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

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:
    --
    “ ‘If any of your women are guilty of
lewdness
    Take the evidence from four witnesses amongst
you
    Against them; and if they testify
    Confine them [the guilty women] to houses
until
    Death do claim them.’ ”
    --
    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