Our Women on the Ground

by Zahra Hankir

  In my job, I frequently get asked about when and how the conflict will end, and whether Syria can ever come back as a unified state. It’s terrifying to think about the millions of Syrians who have abandoned their country over the past seven years, many of whom will likely never return. It terrifies me to think of all the people who have died, and all the abandoned cities lying in ruins.

  No, I do not think it can go back to what it was, and that is why I feel so fortunate to have known Syria before the war. But I know that one day all this will be over, and people will pick up their lives and rebuild. They will try to move on, just like they did in Lebanon following fifteen years of war.

  It will not be the same country or the same people, and there will always be ugly scars, but just like the builder in Zabadani told me about rebuilding his gutted family home: “Everything needs time and patience.”

  An Orange Bra in Riyadh

  Donna Abu-Nasr

  When I saw the women selling underwear, I choked up. The depth of my feelings took me by surprise. At the time, I had been a reporter for more than twenty years and thought that two decades of covering conflict in the Middle East had toughened me up. But on that day in January 2012, as I stood outside a lingerie store in a mall in the Saudi port city of Jeddah watching Saudi women finally do what only men had until then been allowed to do, I felt overwhelmed with pride and joy.

  Before late 2011, Saudi women weren’t allowed to work in stores, so they had to buy their bras and panties from men. This was both embarrassing and impractical for them. A prominent Saudi journalist had brought the issue to my attention back in 2002, when I was still a reporter with the Associated Press, telling me it was something his female relatives had to grapple with. Women were forced to cover up in public, wearing long abayas that hid most of their bodies, while salesmen had the power to undress them with their eyes.

  I understood what he meant by this when I walked into a lingerie store in a Riyadh mall in October 2002, a few months after I had started covering Saudi Arabia. I saw a woman totally covered in black with only her eyes showing pick up a lacy orange bra and approach the Syrian salesman. In a whisper, she asked if he had it in 36C.

  “Did you say 36C?” the salesman asked, loudly enough for everyone in the store to hear.

  “I don’t know. I think that’s my size,” said the woman.

  He gave her chest a once-over.

  “The past changes,” he responded, and advised her to buy a larger size.

  I was astonished that such an exchange could take place in public in conservative Saudi Arabia. But when I started to talk to other women about it, they recounted even more shocking stories. One woman told me that a salesman had once held up a pair of panties and, eyeing her hips, stretched the waist with his hands to show they were big enough to fit her. A different salesman had rubbed the underwear to demonstrate how to wash it. Another woman who wanted to buy a strapless bra took her husband along with her in the hopes that his presence would keep the salesman from being too bold. “I felt so embarrassed when he covered the table with bras while everyone in the store looked on. He wasn’t satisfied with that. He picked up one of the bras and demonstrated with both hands how it supports the breasts,” she told me. “We left without buying any.” To minimize interaction with the salesman, one woman said she would cut the sizing label off her underwear and hand it to him with a frown so he could find the correct size for her. Another would buy her panties from a department store, because underwear there was sold in packs instead of individually, which meant she could head straight for the cashier instead of engaging with a salesman and therefore didn’t have to bring her husband along for protection. “We’ve reached a state of submission even when it comes to our bras,” said one woman, sighing.

  But in June 2011, almost ten years after I’d spoken with these women, King Abdullah partially reversed the ban, allowing women to sell underwear and makeup. His decision seemed like a minirevolution. At that time, before his death in 2015 and the subsequent rise of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, change happened at a snail’s pace. King Abdullah, and other leaders before him, were careful not to upset the country’s powerful, ultraconservative religious elements, not only because they feared them but also because they needed them. Saudi Arabia follows Wahhabism, a strict strain of Islam that emerged under the guidance of an eighteenth century cleric, Muhammad bin Abdul-Wahhab. His descendants hold key religious positions, giving them sway over legal and social policy in the kingdom; in return, they give the royal family legitimacy. This meant that every development, no matter how small, was a major piece of news, and many months or years passed in between.

  It’s important to look back at those days to understand the enormity of change currently under way in the kingdom. Before Prince Mohammed became crown prince in 2017, it was inconceivable that orders to allow women to drive, singers to perform, and cinemas to open would follow one another at such speed, as they have in the last couple of years. In the past, a shy mention of one of these issues in the media was news. One could assume that Prince Mohammed started doing this for political expediency—burnishing his credentials with foreign powers to ingratiate himself with the West. But it seems that he has also realized that times have changed. Low oil prices and a growing population in Saudi Arabia mean the government cannot go on propping up the economy with subsidies. For there to be economic growth, decades of tradition need to be upended. Women need to become active members of society; Saudis need to spend their money on entertainment at home, not in Dubai or Europe; and Westerners need to find the kingdom attractive enough to invest in.

  Over my seventeen years working as a reporter intermittently covering Saudi Arabia, first for the AP and then for Bloomberg News, I’ve been able to witness some of the changes firsthand. But every time I leave the kingdom, I think: If it were that easy for these changes to take place, why didn’t they happen decades ago? And who will ultimately be proven right—the prince who’s reversing decades-long bans at a pace not seen in the modern history of the kingdom and introducing unprecedented repressive measures, or his more cautious uncles who ruled before him?

  * * *

  —

  Although I’d been to Saudi Arabia twice before—once on a family vacation and once to cover a conference—my trip in January 2002, was different. The kingdom was a mysterious place that rarely granted entry permissions to journalists, let alone female journalists. I didn’t have any connections—a family member or an event I had been invited to—to ease me into my assignment, and I didn’t know what to expect. Was Saudi Arabia a tightly controlled police state like Libya, where the newspapers were filled with drivel about the late dictator Muammar Gaddafi’s supposed supernatural qualities? (A Libyan English-language paper once published a piece that described him as follows: “His teeth are naturally immune to stain, so that when he releases a full-blown smile, the naturally white teeth discharge a radiation pregnant with sweet joy and real happiness for those lucky ones who are fortune [sic] to be around him”!) Or would it be like Iraq, where Saddam Hussein’s sons had reportedly installed cameras in the rooms of the only hotel where journalists could stay, and my photographer and I were forced to speak in whispers? Maybe it was more like Kuwait, another Gulf state, relaxed despite many restrictions and an alcohol ban. In September 1991, on a first date at a beach in Kuwait City, I spent an evening drinking a fine white wine straight from the bottle as police carried out regular patrols a few meters away. A few days before, I had celebrated my thirty-second birthday with champagne that a colleague had brought into the country from Bahrain, with no problem at all.

  But I soon discovered that Saudi Arabia wasn’t like any Arab country I had visited. Over the years, the kingdom has surprised me, challenged me, and infuriated me, but it has never bored me. I never imagined I would attend stand-up comedy in an empty pool, go to a “beauty pageant” in which sheep strutting down a red carpet were lauded with po
etry, or be shooed away by the religious police—the muttawa—for interviewing men or not knowing how to buy a sandwich. I never imagined that behind the seemingly static, literally black-and-white façade of the country, where men wear white robes and women wear black abayas, there existed such an intense energy and pushback against the restraints that stifled society.

  The Saudi Arabia I arrived in in late January 2002 couldn’t have been more different from today’s kingdom, which seems like it’s almost a twenty-first-century country. I still remember the flight to Riyadh and how apprehensive I was about being a female journalist in a nation as closed off and conservative as Saudi Arabia. True, I am an Arab like the Saudis, but I grew up in Lebanon and had freedoms few Saudi women enjoy, like driving, mingling freely with men, and working in a mixed- gender space. At what point during the flight, I wondered, was I supposed to cover myself with the abaya I had bundled up in my handbag? How was I going to do my job in a country that segregated men and women, even when standing in line at McDonald’s? How would I get around in a country spanning eight hundred thousand square miles that was also the only nation in the world that had banned women from driving? What would happen if the information ministry employee who was supposed to meet me at the airport—women at that time could leave the building only with a male guardian—didn’t bring with him what we jokingly called the “I’m not a prostitute letter,” without which I couldn’t check into the hotel? (The letter was a document from a male guardian—in my case, the ministry—stating that I was known to the authorities, meaning I wasn’t there to seduce every man in sight. On successive trips, when the ministry letter was late, the hotel circumvented the problem by listing me as a “Mr.”)

  I was more or less paralyzed during my first couple of days in Saudi Arabia, too focused on what I could or couldn’t do and how I looked in the abaya. I kept tripping on the overgarment and had to slow my pace until I got used to it. Riyadh was windy, so I had to learn to bend swiftly and gather the hem together to prevent it from flying into the air—and to make sure I was wearing something decent under it, just in case.

  At the hotel, every time I ordered room service, the voice at the other end of the line would promptly say, “Yes, sir,” because the person wasn’t expecting a woman to call. The hotel rarely hosted women guests traveling on their own for business, and the gym and the pool were off-limits to them. I’ve seen some women tell the receptionists they were entitled to a discount because they couldn’t enjoy these facilities.

  On top of learning how to make my way around Riyadh, I had to adapt to the no-gender-mixing rule. For instance, it took me some time to figure out the logistics of how to buy my favorite shawarma sandwich. Restaurants are divided into “singles” sections—for men eating out alone—and “family” sections, which at that time decreed that women without a mahram weren’t allowed in. Staff at some family sections would bend that rule, but they usually didn’t sell sandwiches there—only the singles section did. At first, I would ask a salesman at a nearby patisserie to get the sandwich for me. Then I decided to buy it on my own. I would stand outside the singles section and wave my arms around until a waiter reluctantly came out and took my order. Every time I did this, I would wonder how, in a kingdom so obsessed with shielding women, I found myself in a situation in which I had to expose my arms—as I waved, the loose abaya sleeves would fall back—and in which I was in full view of male diners and passersby for at least ten minutes while my sandwich was being prepared.

  Then there was the issue of the male AP photographer who accompanied me on my trips to Saudi Arabia, a dear Bahraini friend named Hasan Jamali. In other countries, working with photographers was a normal part of my duties, but in Saudi Arabia, where unmarried men and women found together in restaurants, cars, or malls were detained, how were we supposed to cover stories together? There was no choice but to risk it. We got away with it, but sometimes, while walking in the mall, the religious police would order Hasan to ask “the woman”—meaning me—to cover up her hair, something that became a private joke between us.

  * * *

  —

  My first story from Saudi Arabia was a scoop. The September 11 attacks had taken place only months earlier, horrifying the world and causing a public relations disaster for the kingdom: fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were Saudi, as was their leader, Osama bin Laden, and the nation was under global scrutiny. In response, Saudi officials had gone on the defensive, arguing that the citizenship of the hijackers was questionable. Since by that point I’d settled in and begun to feel a little more comfortable in the country, I decided to focus my energies on obtaining official confirmation that the hijackers had been Saudi.

  I asked our information ministry contact to put in a request for me to interview Prince Nayef, even though I suspected I wouldn’t get anywhere. I turned to the AP stringer, seasoned journalist Abdullah Nasser al-Shihri, for advice. He told me to call the prince at home, and gave me his phone number. I was skeptical, but desperate, so I called. It was around 7:30 p.m. The operator informed me that the prince was asleep, so I left him a message, saying I had put in a request for an interview and hadn’t yet heard back.

  Close to midnight, the information ministry contact returned the call and, in a shaky voice, probably due to his surprise, said I had been granted an interview with Prince Nayef the following day, at 11:30 p.m. (Saudi royals like to work in the middle of the night, possibly due to the intense heat of the daytime.) Not only was my message actually relayed, the prince had responded to it and granted me an interview. I couldn’t believe it: I have seen Arab officials tear up reporters’ business cards seconds after assuring them that they would call back.

  Prince Nayef was two hours late to the interview at the interior ministry, and his spokespeople said I could have only thirty minutes with him because of the delay. But I ended up spending ninety minutes with him anyway, during which time he confirmed that the fifteen hijackers were indeed Saudi. I left determined to focus on doing my job as a journalist, and to deal with the hiccups as and when they came up.

  That incident was an eye-opener. It showed me that behind the rigid façade there was room for maneuvering, and I shouldn’t let myself be intimidated by how “different” the country was.

  * * *

  —

  On my first few trips to Saudi Arabia—I visited the kingdom regularly, spending several months a year there before I was appointed AP’s first Saudi bureau chief in 2008—I focused on what set the country apart from a social perspective. I often felt like a rebellious teenager because I was virtually breaking the rules every time I stepped out of my hotel room. On some of those trips, my adventures would begin even before takeoff, when a Saudi man assigned to a seat next to mine would balk at the idea of sitting next to a woman. The cabin crew would then scramble to find a female passenger willing to switch seats with him.

  One of my first features out of the kingdom was about how Valentine’s Day was celebrated in a country where genders were not allowed to mix publicly. Some families were so strict that they did not allow their daughters to meet with male cousins or in-laws once they reached puberty. “Sometimes, while walking down the street or in a mall, I would wonder if the man walking past me was a relative,” one Saudi woman told me.

  I had no clue if Saudis even knew about Valentine’s Day, so in early February 2002, I went into a gift shop across the street from my favorite shawarma place to investigate. There were Valentine’s Day gifts in the back of the shop: teddy bears with “Love” on one paw and “Me” on the other; baskets of plastic red fruits and flowers; messages of love expressed in poetry. “Officially, there’s no Valentine’s Day here, but there are many items you can choose from,” said the salesman. Like many residents of the kingdom, he was so used to such contradictions that he said the words with a straight face.

  I learned that Saudis buy their Valentine’s Day gifts as early as possible, well ahead of the muttawa
’s raids on shops shortly before February 14, when they would confiscate every red, white, and pink item that they came across in stores. A salesman said he was once detained for a couple of days because he was wearing a white top during one of the raids. “They accused me of celebrating Valentine’s Day,” he said. Flower shops were also a target at this precarious time of the year. I heard stories of salesmen ordered to trample on red roses. The shops looked bizarre during the few days before Valentine’s Day, after the flush of red and pink had been forcibly removed.

  Restaurants, meanwhile, received leaflets from the religious police ordering them not to decorate tables with red candles, roses, or tablecloths, dim the lights, or even play music on February 14. At one restaurant, a waiter told me in exasperation that the police had given him a CD with a recording of the sound of running water that he could play for the diners to soothe their nerves, instead of music. But it had the opposite effect. Many were annoyed. “They kept asking us to turn off the water,” he said.

  I was surprised to find that in such a restricted environment, with no cinemas, mixed-gender cafés, gyms, or bars, young couples still found ways to date. Roughly half of all Saudis at that time were under the age of eighteen, and for them, life was boring. They were under constant scrutiny from the government, which had begun trying to understand, following the September 11 attacks, what drove young men into the arms of militants. On the weekends, the streets were packed with men driving around, hoping to catch glimpses of a woman—any woman—in the back of a chauffeur-driven car. Often, while I was stuck in traffic, young men would slam Post-its or papers with their mobile phone numbers scribbled on them on the window of my car. That was one way to pick up women. Another was to go to the mall and throw the little slips of paper at the feet of women covered head to toe in black. Dating consisted mostly of long phone conversations or meetings abroad for those who could afford it. When Bluetooth became popular, I went to a mall to report on how the technology made it easier for Saudis to connect. I called a man whose number appeared in my vicinity to interview him. He turned out to be eighteen and desperate to hear a woman’s voice on the phone.