Princess Sultana's Daughters

hands onto the pages of an
ordinary notepad, producing an extraordinary journal.
    Weeks later, while reading one of these short
but disturbing stories from her notes, given freely from Maha’s
hands to her parents, Kareem and I discovered the depths of our
child’s plunge into a world more sinister than either of us could
ever have imagined.
    Living in the Mirage of Saudi Arabia
    or
    The Harem of Dreams
    by
    Princess Maha Al Sa’ud
    During the dark period of Saudi Arabian
history, ambitious desert women could only dream of harems stocked
with hard-muscled men, well endowed with instruments of pleasure.
In the enlightened year of 2010, when the matriarchal family
ascended into power, with the most intelligent woman crowned queen,
women became the political, economic, and legal authority of
society.
    The great wealth accumulated during the oil
boom of the year 2000, the boom that had crippled the powers of the
United States, Europe, and Japan to that of third world powers,
assured the land of Arabia plenty for generations to come. With
little but time on their hands, women addressed social issues that
had plagued the land for more years than they could remember.
    A small minority of women voted to abolish
polygamy, the practice of taking four husbands, while the majority,
remembering the evils the practice had spawned when the kingdom was
a patriarchal society, recognized that while the system was not the
best that they could devise, it was the only social system that
embittered women would receive. The pleasures of love that had been
forbidden now wormed their way into the mind of every woman, even
that of the waiflike Malaak, the daughter of the queen of Saudi
Arabia.
    Malaak danced a hot dance of love,
challenging her favorite lover, Shadi, with a gold sovereign
between her lips, motioning with her head for the man to pull it
out with his teeth.
    Malaak was small and brown-skinned with
delicate features. Her lover was large and heavy with muscles of
steel. Wanting desperately to achieve his goal of being appointed
the most influential man in the harem, Shadi moved his tongue over
every part of Malaak’s body, enticing her senses in an agony of
passion.
    In a frenzy of movement, Shadi removed the
coin with his teeth, and lifted Malaak into his arms, taking her
behind the flimsy curtains of his assigned section of the harem.
There, the lovers pressed against each other, the warmth of their
breath spreading over their faces, and down their necks, to their
chests. Shutting out the world, they began to kiss.
    Malaak opened her eyes to watch her lover
perform his rhythmic movements. Her muscles tensed when she saw
that the man Shadi had softened into a woman!
    Life having produced a cynical soul, Malaak
adjusted herself to the power at hand, and she became enamored of
the loveliness of the woman who shared her bed. Choosing between
being feared without love and being loved without fear, Malaak
could not sacrifice the love.
    With Machiavellian subtlety, Malaak became
what she had to be in the circumstances and atmosphere of her
time.
    *
    With a pale, sickly look, Kareem laid the
pages of Maha’s journal on the doctor’s desk. Bewildered, he asked,
“What does this mean?” He gestured toward the notepad, his tone
accusatory. “You said that Maha was much improved. This writing is
nothing more than the ramblings of a lunatic.”
    I know not the source of my instinct, but I
knew what the doctor was going to say before he said it. I could
not breathe, I could not speak, I saw the room through a haze of
blue. The doctor’s voice came to me as from a distance.
    The doctor was gentle with Kareem. “It’s
quite simple, really. Your daughter is telling you that she has
made the discovery that men are her enemies, and that women are her
friends.”
    Kareem still did not comprehend what the
doctor was saying. He was impatient in his ignorance. “Yes?
So?”
    There was nothing else but to speak bluntly.
The doctor verbalized what I already knew. “Prince Kareem. Your
daughter and her friend Aisha are lovers.”
    Kareem was quiet for many minutes. When
Kareem regained his senses, he had to be restrained and kept from
Maha’s side for three days.
    *
    Muslims are taught that love and sex between
two of the same is wrong, and the Koran forbids experimenting:
“ Do not follow what you do not know .” In Saudi Arabia, love
and sex are considered distasteful, even between those of opposite sexes, and our society pretends