Princess (24 page)

Like most Muslims, Ali would never see or understand the customs and traditions of another religion or land. The only knowledge most Arabs have of American society comes from the content of low-grade American movies and trashy television shows. Most important, Saudi men travel alone. Because of their forced seclusion from female companionship, their only interest lies in foreign women. Sadly, they seek out only women who work in bars as strippers or prostitutes. This slanted view distorts Saudis’ opinions of the morality of the West. Since most Saudi women do not travel, they believe the stories told by their husbands and brothers. As a result, the vast majority of Arabs truly believe that most Western women are promiscuous.

Admittedly, my brother was handsome in an exotic way that would attract many of the opposite sex, but I knew without a doubt that every woman in America was not a whore! I told Kareem that I longed for the opportunity to travel with Ali. What fun it would be to stand behind him and hold up a sign that proclaimed: THIS MAN SECRETLY DISDAINS YOU AND HOLDS YOU IN CONTEMPT! IF YOU SAY YES TO THIS MAN, HE WILL BRAND YOU A WHORE TO THE WORLD!

Before Ali left to return to the States, he told Father he was ready to acquire his first wife. Life without sex was a hardship, he said, and he would like a woman to be available to him each time he returned to Riyadh for the holidays. Most important, it was time for him, Ali, to have a son. For without sons, a man has no value in Saudi Arabia, and is scorned by all who know him.

His new wife could not live with him in the United States, of course, but rather would live in Father’s villa, carefully guarded by Omar and the other servants. Ali said he must be free to enjoy the relaxed morals of America. His only requirement for his wife—other than virginity, of course—was that she be young, no more than seventeen years of age, exceptionally beautiful, and obedient. Within two weeks, Ali was engaged to a royal cousin; a wedding date was set for December, when he would have more than a month between school terms.

Observing my brother, I recognized my good fortune in having wed a man like Kareem. Doubtless, my husband was far removed from perfection, but Ali was a typical Saudi male; to have such a one as him as your master would make life a grinding affair.

Prior to Ali’s return to the States, our family gathered at our villa in Jeddah. One evening, the men had too much to drink and became argumentative. After dinner, the volatile issue of whether women should drive automobiles came out into the open for debate. Kareem and Asad joined Sara and me in our push for a change in the silly custom that had no basis whatsoever in Islam.

We brought up the example of women piloting planes in industrial nations while we were not allowed to drive an automobile! Many Saudi families could not afford more than one driver, and where did that leave the family when he was on an errand? What would happen if a medical emergency occurred when the driver was unavailable? Did Saudi men think so little of their women’s abilities that they would rather twelve- and thirteen-year-old boys drive (which is common in Saudi Arabia) than adult women?

Ali, Father, and Ahmed thought the very topic maddening. Ali declared that women and men would be meeting in the deserts for sexual misadventures! Ahmed worried about the veil’s hindrance to visibility. Father brought up the possibility of car accidents, and the vulnerability of the female on the street while awaiting the traffic officer. Father looked around the room for confirmation from his other sons-in-law that a woman behind the wheel of an automobile would endanger herself and others in the process. My other sisters’ husbands busied themselves refreshing their drinks or going to the bathroom.

Finally, with brash confidence, as if he had the one bright idea that would win the argument, Ali said that since women are more easily influenced than men, they would imitate the youth of our land, who raced their cars through the streets. Naturally, the women would have no thoughts except to emulate them and this would, as a result, cause our already soaring accident rate to climb.

My brother still infuriated me! Ali mistakenly believed that I had left my youthful impulses behind, but his smug look gave rise to my temper. To everyone’s complete surprise, I leaped at Ali, grabbed a handful of his hair, and began to pull as hard as I could. It took both Kareem and Father to force me to release my grasp. My sisters’ loud laughter rang throughout the room while their husbands stared at me with a combination of awe and fear.

Ali tried to make peace with me the following day before he departed for the States. My hate was so reckless that I purposely maneuvered him into a conversation about marriage and the insistence of our men that their wives be virgins while they, themselves, tried to sample as many women as possible. Ali took the conversation seriously and proceeded to quote the Koran and enlighten me on the absolute necessity of the virginity of females. The old Sultana of many sly tricks came back to me with ease.

I shook my head sadly and sighed a deep sigh. Ali asked what was in my heart. I told him that for once he had convinced me. I agreed with him that all females should be virgins when they wed. I added, with a hidden malice he did not see, that the nature of our young girls had so changed that rarely was a real virgin to be found among them. At Ali’s questioning look, I said that certainly there was little misconduct from Saudi women while in Arabia, for what woman wants to lose her life? But when our females traveled, I asserted, they sought out sexual partners and gave their most precious gift to strangers.

Ali became enraged at the thought of any man other than himself, a Saudi, deflowering a Saudi virgin! He inquired, with great agitation, as to where I had learned such information. With a look of appeal on my face, I begged my brother not to reveal our conversation, for surely Father and Kareem would be scandalized. But I admitted to him that we women discussed such issues, and that it was a known topic: The day of the virgin was leaving our land!

Ali puckered his lips and sank deep in thought. He asked me what these young girls did on their wedding night; for if there was no blood, a girl would be disgraced and returned to her father. In Arabia, bloodied sheets are still proudly handed to the mother-in-law of the bride so that she can show friends and relatives that a woman of honor and purity has joined her family.

I leaned closer and told Ali that most young women had surgeries to repair their hymens. I added that most young women gave their virginity over and over again to unsuspecting males. It was simple and easy to fool a man. There were plenty of physicians who skillfully performed the operation in Europe, and a few who were known for the service in Saudi Arabia.

Then, to Ali’s total horror, I whispered that if, by some chance, the girl could not have a repair job in time for her marriage, it was a simple affair to place the liver of a sheep inside her prior to the sex act. The husband could not tell the difference. It was a sheep liver he was deflowering, and not his wife!

A new fear engrossed my self-centered brother. He immediately placed an urgent call to a physician friend; holding the telephone, his face became pale when the friend admitted that such operations were possible. As far as the sheep liver, the physician had not heard of it, but it sounded like a viable scheme immoral women would discover sooner or later.

Obviously disturbed, Ali returned twice to the villa on that day, asking my advice as to how he could best guard against such trickery. I told him there was no way, unless he had kept company with his new bride day and night since the day she was born. He, Ali, would just have to accept the possibility that the one he wed might very well be human and have committed mistakes in her youth.

A worried and despondent Ali returned to the States. When I told Kareem, Sara, and Asad of my joke, Sara could not control her glee. Kareem and Asad exchanged looks of worry and glanced at their wives with new thoughts.

Ali’s wedding remained on schedule. His young bride was achingly beautiful. How I pitied her. But Sara and I laughed aloud when we saw that Ali was frantic with worry. Later, my husband reprimanded me for my mischief when Ali confessed to him that he, Ali, was now dreading the act of sex. What if he had been tricked? He would never know and would be forced to live in doubt with this wife and all future wives.

The worst possible nightmare for a Saudi male would be to follow another in an act of sex with the women he had wed. If the woman was a prostitute, there was no shame, but his wife represented his family name, bore his sons. The very thought that he might have been misled was more than my brother could bear. I readily admitted to my husband that I had wicked moments and acknowledged without hesitation that I would have to face up to many sins on my day of judgment. Yet, on Ali’s wedding night, I smiled with a satisfaction I had never known. I had discovered and exploited Ali’s greatest fear.

Chapter Seventeen: The Woman’s Room

Nura’s hand was shaking as she retrieved the Koran, our holy book. She pointed out a section to me. With increasing emotion, I read aloud the passage:

I looked at Nura and then, one by one, at my other sisters. My gaze rested on Tahani’s stricken face. All hope was lost for her friend Sameera.

Sara, usually quiet and restrained, now spoke. “No one can help her. The Prophet, himself, ordered this method of punishment.”

Anger flamed out of my body as I retorted, “Sameera was not guilty of lewdness—there are not four witnesses to any crime of Hudud (crimes against God)! She merely fell in love with a Westerner! These men of ours have determined it is permissible for them to mate with a foreign woman, a woman of another religion, but no, we women are forbidden! It is insane! This law—and its interpretation—is made by men, for men!”

Nura tried to calm me, but I was prepared to fight to the last desperate inch this unnatural tyranny now focused on one whom we all loved, Sameera.

The day before, Sameera had been sentenced by the men of her family and of her religion to be confined to a room of darkness until she was claimed by death. Sameera was twenty-two. Death would come slowly to one so young and strong of limb.

Her crime? While in school in London, she had met and fallen in love with one not of our faith. From our first age of understanding, we Saudi women are taught that it is a sin for any Muslim woman to bind herself to a non-Muslim: The religion of her children cannot be guaranteed if her husband is Christian or Jewish. Since the last word in the Middle Eastern family rests with the husband, the children might well be brought up as Christian or Jewish; the wife and mother would have no say.

Every Muslim is taught that Islam is the final message from Allah to mankind, and, therefore, it is the faith superior to all others. Muslims are not allowed to bring themselves knowingly under the patronage of non-Muslims, nor should they ever allow such a relationship to develop. Yet many Saudi men do marry women of other faiths without repercussions. Only Saudi women pay the supreme price for their association with a nonbeliever. Our religious scholars say the union of Muslim men with women of other faiths is permissible, for the children are raised in the superior Muslim faith of their father.

Just thinking about the unfairness of it all made me scream out in rage. My sisters and I understood that from this moment, the stepping-stones of Sameera’s life, one by one, would lead to a great tragedy. And we, her friends from childhood, were helpless in our desires to rescue her.

Sameera had been Tahani’s dearest friend since the age of eight. She was an only child; her mother had fallen ill with ovarian cancer and, although cured, she was told there would be no other children. Surprisingly, Sameera’s father had not divorced his now barren wife, which would have been customary for the majority of Saudi men.

My sisters and I had all known women stricken with serious illnesses, only to be thrust aside by their husbands. The social stigma of divorce is severe, and the financial and emotional trauma overwhelming for women. If the children of a divorced woman are not suckling, they too can be taken from her. If divorced women are fortunate, they will have loving parents to welcome them home, or an elder son who will give them shelter. Without a supportive family, they are doomed, for no single or divorced woman can live alone in my land. There are government-sponsored homes built specifically to accommodate such women, but life is bleak and each moment is cruel. Those few divorced women who have an opportunity to remarry are lucky enough either to be a great beauty or to have a great fortune. As with everything else in Saudi society, the failure of the marriage and the blame for divorce rests with the woman.

Sameera’s mother had been one of the fortunate. Her husband loved her truly and did not think of casting her aside at her time of greatest need. He did not even take a second wife to provide him with sons. Sameera’s father is a man considered strange in our society.

Sameera and Tahani were the best of friends. And, since Sara and I were closest to Tahani in age, we were playmates of Sameera too. All three of us were envious of Sameera in many ways, for her father bestowed great passion on his only child. He, unlike most Saudi men of his generation, was of a modern mind and promised his daughter that she would be free of the antiquated customs forced upon the females of our land.