It is very rare for women to go out to a coffee shop in Taif, even if it has its own family section. Rarer still to see a woman sitting alone or with friends in a coffee shop drinking coffee. Not even in any of the three coffee shops with family sections in Taif. Rana Muhammad, a regular at coffee shops, said: "I love to come with my family or friends to the coffee shop, although it does not provide shisha like the coffee shops in Jeddah. Nor does it have a TV set. Despite all that, the coffee shop remains the No. 1 favorite place to have my coffee." But for some, she said, coffee shops remain a forbidden territory. "They look at coffee shops as symbolic of Western culture and as such should be banned. No one should go inside or drink their coffee," she added.
| Prob'ly run by Zionists and other such unsavory characters. Definitely has an effect on the flavor of the coffee... |
H. Al-Qurashi, a female university student, agrees that it should be banned. "It is enough that it is an American outlet. We must boycott American products. These coffee shops are mixed places even if there are barriers between sexes. There is music blaring all the time. All these sins together in one place. We should ban it."
| "American products! Mixed places, even if there are barriers between the sexes! Nakedness under all that clothing! Music! Laughter! Oh, the degeneracy of it all! It must be banned!" |
"Oh Fatima, hold me!"
"Okay ... hey, wait a minute!" |
Starbucks is the biggest loser. It closed the family section in their only branch in Taif. Paul Matta, responsible for chain stores in Saudi Arabia, justified the closure saying that customers had complained that there was no parking space for their cars.
| So now they can park where the family section used to be, only they don't come, because they can't bring their families. Brilliant. |
He said the branch in Taif gets busy only in the summer. A Starbucks employee said there is a section of society that does not respect the place and causes trouble.
About female attendance, he said educated girls in large numbers used to come by to enjoy its coffee. He said the management made sure that there were barriers between seats to prevent harassment.
| "You know how Arabs are, especially Soddies. Take your eyes of the wimmin for a second and the skirts come up and the pants come down. That's why they have to keep 'em bundled up like that — they simply can't be trusted." |
"We tried to avoid trouble by placing all tables inside the coffee shop. We are looking for another location to open a new branch and this time we will make sure that it could hold large number of people and has plenty of parking space."
| "We actually need two buildings, one for the men's coffee shop and the other one, the one with the bars at the windows and the eunochs, for the wimmin. They get out of control so easily..." |
Rabab Muhammad and her friends wish they could visit a coffee shop. They see no good reason why they are banned from going there. "I cannot ask my family to let me go to a coffee shop," Rabab said.
| Certainly not, you brazen hussy! Oh, the shame of it all! |
Her friends said she is banned from going to a coffee shop even inside the university. "She can't break the social barrier. It is said that if a girl wants to drink a cup of coffee, she must drink it inside her house or never drink it," they added. |