A girl in Saudi then, and now

n the 1990's, while living in Saudi Arabia, I tutored the children of a Saudi family in English. I still think about those children often. What are their lives like now, what kind of people are they? Are they happy?

It's not just about what effects the Wahhabi religious and cultural restrictions could have on one delightfully, irrepressibly spirited girl, but also on her equally curious and carefree brother.

Back when I taught her, she was at the age when the weight of all Saudi cultural and family norms for girls and women were about to descend upon her, firmly pressing her into prevailing social customs and her approved cultural niche. She would soon need to restrain and subdue her movements, to cloak herself in a flowing black abaya in public, and to refrain from doing things most non-Muslim and Muslim girls in the US take for granted.

With the beginning of puberty, she could no longer ride a bike outside of her family's private compound, play with boys not closely related to her, go to an amusement park or zoo with her father and brothers. She would be restricted to restaurants, malls and stores that catered to women and families, with "women only" sections or "family sections."

The restrictions go on and on. The cost of ignoring such cultural taboos and laws? Risk the wrath of the Mutawwa’in, or morals police, and/or bear the consequences of offending or shaming one's family, which in Saudi culture could be dire indeed, even life-threatening.

For the time I knew her, at least, she was still allowed to be a little girl, providing sharp contrast to the reserve, circumspection and outward docility of her older sisters. However, by the time I left the country, the circle of doting adults around her was visibly stepping up efforts to tone her down.

Watching, I felt some anxiety about her future.

Fourteen years later, as I read about the nascent and growing women's movement within Saudi Arabia, I believe that somewhere among them is a young women who once delighted in teasing her English tutor by sprinkling colored pencil shavings into the water channel that flowed from the fountain connected to her family's Moorish-tiled spa rooms. She would chase the shavings as they tumbled around, laughing, out through the sun room and around the channel to where it curved back again, mirroring the blue of the Arabian sky.

The picture on human rights is still bleak in Saudi Arabia. However, this past Saturday, Nora bint Abdullah al-Fayez, a US-educated former teacher, was made deputy education minister in charge of a new department for female students, reports the UK's Guardian. The appointment was part of a cabinet reshuffle by King Abdullah that did away with several ultra-conservative ministers and clerics and paved the way for more moderate reforms.

Women's rights advocate Wajeha al-Huwaider told CNN that while the appointment of Al-Fayez is a step in the right direction, she is still subject to oppressive Saudi laws."Even this minister now ... she is not really in control of her life," al-Huwaider noted. "It is not up to her, it's up to her male guardian."
"This is the main thing that is controlling our life," al-Huwaider said. "We want to be able to drive our cars, you know, to feel like we are just like the rest of the world."

Other positions that were replaced were the head of Saudi Arabia's influential Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice, as well as the ministers of health, justice, culture and education. (The Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice directs the Mutawwai'in). "King Abdullah has always been saying this for quite some time, that he would like to see the country progress," al-Maeena told CNN. "He has taken many initiatives, reforms, enhanced the power of women....

"And right now, by getting these people who are young -- some of them -- who have the right ambition and the right knowledge, to go ahead, I think it means that there is going to be a march towards progress."

Anderson Cooper of CNN wrote about it in his blog and mentions signs of changes on the horizon in the magic kingdom, signaled by the mercy King Abdullah granted the Qatif gang-rape victim who was lashed publicly and then jailed. (When her lawyer appealed, her original sentence was doubled and the lawyer's license was revoked. After public outcry and the King's mercy, the lawyer's license was restored and the woman was released). Cooper also shouts out to the Saudiwoman blog, which takes up the cause of jailed bloggers and against human rights abuses and crimes against against women.

Khaled al-Maeena, editor-in-chief of Arab News, an English-language daily newspaper in Saudi Arabia, said that the entire Cabinet reshuffling "sends a clear signal that the King means business."