We also grew used to surprise inspections of our bags and possessions. It was forbidden to bring anything to school other than a schoolbook or notebook. Carrying a lipstick, a comb, or a mirror to school—or even an outside book or, as we grew older, a cassette tape or a photograph—was prohibited. The school would confiscate the item, summon the student’s mother, and also send a letter of warning to her guardian.
There was no room in the girls’ schools for any activity that was not directly related to our academic classes—they were forbidden by order of the mufti. No sports, no theater, no music, no art appreciation, no visits to museums or historical sites, no celebrations for our end-of-year graduation. There wasn’t even space for a school library. The only permitted enrichment classes were drawing, sewing, and home economics. We were taught how to make different types of stitches, how to crochet, and how to prepare cakes and pickles: even though we were at school, the expectation was that our ultimate destination was inside a home.
I adored drawing class, though we weren’t allowed to draw living creatures, only plants and inanimate objects; the Saudi clerics’ interpretation of Islamic law prohibits representative art, such as drawing a person. Many times I tried to test the limits of this prohibition. My smiling fruits often enjoyed the use of human hands and feet. But my teacher usually confiscated those drawings, which ended up as shreds of paper in the wastebasket. So I stopped drawing people in my art sketchbook and started instead to draw them in my notebooks at home, which I filled with the forbidden smiling faces and bounding animals.
Inside the classrooms, school was rigid, but as soon as it came time to pause our lessons to eat, chaos prevailed. There was no set place to eat, and no one formed lines to buy food. In the beginning, I brought my own food. Each day, Mama sent me with a cheese sandwich and a drink. Then one day, one of the teachers pulled me aside and asked me if everything was okay at home with my family. I said yes. She asked why I brought my own meal rather than pocket money to buy breakfast. The only girls who brought their own food to school were the poor girls, because they couldn’t afford to pay for breakfast at school. My face turned red, I was so embarrassed to think that anyone at school would consider me poor. After that, I asked Mama for pocket money and she gave it to me. But every day, I had to endure a shoving match with about one hundred girls over the small box of sandwiches for sale. I was a thin, small girl and couldn’t fight my way through so I ended up with my hair pulled and no breakfast. My sister refused to help in part because I wouldn’t put up a fight, but a girl named Fatin, the older sister of one of my friends, took pity on me. I’d give her my money and she would buy me food. But it was always horrible. One time they left the food next to a kerosene container, which must have leaked onto the sandwiches. The smell was awful and every bite tasted like kerosene, but they sold it to us anyway. It still amazes me that we literally fought each other to buy such terrible food.
Every girl did bring her own water, however. The school’s metal coolers were old and rusty, and the water that came from them was warm and brown.
In class, we were not grouped according to our abilities but rather divided up into alphabetical groups by our first names. I was incredibly lucky to find two of my best friends in my group, another Manal and a girl named Malak. There was not enough space in our classroom for me to have my own desk, so each day I would squeeze myself into a crack between Manal’s and Malak’s desks and nestle between them. They were both very pretty, and the pretty girls were always favored by the teachers. Malak always arrived at school dressed beautifully with bands in her hair. Her mother even ironed her socks. The teachers would bring the pretty girls candy. They would speak nicely to them and permit them to do things that the rest of us could not. When it came time to go to the bathroom, the teachers always allowed the pretty girls to go, but depending on their mood, the other girls might be forced to stay in their seats. One time, one of the average girls wet herself after she was sent back to her seat, and the teacher yelled at her as she sobbed.
I was not one of the pretty girls. In drawing class, I spent extra time trying to make the most beautiful pictures I could so that the teacher would praise my art. I was at least fortunate to be smart, although some of my teachers disliked me because I would interrupt and ask questions. Many times, though, my good grades saved me from a harsh beating. But not always.
When it came to beatings, Saudi Arabia’s schools were no better than its homes. I remember the expression uttered by many parents when they registered their children, which translates literally to: “The skin is for you, and the bone is for us.” This meant that the teacher was permitted to hit the child whenever he or she deemed it necessary. The deputy of our school had a fifty-centimeter wooden ruler, somewhat shorter than a yardstick, that she carried everywhere, and each teacher brought a traditional thirty-centimeter wooden ruler with her to class. When a female student was punished, she was required to extend her palm and be smacked by the ruler. But it did not stop there. Teachers might also pinch our ears and slap our faces and behinds, and pull our hair. There were also “moral” punishments, like missing the daily break or being stopped and publicly reprimanded in front of every girl standing in the morning queue.
I remember the first beating I received at school, during my first week of first grade. The teacher was named Miss Ilham, and she was an angry woman very much like my mother. She was busy at her desk when she noticed me chewing gum and called for me in a loud voice to come forward. I got up from my desk and walked dumbly to the front of the class, wondering what I could have done to be singled out: no one had explained to me that chewing gum was not allowed. As I stood, confused, there came a slap on my right cheek so forceful that it drove my face into the green chalkboard and left a chalk stain on my other cheek. Then she began to scream at me, “Gum?! Gum?! Do you have no manners at all?!”
She pointed to the wastebasket. Amid my sobbing, the gum had fallen out of my mouth and now lay like an incriminating piece of evidence on the patterned white-and-black ceramic floor. Terrified, I walked toward the wastebasket and back only to receive a second slap. “Blindness in your eyes!” Miss Ilham screamed. “The gum is still on the floor, you dishonest girl!”