by Jean Sasson
With teary eyes glistening, Reema looked at me and said, “Sultana. I have wearied of worrying about your sinful conduct. That promise has been a great burden, for I am a Muslim who not only prays the five obligatory daily prayers, but who prays on many other occasions. A promise made to my dear mother can never be broken, so I know that I must pray for you until I pass from this earth. But now I pray that you are no longer a thief and my prayers have been answered!”
The room burst with the sound of eight other voices, for each of my sisters was whooping with laughter, screaming over the sounds of the others. Once calm returned, we made the discovery that my mother had requested and received the identical promise from each and every sister! Each had been convinced that she was the only sibling privy to the secret that her baby sister was a little thief! For twenty years, none had broken her promise by telling. When the truth of the situation came over us, our wild and hysterical laughter could be heard throughout Nura’s palace.
I felt a keen sense of relief. Surely I was protected by many of God’s angels, for each of my sisters was devout and said many daily prayers.
In a joking manner, Tahani asked me point-blank. “Sultana, we would like to know if God has answered our prayers. Have you taken anything not belonging to you since the time of your youth?”
I could see that my sisters expected me to reply in a negative manner, for they could not imagine that I was still a petty thief. I could not keep my face from a trembling smile, and I began to fidget, remembering Ali’s Wonder Garment, which was packed away with my belongings in the room that I was occupying.
Surprised at my hesitant reaction, Nura said, “Sultana?”
“Wait a moment,” I said, and ran to get the garment I had stolen from Ali’s home.
No one could believe her eyes or ears when I returned to the room wearing Ali’s underpants, and when I read the instruction sheet and placed two bananas into the special “strategic” pouch, Nura tried to be firm in her disapproval, but hysterical laughter overwhelmed my sisters, and three had to leave the room, while another claimed that she had wet her pants.
We could not control our glee, even after three of Nura’s servants came running into the palace, fearful of the tremendous noise they had heard from distant gardens.
After calm returned, the telephone rang, and our thoughts turned to more serious matters. The caller was Nashwa asking for her mother, Sara. It seemed that Nashwa was telephoning from Monaco to complain to her mother about her cousin Amani. My daughter had been following her cousin in Monaco and had appointed herself a one-woman “vice and social corruption committee.”
Nashwa’s indignation was running high, for Amani had gone so far as to take her cousin’s makeup, nail polish, and sunglasses, saying that for Nashwa to wear such things made her a violator of Islamic mores!
Nashwa told her mother that if someone did not control Amani, she was going to have three French friends follow her that evening and strip off her clothes, leaving her clad only in her underwear in an area filled with tourists. That should get the prude’s mind set on topics other than Nashwa’s morality.
The evening’s conversation shifted away from Ali’s under- pants, and none of my sisters could shake the irony of Sultana’s daughter caught in a religious fervor while Sara’s child was happily lounging in discos.
I left the room for a moment to call Kareem, advising him of the tension between our child and her cousin. My husband said that he had already decided to keep Amani by his side until she was safely returned to Riyadh, for our daughter had that very day confronted the manager of a hotel in Monte Carlo, demanding that he provide separate elevators in his establishment for men and women, and advising him that unrelated members of the same sex had no business confined together in such close quarters.
I rolled my eyes in disbelief, agreeing when Kareem declared that Amani should be put into counseling when they returned to the kingdom. Maha’s successful recovery from her earlier mental unbalance had turned Kareem into a staunch believer of psychiatric counseling.
I lived a short moment of relief, thinking of how Maha had rejoined our family as a responsible girl. My oldest child’s thoughts now centered on her education and plans for a normal life.
When I reentered the room, my sisters were involved in a heated discussion of the threat of militant fundamentalism, which was now challenging our family’s leadership of Saudi Arabia, and my thoughts returned to Amani and her extreme interest in her faith. Each of my sisters stated that her husband had expressed great fear of the growing gap between the monarchy and the pristine ideological movement now gathering power. The Islamic fundamentalist leaders are known to be young, educated, and urbanized. This group preaches an uncompromising return to the Koran and is on a collision course with our regime, which is linked to the modernization and Westernization of the kingdom.
I said little even though I had done much investigation of the movement, for my own child was a part of an extremist group that had indicated opposition to the monarchy. I felt too close to the subject at hand and made myself busy preparing pillows to place behind Reema’s head.
I asked myself, what disturbances would I live to see in the land I called home? Would my own child be a part of the opposition that brought down the legitimate government of Saudi Arabia?
When talk of the Muslim extremists ran dry, Reema said she had another bit of news that she wished to share.
I hoped that another one of my sins was not going to be made public knowledge, and I tried to keep a blank face.
Reema spoke without emotion, saying that Saleem had made plans to take another wife.
While our mother had been greatly humiliated by our father’s taking four wives, Reema was the first of my sisters to undergo such an ordeal.
My chest tightened and my eyes flooded with tears, but Reema asked that none of us cry, for she would happily live her life as an ignored wife. Nothing could shake her resolve to live a life of peace, so long as she was not separated from her children. She declared in a strong voice that she was happy, but Reema’s eyes spoke a different truth.
I knew my sister had loved Saleem with a true and honest love. Reema’s reward for being a faithful wife and loving mother had not come to her on earth.
For her sake, Reema’s sisters made a pretense of belief and congratulated our sister on her small victory.
Nura announced that Nada had once more become Ali’s wife. Our brother had signed a document giving Nada wealth in her own right, along with a trip to Paris to purchase diamonds and rubies fit for the queen of England.
When Tahani asked how he had overcome the religious edict that forbade him to remarry Nada, I was not surprised to hear that Ali had hired a Saudi cousin to wed Nada without consummating the union. After the marriage, a divorce had taken place. Then Ali and Nada had wed again.
Remembering the teachings of Islam concerning such deeds, I told my sisters that what Ali had done was not allowed. The Prophet himself said that God curses men who are parties to such an arrangement, for it is nothing more than a trick against God and is considered a grave matter.
“Who is going to intervene?” Sara asked.
Nura admitted the truth—no one. “But God knows,” she added, and each of us felt great sympathy for Ali, for he had piled yet another sin upon his soul.
The evening was coming to an end when the telephone rang once again. One of Nura’s servants came and said that Tahani was wanted on the telephone.
Those of us who had left our loved ones in Monaco thought perhaps there was another crisis and told Tahani to spare us the details of our children’s follies.
When we heard her cry out, we rushed to her side. Once she replaced the telephone on the hook, it took us many moments to calm our sister, and our fears were high that a member of our family had met with misfortune.
A grief-stricken Tahani finally spoke. “Sameera has died.”
No one could speak, no one could move.
Could it
be true?
I counted on my fingers, trying to calculate the number of years that dear girl had spent locked in the woman’s room, a padded cell in the home of her savage uncle.
“How long?” Sara asked, seeing me struggle with my memories.”
“Almost fifteen years,” I told her.
“I have committed a grave sin,” Tahani confessed. “For many years I have asked God to take her uncle from this earth!”
We had heard that Sameera’s uncle was wrinkled and frail, and that knowledge had given us hope that after his death, Sameera would return to us.
I sarcastically commented, “We should have known that such a one could not be depended upon to die soon enough.”
Over the years, many had tried to win Sameera’s release, saying that her sin did not merit eternal earthly punishment, but her uncle felt that he alone knew the wishes of God, and his harsh verdict had not been lifted.
Sameera had been brilliant, beautiful, and sweet in temperament. What nature had given her, cruel fortune took away. As a result of her uncle’s unbelievable cruelty, Sameera died, completely alone, locked away in the darkest of rooms, kept from any human contact for fifteen long years.
Tahani began to sob, her cries chopping through her words. It took her many moments to reveal that Sameera had been buried on this day. Her auntie confided that despite her emaciation, Sameera was still beautiful when wrapped in the white linen shroud in which she would appear before God.
How could we bear the pain of her cruel death?
Choking back sobs, I tried to remember a verse from Kahlil Gibran on the question of death. I first whispered it, and as my memory of it returned, I slowly raised my voice, until all could hear me. “Only when you drink from the river of silence, shall you indeed sing. And, when you have reached the mountaintop, then you shall begin to climb. And, when the earth shall claim your limbs, then shall you truly dance.”
My sisters and I joined hands, remembering that we were as a chain—strong as the strongest link, weak as the weakest link.
As never before, we belonged to a sisterhood more powerful than that of our own blood. Never again would we sit back and wonder at the cruelty of men and the obscene arbitrariness of innocent female death brought about by men’s evil.
I said, “Let the world know that the women of Saudi Arabia are gaining strength in the knowledge that they are right.”
My sisters looked at me one by one, and for the first time I knew that each of them understood why I do the things that I do.
At that moment I promised myself that somehow the moral order of our world would be changed, and right would triumph someday.
The great human rights movement for women in Saudi Arabia has just begun and it will not be defeated by men of indoctrinated ignorance.
The men of my land will grow to mourn my existence, for I will never cease to challenge the evil precedents they have allowed to prevail against the women of Saudi Arabia.
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Update from Jean Sasson
The world as we know it was utterly changed on September 11, 2001. Few people were left untouched by the carnage brought against so many by so few. That eventful day even provoked military action. The haunting images of the war against terrorism were often tragic while others were uplifting, and none more so than the endearing smiles on the faces of the previously burqa clad women and girls of Afghanistan. Although our purposeful military mission was to seek justice and to stop suicide bombers from future odious acts, I have always believed that the emancipation of women is a freedom worth fighting for. A great imbalance is created in the world when women are treated as liabilities, as they are in many countries.
As the Afghani women celebrated, I rejoiced with them. As I listened to First Lady Laura Bush’s now famous radio broadcast about these women, I waited in anticipation, hoping that some golden words of hope would be cast to women in other countries. Consider the fact that women in Saudi Arabia are forbidden to drive or to participate in public life, or that newborn females have their spines snapped in India, or the outrage that men are acquitted for killing women who are raped in Pakistan, or that young girls are routinely forced into prostitution in Thailand.
I recently spoke with Princess Sultana and was not surprised when I learned that she, too, was hoping that the great victory for women in Afghanistan would magically sweep her world. She, as I, was disheartened when she saw that the time had not yet come when every democratic government will do the responsible thing and proclaim that freedom is just as important for women, as it is for men. Surely, the world now knows that what imperils women, imperils the world.
I thank you for following Princess Sultana’s true story by reading Princess Sultana’s Daughters. There is a third and final book in the Princess Trilogy series, titled, Princess Sultana’s Circle.
Jean Sasson
For additional information about Jean Sasson and her books, including maps, timelines, glossaries, and key facts about Saudi Arabia, please visit the author’s website: www.JeanSasson.com
