Princess Sultana's Daughters

family. Her
youthful devotion to all living creatures clashed with the Saudi
male’s love of hunting and killing all creatures that inhabit our
land. While Abdullah and his father gleefully joined other royal
cousins in desert hunts, machine gunning gazelles and rabbits by
the light of huge spotlights mounted on specially equipped Jeeps
and open trucks, Amani crept into her father’s hunting room, hiding
ammunition, successfully dismantling weapons, and tossing expensive
firearms into the garbage. Because of Amani’s intense love of
animals, she was willing to forgo her strong desire for family
harmony.
    This humane but troubling trait showed up at
an early age. Owing to Amani’s fervor, our home was overrun with
stray beasts of many species, sizes, and colors.
    Most Arabs, unlike many Westerners, feel
little devotion for animals, and starving and injured cats and dogs
run wild on our city streets. Since the early 1980s there has been
an active government policy in Saudi Arabia of collecting strays
and abandoning these creatures in the desert to die slow and
painful deaths. Yet many animals do outwit their slayers and manage
to find a safe haven with those of tender nature.
    While I appreciated and sympathized with
Amani’s pressing compulsion to protect abused animals, Kareem and
others in our home were greatly distressed that our property had
become a sanctuary for strays. Not content with the mere act of
saving their lives, Amani pampered these abandoned creatures as if
they were rare and expensive breeds, and when they died, the
animals were buried with solemn funeral rites in our garden. The
surviving strays she had trained to be lap pets joined the family
on our grounds and in our home.
    Many times it seemed to me that Amani cared
more for animals than she did for members of her own family, but I
am a mother who has difficulty punishing or restraining her young,
and Amani was allowed her one unfortunate idiosyncrasy.
    Kareem employed two young men from Thailand
to clean and disinfect after the animals and to train the dogs in
obedience. We even took the extreme action of building our own
small zoo on the grounds, equipping the facility with spacious
caged areas and purchasing numerous breeds of exotic animals in the
hope that Amani’s personal zoo would satisfy her need to collect
and coddle large numbers of animals. Next to the zoo area, Kareem
had a sizable area walled off for Amani’s strays. He commanded his
daughter to restrict those animals to that special section of the
yard. But after Amani had shed many tears, Kareem reluctantly
agreed that she could select her ten favorite cats and dogs, which
would be allowed inside our home and given free access to the
general grounds area.
    In spite of these efforts, our daughter
remained alert to street strays, and these creatures invariably
found their way to our door.
    Once Kareem came home to a strange sight.
Three Filipino men who worked for our neighbors were caught in the
act of delivering five cats in a bag to one of the Thai zookeepers.
Confronting the Filipinos, who were frightened into silence, Kareem
was handed a flyer that stated our household would reward the
bearer SR 100 for each stray cat or puppy. Kareem flew into a fit
of wild anger. After he threatened the Thai employees with
termination, they confessed to Kareem that Amani had instructed
them to attach the reward flyers to the walls of neighboring
palaces and villas. In addition, the two men had been told to roam
the neighborhood streets, abducting cats and dogs, and to bring
them to Amani. Our daughter had sworn the two men to secrecy, and
since Kareem had employed them to work directly for our daughter,
they had kept her confidence.
    Kareem forced a head count of strays, and
when he discovered that he was feeding over forty cats and twelve
dogs, he slumped to the ground in a daze. After a long period,
without a glance at his family, my husband came to his feet and,
not speaking a word, left our home. We heard the wheels of his
automobile spin as he left the neighborhood. He was away for two
days and three nights. I later learned that Kareem had been
visiting his parents during this time. I heard from gossipy
servants that Kareem told his startled parents he must have a few
days’ respite from the complex women in his life, or he would be
forced to commit us all to an institution.
    While Kareem was away, I decided I must find
some manner of dulling my daughter’s extreme sensitivity