Princess Sultana's Daughters

yourself! The men of this country want to regulate
the wearing of our shoes, the ribbons in our hair, the color of our
lips!”
    My sisters, while their anger did not equal
mine, sullenly complained that our men were obsessed with
controlling every aspect of our lives, even that part of our daily
living that was supposedly private.
    In my opinion, the control fanatics who
govern our traditional lives had driven my daughter into the arms
of a woman! While I was greatly distressed and did not condone my
daughter’s relationship with another woman, I understood, in view
of the harsh restrictions she had inherited by the mere fact of
being born female, how she had come to seek solace with one of her
own kind.
    Knowing the problem, I now felt more capable
of seeking solutions.
    Kareem feared that Maha’s character was now
marred by her experiences. As a mother, I could not agree. I told
Kareem that Maha’s wanting to share her darkest secret with those
who love her best pointed to her recovery.
    I was right in my assessment of the
situation. After months of professional treatment, Maha was ready
for maternal guidance. For the first time in her young life, she
drew close to her mother, wanting to communicate, tearfully
acknowledging that from her earliest memory she had hated all men
but her father. She had no ready explanation for it.
    I felt a twinge of guilt, wondering if my own
prejudices against the male sex had seeped into the embryo I had
given life. It was as if my daughter had been forewarned of the
wicked nature of men while lying cradled in my womb.
    Maha confessed that the early trauma she had
endured on the occasion of her parents’ long separation had further
eroded her trust in men. “What was so wrong with Father that we had
to flee from his presence?” she asked.
    I knew that Maha was speaking of the time
Kareem had tried to take a second wife. Not wishing to share my
wifely status with another woman, I had fled the kingdom, fetching
my children from summer camp in the Emirates and taking them with
me to the French countryside. France, with its humane people who
shelter those in distress, had seemed the perfect spot to protect
my young while I negotiated for those long months with my husband
over his scheme to wed another woman. How I had tried to shield my
children from the trauma of my own failing marriage and our
separation from Kareem!
    What folly! As a parent, I know now that it
is preposterous to believe that even minor parental conflict does
not interfere with the emotional well being of a child. Hearing
Maha say that my actions had increased her mental pain, allowing
abnormal thoughts to creep into her consciousness, caused me more
anguish than any previous agony I have known. I had a moment of
renewed anger at my husband, remembering the distress he had
brought upon our three children.
    Maha confessed that even after Kareem and I
had patched over our differences and brought our family together
again, our continuing strife had pierced the safety of the cocoon
in which my children dwelled.
    When I prodded my daughter about her
relationship with Aisha, Maha confided that she had not known women
could love women and men could love men. Such a possibility had
never entered her mind, until the day Aisha showed her some
magazines she had taken from her father’s study. The magazines had
displayed photograph after photograph of beautiful women in acts of
female love. At first the photographs were a novelty, but later
Maha came to see them as beautiful, sensing that the love between
women was more tender and caring than the aggressive, possessive
love of man for woman.
    There were other disturbing revelations.
    Aisha, a girl who had experimented with many
social taboos before knowing my daughter, thought nothing of spying
on her father’s sexual misdeeds. The girl had made a small peephole
in the study adjoining her father’s bedroom. There, she and my
daughter had watched as Aisha’s father deflowered one young virgin
after another. Maha claimed that the cries of those young girls had
closed her mind to wanting a relationship with a man.
    She told me an unbelievable tale that I would
brush aside as fabrication had my own daughter not witnessed the
event.
    Maha said that on one particular Thursday
evening Aisha had telephoned her, urging her to come over quickly.
Maha said that Kareem and I were out, so she’d had one of our
drivers deliver her to Aisha’s home.
    Aisha’s father had gathered