Princess (19 page)

With the tightness of dread in my throat, we entered his mother’s palace to begin our married life. At that moment, I was unaware that Kareem’s mother so disliked me that she had already begun plotting ways to bring our happy union to an end.

Chapter Thirteen: Married Life

If there could be one word that would describe the Saudi women of my mother’s generation, it would be waiting. They spent their lives waiting. Females of that era were banned from education and job opportunities, so there was little to do but wait to be married, wait to give birth, wait for grandchildren, and wait to grow old.

In Arab lands, age brings great satisfaction for women, for honor is bestowed upon those women who fulfill their productive duties with many sons and therefore ensure the continued lineage of the family name.

My mother-in-law, Noorah, had spent her life waiting for a daughter-in-law to bestow the honor she felt was now her due. Kareem was her eldest child, the most beloved son. Saudi customs of the old days demanded that the wife of the firstborn son do his mother’s bidding. Like all young women, I knew of this tradition, but reality tends to fade from my thoughts until the time I must confront the facts.

Certainly, desire for male children is common in much of the world, but no place can compare with Arab lands, where every woman must endure boiling tension throughout her childbearing years, waiting for the birth of a son. Sons are the sole reason for marriage, the key to satisfaction for the husband.

Male children are so treasured that a fierce bond develops between mother and son. Nothing, other than the love of another woman, can separate the two. From the moment we were wed, Kareem’s mother thought of me as her competitor, not as a welcome member of the family. I was the promise of a wedge between Noorah and her son; my presence only intensified her pervasive mood of general unhappiness. Some years before, her life had taken an abrupt turn that had poisoned her outlook.

The first wife of Kareem’s father, Noorah had borne her husband seven living children, three of whom were sons. When Kareem was fourteen, his father had taken a second wife, a Lebanese woman of great beauty and charm. From that moment, there had been no peace within the walls surrounding the palaces of the two wives.

Noorah, a mean-spirited woman, was positively malevolent over her husband’s second marriage. In her hate, she was driven to consult a sorcerer from Ethiopia—who served the palace of the king but was for hire to the other royals—and paid him a great sum to put a curse on the Lebanese woman so that she would be barren. Noorah, proud of her own productivity, was convinced that the Lebanese would be divorced if she could not produce sons.

As it turned out, Kareem’s father loved the Lebanese woman and told her he did not care whether she gave him children. As the years passed, it became evident to Noorah that the Lebanese was not going to give birth or be divorced. Since the great driving force in Noorah’s life was to rid her husband of his second wife, she consulted the sorcerer and paid an even larger sum to bring a cloud of death upon the Lebanese.

When Kareem’s father heard the idle gossip of Noorah’s scheming at the palace, he came to her in a rage. He swore that if the Lebanese woman died before Noorah, he would divorce Noorah. She would be sent away in disgrace and forbidden contact with her children.

Noorah, convinced that the barren womb was a result of the sorcerer’s power, was now terrified that the woman would die; surely black magic was unalterable. Since that time, Noorah was obliged to protect the Lebanese woman. She now spent an unhappy life trying to save the life of the very woman she had tried to kill by voodoo.

It was a strange household. In her unhappiness, Noorah lashed out at those around her, excluding her children. Since I was not of her blood and was greatly loved by Kareem, I was her natural target. Her intense jealousy was evident to everyone except Kareem, who, like most sons, saw little wrong in his devoted mother. In her maturity, she had apparently gained wisdom, for she made a great pretense of affection to me when Kareem was within hearing distance.

Each morning I happily walked Kareem to the gate. Hard at work at his law firm, he would leave by nine, which is early for anyone, particularly a prince, to begin work in Saudi Arabia. Few members of the Royal Family arise before ten or eleven.

I was certain Noorah watched us from her bedroom window, for the moment the gate closed behind him, Noorah would begin to call my name with the greatest urgency. None of the thirty-three servants employed in her household would do; she would cry out for me to serve her hot tea.

Since I had spent my childhood mistreated by the men of my family, I was in no mood to spend the second part of my life abused by women, even Kareem’s mother.

For the present, I remained mute. But Kareem’s mother was soon to learn that I had faced antagonists much more fierce than an old woman with dark mental recesses. Besides, there is an old Arab proverb that says: “Patience is the key to solutions.” In an attempt to exchange success for failure, I thought it best to heed the wisdom passed down from generations. I would be patient and await an opportunity to reduce Noorah’s power over me.

Fortunately, I had little time to wait. Kareem’s younger brother, Muneer, had recently returned from his studies in America. His anger at being back in Saudi Arabia bit deeply into the peace of the household.

Although much has been written about the enforced monotony of women’s lives in Saudi Arabia, scant attention has been given to the wasted lives of many of our young men. True, their lives are bliss compared with that of women; still, much is lacking, and the young men of Arabia spend many languid hours longing for stimulation. There are no movie theaters, clubs, or mixed dining since men and women are not allowed in restaurants together unless they are husband and wife, brother and sister, or father and daughter.

Muneer, only twenty-two years old and accustomed to the freedoms of American society, did not relish his return to Saudi Arabia. He had recently graduated from business school in Washington, D.C., and had plans to be a liaison for government contracts. While waiting for his opportunity to prove his adeptness in acquiring huge sums of money, a passion with all the royal princes, he began to keep company with a group of princes within the family known for their risky behavior. They gave and attended mixed parties. Foreign women of questionable morals who worked for the various hospitals and airlines were in attendance.

Drugs were abundant. Many of these princes had become addicted to alcohol, drugs, or both. In their drug- or alcohol-induced haze, their dissatisfaction with their kin who ruled the land festered. Not content with modernization, they longed for Westernization; these young men were ardent for revolution. Not surprisingly, their idleness bred dangerous talk and conduct, and before long, their revolutionary intrigues were common knowledge.

King Faisal, once a carefree youth himself who was transformed into a pious king, diligently followed the actions of his young kin and attempted, in his solicitous manner, to guide the young men of the family from the excesses of empty lives. Some of the worrisome princes were placed in the family business while others were sent off to the military.

After King Faisal spoke of his concern about Muneer’s unseemly behavior to his father, I heard loud shouting and angry voices from the study. I, like the other female members of the family, soon found some urgent task in the map room, directly opposite the study. With eyes on the maps and ears tuned to the shouting, we gasped when we heard Muneer accuse the ruling family of corruption and waste. Muneer swore that he and his friends would bring the changes so direly needed in the kingdom. With curses on his lips and a call for rebellion, he stormed out of the villa.

While Muneer claimed the country needed to move into the future, his commitment was vague and his real activities troubling. His was a sad tale of misjudgment; alcohol and easy money had seduced him.

Few foreigners today are aware that alcohol was not banned to nonbelievers (non-Muslims) in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia prior to 1952. Two separate and tragic events involving royal princes brought about the ban by our first king, Abdul Aziz.

In the late 1940s, Prince Nasir, the son of our ruler, returned from the United States a different man than the one who had departed the kingdom. He had discovered the enticement of the combination of alcohol and uninhibited Western women. In his assessment, alcohol was the key to idolization by women.

Since Nasir held the position of governor of Riyadh, he found few barriers to his ability to maintain secret supplies of the desired liquid. Nasir held forbidden parties, entertaining men as well as women. In the summer of 1947, after a late-night gathering, seven of the partakers died from drinking wood alcohol. Some of the dead were women.

Nasir’s father, King Abdul Aziz, became so incensed at this needless tragedy that he personally beat his son and ordered him to jail.

Later, in 1951, when Mishari, another son of the king, while intoxicated, shot and killed the British pro vice-consul and almost killed the man’s wife, the old King’s patience expired. From that time forward, alcohol was banned in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and black-marketing schemes were born.

The people of Saudi Arabia react to the prohibited much in the same manner as people of other cultures: The forbidden becomes even more enticing. Most Saudi men and women I know drink socially; a large number have acquired serious addiction to the substance. I have never been in a Saudi home that did not have a large assortment of the finest and most expensive alcoholic beverages to offer to guests.

Since 1952, the cost of alcohol had risen to SR 650 for a bottle of Scotch ($200). A fortune could be made in importing and selling the illegal drink. Since Muneer and two cousins who were high-ranking princes were of the opinion that alcohol should be legalized, they banded their energies and soon became fabulously wealthy trucking illegal alcohol from Jordan.

When border guards became suspicious of the cargo, they were paid off. The only obstacles to the illegal importation of alcohol are the ever-roving bands of the committees for the Propagation of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice. These committees were formed by the mutawas, religious men who tremble in anger at the effrontery of members of the Saudi Royal Family who, above all others, are presumed to uphold Islamic law, yet prove time and again that they consider themselves above the teachings of the Prophet.

One of these committees soon was Muneer’s undoing and unwittingly provided the solution to my obtrusive mother-in-law. It was a Saturday, our first day of the week (Muslims celebrate their religion on Fridays), a day none of Kareem’s family will ever forget.

Kareem sullenly walked through the doorway, weary from a hot, trying day at his office, and came upon his mother and wife in a rough shoving match. When she saw her son, Noorah widened the twilight war with her new daughter-in-law by sobbing and loudly proclaiming to Kareem that I, Sultana, was filled with disrespect for his mother, and that for no apparent reason, I had started the brawl with her.

As she fled the scene she pinched me on the forearm, and I, in a widening mood of anger, rushed after her and would have taken a swing at her but for Kareem’s intervention. Noorah looked hard at me and turned to Kareem. She hinted darkly that I was an unfit wife, and that if he investigated my activities, he would be prompted to divorce me.

Any other day Kareem might have laughed at our ridiculous and infantile display, for women with little but time on their hands tend to maneuver themselves into numerous squabbles. But on that day he had been informed by his London broker that over the previous week he had lost more than a million dollars in the stock market. In his black mood, he rushed to meet violence with a vengeance. Since no Arab man will ever contradict his mother, Kareem slapped me three times across the face. They were slaps meant to insult, since they accomplished little more than to redden my jaw.

My strong character was formed by age five. I have the tendency to be nervous at the sight of trouble looming. As the danger draws near, I become less nervous. When the peril is at hand, I swell with fierceness. As I grapple with my assailant, I am without fear and fight to the finish with little thought of injury.

The battle was on. I swung at Kareem with a rare and priceless vase that just happened to be nearby. He saved his face by a quick move to the left. The vase shattered as it struck a Monet painting worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. The vase and the water lily painting were destroyed. In a fine fury, I grabbed an expensive Oriental ivory sculpture and threw it at Kareem’s head.

The crashing and banging, along with our shouts, alerted the household. Women and servants burst suddenly upon us with loud cries. By this time, Kareem realized I was going to destroy the room, which was filled with his father’s beloved treasures. To stop me, he punched me in the jaw. Inky darkness surrounded me.

When I opened my eyes, Marci was standing above me, dripping cold water on my face from a soaking cloth. I heard loud voices in the background and assumed that the excitement over my fight with Kareem was continuing.

Marci said no, the new disturbance concerned Muneer. Kareem’s father had been summoned by King Faisal regarding a container of alcohol that had leaked the illegal substance in a trail down the streets of Riyadh. The Egyptian driver had stopped at a shop for a sandwich and the pervasive smell of alcohol had caused a crowd to gather. Detained by a member of one of the committees to prevent vice, he, in his fear, had volunteered the name of Muneer and one other prince. The head of the Religious Council had been alerted and he had contacted the king. The king was in a rare rage.