Daring to Drive

by Manal al-Sharif

  But deciding to do it was one thing; actually doing it was another. I was filled with a combination of excitement and anxiety. I was about to become even more of a public face. I hadn’t slept much in the preceding two weeks and my small town house was bustling with energetic people who wanted to help with the campaign. It had become our de facto headquarters. We posted updates, but we also delegated. A Brazilian artist, Carlos Latuff, created a logo for the campaign that depicted a Saudi woman wearing a niqab sitting behind the wheel of a car with her hand raised in a victory sign. But I knew that we and I had to be careful. Women2Drive couldn’t be seen as an actual protest movement. I clung to the belief that if I could just show Saudi society that no harm would come if a woman drove, many of the other issues surrounding the campaign would simply vanish.

  I selected May 19, just a month shy of the June 17 Women2Drive day, as the day to make my video. I got up early that morning, after having once again slept very little. I didn’t have my son with me—he had spent the night with his grandmother at his father’s family home, which made it less stressful. I hadn’t told anyone in my family other than my brother what I was doing. Neither my parents nor my ex-husband knew, because they would simply try to discourage me. But my brother had supported me unconditionally. Since I had begun working on Women2Drive, he’d been to my house to offer his solidarity and support. I, in turn, felt fortunate to have a male relative who was in my corner, who understood that this cause was much bigger than me.

  I called my brother almost as soon as I got up, but didn’t reach him, so I made myself a strong cup of coffee, dressed in the most conservative outfit I owned, and laid my black hijab on the bed. I looked at myself in the mirror, and made a decision not to put on my usual kohl eyeliner. I knew I had to do everything to minimize my appearance so that people would focus only on the driving. After a few minutes, I left the bedroom and sat down at the dining room table, reviewing my driving plan. It would be simple but very visible, and the more I imagined it, the more I excited became. I dialed my brother’s number again. When he didn’t pick up, I texted him: “Where are u? Waiting for you to come. Time to drive!” Although we’d agreed to meet that day, and he had offered to accompany me, we had not arranged a definite time. I was a bit worried because in one of my tweets, I’d announced that I was going to drive that day and post the video on YouTube. I needed to drive, with or without my brother. And then I had an idea. I would ask Wajeha to accompany me.

  Without hesitating, I texted her, “What are you doing? Can you drive with me?” She texted back immediately that it was the fortieth day after her mother’s death and she needed to travel to a city about an hour away from Dhahran, where the ceremony would be taking place. A driver would be picking her up. I assured her that we would be finished before she needed to leave. She immediately answered, “Okay.”

  In the meantime, Ahmed, one of my campaign friends (the friend responsible for our Twitter account), had come to check on me. Because my brother was not available, I decided to ask Ahmed if he would accompany Wajeha and me: we needed a male driver to clear the security gates at the Aramco exit. Wajeha would be the film crew and Ahmed would be our designated driver until I slid over and took the wheel of my purple Cadillac SRX. I had spent several years saving my money for the car, a car that I would now for the first time be driving on actual Saudi kingdom streets. Ahmed smiled and agreed, promising, “I’ll drive you to my favorite café, get myself some ginger lemon tea, and leave you two ladies alone.” The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of another Saudi woman filming me. I told Ahmed that we should tweet about it.

  After about an hour, Ahmed and I left my house. We drove through the neatly groomed streets of the Aramco compound, past perfectly green lawns. Wajeha lived on the other side of the sprawling golf course, in a part of the compound where many Saudi employees had their homes. By the time we arrived at her house, it was almost eleven o’clock. We honked the horn and I texted her that we were out front, and she practically ran out the door. She looked very different from the day we had met for coffee, and yet she still made a statement. Her hair was neatly concealed beneath a black hijab, but she had on a bright pink abaya. Saudi women rarely wear anything but black abayas in public. When I saw Wajeha in pink, I giggled, thinking that she was even more fearless than me. No doubt she was thinking that if we got arrested, at least she’d look stylish.

  As she approached the car, Ahmed moved from the passenger’s side to the driver’s seat so we could exit the Aramco gate. I got out of the car and walked around to the passenger seat. Wajeha sat down in the back, and just as soon as she closed the door, she opened it again. “Oh, I forgot my ID card,” she said. “I better have it with me, just in case we get arrested.”

  Ahmed looked at me nervously, and I knew what he was thinking. “Don’t worry, Ahmed,” I said, “we’re not going to get arrested.”

  After Wajeha came back, she spoke excitedly. “Manal,” she said, “you’re a genius. This is great, filming yourself driving outside and posting it. I wish I had thought of this.”

  Ahmed smiled, looked in the rearview mirror, and turned the key in the ignition. After he turned onto the main street, I twisted my head slowly and looked back at the buildings behind us. As the neat Aramco skyline receded, it was as if I was leaving the safety of all that I knew.

  Outside the compound, Ahmed drove nervously, looking at the speedometer and then over at me and up at the mirror to see who might be behind us on the road. His anxiety was contagious, but I also felt a growing sense of exhilaration. After several blocks we passed the local police station, and then at last, we reached the café where Ahmed would get his ginger lemon tea. He pulled into the parking lot but didn’t park until we were well behind the building, out of sight. He got out of the car, but then spent a few minutes chatting with us. Finally I said, “Okay, Ahmed, go drink your tea. We have some places to drive to.”

  I moved to the driver’s seat and Wajeha moved to the front passenger seat, laughing. I took a deep breath and sat down inside the car and put my hands on the steering wheel. I still vividly remember the feeling of pulling the door closed and locking it. Although I was enclosed, at that moment, I felt like one of my father’s songbirds, let out of its cage and flying around the room. “Thank you, my friend,” I said to Ahmed out of the rolled-down window. “We’ll be all right, don’t worry.”

  As I fastened my seat belt, I could feel my hands shake slightly. I placed the key in the ignition, adjusted the rearview mirror, and pulled my black hijab close around my face to make sure no hair was visible. I reached for my sunglasses from inside my bag, placed them on my uncovered face, and took one last look at myself in the mirror. Then I looked over at Wajeha and asked, “You ready?” I didn’t wait for her reply.

  My heart began to beat faster as I turned the key, heard the engine catch, put my foot on the brake, and switched the car into reverse. My decision to drive had been made in a moment of anger, but now I felt pure calm rise up inside me. I was committed to driving because I was convinced, after having read and understood the traffic code, that there was nothing actually forbidding me from doing so. I believed it would be okay. So it was an odd combination of fear and fearlessness I felt as I pulled out onto the main road.

  I had already handed my iPhone to Wajeha and showed her how to turn on the camera and shoot the video. As the car glided down the street, I began to compose my thoughts for the video’s introduction. I wanted to declare in a clear, loud voice, “This is my right, the right to drive.” But instead, I turned the wheel of the car and gazed straight ahead, feeling the iPhone hovering close to my face. After chatting casually for a few minutes in Arabic, I said, “There’s something to be proud of in this country. There are people doing volunteer work, doing it without pay, to help the women of this country. We are ignorant and illiterate when it comes to driving. You’ll find a woman with a PhD, a professor at a college, and she doesn’t know how to drive. We want change in the
country.”

  As I turned the steering wheel, I could feel the words slip out of my mouth. It was hardly the stuff of protest; it was a conversation I had started simply to keep myself calm. At that moment, the driving did not feel all that different from the driving that I did on a daily basis inside the Aramco compound. But it was completely different. I felt Wajeha’s eyes on me and her presence as a witness. I felt the gaze of the camera as a witness. Like other people of my generation, who had been gathering in city squares and on street corners across North Africa and the Middle East, who were raising their voices and their hands and using their cell phones and cameras to stand up to repression, authoritarianism, and tradition, we were at that moment pushing back against one of Saudi Arabia’s most enduring cultural taboos. We were taking a chance to express the basic aspirations of Saudi women. With Wajeha beside me, I felt that we were now in “the driver’s seat of our own destiny.”

  As I kept driving, adjusting my hijab and sunglasses again, Wajeha added, “Today there was a report in Al Riyadh newspaper that a sister took her brother to the hospital in her car. But a woman is not just for an emergency. A woman has the same right as a man to live her daily life—in dignity,” she said. I nodded, even as I kept my eyes on the road.

  We continued, speaking about women who pay as much as a third of their monthly salaries to hire a private driver. Many of these drivers work for multiple women; what would be a ten-minute trip can take one or two hours as the driver circles the area, picking up all the other women. We talked about the hour-plus wait for a taxi during rush hour, about standing on the roadside as hired drivers humiliate us because they want more money than we are offering. We talked about mothers who cannot drop their children at school when their husbands are away, about mothers who put their ten-year-old sons behind the wheel so they can leave their homes. As we spoke, I negotiated the traffic, obeyed the lights and signs, and rounded the roadway’s curves.

  I looked left and turned down Corniche Street, heading toward the supermarket where I shopped for groceries each week—and where, previously, I could only go with a male driver. I let the steering wheel glide smoothly in my hands as I made the turn, looking out so I could make eye contact with any oncoming drivers. A silver Toyota SUV approached, and I saw the male driver lean slightly to his right and speak to a woman seated next to him. They looked at each other and then back at me. I smiled, and Wajeha asked, “Why are you smiling, Manal?”

  For a second, I turned to face the iPhone in her hands, smiled even wider, and said, “Because I am driving.”

  For several minutes, I circled the parking lot, watching as various drivers noticed me, until finally I slowed the car and turned into a parking space. Then I said, “Come on, Wajeha,” I said. “Let’s go shopping.” Wajeha turned off the cell phone, and together we exited the car.

  The parking lot was crowded with foreign male drivers, standing outside their cars, waiting for their female clients. Their eyes widened and followed us; I could hear several whisper to each other in Hindi or Urdu. But no one confronted us. I felt a bit like a child breaking the rules, but I also knew this was far more serious than a childhood prank. Every gaze seemed to burn into my skin.

  “Wajeha, let’s get some groceries,” I said. “I’d like to get my son a treat.” She nodded and waved her hand, indicating that I should enter the supermarket first. I pulled my hijab tight around my head and didn’t remove my sunglasses. From just inside the store, I saw a man lean over and whisper something to his coworker. We moved through the aisles, placing items in our shopping basket: a bottle of water, a piece of fruit, a candy bar for Aboudi. At the checkout counter, the two of us stood side by side, saying nothing as I pulled out my wallet. We walked proudly through the parking lot, opened the car doors, and got back in. Only then did Wajeha and I look at each other and break into spontaneous laughter, calling out together, “We did it!”

  I placed my slightly sweaty hands on the wheel, turned on the ignition, and said, “Okay, Wajeha, let’s keep driving.” She began to film again, but I barely spoke. Instead, I took in the space and power of the car and the undeniable sense of victory. I knew then that no matter what my future held, I had done something important and meaningful. That day, I felt I was driving for all Saudi women—and in a sense, I was.

  As I drove, I contemplated what route my driver usually took after leaving the grocery store. But I also knew that I did not yet have that freedom. After a few more miles, I guided the car back in the direction of the café where we’d dropped off Ahmed. I drove neither fast nor slow, but I could feel myself looking at the familiar streets and buildings that I had never seen from a vantage point other than the passenger seat. I couldn’t help glancing in the direction of the police station as we passed, wondering if any policemen would catch a glimpse of me.

  It was the same police station where two days later I would be arrested and detained.

  12

  * * *

  * * *

  In the Kingdom of Saudi Men

  * * *

  * * *

  I drove on Thursday, May 19, on what was then the first day of the Saudi weekend. That night I uploaded the video to YouTube. It was completely in Arabic, with no subtitles, my hair was covered, and I was wearing big sunglasses. It was like someone’s home movie. I hoped that most of the people who had watched the previous video might see this one too, but not leave so many nasty comments. The next day was Friday, Islam’s weekly holiday, a time for prayer, for sermons from imams, and for whatever public punishments the kingdom might mete out. The following morning, Saturday, I went to work as usual. Except that nothing would ever again be the same.

  One of my colleagues walked into my office and, holding on to the lip of my desk for support, he told me that my video was the most watched YouTube video in all of Saudi Arabia and one of the top videos in the world, with more than 700,000 views and a 20:80 like:dislike ratio. At first I thought he was joking, but then I checked online. Someone living in Australia had posted in the comment section, “I have no clue why the hell everyone is watching this.” But every Saudi knew exactly why he or she was watching. And the reaction was quickly overwhelming.

  Aramco publishes a private directory listing the names and contact information for its employees. It didn’t take long for angry strangers to find me. My inbox was clogged with messages calling me a “whore” or worse. “If I ever see you in the street . . .” one began. I immediately deleted it. Another started with the words, “We are digging your grave.” A third, “You have just opened the gates of hell on yourself.” I began forwarding the worst ones to Aramco security. Even after reading only a few words, I could feel the writers’ anger seething across cyberspace. The phone on my desk was ringing constantly, some callers doing nothing but breathing on the end, but some screaming, “You drove a car! Your face was uncovered!” It didn’t matter that a group of Saudi clerics had acknowledged a woman’s right to uncover her face or that there was no statute explicitly banning women from driving. I endured rants about my bringing chaos (fitna) to the country. On YouTube, I disabled the video’s comment section because about half of the four hundred comments were vile. At lunchtime, two strangers stopped at my cubicle and read my nameplate. They stared, but said nothing and then left. I felt nervous that someone would try to hurt me.

  Not long after, I went to my boss and requested two weeks off; I didn’t want to cause any trouble at work. My request was verbally accepted, but I was determined to finish out the current day as if nothing had changed. Soon the department manager came to my door.

  “I want you to listen, Manal,” he told me. “I want you to be very careful with the things that you are doing. We don’t like it, and we don’t want the company’s name involved, in any way.” And then he asked this: “How are you going to change anything by doing what you’re doing?”

  I looked at him and replied, “It’s 2011. It’s time.”

  He asked me again to be careful, to think of my s
on and my family, and to think of all that I was risking, including my job.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “I have things under control.” But I also did not want anyone to doubt my commitment.

  The chaos of that morning had thwarted one key piece of my plan. I had intended to go to the local traffic station during my lunch break and apply for a Saudi driver’s license. I had already checked; there was no statute prohibiting me from doing this. I still had my valid American license, and I had completed the Saudi application form. All I needed was my younger brother acting as my mahram to accompany me. But he was unable to leave work, I couldn’t find a taxi, and I was occupied by angry emails and harassing phone calls. The license application waited, folded inside my bag.

  After work, I picked up Aboudi, got into a taxi, and together we headed to my brother’s house. I told him about the video and the responses. But now I had a new concern: how could I be certain the women who drove on June 17 would be safe? After the forty-seven women who had driven in Riyadh in 1990, only the occasional woman here and there had dared to drive. In each of those instances, it appeared that the woman had been brought to a Saudi traffic police station and her guardian summoned. The women were forced to sign pledges agreeing never to drive again.

  When I had driven two days before, I hadn’t encountered any traffic police and I hadn’t been stopped. I had hoped that no one would stop any woman driving on June 17, but after the reaction to the video, I was worried. “I need to find out,” I told my brother. “Let’s go now and I’ll drive by the traffic police.”

  My brother agreed. He told me, “I will be with you until the end,” and handed me the keys to his car, a Hyundai Azera sedan. But my sister-in-law was upset and begged us not to go. I told her that it was late in the day, the officers would want to go home quickly, and there was no rule that made my driving illegal.