I grew up afraid to fall asleep. My mind simmered with genie tales and stories of Al Si’elua, the witch who would come and eat you if you ventured out beyond the confines of your home. My grandmother was full of such stories, stories of women eating children and witches who would kidnap you or cut off a leg or an arm. She told us these stories before we fell asleep, so they were the last images to pass through our minds as we closed our eyes.
During the daytime, it was the genies we feared, although we were too scared to utter the word genie, and so we would say “Bismillah” instead. (Bismillah means “in God’s name.” We say it before starting anything, from a meal to a project. Saying “Bismillah” will cause any genie coming your way to vanish.) As children, we were told that genies would possess you if you failed to say your prayers before performing any of a host of daily tasks: using the bathroom, looking in the mirror, getting dressed or undressed. Forgetting to pray before changing clothes meant that angels might see your aura. We needed to pray before we ate, before we started a new class in school, a new job, or a new day. There were prayers for starting a trip, even a prayer for taking an airplane or getting into a car. All these prayers were designed to protect us from the genies, who were as real to us as our own families. The genies lived in their own genie cities, had their own tribes, and had names, wives, and children. Where angels are made of light, genies are made of fire, and humans of mud, or so we are told in the Koran.
Many women, including young women, believe that they are possessed by genies. Some even pay money to have the bad genies removed from their bodies, and countless others worry about being given the evil eye and thus having their blessings destroyed. I have close friends who did not share the news that they were getting married, that they were pregnant, or that they were building a new home until after the fact, out of fear of being cursed with the evil eye. I have learned never to say, “Oh, you have a beautiful child” to certain friends, because if anything ever happened to the child, I would immediately be blamed for having given it the evil eye. Women become conditioned to say only the bad things, to complain about their lives, for fear of otherwise inviting the evil eye, and create rituals and obsessions to avoid it. For example, after you have spent the day at someone’s home, your hostess might drink the last dregs of your coffee from your cup, believing that it will offer protection in case you have coveted anything while you were there. A bad grade on an exam, a food stain on an expensive leather purse—anything at all—can be blamed on someone else’s evil eye.
My mother believed. When we got our hair cut, she would insist on taking the clippings with her so that no one could bewitch them. If she thought my sister or I had been given the evil eye, she would take us to a man in Mecca who sold water designed to drive off evil spirits. Some women even think it is necessary to spit this water on the afflicted to drive away the genies. Even very personal items, such as women’s menstrual pads, have to be disposed of in a special way—and never in someone’s home—so that no one could use them to perform black magic.
As I grew older, I stopped believing in genies possessing us and in the evil eye. But I am sure there were more than a few women who saw me, a newly single mother, and believed I had been struck by the worst of the evil eye. When I crossed the threshold into my tiny company studio room in the Aramco singles’ building, there was no familiar prayer that I could utter as a divorced Saudi woman living alone.
My own family didn’t know I was alone. My father had already been to visit me and had forbidden me from divorcing. My twenty-four-year-old brother had told me, “We don’t have girls who get divorced.” My mother was in Egypt when the divorce happened; she did not know for a year. The only people I told were two men who worked at Aramco: one because he had to sign my housing papers, and the other because I could not move without a man’s help.
The axiomatic thing about Saudi society is that while there are a seemingly infinite number of rules, it is also possible for people in authority to go outside those rules, and, if not break them, at least bend them quite a bit. So it was that in 2007, when I left my husband, I moved into a small studio living space, only a few hundred square feet, inside the Aramco compound under a provision known as “out of policy.” This section of the compound provided housing for single Saudi female employees whose families lived more than eighty kilometers (about fifty miles) away and who had no children. I was not yet single and I had a toddler, but I had told a member of Aramco’s housing department that I was getting divorced and I had nowhere to live. Within a week, I had been assigned to a unit, living among female nurses and clerks. If Aboudi made too much noise, or if anyone complained, I would be removed and be without a home. Each time I drove into the housing cluster, I passed a sign that read: “No pets allowed, No men allowed, No children allowed.”
A few months later, I appealed for a larger living space. My request was denied. Then one day I was at a small lunch with a senior executive, and I thought, Why not ask him? I made my request, and I was granted a town house. But I hadn’t realized there was a difference between single townhomes and family housing, so I was merely transferred into a bachelors’ area with slightly more space. There was only one bedroom for Aboudi and me to share: if my neighbors complained, I could still be kicked out.
The year of my divorce, I was assigned three new hires as my mentees. And I also told one of them, a recent university graduate, that I was divorced. I needed a man to help me get furniture and with other basics, such as opening a bank account. Like almost all Saudi woman, I could not leave my awful marriage without the help of a man—and my own family would not help me. My mentee and I remained good friends until he got married. Then, perhaps at the insistence of his wife or just the culture at large, he stopped speaking to me. Such are the ways of women and men.
Otherwise, I kept my divorce secret. I did not tell my coworkers or my boss. But the upheaval showed in other ways. I had a hard time concentrating on projects. For the first time, my performance review at work was dreadful. And I cut my hair.
I had worn my hair long for years. My ex-husband in particular did not like even shoulder-length hair, he wanted me to stop cutting it entirely. Whenever I got a haircut, he would fly into a rage and scream insults at me for touching my hair. Without a husband, there was no one to tell me how short I could or could not wear my hair. I cut it very short, as short as a boy’s. It was a symbolic act; I could not tell people I was free of my marriage, but at least I could be free of my hair.