Princess Sultana's Daughters

to cooperate with my memory, and it required three attempts
to open the combination safe.
    My husband kept his passport in his office
safe, while mine and the children’s were kept at home.
    My fingers riffled through the various
documents and papers.
    Abdullah’s passport was missing!
    I was then struck with the horrible
realization that I could account for only two out of four
passports. Looking closely, I saw that Maha’s passport had
disappeared along with that of her brother.
    What was going on? How had this happened? No
one, other than Kareem and I, knew the combination of this
particular safe.
    “No!” I said to myself when I could not find
the special papers of permission Kareem had signed for the women of
his family to travel outside the kingdom without the company of a
male member of our family.
    I was confused. Was Maha traveling alone? Or
did she and her brother flee the kingdom together?
    The private telephone in Kareem’s office
began to ring.
    My husband had tired of waiting. When I
picked up the receiver, he shouted, “Sultana! What is going
on?”
    I told Kareem of my unsettling discovery.
    “And the dollars?”
    I had not thought to look for the large
amount of money we kept in dollars in our safe for the purpose of
fleeing the kingdom should a religious revolution ever grip our
land. It was money we hoped we would never be forced to use to
bribe safe exit from our country.
    I opened the large drawer at the top of the
safe. It was as Kareem had expected. The money was no longer there!
As our fears of unrest in Arab lands had grown, the money had
increased. Abdullah had taken over a million dollars in cash from
his parents’ safe. Had my son lost all his good sense?
    “The dollars have disappeared,” I glumly
reported.
    “Go, see if Maha is at school. I am on the
way to the airport.”
    I cried out, “Hurry!” I knew that my son was
on his way to Lebanon. But how was Maha involved in this? Surely
Abdullah was not taking his sister with him to that dangerous land.
I was giddy with fear and confusion.
    “I will try to call you from the car. Now. Do
as I say. Find Maha!”
    I fetched a simple dress and hastily pulled
it over my head. Reaching for my abaaya , veil, and shayla , I threw on my outer garments as I ran through the
house, calling out for my sister Sara to accompany me to Maha’s
school. I yelled at Connie to find Mousa, the youngest of our
Egyptian drivers, a man who, I knew from past experience, could be
urged to break the city speed limit.
    Maha’s school was fifteen minutes by
automobile from our palace, but we arrived in ten minutes. Along
the route, I told Sara what little I knew of the situation.
    The seventeen girls in Maha’s history class
were taking notes while listening to a male instructor, who
appeared on a large television screen in the center of the room.
The lesson was being given via video, since it is forbidden in
Saudi Arabia for a male professor to come into personal contact
with female students.
    Maha’s face turned crimson red as I burst
into her classroom, calling her name. Seeking the face of my child,
I hovered over her desk and said, “Maha! You are here!”
    Maha pushed my arms from her neck,
exclaiming, “Where did you think I was?”
    I told the headmistress that I needed my
daughter to return to our home. Without a hint of curiosity about
my unusual behavior, she calmly instructed Maha to gather her
books. She asked if Maha would be away for longer than a week.
Since I did not know, I said that she would. The supervisor said in
that case she would have Maha’s instructors save my daughter’s
lessons for her return.
    “Mother! What is going on?” Maha wanted to
know as we settled ourselves in the car.
    “I feared that you were with Abdullah.”
    “Abdullah?”
    Maha, only seventeen years old at the time,
was a junior at a girls’ high school. My son, at age nineteen, was
supposed to be at his university, an institution that girls did not
attend. Maha looked at me in astonishment. “Mother, you are
behaving like a crazy person.” She looked at Sara for confirmation.
“Auntie, what is wrong?”
    Sara explained the mystery of the passports,
saying that we could not understand why Abdullah had taken
hers.
    My sister’s eyes met mine across the head of
my daughter. Sara’s thoughts matched mine perfectly.
    “Fayza!” We uttered her name in unison.
    I told the driver to take us to the home of
Fouad and Samia.