My parents went to great lengths just to keep my job at Aramco a secret from my own family; if anyone found out, Mama and Abouya would face severe disapproval or worse. Whenever anyone asked Mama about my work, she told them that I was a teacher in one of the Aramco schools in the Eastern Province and that I was living in the company accommodation for female employees. But even then, there was constant questioning: “How can you permit her to live there alone, even if it’s in the company housing?” My parents found themselves under so much pressure that they eventually resorted to additional lies: “We’re taking turns traveling to the Eastern Province, to stay with her and supervise her,” they said.
I, too, felt the pressure from family, acquaintances, and even perfect strangers, so I simply kept to myself. That way, I didn’t have to lie or hide the truth; doing so made me feel as if I were somehow living in sin. On one of my trips between Jeddah and the Eastern Province, I was interrogated by a woman sitting next to me on the plane. “You are from Jeddah and you work in Aramco and you live alone?” came her accusing tones. “How can your family permit you to do this? Don’t you fear for your reputation?” Every time I traveled after that, I made sure to bring headphones and a book.
Each day at lunch, I boarded the shuttle bus to the dining hall—unlike the Aramco city bus, female employees could ride the shuttle bus inside the compound—to eat with two women who were working as contract employees. I didn’t know at the time that they were from the Shiite community, but neither I nor anyone around me (or so I thought) cared about the Sunni/Shiite sectarian divisions anyway. One day, however, I bumped into an older male colleague in the mixed dining hall, and he answered my smile with a sullen face.
After lunch, he stopped by my office. “Aren’t you scared what will happen to your reputation from eating lunch in the dining hall?” he asked.
“Excuse me?” I answered. “What does my reputation have to do with the dining hall? Am I supposed to starve?”
“Well, it’s well known that girls who eat in the dining hall go there to look for relationships with men.”
I sent an email to the division planner, Amro, and my group leader to ask them if it was considered taboo for female employees to eat lunch in the dining hall. I didn’t get a direct response, which made me uncomfortable. I decided from then on I’d get a cold sandwich from the Coffee Man, a small shop in our office building, and make dinner my only proper meal, eaten largely alone when I got back to the apartment.
At one point I also decided to stop wearing my abaya in the office. I made sure my outfits were formal and modest, and I still covered my hair. Within a couple of days, the same colleague who had complained about my coffee break habits was at my door, voicing his disapproval. I went back to wearing the abaya and soon found an unsigned letter on my desk thanking me for adhering to a modest dress code. The letter only made me feel more resentful.
I had been under the illusion that my male colleagues were open-minded, since we worked in a mixed environment, but I soon discovered that was far from the case. My Saudi colleagues never introduced me to their wives; I didn’t even know their names. By chance, I met one wife in a training session at Aramco’s Department of Adult Education (these sessions took place outside working hours, and family members of Aramco employees were allowed to attend). My colleague’s wife told him about our meeting, and he was deeply distressed. “Please,” he begged, standing before me in my office, “don’t tell her that we’re working in the same group. Don’t mention anything about me in front of her!” I was very surprised. This man was quiet and calm; he was one of the men who treated me very respectfully. But he was terrified that his wife had discovered he was working with a woman. If a man in the office spoke to his wife on the phone, he never addressed her by her first name but instead as the mother of his oldest child, “Umm Muhammad” or “Umm Abdullah,” just as my mother used to call me by my brother’s name when were in the marketplace. And the men were always eager to end the calls as quickly as possible. Almost daily, I wondered what these men thought of me, the only woman working among them.
The Information Protection Division was brand new when I joined; it had been set up after a computer virus had attacked Aramco’s network infrastructure. In our second year, our administrator decided that each of us should take a series of specialized information security training courses. After completing the three courses, employees would be awarded a title. Information Security Consultant III would be awarded after the first stage, followed by Information Security Consultant II for the second stage, and Information Security Consultant I for the third. It was obligatory for all the employees in our division to attend.
I arrived at the start of one workweek to find everyone gone. They were all in Khobar attending the first training course. I was rushing off to find a driver to take me there when the division head explained that I couldn’t go. “It is not permitted for women to attend.”
I filed an official complaint with all my supervisors. Aramco’s response was that the Saudi Ministry of the Interior did not permit women to be present alongside men for training courses held outside the compound. Only an official waiver granted by the Governor’s House (known as the Imara and responsible for the administration of the Eastern Province) and then approved by the Ministry of the Interior could allow me to attend. Aramco had decided against delaying training for the division’s male employees to wait for permission for me that might or might not be granted.
It was difficult not to feel as if every rule had been invented to ensure that I would fail.
I requested that we petition the Governor’s House to let me attend the training course, but my request was ignored. Then I asked my group leader if I could travel outside Saudi Arabia to attend the same courses, but the answer was no. The only way for me to complete the training was to borrow books from my colleagues and study them myself. And that was what I did. I passed the first three tests on my own, and I was awarded the same certificates as my colleagues. But there was one more test to pass before I could earn my first title.
The fourth test focused on the topic of ethical hacking. Although I had spent my first year at Aramco working with a team of ethical hackers, books alone were not enough: both the training course and the exam assumed that the student had access to a specialized computer lab. The first time I took the test, I failed. It was the first time I’d ever failed anything. I went to the administrator’s office and explained my situation. I showed him the cost of attending the same course abroad and the dates it was being offered. My direct boss was very annoyed with my decision to go over his head, but my diminishing patience had made the decision for me.