The first two or three rooms were digital immersive displays with an American accent reading through the speakers. The second half of the guide was delivered by the tour guide. Whilst this was valuable, you can’t take pictures during these talks which I can understand and be respectful towards. However, and by the way this is just me, as I am a hearing aid user but I don’t think I could live within a society where veils are as common as they were in Makkah.
Please don’t take this as me being critical of the veil and it is really not my intention to cause offense so I apologise if this happens. As someone who struggles with hearing, if I can’t see someone’s face and see their lips, it really causes difficulty with my communication.
I’ve just read a fantastic book called Captivate by Vanessa van Edwards and she talks about the first 5 minutes of meeting someone and microexpressions. Microexpressions are a form of communication. They enable you to communicate and understand contempt, happiness, disappointment, anger, disgust and other everyday emotions.
When I’m faced with someone wearing a veil, I can’t get any of that and with my bad hearing, it gets quite difficult to understand the other person. I’m sorry and by the way this is just me and my individual circumstances.
When the guide was speaking, it was very scripted which is very reasonable and fair. However, it was a bit rushed and I didn’t really get much of what was said besides the roles of women and also about medicine/diet as this involved the audience. The prophet said you should fill your stomach a third with water, a third with food and a third should be for air/empty. I understood this as the guide asked the audience who answered together.
Beyond that, I was just admiring the displays and holograms which were cool. We exited the tour into the gift shop which had a varied selection including, jewellery, plaques, arabian oud (a type of perfume I think), quran’s and my favourite – fridge magnets! I love fridge magnets, I’m obsessed with them. I have two fridges in my kitchen which are covered in fridge magnets! The fridge magnets on sale however, were not individually wrapped. They were boxed up like a proper item. At SAR 20 each (about £4.50) they’re quite steep for fridge magnets. Also they’re all in a circular shape so they can all look the same.
I bought 2 – one for Madinah and one for Makkah. The reason being is that this was so far the only retail outlet I could find that sold fridge magnets. Despite the number of small souvenir shops around my hotel and the grand mosque, fridge magnets are very rare and difficult to find. The Makkah fridge magnet was a picture of the Ka’bah and the Madinah one was a picture of the green dome in Madinah.
They were decent and funnily enough my mum was very insistent that I don’t break them by opening the boxes and that I put them on the top of the fridge so no one would knock it off accidentally. She was very assertive on this, whereas with my other fridge magnets – “why are you spending so much money on these??”
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