The division ultimately decided that it would be cheaper for a training coach to teach me in private at an Aramco office than to send me abroad. It was my responsibility, they told me, to find an appropriate location for the one-week course; if I couldn’t find a spot, the trainer would not come. I booked a meeting room, and I got hold of a portable projector for the trainer to use during the sessions. I was the sole attendee, which made it the most useful training course I had ever attended. I passed the test and received my first title: I, Manal al-Sharif, could now call myself an Information Security Consultant III.
It was 2004; I had spent only two years with the company, and in that short period, I’d already faced many obstacles. But I was determined to beat them, one by one.
The Information Protection Division was not the only department housed in our sand-colored building. One day I was walking down a neighboring hallway when, glancing at the signs outside the doors, I saw a woman’s name, Hanan. I stopped and introduced myself, telling her how happy I was to see another woman. It was a Wednesday, and on Wednesdays her department shared breakfast with a third department on the other side of the building, in an area I’d never visited before. “Why don’t you come along?” she asked. “There are other women that will join us.”
At the breakfast, the men and women ate in two separate places, which surprised me, because there was no segregation of men and women anywhere else inside Aramco. But I was very happy to meet other female employees. Two were my age, although I was the only one who worked in a technical field. I sat in the office of a girl named Reem, and we got to know each other. Then, quite unexpectedly, everything changed.
A young man around my age entered Reem’s office, carrying a tray of hot falafel. Reem offered me some food, and we continued our conversation, but the man stayed where he was. He had sleepy, almond-shaped eyes and long, dark eyelashes. In that moment, that was everything I noticed and all that I could remember.
For a second, I shifted my gaze in his direction, and I saw his eyes watching me. I felt the blood rushing to my face and butterflies in my stomach. Reem was still talking, and I looked back at her, though I couldn’t follow anything she was saying. After a while, a colleague called and the nameless man left the office.
Though I was working in a division composed entirely of men, I’d never felt anything like this for any of them. When I had worked in the hospital, I would have fleeting crushes that lasted for a week and then promptly disappeared. This was different. But there wasn’t to be another breakfast for some time: we had entered the month of Ramadan, where everyone fasts from one hour before sunrise to sunset.
I knew nothing of this young man, but I thought of him constantly. There was no way, however, for me to learn anything more. I didn’t dare enter the other department without a reason. I had always found the month of Ramadan to be among the most beautiful times of the year and the fastest to pass, but this Ramadan lagged and idled.
At the end of each day during the thirty days of Ramadan, when you break your fast, you may ask God to grant you one wish, and that wish will be granted by God. Thirty wishes for thirty days. During that Ramadan, I used my wishes on just one thing. “Your call each day,” my childhood friend Manal later reminded me, “was, ‘O God, make the falafel guy mine!’ How silly you are,” she added, “to wish to marry a man when you don’t even know his name.”
After Ramadan, I gingerly approached my female colleagues to ask about the Wednesday breakfast. Reem assured me it was resuming and said I was welcome. When I saw the falafel man again, I was sure he could hear my heart pounding. After only a few Wednesdays, I recognized his distinctive French cologne.
I gradually found more friends. One of my female classmates from King Abdulaziz University joined my project as a contract employee. She was very religious and wore the niqab, but her intelligence and ambition had made her want to join Aramco regardless. This girl, Reem, Dalia (another female colleague), and I ate lunch together every day. I made sure to go to Reem’s office at lunchtime in the hopes of seeing the falafel man before he left the office to eat with his male colleagues. He, meanwhile, had started walking by my cubicle after lunch on the days that I did not walk into Reem’s section or missed seeing him. My male colleagues’ inquiring glances made very clear what were they thinking. But his visits, although they made me feel awkward, gave me some hope that our feelings were mutual.
I still didn’t know anything about his personal life, so it came as quite a shock to me when out of the blue several months later Reem produced a picture of a young child. “Look, Manal,” she told me, “this is his son.”
I felt suddenly sick. Saudi men don’t generally wear wedding rings, so it’s impossible to know their marital status unless they mention it. “Reem,” I gasped, “really, I had no idea before now that he was married.”
Reem laughed. She and the falafel man, whom I’ll call K., had planned the photo as a prank; he was not married, but now my feelings had been laid bare.
Sometime later, Reem and I ate lunch alone, and she raised the topic of K. without invitation. “K. says he is from a very conservative family, and that he would never marry a girl who works in Aramco.”
I felt foolish. For a year, I had entertained all kinds of hopes about our future together, hopes predicated on nothing more than the glances K. had scattered in my direction. Occasionally, he would speak to me, but he had never said anything about his feelings. I silently scolded myself for even opening myself up to the criticisms that Saudi society visits on women who work among men, convinced that my beliefs about K.’s intentions toward me were nothing more than fantasies.
That morning I had brought in a small plant that I planned to give to K.; it was similar to a plant of mine he had admired the last time he had passed my cubicle. After lunch, I walked quickly to his office, plant in hand. My words were like a stream of bullets: “Don’t worry,” I said, “it wasn’t your fault, it was mine. It was my fault for falling in love with a man who holds this view of women. Thank you for disclosing your true feelings to Reem; thank you for saving me a lot of hardship and for finally putting an end to my confusion! And thank you again for all the words that deceived me. Please, take this plant to remember me, and try to learn that not all women fit the image you have in your mind!” I slammed the plant down on his desk and left before he could catch sight of my tears. Only once I had gone did I realize what I had said. Love? I was mortified.