by Jean Sasson
Makkah: The holiest city of Islam, where God revealed his will to Prophet Mohammed. It is the destination of millions of Muslim pilgrims each year.
Malaz: A residential section of Riyadh popular with wealthy Saudis
Manama: The capital city of Bahrain, an island nation connected to Saudi Arabia by a causeway
Mena House: A popular hotel in Cairo frequented by tourists
Mismaak: The fortress in Riyadh used by the Rasheed clan in the battle of 1902 that returned the Al Sa’uds to power
Mutawa: The morals police of Islam
Najd: The traditional name for central Arabia. Riyadh is located in this region. The inhabitants are generally known for their conservative behavior. The Al Sa’ud family are Najdis.
Nasiriyah: A residential section of Riyadh inhabited by members of the Royal Family and exceptionally wealthy Saudis
Qisas: A crime committed against a person. The victim or the victim’s family can retaliate against the one convicted of such a crime.
Qiyas: The method of agreement of new legal principles in Islam Ramadan The Islamic month of fasting when Muslims worldwide celebrate God’s gift of the Koran to man
Riyadh: The capital of Saudi Arabia
Riyal: The Saudi riyal is the currency for Saudi Arabia
Shari’a: The law of God for those belonging to the Islamic faith
Shiite: The branch of Islam that split from the Sunni majority over the issue of Prophet Mohammed’s successor
Souq: The native marketplace or bazaar
Sunna: The traditions of the Islamic faith as addressed by Prophet Mohammed
Sunni: The majority orthodox branch of Islam. Saudi Arabia is 95 percent Sunni.
Suras: The chapters of the Koran. There are 114 Suras.
Taif: A mountain resort village in Saudi Arabia located near Makkah
Tazir: Crimes of misdemeanor under Islamic law
Thobe: A long shirt-like garment worn by Saudi men. Traditionally, the thobe is made of white cotton, but during the cool winter months men often wear a thobe of a heavier fabric and a darker color. (As soon as male children can walk, they are dressed in tiny thobes and headdresses, identical to their fathers’.)
Ulema: Islamic religious scholars who regulate religious life in Saudi Arabia
Yemen: A country located in the southwest corner of the Arabian peninsula. In the past, many Yemenis provided much of Saudi Arabia’s manual labor force. When the government of Yemen remained loyal to Saddam Hussein during the Gulf War, most Yemeni laborers were expelled from the kingdom.
Author Jean Sasson Speaks
Why do I care so much about the plight of women of the world? The answer is simple: I can't help it.
I grew up in the United States, in a tiny town down South. In my daily experience, women enjoyed full freedom to do as they pleased. It was beyond my imagining that women might be discriminated against.
But from my earliest days, I noticed mankind’s occasional unthinking mistreatment of “lesser” animals. Such cruelty broke my heart, and I took aggressive – sometimes perhaps even bizarre – action to aid animals in need. Mischievous boys who thought it amusing to tie a bag of rocks to a cat's tail soon learned to avoid me. I cared for a number of animals of my own, including some rather eccentric ones, such as a pet chicken name Prissy that I taught to walk on a lead. Another pet chicken, named Ducky, accompanied me like my little shadow and brought me endless joy. I had a number of cats and, when I grew older, I got my first doggie, a black cocker spaniel named, yes, Blackie! Others – Frisky, Doby, and a Peke named GooBoo – soon followed.
As I grew older, it seemed that all the homeless dogs and cats in my little town “knew” to gather in our yard, sensing that I could not turn a single one away.
An impulse to save needy animals carried on throughout my entire life, and I was willing to pursue eccentric efforts to save a chained or mistreated animal. After I moved to Saudi Arabia, our villa in a Saudi neighborhood quickly filled with abandoned dogs, cats, birds, rabbits, and even ducks!
Friends who stayed overnight in our Saudi home were often confronted with the challenge of sharing their bed with a couple of cats, of being roused by the morning song of caged birds, or of arranging their evening ablutions alongside a surprise in the guest bathroom: a bathtub filled with ducks!
Some people say that my heightened sensitivity to needy animals is a blessing, while others stamp it a curse. I endorse the “blessing” tag, and exult that I've been the joyful “mother” of 31 cats and dogs, and the caretaker of too many birds to count.
In Saudi Arabia, I worked as Coordinator of Medical Affairs at King Faisal Specialist Hospital and Research Centre. Most of the hospital’s patient reports crossed my desk, so I was privy to the details of many human tragedies. But the reports that haunted me most were the stories of women who had been brutally mistreated. And, more often than not, it seems, their injuries had been inflicted by the very men who were supposed to protect them. Many Saudi men, of course, were wholly kind to the females in their family. But when the occasional man lashed out at a wife or daughter with cruelty or brutality, the women of the family had nowhere to turn for help. The man's word was absolute law and no outside organization would dare interfere. A woman’s helplessness in such a situation is heartrending and nearly unsolvable.
I saw sadness almost every day that I worked at the hospital, much of it associated with women's issues. Unfortunately, there was little I could do – for I, too, was a disenfranchised woman, in a country not my own.
But I met Saudi women who desperately plotted for change. One was a Saudi princess, a woman by the name of Princess Sultana Al-Saud. Knowing her country well, she described that nothing would crack Saudi men’s determination to maintain the status quo...nothing, that is, short of worldwide indignation. For this reason, the princess was fierce in her belief that the story of Saudi women be told. Most importantly, she wanted her own life experiences to be the story that inflamed the world.
For years we discussed this opportunity; and after my book lent me the clout of a bestseller, we knew the time was right to expose the tragedies that afflict so many women on this earth. By then, we were both mature women who understood that discrimination against women is not limited to Saudi Arabia or to the Middle East, but is a worldwide problem, aggrieving women in Western nations, too. But first we would tell Princess Sultana’s story.
Storytelling is power. A powerful book or movie can inform and inflame. That is why I think is wonderful that so many books are being written about the plight of women worldwide.
I am proud that my books have shared some very powerful stories. After writing Princess Sultana's life story, I wrote about Mayada Al-Askari in Mayada, Daughter of Iraq, and later I shared the story of Joanna's great adventure, a Kurdish woman's escape from Northern Iraq. Soon after came the compelling story of Osama's wife and son, called Growing Up Bin Laden. My latest account is For the Love of a Son: One Afghan Woman's Quest for Her Stolen Child, a story that will make you weep and make you laugh. Such exuberance is typical of so many lives, lives laced with good and with bad. And who would deny the importance of any story that details the life of a woman who challenges an unjust system?
I hope that you learn about women of the world, and that you, too, work to ensure that every human being – male and female – leads a life of dignity.
Jean Sasson
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MAYADA DAUGHTER OF IRAQ: One Woman’s Survival Under Saddam Hussein
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GROWING UP BIN LADEN: Osama’s wife and son take us inside their secret world.
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The Princess Trilogy
These best selling books have become a classic in their genre, galvanizing human rights activities all over the
world. A favorite for community book clubs, as well as required reading for many high schools and universities.
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