After breakfast, I asked to see the prison administrator. I had to wait outside for the metal doors to be unlocked and could not even knock. I just had to wait, standing, until I was allowed to enter the office wing.
The administrator, whose name was Dina, was a pretty woman. She wore her hair short, near her shoulders. She wore makeup and had a nice smile. Her clothes were good quality. She was, in short, a professional woman, like me. Her office was small, but it still held a large desk, a sofa, and a place to hang your abaya. She had a phone on her desk as well as a computer. It was another world from the central prison room, where women hung up small pieces of cloth to try to separate their cockroach-infested space from the cockroach-infested space next to them.
I didn’t have to introduce myself. She practically interrupted me to say, “Yes, they told me about you. I don’t know what to tell you. I have no information about your case. They just said, ‘This is Manal al-Sharif, the one who drove. She’s here in jail until further notice.’?”
“Please,” I said, “I need to call my family, but I don’t have their numbers. They are all stored in my phone. I only have the number of my sister-in-law.”
“Yes, you can use the phone,” she said, “and you have a visitor.”
The woman waiting for me was a representative from the Saudi National Human Rights Commission. She did not cover her face, and the dark skin of her eyes and cheeks was covered in heavy, bright makeup, so much so that the color stood out in the drab visiting room. She said very little, and offered no words of consolation, no hope. She opened the visit by asking me, “Tell me your story.”
“I think everyone knows my story by now,” I said. “I just drove and I was sent to jail. They interrogated me and suddenly I’m in jail. No one explained to me why I’m here.” Then I told her, “The story you need to hear is the story of those other women inside. Did you see this jail? Did you see how filthy it is?”
She looked at me and said, “Yes, yes, I know. What can we do about it?”
Suddenly, I was so mad at her. It was absurd, sitting here going through the motions. “How could you know the conditions of the women living here, being treated like animals, and not do anything about it?” I asked. “Aren’t you for human rights?”
She just said again, “Yes, yes, I know, but what can we do about it? We complain, we say something, but what can we do?”
I sat there feeling confused and hopeless, at the situation and at her. With a bit of a bite in my voice, I asked, “So how do I join your group if I want to volunteer with you?”
“No,” she said. “You have to quit your job. We don’t accept volunteers. You have to leave your work and be full-time with us.”
At that point, I gave up. No one would leave a good job to work for a powerless institution for a small salary. I also realized she was not going to leave until I had told my story, because she was required to write up some formulaic report, so I went back over everything that had happened. She listened but did not take a single note. We were both trapped in our roles until the visit was over. In fairness, looking back now, I can only imagine how many other stories she had heard over the years, knowing that long after the stories were told, nothing would change. Domestic human rights groups in Saudi Arabia have little authority and even less sway. Major international groups like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch can speak out, but even then the kingdom picks and chooses whether or not to listen.
Even so, I believed I would be leaving prison soon. I believed that the reporters and bloggers who had followed me would agitate to secure my release. I believed this until one of my good friends, Hidaya, arrived. Even though it was not a visiting day—those were Saturdays and Thursdays—the prison staff let her in. I was grateful to see her, but then I realized that she was carrying a change of clothing, a book, and a photo of Aboudi, which the guards confiscated.
“Why did you bring me clothes and a book?” I asked. “Do you know something I don’t?”
“I just didn’t want you to think you’d been forgotten,” she said, “I wanted you to know we’re thinking of you.”
Before she came to see me, Hidaya had asked her mother’s permission. Her mother, who is very conservative, had told her yes, and added, “Ask the authorities to put you in jail with Manal, so that you can stay with her and she is not alone.” Of course, that didn’t happen, but I was grateful. It is particularly humiliating to go to jail as a woman.
Hidaya told me that Aboudi was being cared for by his father’s mother, that she had my sister-in-law and her son at my house inside the Aramco compound, and that the whole country was shocked to hear I had been arrested and sent to the women’s prison in Dammam. She said that the Arab press had reported my arrest, but that many national news outlets had been characterizing both me and Women2Drive negatively. Only Al-Hayat, the major newspaper of the Arab world, had portrayed my actions in a positive light. Saudi newspapers wrote in their headlines that I had broken down in tears and “confessed” to the charges against me. The five charges that the press had stated as the reasons for my arrest were: 1) inciting public opinion; 2) driving without a license; 3) operating as a traitor and spy on behalf of foreign enemies; 4) posting a video of my driving on YouTube; and 5) contacting the foreign press. And yet I still had no idea who or what entity had ordered my arrest and detention.
As Hidaya told me everything, I grew increasingly furious until my emotions erupted. “Those liars! How can they charge me with violating statutes that don’t exist?” I cursed. “Wait until I get a lawyer!”
In the middle of our visit, the prison warden entered and interrupted us. She held a piece of paper in front of me and without looking at me said, “Sign this.” It was another pledge not to drive. This time, I did not argue. I simply signed the document and handed it back. I wanted to get out.