When you know that a story is set in a country that has the reputation of being terribly oppressive, you tread gingerly as you read – not knowing what kind of horrors will unfold.
Sadly, Princess Sultana’s world is even worse than what rumors and reports by activist groups have led us to believe. Much like Trevor Noah’s “Born a Crime”, this book too is about the cruelty and inhumanity of mankind against their own. In Trevor’s case it was racist atrocities and in Sultana’s case – it is sexist. Gender inequality at its very worst – raw and painful and mind-numbingly horrific.
Princess Sultana is quite the rebel and my heart never left my mouth for the entire duration of the book. It is one thing to be a “naughty child” – there’s something cute and endearingly evocative about the phrase – the mind conjures up an impish person full of mischief and innocent childish pranks. But in Sultana’s case it is surprising that she even lives to tell the tale – after chomping vengefully on the “shiny red apple” meant for her brother Ali, her punishment is that not only are all her toys given to him, but also that Ali would have the “exclusive right to fill” her plate at mealtimes – which meant that she starved for many days. When she learns (years later) that Ali is planning to go to Cairo with her and her sisters, she gets so enraged that she snatches his headdress and flushes it down the toilet and then to take the vengeance to its fullest extent, takes Ali’s stash of Playboy and other porn that has his name on them, and leaves it in the mosque for the mutawas (religious police) to find.
There are not very many men in this narrative that do not strike fear and terror. Even Kareem who seems like a diamond in the rough – reverts to “type” when he wants to “take a second wife” just so she could provide him with children; he is also not at all concerned about the plight of other condemned women – Sameera who is to suffer the “harsh sentence of darkness with silence until death” (a windowless padded cell with a hole for bodily wastes) because she had slept with another man before her marriage; the young teenager Amal – (a child herself who was raped at 13 and impregnated) – her punishment is to be stoned to death as soon as she delivers her baby – Kareem is disgusted with her because “she had humiliated the honor of her family name”! When Sultana asks him about the punishment for the men involved in this sordid crime, he has no answer and when she further pleads with him, he shows “unconcealed irritation” and insists that “the subject be dropped.”
There is the market area – apparently called “chop, chop square” by foreigners – “since that is where our criminals lose their heads or their hands on Fridays, our day of religion”; 17 year old Wafa who is to be married to a 53 year old man as punishment for her misdeeds (meeting men and doing “everything except penetration”) – which seems like an amazingly light sentence compared to Nadia “who was going to be drowned in her family’s swimming pool, by her father”, and Nadia’s entire family “would witness her execution”! Sultana’s father himself – divorces the 15-year-old Randa – (whom he had married to replace her mother after she dies). Hadi – a student at the Religious Institute – full of righteousness and who believed that “women were the cause of all evil on earth”, is caught raping a young girl “no more than eight years old”, while Ali is holding her down. When Sultana threatens to tell her father, Ali laughs and tells her that it is their father who gave him the “name of a man to contact for the same type of service” – he says that “young girls are more fun and father always did the same sort of thing when he came to Cairo.”
Interwoven with all these endless acts of violence and aggression and the sickening hypocrisy, is the untold wealth and grandeur – so opulent that it is hard to relate to; There are private gardens that are a mile long, 3 day shopping-trips to London, fresh strawberries flown in daily from Europe, private jets for family travel and when travel is necessarily commercial then “for the sake of privacy, all the 1st class seats in the flights” are bought by Kareem; the women laden with diamonds, rubies and emeralds, a palace for each of the wives of royalty. Apparently, money really does not buy culture or polish or a refined mind – or indeed any of the finer things of Life.
And right alongside this decadent opulence and the dire stories of most of the women in this unjust and lopsided world where all the cards are stacked against the women, Sultana still manages to inject into it her own brand of humor. She makes up her mind that if she does not like Kareem during their first meeting, she would lean towards his family and make “loud chomping sounds, neigh like a horse, eat without any manners, belch in his mother’s face and spill hot tea in his lap”! But the most priceless idea she has is when she decides that after all her uncouth and unladylike behavior, if Kareem and his family are still not convinced of her unworthiness as a wife, she had thought she “might pass gas”. And that single idea, in my opinion, is the one that takes the most courage of all; as for the ability to execute such an action at will – how noteworthy and admirable!
I remember innumerable Bollywood movies where the heroine would behave like a crazed lunatic – to ward off unwanted suitors; movies with honor killing, movies with rich zamindars (landlords) who would persecute and rape young village girls, wicked mothers-in-law et al (and any of these people could have come out of the pages of this book). And since movies borrow from the real world, there is no dearth of sordid stories in India – be it female infanticide or vendettas, rapists getting away scot free or police brutality, men in power (usually politicians) perpetrating violence openly or religious men (sadhus and swamis) caught in ungodly acts. Horror stories abound – in India, in our neighboring countries and indeed in just about any country you can name. What then, makes the world of Princess Sultana so horrific that you flinch at the very thought of sharing the planet with her countrymen?
The answer could well be the fact that anywhere else in the world, when we hear of acts of barbaric savagery, they are (usually) unlawful acts – in many cases there is hope of justice in the courts if enough people raise a hue and cry in outrage, if enough activists join forces and combat the “system”. But there is no such recourse in Saudi Arabia. The Law itself is very exacting and stringent but only when it comes to women. The scales are tilted and the sauce for the goose is definitely not the same for the gander.
I turn the last page of this book in great relief – I no longer have to read any more about the atrocities and can escape – at least for tonight – into the cozy warmth and comfort that my bed and quilt and gently snoring dog provide. But the escape is short-lived. Ironically, the G-20 summit this year is being held in Riyadh and the Saudi government says that one of the aims of this summit is to empower people “by creating the conditions in which all people – especially women and youth – can live, work and thrive.” As if in continuation and as if I had not just finished reading about so much heart and gut-wrenching misery, the G-20 location focuses renewed interest in the five women activists in Saudi Arabia who have been detained and tortured and sexually abused since May 2018 (for trying to lift the ban on women drivers and overhauling the male guardianship system in that country).
The most prominent of them is scheduled to be tried in terrorism court. The book is over but the horror and the madness rages on.