We had a Lebanese secretary working at our office in Dubai.
She was Westernized with Western clothes, make-up and hair style. Houri was both beautiful and intelligent.
She and her husband were Muslims in name only.
This was in my wild and wooley days, and one day I came to work in a shirt that was one of my less dirty ones and badly wrinkled from being wadded in the bottom of my closet.
She took one look at it and said, "A manager cannot wear a shirt like that! At lunch time we'll go to my house, and I'll iron it."
By the time lunch time rolled around, and I went in to get her to take her home, I sensed that she knew she had made a mistake. The fear was in her eyes, but she didn't accept my offer to forget it.
She lived in a solid Muslim neighborhood where all the women wore burkas and Muslim dress. As we went into her apartment she made a point of telling the women who passed that I was her boss, and she was going to iron my shirt.
I sat on the couch while she worked and tried to converse, but her ears were tuned to outside. Her fear became almost palpable, and, by the time she was finished, her hands were shaking badly.
We almost ran out of her apartment like we had been doing something very wrong.
I left the UAE about six months after that, and she was still safe. I've often wondered if they put a bullet in her head as soon as I was gone.