The Haq

On Friday night, I went to a wedding party called "The Haq." I wasn't invited to this party, per se, but was rather summoned by our landlord. This Haq was for his oldest son. The Haq is the party before the wedding, before the engagement party, where they prospective groom and family take the dowry of gold and jewelry and other expensive gifts over to the prospective bride and her family. Yes, here, the men pay for the women! And boy do they pay!

But, let's go back to around 6 on Friday... I was told to be there by 7:30/8, so I wasn't planning to leave my house until 8. The landlord, well, one of his daughters, owns the salon that's next door to our house. She is a hair and makeup stylist and she wanted to do my makeup for the night. So....

 She did full on local woman style, including shadows and highlights on my nose to make it look "long and pointy." 

 This is my friend that works at the salon. She rode with me. She is the most amazing henna artist I've ever seen!

 We got to the house at 8. We were literally the first people there. No surprise. We went inside the house and sat with an aunt until more and more women started showing up and the band started playing outside. The band was made up of 3 drummers, 4 women dancers, 2 men who stood behind and sang and clapped, and 1 guy playing the bagpipes. (Naturally, right?) 

 The view from where I was sitting.

 After we sat and sweated and watched the band do their thing, we went through the buffet line and then sweated some more. At 10pm, I texted Brad because nothing was happening, but I'd wait 30 more minutes before coming home. 

30 minutes passed and all the women were herded out the gate and onto what I'm calling the Arab Ladies Party Bus. There's really no other explanation for it. We loaded on and the driver cranked up the music. The ladies clapped and danced and hollered...it was LOUD. We left the house at 10:26 and headed to the prospective bride's house. We got to her place at 11pm. (I was tired!) 

As we got off the bus, the gifts were paraded in.

Every gift had gold jewelry and other things in it. 

 They like the really yellow gold here, not the color of gold that we usually see in the USA.

This basket was so big! And it had 6000 Rials (around $15,600) cash and gold jewelry in it.

 More jewelry.

All the gifts were brought into the tent and put in the middle. The bride's family/friends were all sitting to the left and the groom's family/friends covered up the right side - including the band!

 We were told to sit down and a lady got on a loud speaker and announced all the gifts and showed them off to everyone. 

After we did all of this, and danced some more, and hollered and general merry-making all around, we were ushered inside the house to see the prospective bride. You read that right, she wasn't outside for any of this!!

There was more dancing. It was later and later...We finally got on the bus to leave at midnight. It was an amazing cultural event that I'd never seen before! 

**And this was in ALL Arabic, ALL night!**