My brother suggested that I drive down Corniche Street again, the biggest street in the city of Khobar. There were always traffic cops on that street. So my brother, my sister-in-law, their baby, and five-year-old Aboudi got in the car. I got in as well, but unlike every other time that we had ridden together like this, I was behind the wheel. I was excited but terrified. I hoped having my family with me would offer some protection if I was harassed. As I drove, I asked my sister-in-law to take out her cell phone and make another video. I was already thinking about how I could post it on YouTube, a Part 2.
I drove for about thirty minutes until we reached Corniche Street, the steering wheel feeling comfortable—easy and familiar—in my hands. Right away, I saw the first traffic cop. I held my breath as we passed. But he did not wave me over. Nothing happened.
“We have the green light!” I shouted. “We have the green light! It’s okay!”
I kept on driving, watching the faces of the other drivers on the opposite side of the road. All of them stared, even swiveling their necks around as we passed. Some glanced down or looked away and then looked back, as if they could not believe what they were seeing: a woman driving. I looked them straight in the eye and smiled, as if to say, Yes, you are seeing a woman behind the wheel. Time finally to get used to it.
I continued until I reached an intersection. There, directly facing me, standing in the middle of the street, was another traffic cop. I came to the horrible realization that perhaps the first traffic cop had not reacted simply because he had not seen me. This time I was in full view. As the traffic cop looked at my vehicle, our eyes locked. When the light changed, I made a left turn, directly in front of him. I was barely through the lanes for oncoming traffic when I heard the command blaring over the police address system: “The Azera, pull over.”
“That’s us, Manal. Stop!” my sister-in-law called, her voice rising from the backseat.
“No, wait a minute,” I said. Perhaps, I rationalized, he meant a different Azera.
But then the police address system blared a second time, “The Azera, pull over.”
I jerked the car to a stop. I blew out a big breath as I saw him striding up to my window, the driver’s-side window. Then I saw that he was smiling.
“Are you from Saudi?” he asked. “Do you know, in Saudi, women don’t drive?” He looked at me, completely amused.
I smiled back and asked him his name. Then, caught up in the moment, I made a huge mistake. I told him my name. I handed over my brother’s Saudi license, my Massachusetts license, and the car’s registration. And then I added, “Sir, there is nothing in the traffic police code that says I cannot drive.”
The traffic cop inspected the documents, all of which were valid. With a surprised look and a big smile, he told us to wait and then called for backup. While we were waiting for the second officer, a black car stopped in the middle of the road and the man inside looked over at me, still sitting in the driver’s seat. “Who is this woman?” the man demanded.
The traffic cop answered. “Manal al-Sharif.”
The man in the black car must have known about the YouTube video, because he made a call that would change my life. Within ten minutes, a huge GMC vehicle raced up, its tires squealing as the driver hastily applied the brakes. I was now surrounded by vehicles on all sides, but this last one was the most terrifying. Painted on its side was the insignia of the Mutawa—the Saudi religious police. Two men quickly emerged, one was very heavy, the other thin. Their names, I would learn, were Abu Abdullah and Faisal, and they were from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
My brother immediately hopped out of the car and went to talk to them. Trying not to panic, I awkwardly shifted myself over to sit in the passenger’s seat.
The Mutawa are like an unmarked army, invisible and yet everywhere all the time. They are best described by one word, brutal. They patrol malls and markets to make sure shopkeepers close for prayer, and are known to shout at ordinary Saudis for wearing the wrong clothes or being insufficiently covered. The religious law is left to their own interpretation, and their application of that law arbitrary and unchecked. The Mutawa have chased vehicles when they believed the occupants have violated religious requirements, resulting in several deadly car crashes, including one in 2012, when a man died and his wife, five months pregnant, and two children were badly injured. Several news outlets reported that a member of the Mutawa demanded that a woman cover her eyes, because although every other part of her body was covered, her eyes were “too seductive.” When her husband asked them to leave her alone, a Mutawa officer stabbed the husband twice in the hand. The Mutawa severely beat a British man and his wife for using a women’s-only automatic teller machine inside a supermarket in the capital city of Riyadh. All of this the Mutawa do—and are allowed to do—in the name of God.
The two Mutawa officers began insulting my brother, calling him every horrible name they could think of. As the minutes passed, it was clear that the situation belonged to them. The first traffic cop and the second one who had joined him stood off to the side, powerless. The Mutawa were yelling that they would not permit such an “outrageous mixing of the sexes” as had apparently happened when I, a woman, sat in the driver’s seat next to a man.
“But I’m that man and she’s my sister!” argued my brother.
Eventually, the Mutawa grew tired of harassing my brother and approached me in the car. People stopped in the street to watch. I triple-checked that the doors were locked.
The fat Mutawa tapped on the car window and called me “bint”—a pejorative term for “girl.”
I cracked the window and called out to them, “First of all, pay your respects. You may call me Umm Abdalla”—meaning Abdalla’s mother, the appropriate form of address for a mother in Saudi society. “Secondly,” I said, “this is a traffic issue, not a moral issue. I was driving with a valid license, there’s nothing immoral about that. This is an issue for the traffic police, so I’m not going with you.” I closed the window.
Abu Abdullah and Faisal from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice were enraged. The heavy-set one pounded on the passenger side window, inches from my face. Like a furious, thwarted cartoon character, he pulled repeatedly on the handle of the locked door. Then he banged on the door. Spit flew from his mouth and collected on the glass as he bellowed at me over and over, “Get in our car! Come with us!”
I had seen countless videos online of the Mutawa harassing and assaulting sobbing women and children. I had watched them pull women by their scarves into Mutawa vehicles, like the GMC that was parked beside me. Many met with awful fates: detention, jail, and worse, scandals. “Over my dead body,” I said through the glass.
In the backseat of the now very hot car, my sister-in-law was crying. The children bawled, terrified. And the battery on my cell phone was dying. Before I shut it off to save what little power was left, I sent texts to two friends. “I’ve been stopped by the religious police for driving, please tweet about it.”
Traffic up and down the largest street in Khobar was at a standstill. Everyone had stopped to look at us. People were taking their own photos and videos. I felt like an animal in the zoo, captive and with no choice but to endure the endless stares.
For nearly an hour, the Mutawa tried to intimidate us. Finally, as dusk approached, my brother and I agreed to sit together in the backseat of his car and allow the two Mutawa to drive us to the traffic station. But that was not enough for them; they wanted my sister-in-law and the two children to come as well.
“They have nothing to do with it,” my brother insisted. He quickly hailed a taxi and placed his wife, their son, and Aboudi inside. It all happened so fast, I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
The next thing I knew, the Mutawa were driving my brother’s car. Beside us, stopped at the light, was the taxi with my sister-in-law and the two boys. My sister-in-law was holding her son on her lap, but Aboudi
was in a seat by himself, looking so panicked and alone. And I could do nothing. I could not take my own son in my arms and rock him, whispering to him that everything would be okay.
I thought, in that moment, of my own mother. I was here, in this seat, because despite all the years that she had fought for us to be educated, fought for us to have a future, my mother still could not change some of the most fundamental aspects of my present situation. But if I had courage, perhaps I could change my son’s. “So help me God,” I thought, “I will stick to this.”
I sat up as straight as I could and spoke directly to the Mutawa. “You know this is illegal. You know you have no right to drive our car,” I told them as we drove to the station. “After this, I can file a complaint against you. And I will.”
It was sundown when we reached the gates of the Thuqbah traffic station, which meant that it was prayer time. Within the compound, there was only a place for men to pray; no women were allowed. I saw a small window of opportunity.
“Can I sit in the car and wait?” I asked.
“Yes,” they said.
Once the men had walked off, I powered on my phone. Holding my breath, hoping the battery would last, I dialed one number. As quickly as I could, I explained where I was. “Please,” I said, “get the word out.”
On the other end of the line was a newspaper reporter from Al Riyadh. At least now I believed that I would not disappear without a trace. When the Mutawa, the traffic police officers, and my brother returned, we went inside the station. I was surprised to find the traffic police colonel waiting for us. I now was the only woman among six men.
With the workday over, the station was empty. The phones were silent. There were no fingers typing on keyboards, no papers being shuffled and restacked on desks; the only sounds were our footsteps as the colonel led us to his office. He unlocked the door and turned on the lights. When everyone was seated, he looked at the Mutawa and asked, “What’s going on?”
The men told him to ask my Wali al-Amr, meaning my male legal guardian. They assumed it was my brother. This is the standard treatment for Saudi women. We are expected to sit in silence while our male keepers speak for us, act for us, and ultimately decide for us. But I had not come this far to stay silent.
“He’s my little brother,” I said. “I should be his guardian.”
The Mutawa were shocked. I’m sure they wanted to slap me.
I explained to the colonel what had happened, and asked why, when this was a traffic disagreement, the Mutawa were involved.
“Do you know that what you did is illegal?” the colonel asked.
“Sir,” I replied, “I did not violate any traffic code. According to Section 32 of the Traffic Statute, there is no gender specification in the driver’s license application. In fact, there is nothing in the statute anywhere that says women can’t drive.”
He leaned back in his chair. “You can cite the statute?”
“Yes. I’ve been studying the code for days, sir.”
He sat still for a moment, silently assessing me. Finally he said, “Well, you need a Saudi license to drive here.”
“Sir, true, but,” I said, without blinking, “I am allowed to use my valid foreign driver’s license for up to three months until I get a Saudi one.” I reached into my bag and handed him my completed driver’s license application, glad I had been carrying it with me. I could nearly hear the colonel think, Oh my God, who the hell is this woman?
Waving his hand as if he were shooing off flies, the colonel said, “Put your papers away.” Then, turning to question my brother, he asked, “Did you give her the keys?”
“Yes, I did,” my brother answered calmly. “I am fine with her driving.”
“Are you for women driving?”
My brother was no longer just my brother at that moment, he was my friend and my ally. He told the colonel that as a petroleum geoscientist, he is often stationed in remote locations for weeks or longer, far away from his family. Because his wife can’t drive, she’s stranded. They don’t have a driver and he doesn’t trust a stranger around his pretty young wife and child. His car sits parked outside his home, worthless. Once, his wife got very sick and suffered for days until he returned.
“So, yes,” my brother answered, “I totally support women driving in this country.”
Looking over, I could see the clenched jaws of the Mutawa.
The colonel left the room to make a phone call. I turned to my brother, tilting back in my chair to face him, when one of the Mutawa snapped, “Look how you are sitting! Change how you sit! Behave!”
And so began the five hours my brother and I would spend at that station.
My bag was confiscated. We were taken to another room, and this one had a landline. I wanted to use it to check on my precious Aboudi. It was nearly bedtime. I wanted him to hear his mother’s voice wish him sweet dreams, so he might sleep soundly after everything that had happened. But when I asked to use it, the phone was ripped from the wall and taken away.
The day had long since ended. My brother and I performed our evening prayers as officials from different authorities began arriving at the station. We could hear their voices and the clipped sounds of their shoes as they moved across the hard, slick floor.
“Manal, they’re planning something,” my brother said in a low voice. He motioned with his eyes toward a few men who wore no uniforms. They were standing slightly apart and spoke only among themselves, monitoring everything else.
“Are those the Dababees?” I asked him under my breath.
“Yes,” he said grimly. It’s a nickname Saudis use for the Mabahith, the “domestic intelligence agency,” or secret police. Dababee literally means pushpin or tack—something with a sharp point that can stab you in an instant.
Panic was beginning to creep into my voice. “Why, why, why, why are they here?”
“I don’t know,” he answered. “Let’s not even talk about it.”
After some time, the colonel reappeared and introduced me to the chief of the Khobar Police. “Aren’t you Manal of June 17?” he asked.
So the head of the police knew about Women2Drive.
“Yes,” I answered.
“Why didn’t you wait until then? Why did you drive now?”
“There is no traffic code banning women from driving,” I said. How many times had I repeated that line? He didn’t reply, so I asked, “May I go now?”
“Not until we get orders from the governor’s office.”
“What?” I asked.
“We can’t release you until we get approval from the governor.”
I resumed sitting in silence. There was no reply I could make.
Around 10:00 p.m., the provincial governor’s office finally sent over a pledge for me to sign: I, Manal al-Sharif, will never drive on Saudi land ever again and I will stop the event on June 17.
The police chief asked that the part about June 17 be removed, and the governor’s office reissued the pledge. Now it simply said: I, Manal al-Sharif, will never drive on Saudi land ever again.
I looked at the pledge, at the blank lines awaiting my brother’s signature and mine. I hadn’t eaten. I hadn’t slept. My throat was hoarse. I wanted to see my son. It would have been so easy to sign it and leave.
“I don’t accept this,” I said. “I broke no code.” I made sure to speak slowly so they couldn’t miss my words.
“You . . . you have to sign it,” the police chief gently urged.
“If I don’t?”
“Then I fear we will have to hold you in detention until you do.” I think at that moment the police chief was very worried about precisely that.
“Sir, I broke no statute,” I said again. “Tell me now what code I broke, and I will sign. What code did I break?”
After a minute he said softly, “You broke orf.” In Saudi society, orf means tradition or custom, a practice or convention. It is not the official code.
I turned to the chief and said very deliberately, “I
want to hear both of you say it, please repeat it.”
“You broke orf,” the chief stated.
“Say it again.”
“Orf. You broke orf.”
“Good, we agree. I broke no traffic code.” It was a small victory, but I wanted to prove to at least the men in the room that I had broken no Saudi statute by driving.
“Still, you have to sign the pledge. Or else, sadly, we must put you in detention,” the police chief said.
My brother signed the pledge. I signed the pledge. I said to myself as I wrote my name, “I’m going to use the fact that I broke orf and no code to keep going.” Orf was not a reason not to drive. When it was done, I asked for a copy of the pledge. The answer was no.
It was after eleven when we were released from the station.
“I had no idea it would turn into this, I am so sorry. We didn’t mean to keep you here this late,” the chief said. His face and his words seemed genuine, and I wondered for a moment if he was sorry for more than the five hours that had passed.
We were halfway out the door when we were told that we couldn’t go home in my brother’s car. It had been impounded. If he wanted it back, he would have to plead his case at the governor’s office. Exhausted, my brother and I decided we would return in a few days to deal with his car and to file complaints. The traffic police called a taxi for us.
Just behind the taxi were three unfamiliar cars packed with men. We got in the cab and the driver sped off, with the three other cars following in close pursuit. One pulled near to us, and I watched as a man leaned out the window and pointed a long, probing camera lens at me. I never heard the click of the shutter, but I saw the explosion of the flash, lighting up the darkness, blinding me. I put on my scarf and sank as low as I could in my seat.
Saudi roads have checkpoints, where authorities can randomly stop you at any time. As we neared the checkpoint before the Aramco compound, we lost two of the cars, but the third one flashed its high beams, signaling that it wanted us to stop. My brother told the cabdriver to pull over at the checkpoint, and he got out of the car. The reporter following us was from the paper Al Yaum. He told my brother he wanted to talk to me. Pointing to the time on his watch, my brother said no. I squeezed my brother’s hand when he got back in the car and said thanks.
Daring to Drive Page 25
