After I left our house, my now ex-husband refused to speak to me, and we communicated only through his sister. We had agreed to share our time with Aboudi; he would be with me during the weekdays and with his dad on the weekends. I did not know until much later that I could have asked to have my son some weekends, since I was not free during the week. Instead, Aboudi went to his grandmother’s each weekend and I stayed home alone.
Saudi custody rules are murky at best and often depend on whatever individual agreements are reached between the two parents and, sometimes, their families and the judge. In 2007, when I got divorced, the policy was for children to reside largely with the mother until they turned seven. At age seven, a girl would then be taken to her father’s house to live. A boy, however, would be asked if he wished to remain with his mother; the choice was his. Once he became a teenager, that boy would often become his mother’s male guardian. He would have the final say over whether she could work or go out, or must stay in. If a woman remarries, she immediately loses all custody of her children. If they are young, they must be sent to her mother to live or, if her mother is unable to care for them, to her sisters—the oldest first, and if she can’t, then the second-oldest—rather like an elaborate plan of royal succession. A man, however, can remarry at will or even take a second wife, with no impact on his claim to his children. I have friends who wish very much to leave their marriages but cannot, because they know that they will lose their children.
I was determined not to become a second wife. I could not imagine giving up Aboudi. My own family did not have a tradition of taking second wives, but the practice is still strong in Saudi society, particularly in the middle of the country. When women reach the end of their childbearing years, the man goes and finds someone younger. For years, Saudi men also used to bring women back from Syria, Morocco, or Egypt to be second wives. The father of one of my childhood best friends had two wives, who lived on different floors of the same apartment building. Another of my childhood friends became a second wife herself. And one of my other friends, who was married with three children, discovered by accident that her husband had taken a second wife, a woman with whom he worked at Aramco. My friend left her husband for a while and returned to her family home, but eventually she went back. Many women do not know or do not speak about the existence of second wives.
After my divorce, I had some suitors propose, all of whom wanted to make me a second wife. I was insulted to be approached for that, but men assumed I would say yes. After you are divorced in Saudi Arabia, it is very difficult to get a second chance.
But I didn’t live in Saudi Arabia—I lived in a world more like something from a Hollywood movie set.
When the American company Standard Oil began exploring for oil in Saudi Arabia in 1932, there was nothing but desert and sand. So they built their own compound to live in. Over the years, the compound became a green oasis, sitting up high on a hill, overlooking the Eastern Province; most days, there is a clear view all the way to the Bahrain causeway. There are grassy parks, lakes and ponds, and walking trails. Some fifteen thousand people live behind the compound’s high walls and security gates. Anyone who visits needs special permission to enter.
Behind those walls, women can drive, even if they don’t have a driver’s license—because most Saudi women, even many who have lived abroad, do not have driver’s licenses. Women do not need to wear the abaya; religious police do not patrol the streets. The compound was originally only for Americans, but by 1980, the Saudi government had bought all the shares of Aramco, and the company is now Saudi owned. More than eighty percent of the employees working at Aramco are Saudis, but they are paid less than their American colleagues and receive fewer benefits. Of all the sixty-six nationalities working for Aramco, Americans are treated the best.
In 2006, the former president of Aramco, Abdullah Jum’ah (the man I would be seated next to at lunch on the day of my divorce), changed the policy forbidding all Saudi women from living in the compound. Although I doubt single mothers were what the company had in mind when it specified that only single Saudi women could live there, the compound was one of the best things that happened to me in Saudi Arabia.
The units were small, but I did not mind. The compound had everything, even a hospital, although Aboudi could not use it because he was technically not considered a resident of the compound. He was registered under his father’s Aramco badge number, and my ex-husband still lived in Dammam. I had no birth certificate, no identity card, no passport, no piece of paper to prove that Aboudi was my son. Several years later, I could not register him for school because I had no way to show that he was my child. No Saudi mother can register her child for school if the father is unwilling to provide the necessary documents, so some children go uneducated.
What I did have was a car. I had originally bought it to be used by a driver, but I couldn’t house the driver on the compound. People in family housing could have a room for their drivers, but that wasn’t possible in bachelor housing. But I didn’t want the car to go to waste. Since women could drive inside the compound without a license, I asked my brother to teach me. He gave me an hourlong crash course in starting and stopping and traveling down the road. The longest I would have to drive was only about twenty minutes. Most of the roads were easy to navigate, although sometimes the speed limit did rise to about eighty kilometers (fifty miles) per hour.
Now, I could drive from my home to my office. On the way, I would drop Aboudi at a compound preschool. The first one he attended was just inside someone’s house; they had converted the garage into nursery space and hired Filipino maids to take care of the kids. Each morning, I would wake before dawn and dress Aboudi as he was still sleeping. I would pack my work bag as well as Aboudi’s bag and his snacks, and on cold mornings, I would go down to start my car and turn on the heater, because I didn’t want him riding in the chilly air. A few times, I tried to carry my work bag, my laptop case, Aboudi’s bags, and Aboudi all in one trip, but it was impossible. Instead I would go up and down, through the heavy fire doors, to start the car and then to load it, and then last to get Aboudi. At lunchtime, I would leave my office and drive to the nursery to eat with him. When I left work at four, I would pick him up on my way home.