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

sentence of darkness with
silence until death. This was a matter between the family and their
God.
    The year of my wedding, Sameera had already
charted her future with great care. Since an early age, she had had
the odd idea to become an engineer. No woman in Saudi Arabia had
such a degree, for we are directed to careers considered
appropriate for females: pediatricians, teachers, or social workers
for women and children.
    In addition, Saudi female students are
forbidden contact with male teachers, so Sameera’s father had hired
his daughter a tutor from London. After years of concentration and
effort studying at home, Sameera had been accepted to a technical
school in London. Her father, in great pride of his beautiful and
clever child, accompanied his wife and daughter to London.
    Sameera’s father and mother settled Sameera
in a private dwelling. Two Indian female servants and an Egyptian
secretary were employed to live with their daughter. They bade
their child farewell and returned to Riyadh. Of course, no one had
a thought that they would never see each other again. The months
passed, and as we expected, Sameera excelled in school.
    During her fourth month in London, Sameera
met Larry, an exchange student from California. Opposites attract,
as they say, for Larry was tall, muscular and blond, a California
free spirit, while Sameera was exotic, slim, and mired in the
confusions created by our oppressive men.
    She wrote Tahani that love had made her heart
heavy, for she knew she was forbidden to marry a Christian. Larry
was a Catholic who would never agree to convert to the Muslim
faith, a procedure that would help their situation.
    Within the month, Tahani received a second,
more desperate letter; Sameera and Larry could not survive apart.
She was going to live with him while in London, and later, she
would escape to the States where they would marry. Then, Sameera
said, her parents could purchase a home near their daughter in the
States. She was certain that their close family relationship would
not suffer. But she would be forced to forfeit her Saudi
nationality. We would never see her again in our country, for she
understood that she could not return to our land after such a
scandalous event as marriage to a nonbeliever.
    Tragically, Sameera’s parents never learned
of their daughter’s dilemma, for both of them and their driver were
killed instantly when a water tanker crashed into the side of their
car as it crossed a busy street in Riyadh.
    In the Arab world, when the head of the
family (always a male) dies, the eldest brother takes control of
the affairs of the surviving family members. Upon Sameera’s
father’s death, his eldest brother was now her guardian.
    Never have two men of the same family borne
so little resemblance to each other. Where Sameera’s father was
permissive and loving, his brother was stern and unbending. A man
of the deepest faith, he had often expressed his profound
displeasure at the independence of his brother’s daughter.
Scandalized, he had not spoken to Sameera’s father since the day
Sameera enrolled in the school in London.
    Scornful of the education of girls, he
thought it best that females be married at a tender age to a man of
years and wisdom. He had recently wed a thirteen-year-old child.
She had begun her menses a few months back and was the daughter of
a man such as himself. Sameera’s uncle was the father of four
daughters and three sons; his daughters had been safely wed at the
first sign of puberty. They received little schooling other than
the female arts of cooking and sewing, although they had ample
instruction in reading skills so that they could recite the
Koran.
    The day following her parents’ deaths,
Sameera received a second shock. A communication of command arrived
from her uncle, who was now the head of her family: “Return to
Riyadh on the earliest flight. Bring all that belongs to you.”
    Her fear of the brutal realism of life under
the care of her uncle caused Sameera to gather her courage and
plunge irrationally into a headlong course of unknowns. In what
proved to be a fatal mistake for her, Sameera and Larry fled
together to California. The blatant disobedience of this female
child burned into the heart of Sameera’s new guardian. At that
time, he had no knowledge of Sameera’s foreign lover. He had no
understanding of the wayward girl, for he had no experience with
unyielding females.
    By the end of the month, with no information
of