Ways and Means

Alicia here. The other day I went out to lunch with my gal pal to India Palace which dishes up fantastic Indian fare in exchange for a reasonable number of dirhams. She generously bought my lunch; as we were settling the bill and getting ready to leave, the waitress brought me a comment card and asked me to leave my valuable opinion of the restaurant. Conspicuously, my friend was not invited to leave her opinion. Now, I find my friend much more highly qualified to speak on the issue, since she is actually from India. So I was surprised that the restaurant seemed more interested in my opinion.

Later that day, she told me a story of being at the movie theater here in town with her sister, when a British lady ahead of them in the ticket line became irritated, barked something unintelligible at both of them and stormed off. The sister, surprised and confused, followed the woman to the popcorn line to ask what the problem was. Instead of answering, this woman waved her hand in the sister's face and turned away, and her newly appeared male companion pressed himself against her front-to-front and demanded, "Is this polite?" We infer from this act that the woman had been offended because she felt that my friend and her sister were standing too close. Well, shit really hit the fan after that. The sister called security and the theater manager and demanded the uncooth Brits be ejected. After getting a lackluster response from all parties, she demanded, "Would they be ejected if he did that to an Arab woman?" And, shockingly, the security and the theater manager admitted that yes, actually, he probably would be on his way to jail right now if she were an Arab woman. And, with that fact out in the open, the authorities concluded that it was only fair to eject them. The Brits eventually persuaded the sister to drop the charges if they apologized, which she did, and they did, which is good. But the whole incident just reminds me how racially charged things can be around here sometimes.