In the living room of the circle of relatives, where he had sat on a couch to pour us Arabic coffee, Noof Hassan was trying the word “head-hunting. “She had never learned this in her English categories at school, and when she heard me say she made me repeat it because she enjoyed it so much. “Yes!” she says. I ejected myself from their heads. He had already won many bids before. But this time, even my boss told me, “We don’t need you to leave, but it’s a smart offer. “
Noof is 32 years old and has thick brown hair, caramel skin and cheerful almond-shaped eyes. The apartment she shares with her husband, Sami, and their two young children occupies a three-story plot of land in a crowded community in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital. Two years ago, the first time I met her, she was a manager at a food processing plant and supervising a dozen female staff in an all-female experimental wing that was part of a nationwide crusade to appeal to Saudi women. in paid jobs. Today, at the lighting meeting plant that had just poached her, Noof was working ten times as hard. His salary had also increased.
“They gave me a nickname there,” he said. The Noof woman oversees the paintings in a no-go zone, but the company’s control offices are “mixed,” as the Saudis say: men and women, without blood or marriage ties, rub shoulders with each other, each other, and any day. Address each other with more than formal courtesy. Attend meetings at the convention table. Maybe by looking at the same document, aspect after aspect. Saudi Arabia is the most deeply gender-segregated country in the world, and amid the difficult, fragile, and habitual changes taking place in the daily lives of women in the kingdom (over several generations, driven by new labor policies and the encouragement of the late King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz – they are now debating what it means to be truly elegant and truly Saudi – this diversity factor of gender is still very much at odds with each other. There are women here who don’t even do a task that requires it.
There are women who could do that task but are rejected by their fathers, or by their husbands, or by concerned relatives who tell them, “No, you don’t; other Muslim countries would possibly allow such a thing, but in Saudi Arabia, that’s not what righteous women do. There are also women on the opposite end of the spectrum, quite comfortable with their male colleagues: Over the past decade, government scholarship systems have sent tens of thousands of Saudi women to study abroad, and then back. At home, many are eager to drive the speed of change.
Glamour Discovers Its Own Display
Somewhere on this complex spectrum, improvising according to his own concepts of dignity, Noof has set up his non-public needs in the company’s offices: no physical contact with men, please, even incidentally. The girl who coaches me understands,” Noof said. “I said, ‘It’s not because I have a baby and I’m worried about germs. It’s religion. I can’t touch a guy who’s my father, my uncle, my brother. That’s why. ‘”
Hence the nickname. ” Mrs. Noof doesn’t shake hands,” Noof said, and laughed so hard he almost fell on the couch. Noof’s laugh, which is rich, is one of the reasons we’ve become friends. She’s fast. . . Witty and tough. He laughs at other people who are unofficial or rude. One of his cell phones rings with the sound of music from Grey’s Anatomy. When she was in her twenties, she turned down her family’s preferred suitors because she was determined to marry Sami, whom she loved. She estimates that she watched Titanic at least ten times as a teenager; Movie theaters are banned in Saudi Arabia, but popular DVDs are easy to find, no matter what the conservative sheikhs who disapprove of it say. (When I pointed out that Titanic included an enthusiastic sex scene starring the single heroine, Noof was unfazed. “Yes, it’s fine,” he said. It’s their culture. “)
I’m telling you those things because Sami was about to take us to the mall, so Noof can help me pick out a new abaya, the ankle-length garment that women will have to wear in Saudi Arabia, and I need you. to see her before she leaves. In the bedroom closet he looks for one of his own, all black. Colorful abayas are beginning to proliferate in Jeddah, the least conservative port city in the west, but in Riyadh, a non-black abaya worn in public still draws frowns from outsiders and perhaps scoldings from the devout police patrolling the streets. The abaya Noof brought had a gray checkered border, with a splash of striking red in the check; Noof had bought it in Jeddah. And pockets, very practical, a cell phone pocket sewn into the left sleeve. Noof put on the abaya over her skirt and blouse, as if she were putting on a raincoat. He tore it in half, reshaping its outer shape into an elongated black triangle. He wrapped the black tarha, the long Arab scarf, over his hair, under his chin and once over his head.
“Where’s my bag?” Noof asked. Sami brought it to him. Then, just before crossing the threshold of the front door of his building, Noof completely covered the rest of the tarha over his face, which disappeared, leaving only the skin of his gloved hands visible. They loaded them into their Toyota, Sami and Noof in front, and dropped them off for the night to go shopping.
Separation is everywhere, even in the queue
The litany of “only country in the world” regulations in Saudi Arabia now feels familiar, in part because it provides such a provocative subjective subject for foreigners who disapprove of it: the only country in the world that bans women from driving a car. The only country that requires each and every adult citizen to live under the supervision of a legally identified male guardian, his father or husband or other family member, who must grant formal permission before he can obtain a passport, comply with all legal formalities, or travel abroad. The last country, besides Vatican City, to grant women the right to vote; The inaugural registration era was just six months ago, and women who lived more than a walking distance from registration sites needed men to drive them there.
In Saudi Arabia, all restaurants that cater to men and women have divided dining areas, one for “singles,” meaning men, and one for “families,” meaning women, in addition to young people and men in their organization who are close relatives. and women who are not similar by blood or marriage would possibly claim to be, but threaten to be harassed by a devout police; The law and social imperatives forbid them to be together. In mall food courts, where Middle Eastern brands compete with McDonald’s and KFC, gender walls function as menu forums that divide each stall’s ordering counter.
All kinds of practical issues, including the physical layout of the buildings, are resolved out of respect for Saudi women’s obligations to be separate from men. When King Abdullah declared in 2011 that he would begin appointing women to the royal advisory council, after the Shura, the nationwide outcry that followed — outrage from conservatives, jubilation from women’s rights advocates — included serious questions about how those women can sit well. Should they assign their colleagues separate rooms with video links?Almost all Saudi schools are sex-only, adding teachers, and the video shows how some schools take care of given categories through sex teachers.
Even the “feminization of employment” crusade to inspire Saudi women to enter the workforce, a five-year initiative also mandated and championed through Abdullah before his death last year, has been accompanied by elaborate segregation rules. By prohibiting women from taking jobs that might put them in contact with men, some types of retail establishments have been ordered to hire female workers in the workplace, and the government is providing incentives to hire Saudi women. However, female supermarket cashiers are grouped apart from male cashiers. New interior walls snake through retail branches, separating men from women. Every workplace that includes both genders should designate an area away from men where women can feel more “comfortable. “I’ve heard this word from women over and over again.
So I would ask: I understand. Why is it more comfortable?
And the women’s responses almost started the same way: Well, in the women’s space, you can take off your abaya, relax and. . .
Why can’t you take off your abaya in front of men?
That’s when they’d look at me for a moment, then sigh, nod their heads, and say, Okay, let’s go.
Mobile Phones Update a Venerable Pastime
Because we are Saudis, and in Saudi Arabia we are a matrix. That would have been the simplest answer, but no one phrased it that way; This legal responsibility to hide the female form from men who do belong to the family, so puzzling and troubling to foreigners, can also be confusing for Saudis. Almost every woman who spoke to me about politics invoked tradition, social pressure, and devout devotion. , tribal loyalty, and the primacy that Saudi culture accords to respectability, the assurance that a woman’s honor — her constancy and probity, if she is married; Her modesty and virginity, if she is Array, remain beyond reproach.
Nor does she believe that the only ones to blame for enforcing those criteria are men. They are mothers, aunts, sisters, passers-by who feel free to scold women they don’t know. ‘Why are you looking to attract men? Cover up!'” a 25-year-old woman from Riyadh recited to me in frustration, mimicking the reprimands of strangers. “It’s like she’s covering herself from head to toe and asking other women to be exactly like her. “
Because every time I returned to the U. S. When I came to the U. S. from Saudi Arabia, each and every one of my acquaintances asked me if I had been forced to wear a burqa, some clarifications about my wardrobe might be helpful. Saudi women’s canopy dress is the abaya, not the chador (Iran) or the burqa (Afghanistan). Although very conservative women wear a variation on their heads, abayas are usually low-necked garments; Think of a judge’s robe. In public, women can dispose of their abayas in and around hospitals, in some residential spaces closed to foreigners, and in the facilities of women-only institutions. (One of Riyadh’s poshest shopping malls, for example, comprises an all-terrain reserved for women. ) Outside of those places: no. Men wear jeans, suits, or white Arabic dresses called thobes. Women beyond adolescence, in addition to expatriate business leaders and visiting journalists, wear abayas.
Why heat-absorbing black in one of the places on the planet?Speculative explanations abound: because black is not arousing to a man, or because there is an Islamic biblical reference to women in the time of the Prophet Muhammad dressed in garments that made them look like black crows. There is no law that specifies the color of the abaya. There is no law that requires abayas. Forty years ago, older Saudi women told me that policies and habit protocols varied across the kingdom, depending on one’s region, social class, circle of relatives, and tribal norms. The monarchy was then a young country created in 1932, newly wealthy thanks to oil money, and still a mosaic of Arab cultures, from desert tribes with ancient traditions to cosmopolitan cities along the coasts. religion throughout the country, the expression of which varies from one position to another.
And in some areas of Saudi Arabia at the time, older women recall, there was nothing outrageous about going out in a casual short abaya or dressing in modest clothes without any outer covering. “Most of us didn’t wear headscarves,” recalls a 70-year-old woman. retired pediatrician from Riyadh. ” Sitting down with a guy you’re not married to, in a restaurant?No problem, as long as you behave. And then. . . Changes. A few twists and turns, I’d say. In the mind, in the heart.
Training and access to the labour market
The handover came in the 1980s, when conservative Islamist movements were flourishing in the Middle East. The Saudi government, its legitimacy threatened by such upheavals, recruited the devout police into a kingdom-wide crackdown that imposed on all Saudis the rigidity of their most conservative cultures. The curriculum has been revamped. Music has been silenced because it is not Islamic. Couples who walked or drove together in public were forced to show police their marriage licenses.
And at the center of the conservative crusade was the punishment of women: for succumbing to Western influence, for appearing outside the house without male guardians, for speaking in a voice that is likely to distract or seduce men, for dishonoring God by not wrapping herself fully in black. In Arabic, Muslims use the word awrah to refer to the most intimate parts of the body, those that a respectable wearer covers in public. Every society in the world has its own versions of awrah, and Saudi Arabia in recent decades has asked all its followers to consider as awrah not only a woman’s hair, as is widely taught in the Muslim world, but also her calves, arms, and perhaps – depending on – her face.
The Saudis were amused by my efforts to capture this “dependent” part; It’s as if a newcomer to American culture wonders, woman after woman, about the regulations for showing cleavage. We veil our faces, they told me, when we get it right. When our families stick to imams they insist that the face is an awrah, even though other imams say it is not. When the children we knew when we were young were excited and embarrassed to see our adult faces exposed. When the message we should convey is to respect me, not look at me. The women debate among themselves about the niqab, which is the word the Saudis use for the knotted black cloth specially designed to cover the face; I once witnessed a heated discussion about the niqab between three feminists in Riyadh, one of whom insisted that any elegant woman who “decides” to cover her face only does so under the pressure of the oppressive society around her. (“It’s NEVER a choice! It’s dehumanizing to wear the niqab!” “How can you SAY that?” “NEVER AN ELECTION!”)
It was Noof Hassan, of course, who articulated the most concise explanation I’ve ever heard, while she was in the painting one day, and who left me watching her deft changes as she walked in and out of the women-only area of the factory. of the face, the shawl upside down – Noof looked at me and said in a cheerful tone, “It’s nothing strange for us. Saudi society remains tribal in masculine aspects; Both women and men feel that those around them are watching them, making assumptions about the norms of their family circle, and making judgments. Dayooth refers to a man who is not vigilant enough with his wife and the other women in his family circle whose honor he must protect. It’s a gutter label. ” Wimp” doesn’t start transmitting it.
Woman, Saudi and fierce
“The challenge is what they think,” Noof says now, from the passenger seat of the Toyota. “That’s the challenge. “
Sami, who was driving, said: “When we faint buying groceries or something, I feel like other people are staring at her. »
“Looking,” Noof said. “Not looking. Looking. “
The most disturbing looks, the ones that shake Sami, come from the men. “So I’m. . . ‘Please, Noof, cover your face,'” Sami said. “So he doesn’t need to see my wife. “
I wondered about the Prophet Muhammad’s assertion that men have their own legal responsibility to turn away from temptation and disrespect.
Sometimes I say to Sami, “This guy has to stop me, because it’s our religion. Why do I want to cover myself?
Sami was silent, concentrating on the traffic. He is Chief Financial Officer. He wears black-rimmed glasses, a short beard and an affable face. “My answer will be: this guy is a Muslim, but he doesn’t follow Islam in the right way,” despite everything “This guy thinks, ‘She doesn’t cover her face because she likes other people to look at her. ‘
I have said that in male societies it is not unusual for a man, disturbed by the way another treats his wife, to threaten to turn off the light.
Sami nodded. He’s smiling. ” If I’m fighting this guy,” he says, “it means I’m fighting every day. “
Noof laughs. Too much effort,” she says from the black of her shawl. “Listen, you can voir. Essayez-le. Je I was dressed in a tarha and I was looking to roll it back like Noof: twice tight, with the rest. the duration of the shawl that covered my face. The fabric was transparent, visibly woven for this purpose, and outside, through the car windows, things were darker and grayer, but visible. A few blocks away, an illuminated shopping mall appears.
I needed a new abaya because a scathing Saudi acquaintance had advised me that the frayed abaya I had been dressed in for weeks could be better disposed of by burning it. Emergency help to buy groceries, please, I texted Noof, and Noof responded. Of course, my dear. Now we let Sami hide the car with the other husbands and drivers while Noof led me quickly to the abaya wing, where seven department stores stood across from each other, a row of windows gleaming and fluttering in the sun. Shades of black.
“Wow,” I said. Noof winked at me. The tarha had been fixed into a half-veil: men don’t spend much time in abaya tents. “I think about this position first,” he says, glancing at one of the front doors and caressing the inside.
A Saudi urban shopping mall may seem like a panoramic level in which many small dramas exclusive to the fashion realm are unfolding simultaneously. Young women look at shop windows, mobile phones glued to their ears and with ice cream cones or comfortable straws in their mouths under the niqab. Pakistani and Filipino drivers take naps in parking lots or video call their families abroad, waiting for the women who employ them to come out. (How do drivers know which woman in a black veil is which?I once asked a Saudi friend. ” Shoes and bags,” she replied. ) Inside Relief Reliable air conditioning includes playgrounds, furniture stores, eyewear stores, and gyms. Centers and supermarkets. There is no other Saudi mall so populated with women, and after a while I found myself reading shoes and bags, imagining them attached to women I had come to know: the retired pediatrician, the graphic designer, the market cashier, the businesswoman, the sociology professor, the lawyer who plays basketball 3 nights a week and is six feet tall, with a bad tray.
This lawyer, Aljawharah Fallatah, 30, plays in gyms, schools and women’s fitness clubs. Why not in the open air, where young people pass?Because that’s where young people pass by and it would be bulky to play good basketball in an abaya. The fact, Fallatah reminded me one night after practicing, is that she works as a lawyer in a country where, until the early 1960s, most women had nowhere to go to law school. school. Ten years later, Saudi women were allowed to examine the law for the first time. Three years passed, the first women were given permission to work as lawyers instead of simply consultants. Women now make up more than a portion of the kingdom’s college students. When King Abdullah introduced a royal scholarship program in 2005, women were among his first scholarship recipients; In 2014, more than 35,000 Saudi women enrolled in foreign undergraduate and graduate programs, and more than a fraction read in the United States.
And Fallatah will now appear in court. It is not a question of recommending any parity between male and female professionals; Highly educated Saudi women complain of underemployment and frustration in a society that is just beginning to settle for women in high-level positions. However, it is a familiar lament in countries much older than Saudi Arabia. years is faster than what American women have done in 100 years,” said Nailah Attar, co-founder of a national initiative called Baladi, which stands for My Country. “We run very fast to replace very quickly. I think we slow down a little bit so that other people settle for it.
Attar, along with other business leaders and academics from across the kingdom, created Baladi five years ago to convince Saudi women to embrace the prospect of voting and running for public office. The hostility of traditionalists is part of their defiance, as is indifference, even on the part of ambitious women: The first time in nearly part of a century that Saudi men voted was in 2005, and the only elected offices are municipal council seats, positions without authority. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not a constitutional monarchy. There is no independent prime minister or parliament. The absolute remains in the hands of the Al Sauds, the now huge circle of relatives that gave the country its name.
“Sometimes we’re in the 21st century and rarely in the 19th,” a professional from Riyadh who lived abroad, looking for the aggrieved or resigned, told me. “And believe in the European Middle Ages, with the Catholic Church. “It meant that in Saudi Arabia, dogmatic devout leaders and a royal dynasty still officially represent power, to a degree almost unimaginable to other people in more secular countries. Insults to Islam or threats to national security: two opportunely elastic categories, encompassing blogs, social media, and the open defense of those already accused, are among the crimes punishable by imprisonment, flogging or death. Executions are carried out by public beheading. The organization that runs the devout police (which operates in conjunction with the national police and is legal to advise, reprimand, and arrest) is called the Committee for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
The confidence that a society’s virtues and vices can be controlled by separating men and women (that men are naturally lustful and women attractive, so that being an intelligent Muslim demands constant attention to the risks of close contact) is so basic in everyday life. Explanation for why most Saudi clothing retailers don’t have dressing rooms: Women don’t need to undress in the presence of male workers on the other side of the door. The explanation for why Saudi Arabia has only one movie theater and a new IMAX science museum: The government shut down all cinemas during the conservative boom of the 1980s. In addition to showing problematic Western films, dark movie theaters make it less difficult for men and women to mix.
And what about the aforementioned ban on women driving?I’ve found that raising this issue with Saudi women and women elicits a number of attractive reactions, in the same order. First, they say, Saudi women are sure to do so sooner or later, despite the thriving subeconomy — taxis, personal drivers, the hiring sector that brings those drivers in from abroad, which thrives on regulations reserved for men. Some women already drive, in the desert or in other spaces where no one will pay attention to them; a causeway connects eastern Saudi Arabia to Bahrain, and it’s not unusual for Saudi husbands or drivers to leave the driver’s seat at the border so the girl can take control.
The reaction of the moment is a serious examination of the arguments against women behind the wheel. The concept that women are not worthy of driving and causing injury is absurd; The fatality rate on Saudi roads is a source of national despair. The proposition that women would have affairs and abandon their families if they could leave the space they sought, only the most backward sheikhs still make such claims, replied the woman I spoke to. Abdullah himself prompted us to move to the workplace, they said. How can we do a smart task if we have to rely on others to get there on time?
The biggest concern, women and men tell me, is about the drivers themselves: the first women who will drive alone, once they get their license, in the midst of men who will be at least hostile and predatory. “”One of them told me that her brother had said, ‘If I caught a woman driving, I would block her car and force her out. A lot of men, uneducated, that’s what I’m thinking about. They write this on social media. ” We will make you avoid driving cars. »
This brother, we wonder: does he plan to keep his sister away from the bullies, or does he do it himself?Or both? We passed hanging abayas, which I learned were elastic and could be cleaned with machines for brisk walking or picnics in the desert; tasteful embroidery for the office or extended family visits; and dressed for elegant occasions, with sparkling stones or ruffles or, hello!, peacock feather eyes woven directly into the fabric. “No,” Noof said firmly, turning, squinting, and touching with his fingers. “No. No, no. ” Then he stopped, his hand on a dark gray sleeve with a black satin band on his wrist. “Okay, see if you like it,” Noof said.
Invisible Walls Are Effective
Female members of the Shura took the oath one morning in February 2013, some with a niqab or black shawl over their faces, others without. The women’s seats were in the gigantic council chamber, next to the men’s. “We women were grouped together, That’s right,” said Thoraya Obaid, former head of the United Nations Population Fund and deputy secretary-general of the United Nations, who is one of the new members. “But there were no walls or separations. And there we were.
Obaid has spent 35 years at the United Nations, but he is by no means a member of the Shura with professional qualifications and training abroad. “Of us, 30, 27 have a medical degree or a doctorate,” he told me. Two of us are princesses with a long history of social activism and social work. “
In other words, the king was looking for quality women. In Saudi Arabia, it’s not hard to hear the anger privately expressed against the royal family, which maintains an unbreakable stranglehold on the kingdom’s oil wealth and uses the repressive force of the state to silence any calls. “I don’t forget yours in Arabic: ‘Tahmeesh, which means ‘No more marginalization. ‘” recalls Hanan Al-Ahmadi, a government official who was present at the audience when the king announced his goal of coming with women to the Shura. The women, myself who attended, had tears in their eyes. “
She and her colleagues are accustomed to constantly complaining that female members of the Shura are accomplices of the West, messengers of the devil, etc. The complaint grows every time the dispute over driving resumes. Al-Ahmadi is in favor of granting licenses to women drivers, however, like Noof and many other Saudis I’ve spoken to, he said the West’s fascination with the history of driving has sparked more national distrust than support. “Khalas,” he said, Al-Ahmadi. Se has become too politicized. Sometimes I pass by places where there are a lot of women and someone comes up to me and says, “Do you think we care about driving?That’s not our main step. “
Ask women in any country what their main goal is and the answers will come from all directions. The same is true in Saudi Arabia, where I have heard and read from women about the highest divorce rate and the divorce formula itself (parents get custody of the children). all children still very young); two-pronged popular regulations on citizenship (obtaining citizenship is undeniable for foreign women marrying Saudi men, but almost more unlikely for foreign men marrying Saudi women); and the remedy of some of the kingdom’s new female staff (long hours, low wages).
One day it will be just a car, a flash point.
There is also criticism of the requirement that each and every woman have to live under the guardianship of an appointed man. Officially, a woman must be able to work, get medical care, or enroll in college without her guardian’s permission. But in Saudi Arabia, official law takes into account tradition, individual interpretations of devotional obligations, or concern about the repercussions of a woman’s family (some employers do not rent to a woman, for example, without the approval of her guardian). They use their tutelage, masculine women say, to punish, control, manipulate.
These are brutal but discreet challenges, the women told me, that will have to be faced one by one and that require sensitive maneuvers in a situation where devout faith, the honor of family members, and state strength remain so closely linked. Her compatriots to get rid of their niqab, Al-Ahmadi says, or to ask en masse for the keys to their own cars, or to tear down the separation walls, will have to realize how many Saudi women would be deprived of their strength, she says. because of the deep disturbance. ” Many Saudi families don’t allow their daughters to work as vendors because the walls are high enough,” she told me. “So if you want to allow all Saudi women to have jobs, you want to remove the stigma attached to those jobs. “
Five years, Noof told me: That’s how long she thinks it will be before Saudi women drive. Not that driving is something he’s urgently interested in. He has no urgent interest in learning how to do it. live an elegant life while devoting yourself to your religion and nationality; Even Saudi scholars have stated that nothing in the Quran or other holy texts prohibits women from driving. Noof and Sami share a single driver with other members of their family, for a monthly payment of $1,000, which is more than many families can afford.
But like many women I’ve spoken to, Noof said she was relieved that Abdullah had never used his royal powers to order women to obtain driver’s licenses, and that his successor and brother, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, had taken no action. “Step by step,” Noof said. She likes some of the progressive features being debated, such as licensing only older married women in the first place, whose dignified appearance behind the wheel can dishonor the harassment of hotheads to behave. “It will happen, I’m sure,” she said. But if all women are allowed, there will be a huge disaster. “
Propelling himself, plaid shoes and all.
I bought the abaya that Noof had selected for me. It costs the equivalent of $40 and is stylish, with black snaps to close it at the front, but I didn’t adopt it right away because Sami had given me the bowling alleys and I didn’t need my shoes to drag all the hem. Her shawl again over her face. Night traffic in Riyadh is deplorable. Noof watched Sami drive. Apparently, he felt that he still had to convince the stranger sitting in the back seat that putting his foot in the fuel couldn’t be what he most wanted in this life.
“A huge headache, sorry,” he said. Why do I focus on the road?I sit here and talk on the phone: “Okay, we’ve arrived. “I don’t have to look to find a parking space. .
The bowling alley turned out to be 12 lanes wide. Men with thobes, women with abayas, and young men played together in the ring, and in front of a wall, a boy and a woman in veil and niqab studied a pool table from various angles, taking turns shooting into the corner pocket.
“Of course, you have to win,” Noof said firmly. Or I’d be a hostess. “
I didn’t do it. The result, though Noof was too smart a hostess to say out loud, wasn’t even close. He knew how to throw a bowling ball between the folds of his abaya and throw it at the right spot, with rotation.
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