Culture shock?

As a foreigner, I instinctively believed that things left unresolved were problems. I had always assumed that Sayyid's detention would be the last straw; I didn't see how a couple could recover from such an event. But as time passed, I realized that the series of conflicts and court cases were much less dramatic from their perspective. It was normal life: this was simply how people worked out their differences in a flawed environment, using whatever tools were available. And the legitimacy of Wahiba's legal strategy was proved by its functionality. Even Sayyid seemed to recognize this. He never again withdrew support for his children, and he stopped trying to dominate his wife in all disagreements. Everything that struck me as an outsider - that the law had been abused, that the police were called in to put pressure on a personal conflict - was irrelevant. For the people involved, only one thing mattered. It worked. 
One thing reassuring about reading Peter Hessler's work is that he doesn't judge. Maybe in the process but not in the conclusion as a closed mind. He'd always open to different justification/rationale that elaborates a 'strange' scenario that he's not familiar or comfortable with. In a way, I think he's a writer that is full of compassion and with great ability to empathize people from different backgrounds.