“Are you from Saudi?” he asked. “Do you know, in Saudi, women don’t drive?” He looked at me, completely amused.
I smiled back and asked him his name. Then, caught up in the moment, I made a huge mistake. I told him my name. I handed over my brother’s Saudi license, my Massachusetts license, and the car’s registration. And then I added, “Sir, there is nothing in the traffic police code that says I cannot drive.”
The traffic cop inspected the documents, all of which were valid. With a surprised look and a big smile, he told us to wait and then called for backup. While we were waiting for the second officer, a black car stopped in the middle of the road and the man inside looked over at me, still sitting in the driver’s seat. “Who is this woman?” the man demanded.
The traffic cop answered. “Manal al-Sharif.”
The man in the black car must have known about the YouTube video, because he made a call that would change my life. Within ten minutes, a huge GMC vehicle raced up, its tires squealing as the driver hastily applied the brakes. I was now surrounded by vehicles on all sides, but this last one was the most terrifying. Painted on its side was the insignia of the Mutawa—the Saudi religious police. Two men quickly emerged, one was very heavy, the other thin. Their names, I would learn, were Abu Abdullah and Faisal, and they were from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice.
My brother immediately hopped out of the car and went to talk to them. Trying not to panic, I awkwardly shifted myself over to sit in the passenger’s seat.
The Mutawa are like an unmarked army, invisible and yet everywhere all the time. They are best described by one word, brutal. They patrol malls and markets to make sure shopkeepers close for prayer, and are known to shout at ordinary Saudis for wearing the wrong clothes or being insufficiently covered. The religious law is left to their own interpretation, and their application of that law arbitrary and unchecked. The Mutawa have chased vehicles when they believed the occupants have violated religious requirements, resulting in several deadly car crashes, including one in 2012, when a man died and his wife, five months pregnant, and two children were badly injured. Several news outlets reported that a member of the Mutawa demanded that a woman cover her eyes, because although every other part of her body was covered, her eyes were “too seductive.” When her husband asked them to leave her alone, a Mutawa officer stabbed the husband twice in the hand. The Mutawa severely beat a British man and his wife for using a women’s-only automatic teller machine inside a supermarket in the capital city of Riyadh. All of this the Mutawa do—and are allowed to do—in the name of God.
The two Mutawa officers began insulting my brother, calling him every horrible name they could think of. As the minutes passed, it was clear that the situation belonged to them. The first traffic cop and the second one who had joined him stood off to the side, powerless. The Mutawa were yelling that they would not permit such an “outrageous mixing of the sexes” as had apparently happened when I, a woman, sat in the driver’s seat next to a man.
“But I’m that man and she’s my sister!” argued my brother.
Eventually, the Mutawa grew tired of harassing my brother and approached me in the car. People stopped in the street to watch. I triple-checked that the doors were locked.
The fat Mutawa tapped on the car window and called me “bint”—a pejorative term for “girl.”
I cracked the window and called out to them, “First of all, pay your respects. You may call me Umm Abdalla”—meaning Abdalla’s mother, the appropriate form of address for a mother in Saudi society. “Secondly,” I said, “this is a traffic issue, not a moral issue. I was driving with a valid license, there’s nothing immoral about that. This is an issue for the traffic police, so I’m not going with you.” I closed the window.
Abu Abdullah and Faisal from the Commission for the Promotion of Virtue and the Prevention of Vice were enraged. The heavy-set one pounded on the passenger side window, inches from my face. Like a furious, thwarted cartoon character, he pulled repeatedly on the handle of the locked door. Then he banged on the door. Spit flew from his mouth and collected on the glass as he bellowed at me over and over, “Get in our car! Come with us!”
I had seen countless videos online of the Mutawa harassing and assaulting sobbing women and children. I had watched them pull women by their scarves into Mutawa vehicles, like the GMC that was parked beside me. Many met with awful fates: detention, jail, and worse, scandals. “Over my dead body,” I said through the glass.
In the backseat of the now very hot car, my sister-in-law was crying. The children bawled, terrified. And the battery on my cell phone was dying. Before I shut it off to save what little power was left, I sent texts to two friends. “I’ve been stopped by the religious police for driving, please tweet about it.”
Traffic up and down the largest street in Khobar was at a standstill. Everyone had stopped to look at us. People were taking their own photos and videos. I felt like an animal in the zoo, captive and with no choice but to endure the endless stares.
For nearly an hour, the Mutawa tried to intimidate us. Finally, as dusk approached, my brother and I agreed to sit together in the backseat of his car and allow the two Mutawa to drive us to the traffic station. But that was not enough for them; they wanted my sister-in-law and the two children to come as well.
“They have nothing to do with it,” my brother insisted. He quickly hailed a taxi and placed his wife, their son, and Aboudi inside. It all happened so fast, I didn’t even get a chance to say goodbye.
The next thing I knew, the Mutawa were driving my brother’s car. Beside us, stopped at the light, was the taxi with my sister-in-law and the two boys. My sister-in-law was holding her son on her lap, but Aboudi was in a seat by himself, looking so panicked and alone. And I could do nothing. I could not take my own son in my arms and rock him, whispering to him that everything would be okay.
I thought, in that moment, of my own mother. I was here, in this seat, because despite all the years that she had fought for us to be educated, fought for us to have a future, my mother still could not change some of the most fundamental aspects of my present situation. But if I had courage, perhaps I could change my son’s. “So help me God,” I thought, “I will stick to this.”
I sat up as straight as I could and spoke directly to the Mutawa. “You know this is illegal. You know you have no right to drive our car,” I told them as we drove to the station. “After this, I can file a complaint against you. And I will.”
It was sundown when we reached the gates of the Thuqbah traffic station, which meant that it was prayer time. Within the compound, there was only a place for men to pray; no women were allowed. I saw a small window of opportunity.
“Can I sit in the car and wait?” I asked.