About This Culture: Clothing

We have gotten used to the local dress here, but I know it's not as common in the States. We've lived in three different countries in the Arabian Peninsula and each country is slightly different.

Women

It's most common for women to wear the abaaya, the long black cloak. It is long sleeved and goes all the way to the ground. It's a way of being modest. They cover their head with the sheilah, also called hijaab. Some women go even farther and cover their face using a niqaab and then you can only see their eyes.

The picture on the right is of a lady at the beach talking to her son. She's wearing the niqaab so you can't see her face at all. 

Men

Sometimes the men wear what we would consider "regular clothes." In some Gulf countries the only thing that men wear is the thobe, also called a kandora. Where we live now, most of the men seem to only wear the thobe when it's a special occasion or if they dress up to go to work. 

The girls in this picture are walking in the water in their abaayas. They're wearing jeans under their abaayas and the girl on the right is wearing a hoodie! :) 

Here's a picture of me wearing the abaaya with niqaab. This abaaya is called a Difa and it goes on top of the head, over the niqaab. It's open and needs to be held closed. 

Here's a picture of me wearing a pretty normal abaaya and sheilah. 

Sometimes ladies wear a different colored sheilah with the abaaya. 

Here's a picture of Joseph wearing a house thobe. It's very thin and comfortable in the summer heat. Also, it's short sleeved. The white, more formal thobe is long sleeved. 

This is Joseph wearing a thobe.

 Tim usually fits right in with his "normal clothes" as many of his friends dress just like this!

Here's Tim wearing a common white thobe. In some countries men are seen wearing different colored thobes/kandoras, but it's not very common in our current country. 

Here's a picture of Joseph and Faith dressed up for a special holiday! The vest and hat that Joseph is wearing is only seen on special holidays. Faith's dress isn't something specific to this culture, it's just a fancy dress. Girls typically wear anything they want until they're about 12 years old and then they start covering. 

For special holidays the girls wear this on their heads. It's called a bakhnaga. We haven't seen it in all of the countries in the Arabian Gulf.