The Saudi Woman Through My Observations

These days the Saudi lands are never mentioned without there springing to mind the oil that flows from their ports toward every corner of the world. This black gold lay hidden beneath the blazing desert earth for hundreds, nay thousands, of years; and when its springs burst forth and the buried petroleum was brought up to the surface and overflowed upon it, the whole country was clothed in a splendid new garment holding fertility and every meaning of progress and of modern civilization. Such, too, will be the destiny of the Saudi woman: though she is still veiled, hidden, masked, shut up in her chamber behind impregnable barriers, these veils must inevitably fall away, the window of light must open, and those fetters must be shattered, so that woman may reach her goal of advancement and her aim of a life of freedom and release.

Whoever visits the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia today plainly perceives the swift strides the country is taking, even though these are confined to the kingdom of men. Yet this man, who sees before him and around him the advantages of a free way of living and the pleasure of an unfettered life, must one day come to realize that his progress and his advancement remain incomplete so long as his better half shares neither the one nor the other with him.

If one wished to judge the condition of the Saudi woman by what one sees in the streets and outside the houses, one would inevitably conclude flimsy things resting on no foundation of truth; for the woman there leaves the house only rarely, and if you saw her outside it you could see nothing of her: the heavy veil covers her from her head to the soles of her feet. Inside her house, however, in her own kingdom, she is free, receiving whom she pleases of her kinswomen or her friends; but she is forbidden to meet men, even were they members of the family. Most women live in comfort within the limits imposed by the nature of the country and by the work the husband or the father does. As for education, it is confined to boys and denied to girls, though there is today some inclination toward the teaching of little girls.

I had only little opportunity to meet women belonging to the common people, because the eastern part of the Saudi lands, where I was, is peopled mostly by merchants and by employees of the foreign and national companies; moreover our contact with the Americans was greater than our contact with the Saudis, apart from the family of the emir of the region and the families of certain influential men. The picture one takes away of these is a repetition of the pictures in the old Arabic tales, which leave the imagination a wide field in which to soar. As for the spirit with which the Arab woman, Bedouin or settled, receives you, it is a spirit of faithful, sincere brotherhood, loving toward the guest and respectful toward the stranger — a spirit in which Arab gallantry shines forth together with genuine modesty and natural generosity, above all when they know that the Arab blood that runs in their veins runs likewise in yours.

As for the idea that occupies the mind of every girl there — be she one of the princesses, or of the settled common people, or a Bedouin — it is nothing other than the fulfillment of her natural mission: marriage and the founding of a family of which she is seldom the sole mistress; and she accepts, however grudgingly, a second or a third wife for her husband, on condition that she have a dwelling of her own and that her husband keep for her particular days of the week. I once paid a visit to a fertile farm, like a garden with waters running through it in the midst of the barren desert. The women received us and took me, with two American friends, to where they were sitting in the shade of the leafy trees, while the men went into the reception room reserved for them; and there we sat in the welcome shade after the burning heat of the sun, even though the hour was near sunset. After drinking coffee and tea and eating biscuits and sweets, the wife, her mother, and her grandmother put to us all sorts of questions, I interpreting for the Americans. Most of those questions turned on each of our husbands and the number of our children; and when they heard the answer, signs of astonishment appeared on their faces at learning that the three young ladies with them were unmarried — for the understanding among them is that a girl is meant for marriage, even well before reaching the age of twenty. Then they set about praying God to favor us with excellent husbands who would make us happy!!! Among their charming customs: the wife and her mother insisted that we take away with us what remained on the plate of biscuits and sweets, and they nearly felt slighted and offended when the two American ladies tried to excuse themselves with thanks — a custom that shows the genuine old Arab generosity. And it appears that when a woman marries a man of eminent position, her mother and her sister come with her, and whoever of her family had lived in her house before the marriage — as though this husband were responsible for supporting not his wife alone but every member of her family; they then come under his protection, or under his command and his control.

The ordinary Saudi man has given proof of an abundant native intelligence and a great capacity for learning. The government has issued a new law requiring the company to employ Saudis in the posts where they can be relied upon, so as to dispense with the non-Saudis who fill them; and this shows that the Saudi Arab's readiness to learn is great. How many an illiterate man has come to speak English and classical Arabic and to read them both, and has grown able and knowing enough to work at running machines and complex apparatus, or at tasks demanding special technical skill! All these things have a tangible effect on the lives of these men and on their families — a thing that promises a bright future for the Saudi woman, who cannot but feel the wide stretch by which her sister, the Arab woman in the other lands, has outstripped her on the course. And as I close this talk, I cry out to my Saudi brother to leave the woman there room to show the world that she can run beside him in the fields of letters, of art, and of society. Is she not the descendant of that Arab woman whose exploits filled the pages of the history books and the records of bygone glory? Is she not likewise the sister of the contemporary Arab woman who has raised the banner of progress and kept pace with man in most fields? Let us strike these fetters from her, for she will not be long in entering the door of enlightened awareness, showering good upon her people and her homeland.