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Women
of the Holy Kingdom
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
As
my Saudi Airlines flight approached Jeddah
International airport, I saw a sudden flurry of
activity around me. Women dressed in modern
western attire quickly grabbed their black abayas
(long coats) and scarves and made their way to the
only bathroom in the economy section of the
aircraft. Saudi law requires that all women wear
black abayas and head scarves when appearing in
public. I quickly donned mine and braced myself
for the desert temperature that often soars over
110 degrees in September.
My first
steps on Saudi soil were tentative. Saudi Arabia
is one of the most restrictive countries in the
world. Here, women have to seek written permission
from their male guardians before they can study,
work and travel. They are forbidden to drive and
mix with men in public. As a Muslim woman, I would
have to abide by almost all these rules.
The Saudi
immigration officer looked at my Pakistani
passport and said “Where is your Mahram (male
guardian)?” This was the last thing I expected
to hear. My paperwork was in order. It had taken
me almost four months to get a journalist’s visa
for Saudi Arabia. I pushed my file towards him and
urged him to read the permission slip issued by
the Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C. But he
refused to speak to me, insisting instead that I
produce a male guardian or prepare to spend the
evening at the airport. One phone call to the
Ministry of Information in Jeddah solved my
problem. They sent an official from the Ministry
to assist me, and within minutes my passport was
stamped and I was free to go.
My first
week in Saudi Arabia was an eye-opener. Jeddah
looks just like any other cosmopolitan city. Its
wide boulevards and shopping malls boast the likes
of Gucci and Louis Vuitton — and almost every
American fast food chain. The streets are lined
with BMWs and Hummers. The Saudi government has
imported hundreds and thousands of palm trees from
all over the world to turn its desert into an
oasis. But behind the glitz and glamour, I saw a
country desperate for political and social reform.
I was in
Saudi Arabia to film a documentary about the
country’s nascent women’s movement for the
Discovery Times channel. Before coming to the
Kingdom, I had scoured western media outlets,
looking for any bit of information about this
emerging movement. I found none. But when I spoke
to Saudi women by phone, I got a different
picture. Change was coming to the Kingdom, they
kept insisting, and they were going to the lead
the way. So, to discover this for myself, I
gathered a female crew, diverse enough to
represent the United Nations – a Dutch producer,
Maiken Baird, and an Asian-American camerawoman,
Julie Lei.
The
office of Abeer Mishkhas at Arab News was very
much like my office in New York, except for the
door that segregated her from her male
counterparts. Arab News is Saudi Arabia’s
largest English language daily and Abeer is one of
its most popular female columnists. Her prominent
position, however, does not relieve her from
having to adhere to the strict segregation
policies enforced by the Saudi religious
authorities, The Committee for the Propagation of
Virtue and Prevention of Vice. “It’s very
frustrating to work in this environment,” she
told me. “Every once in a while I have to get
away from Saudi Arabia, to gain the strength to
work here.”
In the
half an hour that I spent with her, Abeer’s
phone rang incessantly, her land line and then her
cell, until she finally said “Saudis cannot live
without their cell phones; they don’t even turn
them off during Friday prayers at the mosque.”
Then Abeer told me how much her life had changed
since Sept. 11, 2001. “I can write about almost
anything now and I’m not afraid to express my
opinions,” she said. Despite this new freedom,
she expressed her frustration at being a working
woman in Saudi Arabia. “You have to be very
determined to work in this country,” she said.
“Otherwise you will not make it. It’s a
headache to get the various written permissions,
to flag down taxi cabs every time you want to go
somewhere. But we have to persevere because if we
don’t, we Saudi women will never make it
anywhere.”
I
discovered that this very perseverance is forcing
the Saudi Royal family to make concessions to
women. The following day, I traveled to Riyadh to
attend a women’s conference. As I got out of my
car in the parking lot, two security guards came
my way, shouting in Arabic. I panicked and jumped
back into the car. It turned out that this was the
male parking lot; my driver had to drive another
five minutes before an arrow pointed us towards
the women’s parking lot.
Inside
the double doors, women dressed in fashionable
clothing walked around, Chanel sunglasses perched
on their heads as they leafed through the brochure
listing the day’s activities. This was their
private world, where men were forbidden entrance.
Here the women had the freedom to dress the way
they wanted to. There were no rules and
regulations.
At a
round table in the far corner of the hall, I
overheard two women talking about a petition that
was being sent to members of the Royal family,
pressing them to reform the political system. As I
looked around, I noticed my producer, Maiken, deep
in conversation with several women who were
impressed that we had traveled all this way to
report on the women’s movement. They kept
nodding their heads and saying, “It’s good to
know that the outside world is taking notice of
our actions.”
But that
afternoon, the real news was not our documentary
film — it was the announcement by three Saudi
women that they would be candidates in the
upcoming municipal elections. The Saudi government
had recently announced that it would hold its
first nationwide local elections in the
country’s history and, though the election laws
were ambiguous, they did not ban women from voting
or seeking office. Eighteen-year-old Maha Yousef,
who was staffing the computers at the entrance of
the conference hall, told me that she was
delighted to hear that women wanted to participate
in the elections. “I would love to vote,” she
said, “especially for a female candidate. I
think I will help some of them campaign.”
This was
good news for the women’s movement, but these
women candidates still had a long way to go. That
was evident inside the conference hall, where
large screens beamed the discussion of their male
counterparts from an adjoining hall. The women
could join the male discussion; their voices would
carry through to the next hall via a speaker
system — but not their pictures. These women
were still invisible participants at the
conference.
Very
early on in my visit, I realized that not all
Saudi women wanted change. A 35-year-old
housewife, Fatin Bakr, invited me to her home to
discuss a woman’s role in Islamic society. “We
are different from the rest of the world,” she
said. “We are pampered and taken care off. Why
would we want all the rights that you western
women want or have?” I thought that was a fair
question coming from a woman who had all her needs
taken care of by her husband and her sons, so I
asked about women who wanted more rights because
they had greater ambitions or because it was not
practical for them to seek permission for
everything. “In an Islamic society,” she told
me, “a woman’s role is to cook and clean and
look after her family. She doesn’t have to go
out and she doesn’t have to work. So I don’t
know why these Saudi women are insisting on
getting more rights.”
Fatin is
like thousands of other Saudi women who are
content with their way of life and oppose granting
more rights to women. In fact, I met a male
university professor who told me that it was Saudi
women and not Saudi men who were holding other
women back.
Some
women, however, are refusing to be held back. As
the election momentum was growing, I met Nadia
Bakhurji, a successful architect and the first
female to announce her candidacy for the upcoming
elections. “I’m not doing anything against my
religion or my culture,” she told me. “If
anything at all, I am working to enhance the
women’s role in Saudi society. After all, we are
more than 50 percent of the population.”
In the
five weeks that I spent in the Kingdom, I met some
articulate, educated and determined women who were
anxious to lead the way for future generations.
Dr. Thuraya Arrayed works for Saudi Arabia’s
largest oil company, ARAMCO, and was one of the
first Saudi women to work in the private sector in
the 1980’s. She told me that she was worried
about her daughter’s future. “What kind of an
environment are we leaving them?” she asked.
“We should work to make sure that they have more
opportunities and a better life than we did.”
The day
before I left the Kingdom, the Saudi Royal family
announced that women would not be allowed to vote
or hold office in the upcoming municipal
elections.
I knew
from spending time in the kingdom that women like
Abeer Mishkhas and Nadia Bakhurji were paving the
way for a younger generation of Saudi women eager
to take part in the country’s growth. This would
be a setback for them but, given their
determination, I am sure that when elections are
held in 2008, their votes will be counted with the
rest of the population.
From
The New York Times on the Web (c) The New York
Times Company. Reprinted with Permission.
About
Sharmeen
Obaid-Chinoy
 Born
in 1978, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy
was the first woman in her Pakistani family to
receive a Western education. Obaid
graduated from
Smith
College
with a bachelor of arts (honors) in economics and
government and then went to complete two
master’s degrees from
Stanford
University
in International Policy Studies and Communication.
As
a student at
Smith
College
, Obaid was
politically and journalistically active,
lecturing, and writing for publications such as The
Philadelphia Inquirer, The Coast (a
Canadian weekly) and several Pakistani newspapers.
Obaid’s
career in documentary filmmaking began when she
examined the plight of Afghani refugee children in
Pakistan
for one of her articles. Their situation was so
dire, and their stories so compelling, that Obaid
decided to return to
Pakistan
and create a film about them. She petitioned
Smith
College
and New York Times television production
division for the grants that would allow her to
accomplish her goals. Intrigued by her story, both
organizations gave her the funds as well as
production equipment and training.
Source:
www.sharmeenobaidfilms.com
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