Etiquette for Eating Holy Dates from Saudi Arabia

This time of year many of our students at college are returning from Hajj (a religious pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia). A few weeks ago, one of my students gave me a matching ring and brooch set that she had brought back for me. (Aw, so nice.) I got talking with one of my colleagues about it and she started laughing. "You'll never guess what happened to me the other day," she said. One of the newly returned students in her class had brought back some dates and handed them around for everyone to eat. After my colleague had finished hers, the woman came back to her. "What did you do with your date stone?" she asked. "Um, I threw it away," my colleague replied. "Oh, we pray over those," the woman answered, to my colleague's horror. "I was so mortified that I nearly dug through the rubbish bin for it!" she said.

With that story in mind, I felt confident that I knew how to handle the situation when one of my students in another class offered me one of the aforementioned Hajj dates. As I sat munching and asking about her trip, other students filtered into the classroom and took dates to eat as well. Soon it was time for class to start, and there I sat with a date stone in my hand, wondering if she was going to ask me for it or not. I considered my options and decided that the safest way to go would be to just carefully place it on the table next to me with my things in case she wanted it back at the end of class. Then I began to teach. To my surprise, a few minutes later, one of the students got up and threw her stone away. ??? (What?) I suddenly got the slightest bit self-conscious that the students might be eyeing my little date stone sitting there on the table with gnaw marks all over it wondering, "Why doesn't she just throw that away?" I droned on about the reasons why you can't say, "What country did he comes from?" and re-thought my action plan in the back of my mind. After class, all the students left me alone with my date stone. I decided that it was now safe to throw it away.

As I walked back towards the college, I passed under a bridge. A huge hawker dropped out of the sky and landed on my glove (at least it wasn't my head!). While I was trying to wipe it off on a bush, I suddenly thought, "Could this be divine retribution for throwing away that holy date stone?!" When I got back to the office, I told a friend what had happened. "Oh no, I had no idea! I've been throwing away those date stones all week!" she said. "I'd better watch my back, or I might get spit on, too!"

And so, the correct etiquette for eating holy dates from Saudi Arabia has yet to be determined.


Slapping myself on the forehead,

Kristy