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

witches and potions, she
forbade Huda to divulge her beliefs to the younger children. Now
that Mother was no longer with us, Huda returned to her former
habit with gusto. We watched with fascination as Huda peered at the
lines running across Sara’s palm and squinted her beady black eyes
as though she saw Sara’s life unfolding before her like a
vision.
    Sara seemed scarcely affected, as though she
expected those very words, as Huda solemnly told her she would fail
to realize her life’s ambitions. I groaned and leaned back on my
heels; I so wanted Sara to find the happiness she deserved that I
found myself irritated with Huda and loudly dismissed her
prophecies as the mumbo jumbo I wanted them to be. No one paid me
any heed as Huda continued to scrutinize Sara’s lifelines. The old
woman rubbed her prominent chin with her hand and muttered, “Hmm,
little Sara. I see here that you will marry soon.”
    Sara gasped and jerked her hand from Huda’s
grasp. The nightmare of another marriage was not what she wanted to
hear. Huda laughed softly and told Sara not to run from her future.
She added that Sara would know a marriage of love and would grace
the land with six small ones who would give her great joy.
    Sara gathered her brow in a worried knot.
Then she shrugged her shoulders and dismissed what she could not
control. She looked my way and gave a rare smile. She asked Huda to
read my palm, saying that if Huda could foretell what actions her
unpredictable baby sister would take, then she, Sara, would be a
believer in Huda’s powers until the end of time. My other sisters
rocked with laughter as they agreed with Sara, but I could tell by
their looks that they loved me with a fierce tenderness, their
little sister who so tried their patience.
    I lifted my head with a haughtiness I did not
feel as I plopped myself down in front of Huda. I turned my palms
up and demanded, in a loud and bossy manner, to know what I would
be doing one year from that date.
    Huda ignored my youthful rudeness and studied
my upturned palm for what seemed like hours before announcing my
fate. She surprised us all with her posturings; she shook her head,
muttered to herself, and groaned aloud as she pondered my
future.
    Finally, she fixed her eyes on my face and
uttered her soothsaying with such confidence that I feared her
forecast and felt the sinister hot wind of magic in the words she
spoke.
    In a freakish deep-throated voice, Huda
pronounced that Father would soon inform me of my upcoming
marriage. I would find misery and happiness in one man. I would
rain destruction on those around me. My future actions would bring
good along with bad to the family I loved. I would be the
beneficiary of great love and dark hate. I was a force of good and
evil. I was an enigma to all who loved me.
    With a piercing cry, Huda threw her hands in
the air and asked Allah to intervene in my life and protect me from
myself. She unseated me as she lunged toward me and wrapped her
arms around my neck and began to lament in a wild, high-pitched
howl.
    Nura jumped to her feet and rescued me from
Huda’s smothering grasp. My sisters comforted me as Nura led Huda
from the room, mumbling under her breath for Allah to protect the
youngest daughter of her beloved Fadeela.
    I was shivering from the impact of Huda’s
prediction. I began to sob and blurted out that Huda had bragged to
me once about being a witch, that her mother had been a witch
before her and the power had flowed from her mother’s milk into the
suckling infant that was Huda. Indeed, I moaned, only a witch could
recognize such a one as evil as I!
    Tahani, one of my older sisters, told me to
hush, a silly game had gone awry and there was no need for
dramatics. Sara, in an attempt to lighten the mood, brushed my
tears away and said my sorrows were based on the worry that I could
never live up to Huda’s wild predictions. Joining in Sara’s
efforts, my other sisters began to joke and recalled with great
peals of laughter some of the capers I had successfully pulled on
Ali over the years. They reminded me of one of their favorites,
which in our camaraderie we began to retell again.
    The caper began when I asked one of my
girlfriends to call Ali and pretend to be smitten with his charms.
For hours we had listened in as he babbled nonsense on the
telephone and made elaborate plans to be met by the girl’s driver
behind a nearby villa under construction.
    The girl convinced Ali he must be holding a
baby