Princess Sultana's Circle Read Free Page A

wife. Since Tammam was a most
dutiful wife, Ali was questioned by our eldest sister, Nura, as to
his need for a second spouse. Nura later revealed to us that Ali
had declared that his displeasure was linked to Tammam’s
unhappiness. He was angry and baffled over the fact that his young
bride had become a melancholy wife. With the greatest puzzlement,
Ali claimed that Tammam had not once smiled since the day he had
become her husband!
    Tammam’s union with Ali
produced three children, two daughters and a son. The daughters
were as cheerless as their mother, while the son was a perfect
arrogant duplicate of his father. By now, their ranks had been
swelled by twelve other children, by a total of six women apart
from Tammam.
    Munira had lived a troubled
and unhappy life. As the daughter of a man who cared little for
daughters, Munira had spent her early years striving to win the
love of her father, a man who had no love to give. In that respect,
Munira’s childhood quest for a father’s love resembled my own. But
that is where the similarity ended. At least I had survived the
deprivation of my father’s love with my ability to love intact.
Munira’s thwarted love for her father gradually twisted into open
dislike before turning into a combination of fear and hatred. Those
feelings had now grown to include all men—even those men who were
kind. Five years before, at age sixteen, Munira had told her mother
that she wished to remain celibate.
    And so, unlike most Saudi
girls, who spend much of their youth perfecting methods to keep
their future husbands content, Munira determined a different life
for herself. She trained as a social worker with the intent to
spend her life assisting the handicapped who are so scorned in our
land. Nevertheless, she made it clear that she would only attend to
the female handicapped.
    For a period of time it
appeared that Ali had simply forgotten the fact that his eldest
daughter was unwed. But sadly, he had been reminded of her single
state during a recent family social event. Now Ali was denying his
daughter the one pleasure she sought, which was to be allowed to
remain unmarried.
    The moment a girl is born
in Arab lands, the parent immediately begin to think of an
appropriate marriage. With the idea of future allegiances, suitable
families with eligible sons are studied keenly. While a Saudi girl
remains unmarried, she must stay a virgin. On the other hand,
virginity prolonged is deemed a family disgrace. Now that Munira
had turned twenty-one years old, her unmarried state was causing
her father grave discomfort.
    Maha interrupted my
thoughts. She loved her cousin and knew Munira’s views on marriage.
“Mother! Uncle Ali can’t force Munira to marry, can he?”
    “ To whom is Munira
promised?” I sputtered.
    Sara hesitated so long that
I thought she did not know the answer. Finally, she said, with a
long sigh, “Sultana, Munira is to wed Hadi.”
    My memory was barren of a
face to connect with the name. “Hadi? Who?”
    “ The Hadi. Sultana, don’t you
remember? Ali’s boyhood friend who traveled with our family to
Cairo.”
    I could barely speak.
“ That Hadi?”
    Sara nodded woefully.
“ Yes. That Hadi .”
    The memory of our shared
traumatic experience slammed down between us. In disbelief, I
stared into my sister’s eyes.
    “ No, No,” was all that I
could utter.
    “ Who is this Hadi?” Maha demanded.
    Who, indeed? Where was I to
begin?
    I mumbled. “He’s Ali’s
friend from childhood, Daughter. You do not know of
him.”
    Sara settled closer to me
as her hands sought mine. We continued to gaze into each other’s
eyes. Our thoughts were in unison. Sara was reliving the most
traumatic time of her life.
    More than twenty years
before, against her will, Sara had been wed to a much older man, a
man who had sexually abused her from the first moment of their
union. It was only after Sara’s attempted suicide that our mother
had managed to convince our father into allowing