Daring to Drive

by Manal al-Sharif

  I was also consumed by religious guilt. I had broken the prohibitions against having contact with a man outside of my family. I had done wrong, I believed. My inner turmoil was made worse by the gossip spread by the girls who worked in K.’s department. Once I told one of my female lunch companions, “You know, the gossip of the girls in the other department has become so painful that I’ve decided not to be around them anymore.”

  Her response stung: “Make sure your enemy has nothing to hold against you, Manal.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked her. “What do they have?”

  “I swear to God, you are very well aware of what you are doing,” she replied. “I don’t need to explain any more than that.”

  There was another case of infatuation in K.’s department. One of my lunch companions, Dalia, didn’t return the affections of an older colleague, but he pursued her anyway. She complained frequently of his harassment, but that didn’t stop gossip about her from spreading. Someone told her that I was behind it: they claimed that I was calling her honor into question in order to draw attention away from K. and me.

  I was sitting at my desk, writing a report, when Dalia stormed in. “Who are you to talk about me,” she screamed, “you slut, you lowlife, you bitch! Look at yourself and K. first before you throw your dirt at other people.” Then she spat in my face.

  It was horrible. I had never gotten into a public fight; even in primary school, my sister had been disgusted by my refusal to fight back. I didn’t even know how to return an insult. I finally understood why my sister had complained to Mama about her not letting us play with the street children. I realized the value of becoming hardened to these words and learning how to defend ourselves.

  I told K. what these other women had said. I was caught in an untenable situation: gossip about K., the fallout over my decision to briefly stop wearing the abaya, my drinking coffee with foreign male colleagues, my family facing pressure because I was living alone. I asked K. whether he would approach my father to ask for my hand in marriage but we could not get beyond the subject of Aramco and the niqab. Dalia’s words (“You bitch!”) and the contemptuous looks I received from my old university classmate every morning were eating away at me inside. There wasn’t a single person I trusted except my friend Malak, back in Mecca. But she couldn’t help; she was just as confused as me.

  Things continued in this vein until Mama came to visit. At the end of her stay, I accompanied her to the Aramco airport. (Aramco has its own airport and aircraft, which the employees and their families can use.) She called me the next day.

  “The officer responsible for issuing boarding passes admired you very much,” she informed me excitedly. “He asked me about you after you left. He took my number and his mother called me today to inquire about you and him getting engaged.”

  I had long objected to the manner in which these proposals were made, but this one was different: it offered a way out from my daily torment, and that was all that mattered now. “Yes,” I told Mama, “I give my consent.”

  She was very happy, and I miserable. I sent a text to K. informing him that our relationship was over: “Someone has asked for my hand in marriage, and I have given my initial consent.” I didn’t get any response, and I knew it was the end.

  The next day my mother received a call from a Saudi mother. When she called to tell me, I assumed that the shoufa meeting with the airport employee’s mother had been arranged. But it had been K.’s mother on the other end of the line. “We wish to pay a visit to you and your husband in Jeddah,” she had told Mama.

  I told my mother to forget about the first suitor. The date was set, and I booked a ticket to Jeddah to be there for K.’s family’s visit.

  After all the sharp-tongued gossip, I was eager for the other girls to learn of my engagement. I put aside thoughts of the arguments about the niqab, about my resignation from Aramco, about everything else. I entered the office the next day with my head held high, and told one of my lunch companions, “K. approached me officially about our engagement.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked. “I don’t find the two of you at all compatible. And he’s very arrogant.”

  I didn’t give her opinion much weight; I didn’t give any opinion much weight. What mattered to me was that the gossip would stop. I hoped that the news would reach Reem and Dalia, and sure enough it did. Reem offered her congratulations to K., and next thing I knew he was calling to berate me. In the midst of screamed insults, I understood one thing: that if the news of our engagement reached any more of his work colleagues, everything would be over.

  “Do not ever think that you can ever be my wife while you’re working here,” he told me. “On the day we get married, you will resign from Aramco, and until that day, the subject of our engagement is to remain a secret. I am ashamed that my future wife is revealing her face and working with men.”

  On the day of our engagement meeting, he was still angry and we weren’t talking. Mama met his mother and K. met Abouya and my brother.

  For the first time, my father offered calm advice. “My daughter,” he said gently, “I don’t think he is a good fit for us. He thinks very highly of himself, what with him being an only son. You will become very weary with him.”

  But my father had no idea how weary I already was. “Abouya,” I wanted to tell him, “I am willing to have a man trample my dignity if it silences the girls who are slandering my reputation every day.” But, as always, I didn’t say a thing.

  I was also deeply troubled by guilt. I thought I would never be cleansed of my sin unless K. became my husband.

  The marriage ceremony was scheduled, but nothing else was resolved. On the good days, I loved him passionately; on the bad ones, I hated him. We screamed and hurled insults and hung up on each other. But there was no going back now. I could not back out of the wedding. In preparation for our life together, I even had surgery to repair some of the damage caused by my childhood female circumcision.

  On the day of our wedding, K. wasn’t speaking to me again. I can’t remember why. The problems flowed together like drops of water until they became indistinguishable from one another; all that remained was the fast-moving river that formed in their wake. Even my father’s cousins were unhappy; tribal rules dictated that our family’s girls not marry outside the Ashraf tribe. But the wedding was proceeding.

  My father had decided that the marriage contract ceremony would be held at the Grand Mosque in Mecca, with my uncle serving as one of the witnesses. I did not attend my own ceremony. I was sitting in a beauty salon in Jeddah, getting ready for the celebratory dinner afterward. I didn’t stand in front of the sheikh, and wasn’t asked whether I accepted K. as my husband. My answers were of no consequence anyway; the men returned from Mecca with the wedding contract just the same.

  “Now you are my wife” were his first words to me after the ceremony. “I won’t allow you to uncover your face after today.”

  We had reached a temporary accommodation over my continuing to work: it would be permitted after our ceremony, for the signing of the marriage contract, on April 1, but had to stop once we held our official wedding party on August 26—in Saudi culture, these are two different events and not always held at the same time. In other countries, this period between the marriage contract and the wedding party would be equivalent to an engagement, but in Saudi, a girl may not speak to her fiancé without having her official marriage documents completed and signed. K. knew that I was supporting my family financially. I still paid half the rent of the apartment in Jeddah and all the related bills, still gave Mama and my brother an allowance each month. I had borrowed from the bank twice—first to buy a used car for my brother, and later to buy a new taxi for my father, to replace his run-down old one. I was still paying back these loans. But K. quickly became disconsolate over my continued employment. He was determined: it was either my job or him.

  I was desperate to keep both, so I proposed concessions, one after the other, but whenever I
offered a concession in return for his changing his mind about Aramco, he flung back another demand. We never reached a compromise, and it seemed we never would.

  After the ceremony, I took some time off for vacation, during which K. reminded me daily that I should wear the niqab or consider our relationship finished. I had been wearing the black abaya in the workplace, but I had covered my hair with a colored shawl in place of a black veil. I had thought long and hard and was finally persuaded that it was okay for a Muslim woman to show her face. K., however, was ashamed for his wife to reveal her face in front of other men. I bought a niqab, barely believing that I was going to wear it again. How would I make presentations? How would I participate in meetings? How would I keep my colleagues’ respect? One day showing my face, the next appearing in a niqab. Perhaps it was a blessing that I was moving to a new department for a temporary assignment.

  Just as K. demanded, I returned to work after our April 1 marriage ceremony with the black niqab over my face. The news spread quickly to my old department, and I received emails from some of my old colleagues: “Congratulations, Manal, on having chosen the right path.” How odd it is that we judge a woman by her clothes and the place she eats lunch and the subjects she talks about with her colleagues on her coffee break, yet we don’t judge a man if he doesn’t grow his beard or if he works with women or speaks to them. Why do Saudi women allow subjugation to a man and adhere to men’s rules and conditions? Why did I?

  The niqab had a bizarre effect on me; without intending to, I became more and more introverted. I should have been competing with my workmates when we delivered presentations, but I found myself holding back. I no longer fearlessly entered into debates: such behavior didn’t seem to fit with my new attire. Because no one at work could see my facial expressions, I would even carry a card with a happy face on one side and a sad face on another, so I could display my feelings. Otherwise, the niqab numbed me.

  K.’s dominion over my life continued. It seemed that he wanted to change everything about me. “Don’t walk quickly like a man does, don’t talk in a loud voice, don’t talk to your workmates about anything except work. You will not make the next business trip on your own. Your brother will accompany you.” Sure enough, my brother was forced to leave university for a full week to accompany me on a business trip to Hanover, Germany; he was twenty-one years old, still considered a minor under Saudi law and needing Abouya’s permission to get a passport, but his job was to supervise me. Married life was supposed to be joyous, but I was very unhappy. My misery increased when we set the date for our official wedding, and with it, the date of my resignation.

  One day, K. passed by my office at lunchtime to see me talking with a man from the office next door. That was when we hit rock bottom. The subject of the conversation was perfectly ordinary—a film I had seen with K. over the weekend in Bahrain—and it was conducted from behind the niqab, but it was not related to work, and that meant it was strictly prohibited. I was only aware of K.’s presence when I saw his shadow leaving. My heart sank, and I timidly proceeded to his office.

  “Out of my office, slut!” he screamed, his words like a physical blow. He raved as if he had caught me in an act of great betrayal. Worse, his colleagues in the adjoining offices could hear everything.

  I tried to talk to him after work; I sent a text message to apologize. His reply was stinging.

  I thought we were finished, but I persisted, and he finally deigned to visit me. “If your intention is to divorce me,” I said, “then divorce me and release me.” And he said the words “You are divorced.” Under Islamic law, uttering those words is all that is required for a man to divorce his wife.

  I wanted my torment to end. I taunted him by making the sounds of zaghareet, a call we traditionally make during times of celebration. “Please leave the apartment,” I told him. “I don’t want to see you ever again.”

  But then, next day, when I began to gather up his gifts—I wanted him out of my life completely—the yearning for him began to return. I called another friend, Alia, whose first engagement had ended in separation: I knew that she’d be the most understanding of all my friends.

  “Alia, I don’t want to be weak,” I said. “I want to forget him, I don’t want to call him and beg him to come back to me, like I have done every other time. I still love him, but it’s a dangerous love, the sort of love that makes you hate your life and hate yourself.”

  Alia took me to Khobar Corniche. As we walked along, I remembered, here was where we once sat; here we saw a flock of migrating flamingos, resting; here we ate popcorn . . . everything reminded me of him. I gave Alia my mobile phone; I didn’t want to give in and call him.

  After a week, my tears and my longing began to subside. I busied myself with my work and decided that I would remove the niqab when I returned to my division at the end of the assignment. I would pass by every man who sent an email congratulating me on my choice, and greet him so that he saw my face.

  Then I received an email from K. It was a letter of apology, his first ever. He wrote to me of how he had been reckless, of how he still loved me and could not live without me. He wanted us back together, he said, and he would have no other wife in the world but me. I deleted his message without replying. I was not going back to him.

  Next, I received a call from his older sister, a religious woman who was a professor at the university. Up until now, K. and I hadn’t disclosed our problems; they had escalated in private and ended in private, without a single person knowing. This had given a false impression to everyone—including my family—that we were happy. On the phone, K.’s sister listened quietly to my side of the story.

  She advocated patience. “If a woman marries a man, it is her duty to change her personality and her life to align with his,” she told me. She told me of how I was at fault for speaking to men about things that did not concern work: “A man’s jealousy must not be underestimated.” Her words transported me back to the religious lectures of my schooldays, to when we had sat on the hard ground of the school courtyard as we listened to the sheikhs, with no carpets for cushioning. The sun would blaze down upon us, until our clothes were almost too hot to touch. K.’s sister quoted from the hadiths, the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which compel women to obey their husbands, and reminded me that my entry to paradise was inextricably linked to K.’s satisfaction with me.

  I felt extremely guilty, but I told her that my mind was made up. “I’m waiting for my papers,” I said. “Please ask him not to delay them.” I hung up, convinced that I could never atone for my sins.

  One day, after returning home from work, my landline rang with a call from an unknown number. It was K. He begged me to look out of the window. His car was parked in front of our building. “Why are you here?” I asked.

  “I’m coming up to your apartment now,” he said. “Please open the door.”

  “Why should I open the door for you? When will you understand that it’s over? I cannot continue like this. To be alone and happy is better for me than to be with someone and miserable.”

  I heard him crying on the other end of the line. “I still love you madly,” he said weakly. “I can’t imagine my life without you.”

  I felt myself wavering. Behind all the do’s and don’ts and domination, was there really a heart tender enough to cry? There was nothing but my silence and the sound of his tears.

  I put on my abaya, went down to the car, and got into the passenger seat beside him. As I watched his tears, all I wanted was to wipe them away. Instead, I took his hand and squeezed it tightly between mine.

  I went back to him once more, full of hope that this incident would be enough to change everything.

  The wedding party took place, and we returned from the honeymoon. I went back to my old office, and I didn’t wear the niqab, though I was under oath to put it on the moment I left the building. My problems at work were resolved. But no one knew what happened when our door closed each night.

  Afte
r the wedding, I had to get used to leading a double life. I hid that I worked in Aramco from his extended family and friends, and I wore the niqab when I was with him so that his acquaintances wouldn’t see my face. To silence a few gossiping mouths, I had sacrificed everything.

  Our marriage was a continuation of the same tiresome fights of our courtship. All that changed were the insults I was subjected to. Whereas his slurs had previously been directed at me alone, now they extended to my family. I learned to respond to the insults against me and even to forgive them, but what he said about my family was impossible to forgive or forget. He knew exactly how deeply he hurt me. He scoffed at me because my mother was Libyan and my father was a taxi driver. He told me repeatedly of the concessions he had made in becoming associated with me, a girl of lower social standing than himself. (It was only much later that one of my friends said in surprise, “But Manal, your tribe is one of the most highly respected in all of Saudi Arabia. It was he who improved his social standing by marrying you.”)

  Sometimes I would challenge him. “Have you ever once tried asking without yelling to see the result?” I would say. “Whenever you ask something from me by commanding or prohibiting, I feel less and less well disposed toward you and I become more and more stubborn.”

  His response was always the same: “My friends always tell me that you are Hejazi [referring to the region where I’m from, the Hejaz, literally the ‘barrier’ region], and if I don’t treat a Hejazi woman in a degrading way, then she will take advantage of me.”

  His older religious sister was forever reminding me that I was the woman and he the man, and that it was my duty to tolerate everything for the sake of obedience and comfort and his satisfaction. His satisfaction was God’s satisfaction, she would remind me, and his wrath God’s wrath.

  The only thing that made life easier was that after our wedding celebration, I moved to his family house, where we lived with his mother and sisters. I loved them very much, and they loved me. His mother had the tenderness and affection of my late aunt Zein. She never interfered, but I knew she was upset. I asked her to pray to God that our souls would be calmed. I still loved her son. And I was pregnant.