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

Her sorrow was intertwined with her fears for her
unmarried daughters. She was our strength, our only support, and
she knew that we would be tossed in the wind at her passing.
    Mother confessed that she had felt her life
ebbing even as we departed on our travels. She had no basis for her
knowledge, other than three very extraordinary visions that came to
her as dreams. Mother’s parents had died of fever when she was
eight years of age. As the only female child, Mother had nursed her
parents during their brief illness. They both seemed to be
recovering when, in the middle of a swirling fury of a blinding
sandstorm, her father had risen on his elbows, smiled at the
heavens, uttered four words—“I see the garden,” and died. Her
mother died shortly afterward without revealing a hint of what she
witnessed awaiting her. My mother, left in the care of her four
older brothers, was married at an early age to my father.
    Mother’s father had been a compassionate and
kind man. He had loved his daughter as he did his sons. When other
men of the tribe sulked at the birth of their daughters,
Grandfather laughed and told them to praise God for the blessing of
a tender touch in their home. Mother said she would never have been
married at such an early age had her father lived. He would have
given her some years of the freedom of childhood for herself, she
believed.
    Sara and I were sitting by her bedside as
Mother haltingly confided her disturbing dreams. The first of her
visions came four nights before we received word of Sara’s
attempted suicide.
    “I was in a bedouin tent. It was the same as
our family tent of my childhood. I was surprised to see my father
and mother, young and healthy, sitting beside the coffee fire. I
heard my brothers in the distance, bringing in the sheep from a day
of grazing. I made a rush for my parents, but they could not see
me, nor could they hear me as I cried out their names. “Two of my
brothers, the ones now deceased, came into the tent and sat with my
parents. My brothers sipped warm milk from the she-camel, in small
cups, while my father pounded the beans for the coffee. The dream
ended as Father quoted a verse he had made up about the Paradise
awaiting all good Muslims. The verse was simple, yet reassuring to
my mind. It went:
    --
    Pleasant rivers flow,
    Trees shade the yellow of the sun.
    Fruit gathers around the feet,
    Milk and honey knows no end.
    Loved ones are waiting,
    For those trapped on earth.”
    --
    The dream ended. Mother said she thought
little of it, other than that it might be a message of joy from God
to assure her that her parents and family were in Paradise. About a
week after Sara came home, Mother experienced a second vision. This
time, all the members of her deceased family were sitting under the
shade of a palm tree. They were eating wonderful food from silver
dishes. But this time they saw her, and Mother’s father got to his
feet and came to greet her. He took her by the hand and tried to
get her to sit, and to eat. Mother said she became frightened in
the dream and tried to run away, but her father’s hand tightened.
Mother remembered that she had young to care for and begged her
father to release her, told him that she had no time to sit and
eat. She said her mother stood and touched her shoulder and told
her: “Fadeela, God will care for your daughters. The moment is
coming for you to leave them in his care.”
    Mother awoke from her dream. She said she
knew at that instant that her time on earth was passing and that
she would soon go to those who went before her.
    Two weeks after we left on our trip, Mother
began to experience back and neck pains. She felt dizzy and sick to
her stomach. The pain was her message; she knew her time was short.
She went to the doctor and told him of her dreams and the new pain.
He dismissed the dreams with a wave of his hand, but became serious
at the description of the pain. Special tests soon revealed that
Mother had an inoperable tumor on her spine. Mother’s most recent
dream came the night the doctor confirmed her terminal illness. In
the dream, she was sitting with her heavenly family, eating and
drinking with great gaiety and abandon. She was in the company of
her parents, grandparents, brothers, and cousins—relatives who had
died many years before.
    Mother smiled as she saw little ones crawling
along the ground and chasing butterflies in a meadow. Her mother
smiled at her and said, “Fadeela, why do you not pay