Daring to Drive: A Saudi Woman’s Awakening by Manal al-Sharif
A book Review by Juliet Annerino
Cairo Egypt, May 2001. The ambassador’s lounge at the Intercontinental Hotel. I was on break after my first set. It was the first month of my three-month contract as their resident jazz singer. The low-lit room had a long bar stretched across the back where a few affluent businessmen gathered to enjoy the music over a cocktail. I was wearing one of my silk evening gowns, sitting comfortably in a leather chair at a small table, having a drink with two business partners from different countries. The Intercontinental was a hub for meetings between men like this, who traveled frequently and spoke several languages. I took a sip of my martini trying not to look too alarmed at what the two men were talking about.
“…So if I were to drive a car in Saudi Arabia I’d be arrested? And then – what?” I asked.
The man from Istanbul wearing a pristine grey suit, leaned back into his leather seat, deferring to his British friend.
“Well, you would disappear,” the Englishman said crisply.
I lifted an eyebrow. “Disappear where?”
The Turk replied this time, slowly in hushed, measured words.
“They don’t tell you that.”
“And what do people say?” I asked, putting my drink down.
“They say she is gone.”
I felt a subtle chill run down my spine.
In her new book Daring to Drive, A Saudi Woman’s Awakening, Manal al-Sharif shares her personal, harrowing story of life as a woman in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, a country ruled by brute force under an elite “royal” family, protected, sanctioned and heavily subsidized by the powers that be in Washington D.C., courtesy of the taxpayers in the USA, for whom the average Saudi citizen has complete disdain or perhaps only bitter resentment and fear. Most Saudis see the U.S.A. as the world’s occupying military power and the source of Western decadence and cultural corruption. If you are an American curious about what life your tax dollars support for a typical Saudi woman in this country receiving hundreds of billions of USD in “foreign aid,” then this book will give you a painful yet eye-opening experience.
Manal grew up the daughter of a poor taxi cab driver. In her memoir, she tells us how she is held down by three shrouded strangers in her own home with the tacit consent of her mother and father. Manal al-Sharif becomes a victim of the dreaded practice of genital mutilation when she is a mere child. This violent butchery nearly kills her as she almost bleeds to death. She is fortunate to survive, though left disfigured for life.
Manal boldly admits a time in her life when she adheres to the strictest Salafi extremist dictates against even the most basic sources of joy, such as music. As a teenager, she also imposes these bizarre restrictions upon her family members.
Upon finding her little brother’s Backstreet Boys cassettes, she eagerly melts them in a bonfire on the roof to save her brother from such sinful pleasures.
Yet another day, she walks into her family’s living room and by accident hears a song by the band, while her brother is listening. She stops and is “ struck by the beauty of the words and the music,” astonished by a sudden sense of longing that touches her heart. She hears the lyrics, “show me the meaning of being lonely… There’s something missing in my heart.”
Into the dark world of this poor, indoctrinated, sheltered and abused young girl, a sweet ray of hope enters, in the form of music, as “the dreamiest, most beautiful thing…ever heard.”
Her mind is opened and she realizes she “could not understand how something so beautiful could be the work of the devil.”
She tells us, “The lyrics struck a chord with me; I felt truly lonely and closed off in my closed-off world of rigid beliefs, and I too felt there was something missing in my heart.”
Manal al-Sharif’s arduous and frustrating journey presents her with such an insane array of bureaucratic, religious and societally-imposed obstacles, that it is a wonder she maintains her resolve to attend and graduate college, and to win a prestigious position in IT security at the Aramco national oil company. Since women have no socially recognized Independence from their male guardians, such as a husband, father or even younger brother, it becomes almost impossible for a single Saudi woman to even rent an apartment for herself. Finally, living on the special Aramco compound, a separate, closed-off community where foreigners live with Saudis in a more American-style suburban atmosphere, she still cannot even take the male-only bus to her place of work and cannot drive her own car. Instead, women are forced to hire male drivers, who may not even have a license to drive. In some cases, the drivers do not even speak English or Arabic, since they are of the lower working class of laborers from poorer countries such as India or the Philippines.
Manal al-Sharif holds a sign in Arabic: “Freedom is to live with dignity”
She explains to the reader how these stifling restrictions are imposed upon women by government and religious authority who claim these complex and sometimes arbitrary rules are only for the “protection” of women, yet how often they endanger women. For example, by forcing them to be alone in a confined space with a strange man such as a professional driver, a woman risks verbal and physical abuse, and even rape.
The degree of repression and fear of expression of sexuality in Saudi Arabia is truly outrageous. The stringent segregation of the sexes in Manal’s college has the unintended consequence of encouraging a subculture of women who dress in men’s clothing, pair off with other women and accompany each other around campus. These are called the “Boya,” a feminized Arabic version of the English word “boy.” In fact, Saudi society is so sexually repressed and fearful of any sexuality that Manal’s mother actually calls her daughter by her son’s name “Mohammed” when they are in public together so as not to sexually arouse any man who may hear a female name.
While working at Aramco as an IT security specialist, Manal discovers a previous demonstration where women took videos of themselves while driving. Her research shows no official law in Saudi Government code prohibiting women from driving, however, the religious secret police are known to show up in the middle of the night, knock loudly at the door of a woman who has dared to drive, and drag her away. After much planning and consulting with others who have tried to change this “tradition” Manal organizes a day of demonstration. What ensues is truly terrifying.
The overcrowded prisons where not only women, but small children are held in horrible, unsanitary conditions, the complete uncertainty of her situation, not knowing if she can ever see her five year-old son or even the outside world again, the forced signing of secret papers, the demeaning treatment by staff – it is all completely unnerving. Manal’s true story is wrought with a level of terror and suspense beyond any dystopian fantasy.
The author reveals aspects of oppressive Saudi enforced “tradition” and its accommodating perverse economics that might surprise even those such as myself, who have spent time in more open countries of the Middle East like Egypt and Lebanon. Every Muslim country is unique in its culture. A common misunderstanding by Americans in particular, is the assumption that they are all alike.
I was surprised to learn that the Saudi Arabian government was the largest investor in the transportation company Uber, contributing a total of $3.5 billion from the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund. (The director of the fund, a member of the royal family, was of course given a seat on Uber’s board.) In a strange turn of governmental, religious and societal hobbling, what should have meant more and better choices for those desiring transportation, only meant an entire nation using a smart phone app as a means to enforce a long-standing ban against women seeking the simple right to drive their own vehicles.
The story of Manal el-Sharif, her childhood, her school years, her bold career at a male-dominated company, her forbidden romance and her unflinching bravery in the face of a cruel authoritarian ruling class, serves as an inspiration as well as a sad commentary on the state of a strange society built on the unstable sands of fear and suffering, through the use of force.
Ultimately, most fearful in her story as in all of life, are those who cling most desperately to their authoritarian traditions. For, in the end, joyful freedom of the individual, dazzling like music in harmony and beauty, will always be terrifying to those who cannot comprehend such heights, and will sing the clarion call of freedom to those who will hear it.
