The old Bedouin test – as related without comprehension by Wilfred Thesinger in Arabian Sands – is farting. He notes that one guy was teased – and bullied because unfriendly teasing is that – because his father farted out loud at a communal meal. Does this mean that farting was the great forbidden? No. The depth of the story is the Bedouin cared if you farted out loud.
The Bedouin lived – and some try to live today – a wholly simplified life in which existence consists of the barest daily repetitions. They ate a lot of beans. They farted. But the point of being a Bedouin – and the attraction to it of Arab society – is that you control yourself when you cannot control around you, when control is reduced to you in a largely hostile world. So you’d better not fart out loud because that means you can’t control your farting in a gathering. What you do on your own is your business but as a Bedouin you should be practicing how to let your fart out silently.
The problem of Arab society is an expression of the Bedouin image: they cannot comprehend a world of plenty for all because they return over and over to the image of being alone in a hostile world where you can only trust your closest kind and maybe not even then, where you are nice to strangers only because the consequences of not being nice will be reciprocated.
jomi: playing with perception 