Princess: A True Story of Life Behind the Veil in Saudi Arabia

in my land are guided by
the hands of the older females of the families, in our family,
Father was the decision maker in all matters. Long ago, he had
decided that his most beautiful daughter would marry a man of great
prominence and wealth.
    Now, the particular man he had chosen to
marry his most desirable daughter was a member of a leading
merchant family in Jeddah that had decided financial influence with
our family. The groom was chosen solely because of past and future
business deals. He was sixty-two years old; Sara would be his third
wife. Although she had never met the old man, he had heard of her
great beauty from his female relatives and was eager for the
wedding date to be set. Mother had tried to intervene on Sara’s
behalf, but Father, as was his way, responded without emotion to
his daughter’s tears. And now Sara had heard she was to wed. Mother
ordered me to leave the room, but her back was turned; I tricked
her by making noises with my feet and slamming the door. I slid
inside the open closet door and wept silent tears as my sister
cursed our father, our land, our culture. She cried so hard that I
lost many of her words, but I heard her cry out that she was sure
to be sacrificed like a lamb.
    My mother wept too, but she had no words of
comfort for Sara, for she knew her husband had the full right to
dispose of their daughters in any marriage he liked. Six of their
ten daughters were already married to men not of their choosing.
Mother understood that the four remaining daughters would follow
that darkness; there was no power on earth that could stop it.
    Mother heard my squirming in the closet. She
narrowed her eyes and shook her head when she saw me, but made no
effort to make me move. She told me to bring cold towels, and then
she turned her attention back to Sara. When I returned, she placed
the towels on Sara’s head and soothed her to sleep. She sat and
watched her young daughter for many minutes, and finally, she rose
wearily to her feet. With a long, sad sigh, she took me by the hand
and led me to the kitchen. Although it was not mealtime, and the
cook was napping, Mother prepared for me a plate of cake and a
glass of cold milk. I was thirteen, but small for my age; she
cuddled me in her lap for a long time.
    Unfortunately, Sara’s tears served only to
harden Father’s heart. I overheard her entreaties to him. She
became so unbalanced in her grief that she accused our father of
hating women. She spat out a verse of Buddha: “Victory breeds
hatred, for the conquered are unhappy....” Father, his back rigid
with anger, turned and walked away. Sara wailed at his back that
she would have been better off unborn, since her pain so
overweighed her happiness. With an ugly voice, Father responded by
saying that her wedding date would be moved up to avoid stretching
out her pain of anticipation.
    Father normally came to our villa once every
fourth night. Men of the Muslim faith, with four wives, rotate
their evenings so that each wife and family is given an equal
amount of time. It is a serious situation when a man refuses to go
to his wife and children, a form of punishment. Our villa was in
such an uproar with Sara’s suffering that Father instructed Mother,
who was his first and therefore his head wife, to inform his other
three wives that he would rotate among their villas, but not ours.
Before he left the villa, Father curtly told Mother to cure her
daughter of her feverish resentments and to guide her peacefully to
her destiny, which in his words was that of a “dutiful wife and
good mother.” I barely recall the weddings of my other sisters. I
vaguely remember tears, but I was so young and the emotional trauma
of marriage to a stranger had not yet penetrated my thoughts. But I
can close my eyes today and bring to mind every detail of the
events that occurred the months before Sara’s wedding, the wedding
itself, and the sad events that unfolded in the weeks
afterward.
    I held the family reputation of the difficult
child, the daughter who most tried my parents’ patience. Willful
and reckless, I created havoc in our household. I was the one who
poured sand into the motor of Ali’s new Mercedes; I pinched money
out of my father’s wallet; I buried Ali’s gold coin collection in
the backyard; I released green snakes and ugly lizards from jars
into the family pool as Ali lay sleeping on his float.
    Sara was the perfect daughter, with her quiet
obedience, and had earned perfect scores