August 5, 2005
Phone technology aids UAE dating
As part of a series on young people in the Middle East, the BBC News website discovers how technology is aiding the secret liaisons of young men and women in the conservative culture of the United Arab Emirates.
... Among UAE nationals - as the minority of the UAE's residents that are not expatriates are called - it is generally considered impolite for a man to speak to a woman he is neither married nor related to in public.
Traditionally, a young man's first amorous approach to a woman is supposed to be a marriage proposal made by his parents to her parents.
But the cards, scraps of paper and mobile phone messages that pass from male to female are testament to the double existence of some young UAE nationals as they take their love lives into their own hands.
And bluetooth is proving particularly useful, enabling young men to send notes to girls within a 10 metre radius without knowing their phone number."
Related stories:
-- Girls go dating with their identity concealed in a burqa (India)
-- SMS is "the way to do it" in India
-- Custodians of morality must reckon with cellphones (Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states)
-- Mobile Phone Is Matchmaker in Singapore
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