"Are you married?"

The three most despicable and over-used words in this part of the world.

So, I've been in the middle-east a little less than three months, and I lost count of the number of times I was asked the dreaded question after about, oh, 47. Apparently here, if you're female, 24 and not completely bleargh, there's no earthly reason you shouldn't be shoving out Baby #4 as you read this. The shining moment for me, of course, was on my first day at work, when, while I was surrounded and Spanish Inquisitioned by a gaggle of abaya-clad secretaries, one sympathetic soul asked : "You cannot have children, yes? That is why no man will have you?" I WISH my reply had been to slink down in my seat, close my eyes and attempt to teleport myself to some distant and not-so-patriarchal location (a la Hiro Nakamura...don't you just love 'Heroes'??), but sadly, I chose the I-am-woman-hear-me-roar approach. You know, the whole "The world is changing" blah blah blah and "Women are independent and happy without a man" yada yada yada.

I might as well have been trying to teach Osama bin Laden the chicken dance.

So back to the Question-That-Shall-Not-Be-Asked (only by me, it seems). I have been asked that at job interviews (because, dah-ling, don't you know, a diamond ring is the working-girl accessory out here), at clinics during visa-related check-ups (why can't they just come right out and ask if I'm sexually active instead of married?? I have vowed to say the word 'sex' at my next check-up and see if the doctors will spontaneously combust. Or deport me.), at supermarkets (I think they figure no married woman would consume the vast quantities of Coke and hazelnut chocholate that I do), at bars (this one I'm a little confused about. Apparently the unmarried women in bars are prostitutes. So why would any man take his wife there??), and, as I mentioned, at work. Oh, and the women I work with? They're all younger than I am, and, between the 5 of them, have 21 children. I kid you not.

You know that fear you have, when you go to a new school, that you're just not gonna fit in? Yeah, that might be the case here! Though I'm not sure whether it's because of my "radical" opinions or my Sex and the City shoes.

But really, even back home, this whole preoccupation with marriage is mind-boggling! When did it become the be-all and end-all; the cherry on the sundae; the nirvana to be attained? What happened to the fiesty, fun, I-need-a-man-like-a-fish-needs-a-bicycle women? The ones who stayed single till their thirties and then married for equal parts love and lust? Who worked till midnight and then partied till dawn? I mean, obviously not here, where it's a big step forward for the local women to leave their hair uncovered. But at least in B'bay, I thought we were moving towards that new breed of woman that said "Fuck you" to matrimony, swivelled on one three-inch Jimmy Choo (Colaba knock-off) and sashayed away to flirt with...well...I can't actually remember there being anyone to flirt with at work. Are there people to flirt with in the workplace? Most of the bosses I've had have looked like Mr. Potato Head.

Then again, maybe all this introspection is because Serious-Ex#2 is getting married in November.