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

country, Saudi Arabia.
Marci and Madeline had been childhood friends. As poor as Marci’s
family was, Madeline’s was poorer. Madeline and her seven siblings
used to beg on the highway that connected their province to Manila.
Occasionally, a big car transporting foreigners would stop and huge
white hands would drop a few coins into their outstretched palms.
While Marci attended school, Madeline foraged for food.
    At an early age, Madeline had a dream and a
plan to bring that dream to reality. When she was eighteen, she
sewed a dress from Marci’s old school coat and traveled to Manila.
There she located an agency that employed Filipinos to work abroad;
Madeline applied for a maid’s position. She was so petite and
pretty that the Lebanese owner slyly hinted that he could get her a
job in a Manila brothel; there she could earn a substantial amount
beyond the imagination of a maid! Madeline, although raised in poor
circumstances, was a devout Catholic; her negative reaction
convinced the Lebanese that she would not sell her body. Sighing
with regret, the man told her to fill out the application and
wait.
    The Lebanese told her that he had just
received a contract to supply more than three thousand Filipino
workers to the Persian Gulf area, and that Madeline would be given
priority in the maid positions since the rich Arabs always
requested pretty maids. He winked and patted her on the buttocks as
she left his office.
    Madeline was both excited and frightened when
she received confirmation of a maid’s position in Riyadh, Saudi
Arabia. About the same time, Marci’s plans of attending nursing
school fell through, and she decided to follow in Madeline’s
footsteps and search for a job outside the Philippines. When
Madeline left for Saudi Arabia, Marci had joked that she would not
be far behind. The good friends hugged their farewells and promised
to write.
    Four months later, when Marci learned that
she too was to work in Saudi Arabia, she still had not heard from
Madeline. Once there, she did not know where to find her friend,
other than in the city of Riyadh. Since Marci was going to work for
a family in the same city, she was determined to locate her friend.
I recall the night Marci arrived in our home. Mother was
responsible for the running of the household and the placement of
the servants. I remembered that Marci seemed a frightened little
thing, immediately clinging to the eldest of our Filipino
maids.
    Since we had more than twenty servants in the
villa, Marci was given little notice. As an inexperienced servant,
only nineteen years old, she was assigned to clean the rooms of the
two youngest daughters of the house, Sara and me. I had given her
scant attention during the sixteen months she had patiently and
quietly followed me through the villa, asking if I required
anything.
    Marci surprised me by confessing that other
Filipino servants thought her blessed in her job since neither Sara
nor I ever struck her or raised our voices in disapproval. My eyes
flashed, and I asked Marci if people were struck in our home. I
breathed a sigh of relief when she told me no, not in our villa.
She did say that Ali was known to be difficult, always speaking in
a loud and insulting tone. But his only violent action had been to
kick Omar in the shin several times. I laughed, feeling little
sympathy for Omar.
    Marci whispered as she told me the gossip of
the servants. She said that Father’s second wife, a woman from one
of the neighboring Gulf states, pinched and beat her female
servants daily. One poor girl from Pakistan had a brain injury from
being knocked down the stairs. Told that she did not work fast
enough, she rushed down to the washroom with a basket of dirty
sheets and towels. When she accidentally bumped into Father’s wife,
the woman became so enraged that she punched the maid in the
stomach, sending her tumbling down the stairs. As the girl lay
moaning, the older woman ran down the stairs to kick and scream at
the girl to finish her chores. When the girl did not move, she was
accused of pretense. Eventually, the girl had to be taken to a
doctor; she was still not normal, constantly holding her head in
her hands and giggling.
    Under orders from Father’s wife, the palace
doctor filled out a form stating that the girl had fallen and
suffered a concussion. As soon as she could travel, she was to be
sent back to Pakistan. She was denied her past two months’ salary
and sent to her parents with only SR 50