In the Land of Invisible Women

by Qanta Ahmed

  “She is actually one of King Fahad's wives,” he whispered, awestruck himself.

  I was shocked at her youth, she could be no more than thirty-two; and the King, we all knew, was a debilitated man, a stroke patient, already in his advanced eighties. We followed the figure's progress as she moved through the ICU. Her footsteps clicked discreetly with the sound of costly couture. She took small, careful steps on the shiny floor; measured, mincing. As she wandered past the patients, she approached no one. In response no one dared to address her directly. Unschooled in royal protocol, I was unsure what was proper. How could she understand what she was seeing if no one explained the patients to her, I wondered, watching her circuit the unit.

  Nervously she peered through the glass windows of each patient cubicle. She seemed naïve of the critical care environment in the way that most lay-people tend to be. I wondered if she was actually alarmed at the graphic illness here. Her face was revealed as her veil fluttered slightly with her motion. She looked a little pale and drawn. The administrative escort tarried even further behind when he saw her approaching a cubicle directly. He was obviously queasy as the young Queen stopped to gaze at a man with limp, fractured limbs patched together with steel fixtures. The patient, sunk deeply in an air mattress, lay atop a snake's pit of intravenous and dialysis lines that pulsed with his recycled blood. He looked like a corpse in a casket. Surprisingly, the Queen seemed undisturbed—impressive for a lay-visitor.

  She continued walking around the perimeter of the unit, finally turning toward my direction. Spying my white coat, which distinguished me from all other women in the room, she recognized I must be the physician on call. She paused, locking her almond-shaped, hazel eyes with mine. Even surrounded by a headscarf, she was ravishing. Her skin was a perfect shade of pale nutmeg, her nose subtly aquiline. Arched brows, refined and slim, elevated imperceptibly into a subtle inquiry. A flicker of smile appeared on glossed lips.

  “Salaam alaikum,” I volunteered, inexplicably finding myself compulsively bowing from my head and shoulders. She responded in cut-glass, classical Arabic.

  She studied me in silence, as did I her. No one moved. The administrator was flummoxed as though not knowing how to manage such a breach of the Queen's personal space that my address had created. I was equally motionless. I was caught in the fiery light of magnificent diamonds that glittered on her person. Her delicate ear lobes were heavy with carats of Graff diamonds. They radiated a brilliance that pierced the gossamer blackness of her muslin veil. As she adjusted her veil, her slim fingers on both hands sparkled, laden with glittering stones, their radiance reflecting in the polished tips of her manicured nails. A Cellini wristwatch glittered with gems, beaming like headlamps in the dark. Her whole personage was illuminated, other worldly. I was intimidated.

  “Welcome to the ICU, your Highness,” was all I could offer. Immediately I wondered if I should have used “Majesty.” She nodded a smiling acknowledgment in return. A moment of connection passed between us in a shared gaze. And then, with a downward flutter of her kohl-lashed lids, I was dismissed. The moment had passed and the Queen had moved on. In a few seconds she had disappeared through the steel doors, the administrator scurrying behind her. The silence, which had contracted opaquely around the mysterious Queen, began to dissipate, dissolving back into the edges of the humming unit. I regretted my reticence.

  The young Queen who came to visit the hospital that day was one of many wives of the elderly King. No one knew exactly how many he had taken. The monarchy had traditionally strengthened its ranks through polygamy, a means of transferring and even consolidating power through women. Polygamy was not encountered solely among the royals; many of my Saudi colleagues were children of polygamous families, though none of them were participants in polygamous marriages. The working-class ranks of Saudi professionals, among them physicians, had the same economic challenges as monogamous couples in the West: polygamy was expensive. One wife was quite enough purse to muster for the male Saudi breadwinner.

  The practice of polygamy in the Kingdom is a remnant of pre-Islamic Arab tribalism, though Islam certainly grants a man permission to have up to four wives simultaneously. A specific verse in the Quran discusses the possibility of polygamy for men in Islam which, while clearly permissible, is far from actually ordained.

  And if you fear that you cannot act equitably toward orphans, then

  marry such women as seem good to you, two, three, and four, but if you

  fear that you may not do justice to them, then (marry) only one.

  (Quran 4:3)

  Scholars mention always that this particular verse was revealed to the Prophet after a battle in which many Muslim fathers and husbands were slain, leaving orphaned children and widowed wives behind. At the time, carefully institutionalized polygamy was suggested as a solution of social welfare for the surviving unattended and unsupported women and children. The critical observation to make, however, is that Allah recommends polygamy only for those who can actually dispense equal and impartial affection, circumstances, lifestyles, and homes for each wife.

  The Quran then goes on to mention that this kind of fairness is unlikely to be possible for a mere mortal, preference being human nature and that therefore (because partiality is likely to result) polygamy is effectively invalidated. Preferential treatment for one wife over another or one set of offspring over another is considered completely un-Islamic.

  In Saudi Arabia, however, polygamy at an unprecedented level was integral to the cementing together of disparate fiefdoms into al-Saud's early empire. The al-Saud dynasty was conceived and nurtured by a power base possible only through polygamy. Unquestionably, this practice of polygamy upon which the Kingdom was built flouts Islamic teachings, if only through the sheer numbers of marriages men entered.

  Pascal Ménoret describes this phenomenon best in his seminal work, The Saudi Enigma.25 Abdul Aziz al-Saud, the Kingdom's first king, was reputed to have married 135 virgins and one hundred other women in addition, far in excess of the maximum prescribed four wives for a single Muslim man. The King chose brides from among the greatest Bedouin tribes and through his marriages melded partnerships and contracts throughout his Kingdom. His wives were among the daughters of eminent Bedouins or the aristocracy of settled sedentary communities holding power in the Najd. Others were apparently daughters of more-popular clans and less-exclusive stock. Some women were even daughters of the enslaved.

  With this astonishing policy of institutional matrimony, King Abdul Aziz al-Saud pieced together a staggering dynastic network; one that extended across all geographic regions of the Kingdom. By intermarrying across tribal boundaries of families, clans, and even across classes of his future subjects, he knitted together the beginnings of a Kingdom. Ménoret suggests this was not merely to forge alliances through marriage, which he correctly notes could not be a secure means of building a Kingdom, because (since divorce was allowed in the Kingdom as prescribed in Islam), merely marrying and then replacing wives at whim would likely alienate various parties, paradoxically weakening his Kingdom-building.

  Instead, it was the subjugation, the very taming of a rolling, nomadic nation, that Abdul Aziz accomplished through his voracious and determined appetite for polygamy, which he fueled with enormous wealth and indomitable ambition. He used the wealth he had amassed through progressive control of settlements in the Kingdom secured by his fierce Army of God and his strategic conquering of vast expanses of land. Soon after, oil wealth served to consolidate his power into an unassailable supremacy which, far from perpetuating tribal links, actually superseded them precisely because he had married across and through various influential tribes. His collective influence now exceeded that of any single prominent tribe. His power was best described (as termed by Ménoret) to be “supra-tribal.” Without polygamy, Abdul Aziz al-Saud could never have accomplished this dominion, and the Kingdom likely would have remained fragmented into fractious fiefdoms.

  Thus, like overarching s
wathes of canopied canvas in a Bedouin tent, Abdul Aziz swept up each of the prominent tribes in the Kingdom under his rule. As a result, ordinary members of each individual tribe were forever ensured access to a sympathetic ear in this diverse parquetry of monarchy because the King had married representatives from all. Each subject therefore (through intermediaries and community bureaucrats) could take their concerns to their own tribal component of royalty within these intricate, recessed eaves of the House of Saud.

  Today, his progeny, the Saudi ruling class, is now estimated to number anywhere from seven to twelve thousand strong; a vast, shifting network of interrelated überaristocracy full of intrigue, conflicts, competing interests, and competitive ascendancy. The young Queen who had floated into our ICU one night was merely one of many figures at the helm of the apical echelons of this extraordinary family.

  One morning, as I was being driven to work by the trusty Zachariah, I watched the scene through the car window. The hospital grounds were abuzz with activity. New palm trees were being unloaded from endless flatbed trucks. The bald, stiff trees were being planted in symmetrical lines on either side of my usual route to work. It was pleasant to see that the hospital was finally landscaping what was, until then, an eyesore of ripped up earth and desolate building lots awaiting construction. In the matter of a few months an entire building had arisen from the dusty embers of the desiccated land. The new building gleamed white in the morning light. A huge insignia denoted this to be the Cardiac Surgery Building. This was where Ghadah's husband would now operate.

  My image of monarchy in the Kingdom was molded after that of my Saudi friends. Zubaidah and Ghadah, even Jane, who had actually met the highest levels of Saudi monarchy, saw the Crown Prince Abdullah as a benevolent and indulgent prince who had a fondness for all in his Kingdom. He was adored especially as a champion of women. In time, listening to the Saudi women who had lived in the Kingdom all their lives, I had conjured an image of a powerful yet avuncular man.

  As I studied a huge banner being applied to the building, something completely different came into view. Next to the gargantuan canvas, dozens of thin, sun-burned workers were rendered Lilliputian in size. In the image I was reminded of dictatorship. Something about the scale of the picture—its gray and white palette; its elevated vantage; its monumental supremacy—was distinctly pharonic.

  I watched the Bengali laborers. They tied the canvas tight with ropes, ensnaring a fluttering Gulliver. I was deeply disturbed by the iconography. In the Kingdom, the rulers were revered almost to the point of idolatry. I thought about my own short Queen, a Sovereign in humdrum hats and handbags. There was something ordinary and mundane about her stature. Somehow she remained of us, rather than apart from us, even though she was the undisputed monarch. I could recall no image of her of the same stature as the one at which I gazed. In a country ruled by iconoclastic Wahabiism where followers refused even to display their facial photographs on their ID badges and any art other than geometry was scorned upon, I couldn't tally the contrasts of the towering image above. The Islamic ideals I understood to be universal and the reality of living in the Kingdom seemed again to clash. I stood gazing into the gray, blind, canvas eye of the Prince overhead. It revealed nothing.

  The next morning, once more on the way to work, I noticed all the unrolled grass had already been neatly turfed. The bald palm trees, slowly relaxing their scant, tall leaves, were now surrounded by an undulating landscape of rolling greens. Overnight the avenue leading to the hospital had morphed into a Jack Nicklaus golf course. Here and there, gardeners worked on trimming the edges of the lawn with diligent precision. Only one problem remained: without rain for more than twelve months, the grass, transported from elsewhere in the Kingdom, was a dull, inanimate brown.

  The workers hurled water at it through myriad hoses and a new sprinkler system, but still it remained a resistant bronze. A South Indian foreman was screaming at the workers. They cowered under the shower of his verbal abuse but even the best gardener was powerless against the prevailing four percent humidity of Riyadh, where annual rainfall rarely exceeds four inches. I severely doubted the grass would be green for the Prince's entourage of black S-Class Benzes, which was due to roll by this avenue in the late morning of the next day. I had underestimated the landscapers' ingenuity.

  On Wednesday morning, again Zachariah drove me to work. It was seven a.m. The Crown Prince was due in at eleven. Overnight the transformation had continued. Isolated gardeners were evening out the final ripples in the now lovely and verdant vista. Even the trees seemed a little more settled in their new roots. One worker, trailing a damp towel tucked into the rear hip pocket of his blue boiler suit, sprayed what looked to be pesticide with a motorized pump. He sprayed the now green lawn evenly and consistently. I was puzzled. I had never noticed mosquitoes in Riyadh, and pesticide in February was distinctly unusual. The city was perched on an arid plateau. Now that I considered it, I had never seen the grass being sprayed before. But as I took in the lush scene, perhaps all the watering had paid off. The lawn looked sumptuous, a perfect green, no traces of the dull brown grass remained.

  I commented to Zachariah that the green grass looked wonderful. Months since I had ventured out of the Kingdom, I found myself craving greenery. The smell of fresh-cut grass, the universal marker since my English childhood of the onset of summer, had long escaped my memory here in the sterile Kingdom. And that's when it struck me: though I could see grass, I couldn't smell it.

  The men were not watering the grass; they were spraying it an emerald green. This was Ireland in an atomizer. The workers were coloring the dead, hurrying to finish before the Crown Prince's gaze would zoom by, perhaps peering through the bullet-proofed, tinted, heavily armored glass of his German car.

  So much about the Kingdom concerned outward appearances. Veneer was as important as substance, perhaps more so. The Crown Prince's entourage would arrive in moments, so the vista must appear perfect. Climate was hardly an excuse. I was astonished at the efforts, seemingly wasteful, to welcome royalty. As the Bengali workers toiled in prostrate dignity, I was struck by the futility of their efforts. They had slaved for days to create an illusion that may or may not elicit royal note. If the Prince was studying his speech as he passed by in muted luxury, he might miss the entire scene, invalidating their days of underpaid effort.

  A few hours later, the royal party arrived in a fleet of two dozen racing Mercedes. They rushed through the barriers, not stopping until they reached the steps of the building. The motorcade had sped past the newly minted avenue at fifty miles per hour. I doubted the Prince had even glimpsed the greened grass. The aging Regent stepped out of his vehicle and slowly greeted a waiting reception line of carefully selected Caucasian nurses.

  Less than an hour later the motorcade left, halogen headlights blazing, brilliant even in mid-morning sunlight. As they screeched around the corner onto the Khuraij Road, a tiny Saudi beggar boy, perhaps no more than six, looked at the gleaming cars racing, blasting away. His torn thobe fluttered in the rip currents of powerful German exhausts. He coughed a little and shifted his shoeless feet on the rapidly heating asphalt. In a Kingdom of princes, paupers could only watch.

  DIVORCE, SAUDI-STYLE

  IHAD HEARD OF FARIS'Sdivorce some weeks earlier. Recently he had also been hospitalized. One evening, I mentioned this to Zubaidah.

  “Yes, Qanta, we heard. Someone had heard from the mosque that he was not there on Jumma (Friday prayer). But of course, we think it is a reaction to his divorce.” She fixed her hair matter-of-factly, securing it back with a final pin. We were in the women's room.

  “I didn't know he was divorced, Zubaidah. In fact I didn't know he was married. I never asked him about that.”

  “Oh Qanta, everyone in the Kingdom is married. It's most unusual to be like us, single and unmarried.” She cast me a sidelong, droll glance. She refused to expound. My curiosity was piqued.

  A few days later, I decided to ask my colleague Imran. H
e was the chosen confidante of every nurse in the ICU. He always knew the latest gossip.

  “Oh gosh, that's old news.” I waited for him to explain. “You must know his wife. I mean his ex-wife, Fatima? You know, she comes to our conferences. She was at the last conference we had for that patient that turned out to have vasculitis?” I did indeed remember.

  I began forming a picture of Fatima. She was the extremely soft-spoken Saudi woman who was practically buried up to her nose in her veil. She always seemed to smile at me when I was in the same meetings, but being unable to see even her crow's feet, I couldn't ever be sure, and often met her with my blank, puzzled stare. She usually went on to discuss the biopsy specimens. Her advice was always pertinent. We all considered her an excellent clinician, but I didn't know anything else about her.

  “So what happened, Imran? Why did they divorce?”

  Imran began chuckling to himself, wheezing a little. He obviously thought something was funny. “Poor guy. It seems he fell in love with another Saudi woman, the nuclear cardiologist. Maybe you know who I mean? The one in the white veil? Anyway, it seemed he suddenly decided to take her as his second wife, because his love was so passionate for her.” Imran was obviously exercising poetic license with the story. He giggled, “You know, he even followed her to California, settling her in to her fellowship at UCSF, and planned to marry her when she returned after her training. They say he actually escorted her during her emigration, flying with her all the way. Unbelievable. Anyway, when he told Fatima, his wife, she said ‘Forget it! I am not agreeing to that.’ And she promptly asked for a divorce. Of course now the children are divided. I think they live on the same compound but now in different villas.”

  “What happened to the woman he loved, the young cardiologist?” I asked, struggling to keep Imran focused on the details.