There are ten days left until the secondary school exams, and I’m feeling very scared and uneasy. These are my final years of school; all the teachers think highly of me, and I don’t want to let them down. The problem that’s plaguing me now is these awful feelings of fear and dread. I know I’ll be asked about my studies on the Day of Judgment: for whom was I studying? For whom did I stay up late all those nights, and for what purpose? And what will I say? God, forgive me for all the times I studied for myself and not for the good of Islam. Make all this studying for your benefit, and don’t let the devil get close to us. I’ve made a pledge to myself: I’ll do everything I can to become someone of significance, not for the sake of fame, but because I want to serve Muslims everywhere; I want to offer them something useful. I want to be like Necmettin Erbakan [1926–2011], the head of the Islamist Welfare Party in Turkey, or Ali Begovic [Alija Izetbegovic, 1925–2003], the president of Bosnia and Herzegovina. I want to visit all the countries of the Islamic world, solve their problems and repair them single-handedly. I’d hate to live my whole life without having had an impact on the course of things in our great world. I wonder, will I achieve my impossible dream? I don’t think so!
The fact that I ended my secondary school years with such ambitions was something of a miracle. My views had remained extremist and closed-minded. But, more than that, I had grown up in a society that considered teaching, in girls’ schools of course, the only acceptable career choice for a woman. It was a job that would keep her as far from the sight of men as possible. Girls who wished to deviate from this path and work as a doctor or nurse for female patients were viewed with a great deal of suspicion. And this was at a time when Saudi Arabia was recruiting engineers, medical doctors, and PhDs from Egypt and other Arab countries due to a lack of qualified people among its own population. None of this, however, stopped me from nurturing my dreams.
I had two major motivations. The first was an overwhelming desire to lift my family out of poverty and improve our social standing. The second was my mother, who carried a deeply held conviction that education, academic success, and an independent career should be the entire focus of our lives; she single-handedly made education a household priority. My mother came from an educated and academically successful family. Although she did not attend school beyond the fourth grade, all but one of her siblings and their children are university graduates. Mama’s dream was for me to become a doctor, but mine was to become an engineer or a nuclear physicist. Back then, it wasn’t even possible for girls to study these fields, but this did nothing to dampen my enthusiasm.
The universal expectation was for girls to learn how to perform domestic duties such as cleaning, cooking, washing clothes and dishes, and raising children, in preparation for becoming a good wife. But Mama was strongly opposed to us doing any chores. She had only one domestic worker, an illegal immigrant from Nigeria, who came to help during the day; everything else she did herself. I don’t recall Mama once asking my sister or me to help her with anything; in fact, she was angry if she saw us devoting time to any task other than our studies. “I don’t want any reward from you, or any thanks,” she used to say. “My reward will be at the end of the year when I see top grades on your school certificates. I want you to be the number one students not only in your schools, but in the whole of Mecca.” If one of us got second place, we had failed our mother. None of us would receive her blessing until we were the best.
But getting top grades was difficult, particularly in the sciences. We studied sixteen different topics per semester, but had no access to laboratories and other essential materials, and thus no practical lessons. The only way to make up for this was to ask parents for help, hire a tutor, or use the already completed notebooks of an older sibling. None of these options was available to me. My parents were not educated, and they couldn’t afford a private tutor. As for my sister, she took pains to destroy her notebooks at the end of every year. “Make some effort to find the answers yourself,” she told me. “You don’t deserve to get them by doing nothing.”
But I wasn’t going to let my mother down. From my fourth year of primary school through my last year of secondary school, my grades were not only the best in my class but the best in the whole school. At first I worked for my grades to please my mother. I was never rewarded with presents or money; I worked because the satisfaction of achieving was a gift in itself. I started to enjoy the respect that my academic achievements won for me from the teachers and headmistress. Their interest made me feel as if I mattered; it gave me a sense of self. And it was a great achievement for the school that one of their students was able to join the ranks of top students from all over the city.
In school, my grades won me third place in the entire region of Mecca, and in secondary school I achieved first place, with a score of 99.6 percent. The newspapers published the names of the top ten students, and I proudly checked the list to see mine above them all. My teachers told me that there was a cash prize of 5,000 riyals for the student with the top score. Immediately, I thought about everything that Mama needed and drew up a list of what I would buy: a new washing machine to replace our old, broken one; a new oven; a set of pots and dishes. If there was anything left over, I would buy my father a Rado watch, since he’d been without a watch for some time. When my uncle had complimented his old one, Abouya had taken it off his wrist and given it to him as a gift.
Honors Day arrived. The ceremony was held at the offices of the General Administration for Girls’ Education. But I didn’t wear graduation robes as I had dreamed of, nor did I receive a certificate of achievement, or a gift, or even the special cash prize. All I received that day was a shield bearing my name. It wasn’t even inscribed with anything to show that I earned first place. The government had discontinued the award that year, and in general, girls did not receive the same type of recognition as boys. I left the ceremony feeling only crushing disappointment. I put the shield in the box with the rest of my shields and certificates, and I felt even more determined not to rely on other people for anything. I would realize my dreams myself.
However, the graduation wasn’t a complete loss. Aunt Zein surprised me with a beautiful gift of engraved gold bangles, just like the ones she wore. It was the only graduation gift I received. I had to sell them later to buy clothes for university.
After a girl finished secondary school, it was customary for would-be suitors to come knocking at the family’s door. My best friend, Malak, married when she was eighteen, right after we graduated, and my friend Manal married a short time later. Mama, however, was adamant that no one should broach the topic of betrothal or marriage with her. She immediately refused any and all interested parties without even consulting Abouya or us. While I was still at school, one of my teachers tried to arrange an engagement between her brother and me. I didn’t even know about it until after my mother had refused, saying, “My daughters will marry after completing their education.”