Princess Sultana's Daughters Read Free Page B

their
looks of surprise and anger slowly forge into a united hard
stare.
    After only one short month, I am
discovered!
    Finding my voice, I protest weakly, blaming
my deed on the highest authority, saying what all good Muslims say
when caught in an act that will bring punishment on their heads. I
thump the papers with my hand. “God willed it. He willed this
book!”
    Ali is quick to retort, scoffing, “God? Not
so! The devil willed it! He willed it! Not God!” Ali turns to my
father and says with perfect seriousness, “Since the day of her
birth, Sultana has had a little devil living inside her. This devil
willed the book!”
    Quite rapidly, my sisters begin to flip
through the pages in their hands, to see for themselves if our
family’s secrets have been made public.
    Only Sara gives me her support. She quietly
gets to her feet and slips behind my back, resting her hands on my
shoulders, reassuring me with her soft touch.
    After his initial outburst, Kareem is quiet.
I see that he is reading the translated copy of the book. I lean
sideways and see that he has discovered the chapter that tells of
our first meeting and consequent marriage. Sitting perfectly still,
my husband reads aloud the words that he is seeing for the first
time.
    Father’s angry shouting arouses the
enthusiastic hatred of Ali, and my father and brother quite outdo
each other in their verbal assaults on my stupidity. Amid the
passionate disorder, I hear Ali shout out the accusation that I
have committed treason.
    Treason? I love my God, country, and king, in
that order; and I shout back that “No! I am not a traitor! Only a
haphazard council of mediocre minds can reach a conclusion of
treason!”
    As my anger builds, my fear is receding.
    I think to myself that the men in my family
are proof that men and women can remain at peace only when one sex
is strong enough to completely dominate the other. Now that we
women in Saudi Arabia are becoming educated, and are beginning to
think for ourselves, our lives will be filled with additional
discord and mayhem. Still, I welcome the battle if it means more
rights for women, for a false peace does nothing more than further
women’s subjugation.
    Yet, I know that this is not the most
opportune moment for argument.
    The hot controversy continues to rage, and I
become lost in the details. My initial fright had dimmed my memory
of why I had requested Jean Sasson to write my story in the first
place. Now, I stop listening to the accusations and force myself to
remember the drowning death of my friend Nada. I was a teenager at
the time, and religious authorities had discovered my good friends
Nada and Wafa in the company of men to whom they were not wed nor
related. Because both girls were still virgins, they were not
punished by the State for their crime against morality; instead
they were released to their fathers for punishment. Wafa was wed to
a man many years her senior. Nada was drowned. Nada’s own father
called for the cruel punishment, saying that the honor of his
family name had been ruined by the sexual misconduct of his
youngest daughter. With Nada’s execution, he dubiously reclaimed
the honor he had lost.
    My thoughts then drifted to the crushing
imprisonment of the best friend of my sister Tahani. Sameera was a
young woman whose parents had died in an automobile accident. She
fled to the United States with her lover when she felt threatened
by her uncle, who had become her legal guardian at the death of her
parents. A great tragedy occurred when Sameera’s uncle tricked her
into returning to Saudi Arabia. In a rage over her love affair, he
married his niece to a man not of her choice. When it was
discovered Sameera was no longer a virgin, she was confined to the
“woman’s room,” where she was still locked away even as my own
crisis unfolded.
    Even before the book was published, I had
realized that neither tale seemed credible, unless the book’s
readers would consider the barbarities that