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

legal system dealt with disobedient wives!
His face began to redden. He swore, he blushed with shame; I
thought perhaps he was angered by his inability to control his
wife.
    Our impasse ended with a compromise. I would
return to Riyadh only if Kareem signed a legal document stating
that so long as he and I were wed, he would not take another wife.
If he were to break his word, I was to be given a divorce, custody
of our children, and half of his fortune. In addition, I was to
retain, under my control, the monies I had taken out of our son’s
account in Switzerland. Kareem would replace Abdullah’s funds. In
addition, he would deposit one million dollars in each of our
daughters’ names in a Swiss bank account. I would keep, in my
possession, our passports with updated papers stating we could
travel without restrictions.
    I told Kareem that after he signed the
necessary papers, I would remain in Europe with the children for an
additional month. He had been warned of my determination; perhaps
his desire for me would fade after consideration. I was not
interested in replaying the same song twice. Kareem winced at my
words, delivered with a hardness he had seldom heard.
    I accompanied Kareem to the airport. My
husband was not a happy man. I walked away less content than I had
anticipated after the biggest gamble of my life had produced such a
stunning victory. I had found that there is little joy derived from
forcing a man to do what is right.
    One month later I called Kareem to hear his
decision. He confessed that I was his strength; his life. He wanted
his family back, with everything as it was before. I bluntly told
him that surely he could not expect to sever our love with the cold
knife of indifference and then expect that a seamless union would
remain in our grasp. We had been among the most fortunate of
couples with love, family, and unlimited wealth. He was the
destroyer of all that, not I.
    I returned to Riyadh. My husband was waiting,
with trembling lips and a hesitant smile. Abdullah and my daughters
went wild with joy at seeing their father. My pleasure slowly grew
from the happiness of my children.
    I found I was a stranger in my home, listless
and unhappy. Too much had happened for me to go back to the Sultana
of a year ago. I needed a real purpose, a challenge. I decided I
would return to school; there were now colleges for women in my
country. I would discover the normalcy of life and leave behind the
mindless routines of a royal princess.
    As far as Kareem was concerned, I could only
wait for time to erase the bad memories of his behavior. I had
undergone a transition in the fight to save my marriage from the
alien presence of another woman. Kareem had been the supreme figure
in my life until he weakened our union with talk of wedding
another. A substantial part of our love was destroyed. Now he was
simply the father of my children and little more.
    Kareem and I set about to rebuild our nest
and provide our children with the tranquility we so valued for our
young. He said he keenly felt the loss of our love. He valiantly
tried to redeem himself in my eyes. He said that if I continued to
sit in judgment of his past behavior, we and the children might
well lose the enjoyment of our future. I said little but knew it
was true.
    The trauma of our personal war was past, but
the taste of peace was far from sweet. I reflected often on the
emotional scars I had acquired in such a short lifetime; sadly, all
my wounds had been inflicted by men. As a result, I could hold not
even one member of the opposite sex in high esteem.
     

Chapter Twenty: The Great White Hope
    Suddenly, it was August 1990. A glittering
dinner party was in progress at our villa in Jeddah when we heard
the horrifying news that two of our neighbors were locked in a
death-defying struggle across the border in the tiny country of
Kuwait. Kareem and I were entertaining twenty guests from our
exclusive circle when the news was shouted out from the top of the
stairwell by our son, Abdullah, who had been listening to the BBC
(British Broadcasting Corporation) on his short-wave radio. After a
long, dry silence, a disbelieving roar rose throughout the
room.
    Few Saudis, even those royals involved in the
negotiations between Kuwait and Iraq, had really believed that
Saddam Hussein would invade Kuwait. Kareem had been present at the
conference that ended in a stalemate on that very day, August 1,
1990, in Jeddah. The crown prince of Kuwait, Sheik Saud