The difficulty of eating out as a woman

We ventured out of our hotel to find a restaurant to eat dinner last night. We had conveniently neglected to notice that we hadn’t seen a ‘family section’ in any nearby restaurant, so we wandered and wandered and wandered until we were grumpy, hungry and tired. Every restaurant we found only served men. Just when we were ready to give up and get McDonald’s from the taxi, we found a few shawarma stalls and feeling brave in my veil, I asked if we could order some and take them away. Mafi Mushkala (no problem). The food was great and still warm after our three-times-as-long-as-necessary taxi trip back to the hotel. It’s really hard to get used to the disadvantages or perhaps, difficulties of being a woman here. We should have as much right to eat eh? Maybe it’s the combination of being female, single, and without a car that makes it so difficult as it means that we’re usually looking for food in central areas rather than the ‘burbs where they may be more family restaurants.