“I had no intention whatsoever of conveying a distorted or negative image of my country.  I just wanted to make people understand that in Saudi Arabia both men and women are victims of society.”  Rajaa al Sanie has very clear ideas even if she is only 24 years old.  But young as she is, her strong spirit is obvious from the earthquake her first book has unleashed in Saudi Arabia and on the internet. 

Women’s History. The book is called The Girls of Riyadh, and it collects in fictional form the e-mail conversations of four young women living in the Saudi capitol as they exchange comments about men, about society and about their dreams—as people do the world over.  However, nothing in Saudi Arabia is so discredited as being a woman.  Not surprisingly, the book is banned in the author’s own country; however, the internet has become a kind of jungle free space, into which anyone can retreat.  So, even though the novel has not yet been translated into English, it is out there on the internet showing the world an aspect of Saudi society—clearly a very closed society—never before imagined.  An example is the first of the novel’s four stories, the tale of Qamra, a girl who marries a young man named Rashid.  Her own wishes do not count, and in fact, neither do her husband’s.  But Rashid, after a business trip to the United States, dumps Qamra in order to marry the Japanese woman he has fallen in love with.  Then there is the story of Lamis, a young woman who falls in love with Ali, a young Shia.  But Saudi tradition opposes marriage between a man and woman belonging to different denominations, even though both are Muslim; the two young people have to stand up to their respective families, who are all opposed to the love match.  The four young girls also relate the story of Nouri, a young Kuwaiti who acts as a narrative voice but who has a personality all his own: called Nourette by people who know him, he has been forced to leave Saudia Arabia because he is gay.

A brave young woman. The theme is a life of freedom denied, repeated in stories all over Saudi Arabia, where families decide the lives of their children and where every yearning for freedom is seen as libertine deviance.  “My brother Ahmed read the book before it was published,” recalls Rajaa in an inverview in the newspaper Gulf News.  “He found it beautiful and realistic, because he knew I was talking about real stories, gathered from gossip at school and remembered from afternoon weddings, listening to the conversations of women relatives.  But he was terrified by what could happen to me, because I am not married, and Saudi society does not forgive or forget.  However, my family never abandoned me, but supported me to the extent that I was able to drop out of dental school and dedicate myself totally to my real passion, writing.”  And so Rajaa finished her novel ”taking care to use a style like that of the young men who spend days on end in internet chat rooms.”  Success was immediate.  “I was deluged with letters from women, and even a few men.  Some mothers asked me how to get hold of the book because they wanted to give it to their daughters.  Unfortunately, some of my friends distanced themselves from me.  But so what?  Evidently they were scared to death by the idea of spending a lifetime by the side of a mate they had not chosen, but they choose, as do so many in Saudi Arabia, to bury their heads in the sand.”

A harsh country. Rajaa’s fame spread, and she quickly became a celebrity of sorts in the world of the internet.  Thanks to the net, and also to a photo showing the sparkle and determination in her large dark eyes, she has gained the nickname “Scheherazade of Riyadh.”  Published Saudi opinion insinuates—wrongly—that titillation is foremost in the book.  Without being ponderous, Rajaa recounts the irony of the lives and ambitions of young Saudis like her.  The Saudi authorities do not seem to understand what she is writing about.  This is a country where young people are truly cosmopolitan, but they feel shackled to a society that is one of the most conservative in history.  It is no coincidence that the book, which is not on sale in bookstores inside the Kingdom—sells like hotcakes on the internet.