Stuck in the Middle

I've had to delete this log because some people read it and got the completely wrong impression. The whole point of this peice was to talk about how a mentally-unstable western woman comes to the Middle East and befriends an arabic man who is in a difficult situation. She offers him a solution and says, "I will help." But now this woman has this sudden power and if the man doesn't do things exactly as the woman wants, if he tries and do anything independently to help himself, if he does anything that threatens the hold the woman has on him, then she starts becoming abusive. Rather than praising him for trying to help himself, she starts saying things like, "Oh, you did this thing on your own? You don't really need my help. Maybe I won't help you."

What kind of friendship is this? This is co-dependence, this is abusive ... pure and simple. Anyway, this is how I see it, looking from the outside. When I told a friend from home about this situation her response was,

"Geez people, what about personal accounting, for fucks sake?. The inter-cultural, socio-economical, socio-polictical dynamics are extreme...nobody should be real surprised at the resulting friction that arises from a brief exchange between two individuals from dichotomous backgrounds who have indulged in the primal art of "Saving" while several thousand miles apart and don't share a common language. Huh, boy, that sounds like a fun arena to navigate in."

Fun is not the half of it.