By SHAHANAAZ HABIB
What is it like being a female in Saudi Arabia?
I confess Saudi Arabia has never been on my travel list. Sure, I thought I'd like to do the umrah and haj someday but that "someday" has always been 20 or 30 years down the line.
From what I've heard and read, Saudi Arabia is one of the toughest places for women travellers because it is ultra-conservative.
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Changing times: Women journalists at a press conference in Riyadh. They are few in number but are determined to make their mark. They say they have more than proved themselves equal to men. — Reuters |
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First, women are not allowed to drive here (not that I drive back in Malaysia either, but I'd like to at least have a choice). Second, and very significantly, women need to be accompanied by a husband or
muhrim (father, brother, son or close male blood relative) or produce a letter from a male sponsor before they are even allowed to enter the country!
Women also need men to book hotels for them.
In this very male-dominated country, religious officers make sure that women move around only in the company of family members or with other women but never with a man who is not her spouse or muhrim, and never alone.
Some girlfriends who had been in this country before warned me not to get into a cab alone or that would be the last they'd see of me (but this alarmist story didn't check out when I went there). It doesn't help either that restaurants, schools, universities, parks, gyms, offices – life as a whole – is so gender-segregated that I wasn't sure how I'd cope.
Yet I found myself saying "yes" to a week-long assignment in Saudi Arabia because the place intrigued me.
So I washed my abaya, which had been hanging in the cupboard for more than three years, and went out and bought myself another because I knew that would probably be the only thing I'd be wearing over there.
For the uninitiated, the abaya is a black loose robe that the Arab women wear in public OVER their clothes along with a long black headscarf. This covers the woman from head to toe, exposing only the face and palms (sometimes only the eyes).
In Saudi Arabia, the abaya and headscarf are compulsory wear for local and foreign women, Muslim and non-Muslim alike, (although US secretary of state Condoleeza Rice and German chancellor Angela Merkel were allowed to go without the abaya and scarf).
The assignment took me to four different cities: Mecca, Madinah, Jeddah and Riyadh.
In security areas like airports and international conferences, men breezed past with the normal routine checks while we women were whisked into a closed-off area where female security officers did a body search, in case our flowing abaya concealed weapons.
But I certainly did not expect to be body-searched each time I entered the Prophet's Mosque in Madinah for prayers.
The one time that I did venture out in the holy city without my abaya, but very decently clad (or so I thought), two furious Saudi men yelled: "Abaya, abaya!" and frantically gestured for me to go into a shop and get one.
This, in spite of the fact, that I was all covered up in a loose navy blue jacket and trouser suit, with a long sleeve shirt buttoned all the way to the neck, complete with a black head scarf that covered every strand of hair!
Speaking in English (because I don't speak Arabic), I tersely told the angry duo that my abaya was in the hotel and ignored them as they continued their rantings. I was only going to be out for 15 minutes to use the wireless network at one of the hotels.
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Following the rules: A Saudi woman must always be accompanied by a muhrim or her husband. — AFP |
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I found the incident more amusing than intimidating, and I wondered what their reaction would have been if I had been in a striking red
baju kurung and matching
tudung. Certainly, it was an eye-opener.
Wanting to test the ground, I found myself attending a signing ceremony between the Saudis and their Malaysian partners, and a joint press conference 30 minutes later dressed in the same jacket-trouser suit – minus the abaya.
But this time, no one batted an eyelid.
This being my maiden trip to the kingdom, some things surprised me.
In Mecca, I was startled to see abaya-clad beggars (who looked foreign) outside Masjid Haraam, the holiest mosque for Muslims. Naively I thought there would be no beggars in this oil-rich Kingdom.
Another strange moment was when I came out after prayers from the Masjid Haraam, which houses the Kaabah, and found my slippers missing. I spent another 20 minutes waiting inside the mosque believing that whoever "borrowed" my cheap RM29 slippers would return them, but he or she never did.
Bemused, I walked barefoot back to the hotel which, thankfully, was only 25m or so away. Although I bought another cheap pair, which cost only RM5 this time, I still kept checking for my missing slippers during subsequent prayers, refusing to believe that anyone would dare steal after praying in such a sacred place.
That was before I learnt that a colleague had suffered the same fate. He had "lost" three pairs of slippers there!
However, I did not have to worry about the more important things like cash, passport, traveller's cheques, mobile phone, laptop and bags being stolen or snatched here. Thieves have their hands chopped off, which is a huge deterrent. During prayers, vendors just throw a cloth over their goods, leave it on the pavement and head to the nearest mosque.
The call for prayer is such an event here. Shops, restaurants, even the business centres would shut for 15 minutes each time. Even if you are already in a restaurant in a busy shopping mall, they will stop serving food, ask you politely to leave and come back when it re-opens 15 minutes later.
In Mecca and Madinah, even the traffic comes to a standstill during prayertime, with cars parked indiscriminately as people hurry into the mosques. I found this rather charming.
My eyes welled up with tears when I left Mecca. But there are some things that take a lot of getting used to.
It was weird walking into boutiques and finding only male workers there. Then there is the segregation bit, of course.
At the Jeddah Economic Forum held at the prestigious Hilton Hotel in Jeddah, a six-foot high, dark glass partition divided the hall into male and female sections, complete with separate entrances while the speakers, male and female, sat side-by-side on stage without any partition.
Why the speakers on stage were exempt, I have no clue.
Some Saudi girls attending the forum told me that they were used to these male-female partitioned conferences; one even suggested that women were more comfortable with it.
At function halls, there is even an abaya room (something like a cloak room), where women in the company of other women can store their abaya so that they show off the clothes underneath. This is especially so at weddings and other celebrations that are all-female affairs.
At a lavish dinner organised by the Saudi Arabian General Investment Authority (Sagia) in honour of the Deputy Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak's visit to the country, women had to sit at a separate table. I didn't really mind because my dinner companions turned out to be two interesting working Saudi women who offered an insight into their lives.
They said things have been changing slowly in the Saudi kingdom these two years (when King Abdullah, a reform-minded leader, became the Ruler).
And I think I saw some evidence of that in both Jeddah and Riyadh where a few women were out in their abaya but without headscarves – which would have been unthinkable a while back.
Previously, even foreigners wearing nail polish got told off by religious officers and were asked to wear gloves. And women who let their headscarves slip even a little were admonished.
These days, there is even a new hotel exclusively for women opening in Jeddah soon to cater to women travelling on their own. And more women are working these days.
One of the things I never got used to during my stay was the male-female counters (divided by a partition but served by a man at both counters) to order food, then having to sit in the "family section" crowded with mums, crying babies and boisterous kids (and their husbands, brothers and male relatives)!
For the first time, I found myself wishing that I were a guy so that I could sit at the "men only" section to escape the noisy kids and have my meal in peace.
Unfortunately (for me), the women do not have a "female only" (minus children) section. Society here assumes that all girls are into kids.
Having to move through four cities in seven days, I didn't have enough time to feel the real pulse of the country.
I never even got to take a taxi ride on my own (because the press were all heading in the same direction and it made sense to share cabs).
Just a few hours before my flight back to Malaysia, I went down to the souk (market) in Riyadh. And for some reason I cannot fathom, I found myself buying not one, but two abaya.
Perhaps a part of me would like to return here someday. Hopefully that "someday" won't be 20 years away.
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