Princess Sultana's Circle

twenty-one years old, her unmarried state was causing
her father grave discomfort.
    Maha interrupted my
thoughts. She loved her cousin and knew Munira’s views on marriage.
“Mother! Uncle Ali can’t force Munira to marry, can he?”
    “ To whom is Munira
promised?” I sputtered.
    Sara hesitated so long that
I thought she did not know the answer. Finally, she said, with a
long sigh, “Sultana, Munira is to wed Hadi.”
    My memory was barren of a
face to connect with the name. “Hadi? Who?”
    “ The Hadi. Sultana, don’t you
remember? Ali’s boyhood friend who traveled with our family to
Cairo.”
    I could barely speak.
“ That Hadi?”
    Sara nodded woefully.
“ Yes. That Hadi .”
    The memory of our shared
traumatic experience slammed down between us. In disbelief, I
stared into my sister’s eyes.
    “ No, No,” was all that I
could utter.
    “ Who is this Hadi?” Maha demanded.
    Who, indeed? Where was I to
begin?
    I mumbled. “He’s Ali’s
friend from childhood, Daughter. You do not know of
him.”
    Sara settled closer to me
as her hands sought mine. We continued to gaze into each other’s
eyes. Our thoughts were in unison. Sara was reliving the most
traumatic time of her life.
    More than twenty years
before, against her will, Sara had been wed to a much older man, a
man who had sexually abused her from the first moment of their
union. It was only after Sara’s attempted suicide that our mother
had managed to convince our father into allowing Sara to divorce.
Despite her return to our family home, my dear sister had been
unable to shake off a chronic and debilitating
depression.
    During this same period of
time, our eldest sister Nura and her husband Ahmed were in the
process of building a new palace. Nura planned to travel to Italy
to purchase furnishings for this home, and along the way, visit
Cairo.
    Much to my surprise and
delight, Nura and Ahmed invited both Sara and me to accompany them
and their children on the trip. Every coin has two sides, and my
happiness was soon tempered when father decided that my brother,
Ali, and his friend, Hadi, would also be a part of our entourage.
That distressing news was dispiriting, nevertheless, we went along
on the trip.
    While we were in Cairo,
Sara and I were astounded to discover that our brother’s friend was
even more obnoxious than Ali! Neither of us had imagined that such
a thing was possible! We soon learned that in comparison to the
spoiled and difficult Ali, Hadi was pure evil.
    Although a student at the
Religious Institute, which was a boys’ school in Riyadh for
training Mutawwas, or men of religion, Hadi had absorbed none of
the goodness called for in our Holy Koran. His black soul remained
untouched by his religious education.
    Hadi hated women with a
purposeful vengeance, and often expressed his opinion that all
young girls should be wed at the first sign of their menses. In
Hadi’s mind, women were on this earth for three purposes: to
provide for a man’s sexual pleasure, to serve a man, and to bear a
man’s children.
    Of course, Hadi thought
that Sara and I were uncontrollable females, and often said so. If
he had been the master of our destinies, Sara and I were convinced
that we would have been stoned to death, and that Hadi would have
been there to throw the first stone!
    Despite his expressed
hatred of the female gender, Hadi was keen to have sex with as many
different women as possible. And on that trip to Cairo and Italy,
he had done just that. Most disturbing of all, Ali had joined Hadi
in his perverse behavior! While in Cairo, Sara and I had
inadvertently come upon Hadi and Ali sexually assaulting a girl who
was no more than eight years old! The scene had been one of horror
and violence, and neither Sara nor I had ever overcome the haunting
images of what we saw that day.
    Certain that such an evil
boy would have grown into an evil man, we were now filled with
panic at the thought that such a person would soon have absolute
control over a dear and sweet child unprepared to defend
herself.
    Sobbing, I fell into Sara’s
arms. Our tears were so contagious that our daughters began sobbing
with us.
    The sound of our anguished
cries evidently reached Kareem’s office, for he and Abdullah soon
came rushing into the room.
    Full of concern, Kareem
pulled me away from my sister. “Sultana! Sara! Whatever has
happened?”
    And Abdullah demanded of
his sister Maha, “Who has died?”
    I stammered through my
wails, “Death would be