." [I am grouchy and stressed and have not the will for witt.]

H2B: [glares at OPNO, I guess you readers can guess his age]

OPNO: [using the usual Omani way of trying to un-dig the hole one has dug one's self into] "...for a woman." [OPNO does not really believe this, she is just a brat].

[On a side-note]

OPNO: "I have changed my mind. I am going to dress in the traditional dress of my city." [To be brat for a little while longer].

[H2B knows it is similiar to the above dress pictured]. [H2B grows very excited].

H2B: "That would be-! I would wear my traditional dress [think Lawrence of Arabia robe, but black, with silver sword and dagger, and camel stick] and you would wear yours. I love it."

OPNO: [not what she had been expecting] "So we look like the old 1930s movies, like that Rudolph Valentino one where the Arab dude and the British chick want/hate eachother until the point they make out in the sand with camels as a backdrop? [skeptical] Or Rachel Weisz from the Mummy movies, or Candice Bergan with Sean Connery playing a very Scottish Berber?"

H2B: "You kind of look like the girl from the Mummy movies."

OPNO: [glares]

H2b: [being a brat] "I can find us some camels in Barka if you want to take pictures!"

OPNO: "."

To all loyal readers who give a damn, please vote on the poll on the sidebar. And the "sheikh" was a very inaccurately costumed Orientalist extravaganza silent movie, as pictured below: