There was a second man in the room, sitting behind a desk. He too began to speak. He wanted to know who was behind the Women2Drive group, of which I was the public face and one of the leaders, and also whom I had spoken with in the foreign press. He asked me about my relationship with Wajeha al-Huwaider, the woman who had filmed me driving. Wajeha was a well-known activist in Saudi Arabia, but I had no idea about the depths of her troubled relationship with the government. The second man would ask me questions, and then the first man would ask me questions, over and over. I kept smiling the whole time.
All of a sudden, the man behind the desk closed the interrogation file. He looked at me and said something very much like, “Come on, Manal. You know the king is going through a very difficult time with the Arab Spring and all the things that are happening in the region. Why would you add more burdens to the king? Don’t you love the king?” And there right in front of me was the king’s picture, staring down at me with that half-smile.
In Saudi Arabia, your patriotism is measured by how much you love the king. The king is revered like a father, and we are considered his daughters and sons. And out of all the Saudi kings, Abdullah is the king I have loved instead of feared. He is the only one to start opening doors for women, to speak up for women or to allow more freedom of speech and freedom of the press. So it was not hard for me to tell the interrogator, “No, of course, I love King Abdullah so much. I wouldn’t want to do anything that would cause him any more burdens.”
The interrogator nodded and said that the problem wasn’t so much with me driving, it was with me posting my video on YouTube and talking to the foreign media and causing so much fuss.
I tried to follow his lead and started apologizing. I told him that if my participation in the Women2Drive campaign was what was causing all these problems, I’d just stop. I told him that I never imagined I’d have all these problems with officials, and I was so sorry. My purpose, I added, “was not to inconvenience anyone.”
He nodded and then left. My brother and I were alone. Fahad, the Aramco guy, was already gone. Just as the first interrogator had finished, Fahad had stuck his head into the room and said: “I think you’re fine now. Sorry, I have to go to work. It’s seven a.m. and I have to report to my office.” He told me we could take a taxi back, or call him and he would come pick us up.
I sat in silence with my brother, texting the girls who were putting up the feeds on Twitter. I asked them to please stop tweeting about me and my arrest, telling them that I did not want any more attention. It was just something minor, I added, just the video that was the problem. I would be released soon.
About thirty minutes passed and then another man came in. The first thing he did was order my brother to leave. My brother was swiftly escorted out and, in his place, they ushered in a woman. She was called the prison guard. No name, just “the prison guard.” She was fully veiled in a black abaya and black niqab with black shoes, black socks, and black gloves on her hands. Even her bag was black. I couldn’t even see a glimpse of her face, just a thin slash through the cloth where the whites of her eyes glowed. She sat next to me, saying nothing. Her gloves were so old and worn that there were holes in the fabric and along the seams where the threads had come loose. I could see down to her dark skin. Her bag was old too, battered, with a strap that was barely hanging on. But then I stopped looking at her because the new interrogator was not done.
He took my bag with my wallet, my cell phone, and everything I had. My papers and my identity were gone. Even my ability to tell time was gone; there was no clock in the room. On any other morning, I would know when my neighbors began to move about their houses, when the Aramco buses would begin their morning loops around the smooth asphalt streets of the compound. I would know when my five-year-old son woke up. On this morning when he opened his eyes, he would discover that his mother was gone.
Now I was truly frightened.
The new interrogator asked me all the same questions, what’s your name, what’s your age, where do you work? He continued to ask me for the names of the people I had talked to in the foreign media. Everything was the same as the previous rounds of questioning, except he spoke in a harsher tone. Then he left and I sat there, with my silent guard, waiting.
Then another man came in. He sat down right in front of me, and the first thing he said, in a concerned voice, was, “Tell me your story.” So, I told him my story again, and he listened, and then he left the room. I didn’t know until much later that all of this was a standard pattern: to use multiple interrogators, to alternate between cajoling and being sympathetic and then firm and harsh, to repeat the same questions again and again, to keep the detainee waiting. Each time, they were trying to see if I would change my story. Would there be inconsistencies? Would I inadvertently say the wrong thing or give something away?
I don’t know if I would call myself a calm person by nature, but the effect of having been up for more than twenty-four hours, of having eaten so little, and of having expended so much adrenaline, first in the car and then at the traffic police station the previous afternoon, made me calm and methodical. My story was my story. It did not change.
At some point, one of my interrogators had brought in a copy of Al Yaum newspaper. He held it in his left hand, his fingers gripping the paper like a vise, until it buckled and creased around the edges. With his free hand, he pointed to my picture and the headline about my arrest on the front page. Afterward, he threw it on the desk. He wanted the names of people involved with the driving campaign. I gave him only two names, names he already knew: Bahiya al-Mansour, the girl who had started the Facebook event for Women2Drive, and Wajeha al-Huwaider, the activist. (Both were later picked up and interrogated as well.) But I kept my answers short, as King Abdullah’s bespectacled face gazed down from his portrait. Then once more the prison guard and I were left alone.
It was work to keep my body in the chair. I had never thought of sitting as tiring, but it was taking every muscle in me to keep myself in that position, to keep my head from folding over into my lap. I hadn’t been to the bathroom yet, and I knew that at some point soon, it would be time for midday prayers. I kept asking this woman if there was a place I could go for some privacy.
Suddenly the silence broke. There was big flurry of activity. The door opened, people motioned, speaking in fast, clipped Arabic, without any of the usual pleasantries or greetings: “Come with us.” I followed and found myself in another area, surrounded by a lot of men. My face was uncovered, and I was the only woman, except for the prison guard, who followed mutely along.
I started speaking, asking, “Where is my brother? Where is my bag? What’s happening?”
We were led to a metal door and motioned through. I could hear the metal close hard behind us. I kept asking the guard: “Why are we in here? What’s going on?”