SAUDI men often raised the question of women with me; they
seemed to hope that I would tell them, either out of courtesy or
conviction, that I endorsed their way of life. Some blamed all
manner of Western ills, from gun violence to alcoholism, on women's
liberation. "Do you think you could ever live here?" many of them
asked. It sounded absurd every time, and every time I would repeat
the obvious: No.
Early in 2005, I covered the kingdom's much-touted municipal
elections, which excluded women not only from running for office,
but also from voting. True to their tribal roots, candidates
pitched tents in vacant lots and played host to voters for long
nights of coffee, bull sessions and poetry recitations. I accepted
an invitation to visit one of the tents, but the sight of a woman
in their midst so badly ruffled the would-be voters that the
campaign manager hustled over and asked me, with lavish apologies,
to make myself scarce before I cost his man the election.
A few days later, a female U.S. official, visiting from Washington,
gave a press appearance in a hotel lobby in Riyadh. Sporting
pearls, a business suit and a bare, blond head, she praised the
Saudi elections.
The election "is a departure from their culture and their history,"
she said. "It offers to the citizens of Saudi Arabia hope
. It's
modest, but it's dramatic."
The American ambassador, a bespectacled Texan named James C.
Oberwetter, also praised the voting from his nearby seat.
"When I got here a year ago, there were no political tents," he
said. "It's like a backyard political barbecue in the U.S."
One afternoon, a candidate invited me to meet his daughter. She
spoke fluent English and was not much younger than me. I cannot
remember whether she was wearing hijab, the Islamic head scarf,
inside her home, but I have a memory of pink. I asked her about the
elections.
"Very good," she said.
So you really think so, I said gently, even though you can't
vote?
"Of course," she said. "Why do I need to vote?"
Her father chimed in. He urged her, speaking English for my
benefit, to speak candidly. But she insisted: What good was voting?
She looked at me as if she felt sorry for me, a woman cast adrift
on the rough seas of the world, no male protector in sight.
"Maybe you don't want to vote," I said. "But wouldn't you like to
make that choice yourself?"
"I don't need to," she said calmly, blinking slowly and
deliberately. "If I have a father or a husband, why do I need to
vote? Why should I need to work? They will take care of
everything."
Through the years I have met many Saudi women. Some are rebels;
some are proudly defensive of Saudi ways, convinced that any
discussion of women's rights is a disguised attack on Islam from a
hostile Westerner. There was the young dental student who came home
from the university and sat up half the night, writing a
groundbreaking novel exploring the internal lives and romances of
young Saudi women. The oil expert who scolded me for asking about
female drivers, pointing out the pitfalls of divorce and custody
laws and snapping: "Driving is the least of our problems." I have
met women who work as doctors and business consultants. Many of
them seem content.
Whatever their thoughts on the matter, they have been assigned a
central, symbolic role in what seems to be one of the greatest
existential questions in contemporary Saudi Arabia: Can the country
opt to develop in some ways and stay frozen in others? Can the
kingdom evolve economically and technologically in a global society
without relinquishing its particular culture of extreme religious
piety and ancient tribal code?
The men are stuck, too. Over coffee one afternoon, an economist
told me wistfully of the days when he and his wife had studied
overseas, how she'd hopped behind the wheel and did her own thing.
She's an independent, outspoken woman, he said. Coming back home to
Riyadh had depressed both of them.
"Here, I got another dependent: my wife," he said. He found himself
driving her around, chaperoning her as if she were a child. "When
they see a woman walking alone here, it's like a wolf watching a
sheep. 'Let me take what's unattended.' " He told me that both he
and his wife hoped, desperately, that social and political reform
would finally dawn in the kingdom. He thought foreign academics
were too easy on Saudi Arabia, that they urged only minor changes
instead of all-out democracy because they secretly regarded Saudis
as "savages" incapable of handling too much freedom.
"I call them propaganda papers," he said of the foreign analysis.
"They come up with all these lame excuses." He and his wife had
already lost hope for themselves, he said.
"For ourselves, the train has left the station. We are trapped," he
said. "I think about my kids. At least when I look at myself in the
mirror I'll say: 'At least I said this. At least I wrote this.'
"