To subscribe to the Internet you had to have a landline, but Abouya had disconnected our home telephone line after the incident with Muna and the Arab boy. In order to get a new landline, the telecommunications company required proof of the apartment’s rental contract. This made the situation more complex than I’d anticipated, so I asked my mother for help. I explained that I needed the Internet to do my homework, and that I’d take care of all the expenses from my university allowance. Mama got hold of a fake rental contract from a local real estate office for a small fee. We applied for a landline: once again, we had no choice but to keep this secret from my father.
At first, with the cassette sermon fresh in my mind, my willpower was strong. I resisted visiting chat rooms and websites that railed against Salafi ideology. Instead I spent my time doing homework or strengthening my faith by reading postings on the pro-Salafi sites. But I couldn’t resist following political analysis and world news, and as I explored, click by click, I stumbled on a number of sites opposing the Saudi regime. And, though these sites were later blocked and censored, I always found a way around the obstacles.
I began reading articles and postings that criticized extremist Salafi ideology. I read opinions on the niqab, on singing, on drawing animate beings, and also on loyalty and disavowal. My whole life, I’d known only one perspective on these subjects, and as far as I’d been concerned, it was the right one. Now I felt increasingly troubled by everything I read. Gradually, I realized that the ideas I had embraced and defended blindly all my life represented a singular, and highly radical, point of view. I began to question everything. I began posting in forums, discussing these radical ideas and rejecting them. I started drawing again, and I stopped judging Sara for revealing her face. Nothing did more to change my ideas and convictions than the advent of the Internet and, later, social media. When social media began to flourish during the Arab Spring of 2011, I found myself in possession of a voice—a miraculous thing in a country where women are almost never heard.
But a decade before that came September 11. That was the date of the complete transformation in my beliefs, the start of my rebellion against the teaching of hatred and hostility toward non-Muslims. It was an event that divided Saudi society into two sections—those who were shocked and those whose contempt of the West, particularly of America, was heightened. Hatred for Americans was prevalent in Saudi Arabia for many reasons. A central factor was the presence of US military bases, which had been used during the First and Second Gulf Wars. Other factors included the strong bias against Israel in the Palestinian conflict with Israel; the sanctions against Iraq, which were seen as a form of siege and starvation; and America’s support for dictatorial regimes in the Arab world. But on that day, we were glued to the television screen, watching the replays of the buildings falling.
We had grown used to watching bloodshed, massacres, and destruction in Muslim countries like Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chechnya, and Iraq; now, for the first time, we were seeing the same thing in America. As I watched thick plumes of smoke rise into the sky and saw the Twin Towers burn, my feelings were a mixture of shock and deep sorrow. The scene that etched itself in my memory more firmly than any other was seeing victims jumping from the upper floors of the World Trade Center. “This is madness,” I said to myself, in tears. “Neither mind nor conscience can accept what we are seeing here.” When I went to sleep that night, I prayed to God that Muslims had no role in the tragedy.
I woke to news that the attack had been carried out by Al Qaeda, which was led by a Saudi, Osama bin Laden, and soon after, that fifteen of the nineteen hijackers were from Saudi Arabia. The heroes of yesterday’s Afghan War were the same monsters who had perpetrated this attack. It was a shock, and it changed my convictions about what jihad for the sake of God really meant. I could not believe that God would demand the killing of innocent people. The atrocities of September 11 were followed by a series of terrorist attacks inside Saudi Arabia, in which hundreds of civilians and military personnel lost their lives. The name Al Qaeda popped up every time.
I was done with Salafism.
I entered my own period of mourning that fall. On October 25, my aunt Zein died. She had devoted years of her life to caring for her mother, my grandmother Sitti Alwa (God rest their both souls) after she developed dementia. She would wash her mother, clean the urine and waste away from her body, and change her clothes, just as one would do for an infant. She did this even though Sitti Alwa would insult her and rant and rave at her, and even throw her out of the house. My aunt was patient and dutiful to the end. “Lord, let me die a quiet death,” she used to call out in prayer. “Let me cause no trouble to anyone.” God answered her prayer; she left this world peacefully, in a diabetic coma, without giving anyone a chance to bid her farewell. I loved my aunt very much, and spent days crying because I hadn’t been able to see her before she died. I saw only her body, lying on the ground, a colorful pink head scarf with red flowers and green leaves surrounding her peaceful face. A golden stud adorned her beautiful nose, and her gold bangles had been placed in her soft, caring hands. It was as if she were sleeping. But this was a sleep from which she’d never open her eyes, no matter how much I wished to see them and to hug her one last time.
On June 27, 2000, Sheikh Hamoud bin Aqla al Shuebi pronounced the following fatwa: “To grant a woman an identity card bearing her picture is an abomination which is not permitted by sharia law. It will result in great religious, moral and social evils.” But a little more than one year later, in November 2001, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef bin Abdulaziz, decreed that Saudi women twenty-two years or older would be able to obtain personal identification cards with the written consent of their guardian. Newspapers reported that the purpose of the new ruling was to help women “perform their activities with ease” and to prevent fraud and identity theft. But others claimed that the real reason was security; in a number of cases, would-be terrorists had been arrested wearing women’s clothing. Whatever the reason, the issuing of an ID card was now possible, although optional.
Not long after the decree, I asked my father to take me to the Office of Civil Affairs in Mecca. I didn’t tell him why. When we arrived, I tried to make it a happy surprise: “Abouya, did you know that I can now get an official identity card? They issued the decision this week, and I’m here to submit my application.”
My father looked at me, his expression a mixture of outrage and disbelief. What he had heard me saying was this: “I want independence from you, and I don’t need you after today. My picture will be on the identity card, and men will see it.” I know that’s what he heard because those were the accusations he flung at me, word for word, in response to my request.