Princess Sultana's Daughters

out of control, Kareem drops the book
to the floor, grabs my shoulders, and shakes me like a rag.
    I again feel the familiar heartbeat, though I
have a childlike thought—a moment of sorrow that I did not die on
the spot and so burden my husband’s conscience with lifelong guilt.
I hear the muscles of my neck snapping from the force of Kareem’s
strength.
    My father yells, “Sultana! Answer your
husband!”
    Suddenly the years evaporate. I am a child
again, at my father’s mercy. How I long for my mother to be alive,
for nothing less than maternal fervor can save me from this vicious
encounter!
    I feel a whimper forming in my throat.
    I have told myself many times in the past
that there can be no freedom without courage, yet my courage fails
me when I need it the most. I had known that if members of my
immediate family read the book, my secret would be discovered.
Foolishly, I had felt protected by the fact that in my family, only
Sara reads books. Even if gossip of the book had spread throughout
the city, I assumed that my family would take little note of it,
unless mention was made of a particular incident they would recall
from our youth.
    Now, ironically, my brother, a man who scorns
the mention of women’s rights, had read the book that focused
attention on the abuse of women in my land. My demon of a brother,
Ali, had foiled my precious anonymity.
    Timidly, I look around the room at my father,
my sisters and brother. Together, as if they had practiced, their
looks of surprise and anger slowly forge into a united hard
stare.
    After only one short month, I am
discovered!
    Finding my voice, I protest weakly, blaming
my deed on the highest authority, saying what all good Muslims say
when caught in an act that will bring punishment on their heads. I
thump the papers with my hand. “God willed it. He willed this
book!”
    Ali is quick to retort, scoffing, “God? Not
so! The devil willed it! He willed it! Not God!” Ali turns to my
father and says with perfect seriousness, “Since the day of her
birth, Sultana has had a little devil living inside her. This devil
willed the book!”
    Quite rapidly, my sisters begin to flip
through the pages in their hands, to see for themselves if our
family’s secrets have been made public.
    Only Sara gives me her support. She quietly
gets to her feet and slips behind my back, resting her hands on my
shoulders, reassuring me with her soft touch.
    After his initial outburst, Kareem is quiet.
I see that he is reading the translated copy of the book. I lean
sideways and see that he has discovered the chapter that tells of
our first meeting and consequent marriage. Sitting perfectly still,
my husband reads aloud the words that he is seeing for the first
time.
    Father’s angry shouting arouses the
enthusiastic hatred of Ali, and my father and brother quite outdo
each other in their verbal assaults on my stupidity. Amid the
passionate disorder, I hear Ali shout out the accusation that I
have committed treason.
    Treason? I love my God, country, and king, in
that order; and I shout back that “No! I am not a traitor! Only a
haphazard council of mediocre minds can reach a conclusion of
treason!”
    As my anger builds, my fear is receding.
    I think to myself that the men in my family
are proof that men and women can remain at peace only when one sex
is strong enough to completely dominate the other. Now that we
women in Saudi Arabia are becoming educated, and are beginning to
think for ourselves, our lives will be filled with additional
discord and mayhem. Still, I welcome the battle if it means more
rights for women, for a false peace does nothing more than further
women’s subjugation.
    Yet, I know that this is not the most
opportune moment for argument.
    The hot controversy continues to rage, and I
become lost in the details. My initial fright had dimmed my memory
of why I had requested Jean Sasson to write my story in the first
place. Now, I stop listening to the accusations and force myself to
remember the drowning death of my friend Nada. I was a teenager at
the time, and religious authorities had discovered my good friends
Nada and Wafa in the company of men to whom they were not wed nor
related. Because both girls were still virgins, they were not
punished by the State for their crime against morality; instead
they were released to their fathers for punishment. Wafa was wed to
a man many years her senior. Nada was drowned. Nada’s own father
called for the cruel