It can be difficult for people living outside of Saudi to understand why so many in our culture, women in particular, submit, stay, and suffer this kind of physical violence. But the price of resisting can be even higher. As I grew up in Mecca, there was another family on our block whose daughter wanted to attend college. Her father was enraged at the thought of her leaving home to study. They beat this girl so severely that she ran away. The family could not find her. Days passed, and they were forced to contact the police. But this seventeen-year-old girl had gone to the police first. She had filed a complaint against her father. The complaint was ignored, but the girl refused to leave the police station and return home. There were no shelters for abused women, so the only option was for the police to lock this girl in a juvenile correctional facility—a prison for women under age eighteen. Weeks later, her aunt intervened and took the girl into her house to live. I later heard that this girl did go to school and made it out of the country to study, although she was disavowed by Saudi authorities because she was living and studying abroad without a permissible mahram.
I cannot in any way call her “lucky,” but many female victims of abuse have limited skills and education and have even fewer options. There are stories of women who are starved, stabbed, burned, kicked out of their houses, and even locked in psychiatric institutions by male family members. Some are the victims of “honor killings,” murdered by fathers, brothers, or uncles simply because they are suspected of having a relationship with a man and thus bringing shame to the family. When I hear these stories and meet some of these women, I wonder in my heart how so many can claim that they are only following the rules of our religion. What has happened to the two fundamental principles of being a Muslim—living in peace and showing compassion?
It was summer. I asked my brother, who was now also working at Aramco, to accompany me on a trip to Europe. My husband wouldn’t let me take Aboudi with me, but I was willing to compromise on anything so long as I could get away from the house. I wanted to think, alone.
When I returned, I told him, “I want a divorce.” It was ironic that I was the one to say it after all the times he’d used the word to threaten me.
He refused. He ignored me, then insulted me, then beat me. Finally, he requested my father’s intervention. Abouya didn’t understand my request for a divorce; I had told no one in our family about the problems in our marriage, and my father had rarely visited. But now I explained everything to him in detail. He was very upset, but he remained strongly opposed to a divorce. He said, “You are the one who chose him, and you gave birth to his child. For the sake of this child, you should be patient.”
Abouya returned to Jeddah, believing he had set me straight, but I had made up my mind. I realized that K. had fought to keep me only three times during our entire history together, and each of these times was when I had decided to leave him: once during our romance, once during our engagement, and once during our marriage. When Aboudi was still a baby, K. had even kicked me out of the house. I’d taken Aboudi with me, but of course I couldn’t find anyone who would rent us a place to live. My brother was forced to rent a furnished apartment for us under my father’s name, using a copy of our family ID card. It was humiliating; I couldn’t stand the looks the employees in the building’s reception area gave me. Each time I passed, their eyes said, “Look, a lone woman with her child.” I soon returned to K.’s house, apologized, and begged him not to throw me out again. I didn’t have any other place to live.
Then, in late 2006, Aramco permitted women to live in its internal compound.
It happened in October 2007, on the twenty-seventh night of Ramadan, the holiest month for Muslims and the greatest night of the year. Aboudi had been born on this same night two Ramadans before. There was no one at home; everyone except Aboudi and me had gone to the special Taraweeh prayer. I gathered my things and Aboudi’s in two suitcases and left the house forever.
The divorce was even faster than the marriage. Several days later, I was attending a special summit hosted by Aramco to discuss the computing technology needed to support the new King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). There were two hundred people in the audience, and the speakers were experts and chief technology officers from big companies like Yahoo!, Microsoft, and Amazon. I was representing the female IT professionals working at Aramco. I decided to forgo my abaya for the first time in years.
I was listening to the speakers when I got a text from my husband. “Manal, you are divorced,” it read. “Your papers are in the court of Khobar.” I was divorced in my absence, just as I had been married.
Although I wanted this divorce, when I read that message I felt as though part of my soul had been extinguished. My eyes filled with tears and I left my seat. Standing outside, I called my best friend, Manal. When she answered, the only sounds she heard were my sobs. “I wanted this, but why does it hurt this much?” I choked out into the phone.
“Because the Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him, said divorce is the woman breaker,” Manal replied. She started crying with me.
But I could not stay outside. I had to go back in and act as if nothing had happened. I dried my eyes and returned to my seat.
When lunchtime arrived, one of the organizers approached me and asked if I was Manal al-Sharif. She told me that I would be at a table with Mr. Abdullah Jum’ah, the CEO of Aramco. I didn’t believe her until I saw the CEO sitting there with a group of top Saudi IT executives.
I told our CEO what an honor it was to be seated next to him. “Manal, the honor is all mine,” he answered, holding out the hummus plate. “Hummus?”
I was astonished at how humble and easygoing he was. For the entire lunch, I chatted with Aramco’s CEO, and also with the Saudi leader responsible for the country’s ICT infrastructure and regulations, and with the technology adviser to the US president. I wondered if this was a sign that I was right to choose a promising career rather than a failing marriage.
10
* * *
* * *
Live Free or Die
* * *
* * *