Another servant, this one carrying a heavy silver pot, appeared to Pour green coffee into small, handless porcelain cups embellished with heavy clusters of grapes outlined in thick gold leaf. Soon the hostess passed around expensive chocolates wrapped in pink or lavender foil and heaped in a graceful swan-shaped bowl. She was followed by yet another servant, carrying a large incense burner, about twenty inches high, made from teakwood and covered with deep, rich brass. When the burner was passed to Princess Nahela, who was sitting next to me, she fanned the sweet-smelling smoke toward her face with several sharp flicks of her wrist. Lifting her long hair, she held one side and then the other over the burner, allowing the smoke to penetrate each strand. In a far comer of the room, the women of a three- piece band were softly beating their drums and chanting the dull, repetitious melody of an Arabic song. 

From time to time, one of the younger women rose to dance to the pulsating beat of the drums. Slowly and seductively she moved to the rhythm of the beat and finally ended her dance by writhing her body and making her long hair fly out behind her and then wrap around her head. Elsewhere two more women slowly danced together, while other women passively sat, sensually stroking their thick, ebony hair. 

The evening wore on with conversation about jewelry, clothes, children, travel, obstetricians, and, most of all, sex. In the hareem, all of the prohibitions that hover over life outside its walls seem to dissolve as these otherwise puritanical women endlessly discuss sex in exquisite detail. But despite their erotic discussions, all of these women wore the characteristic look of the modern Saudi woman - the look of in credible boredom. For like most Saudi women, they had little to do but wait. A woman waits to be married; then she waits for the next time she will have a sexual union with her husband; then she waits for her next child to be born; and finally she waits for old age, when, relieved of her childbearing duties, she assumes a place of honor within her family. Saudi women have been profoundly shaken by the oil boom; but in no other segment of the population is it as difficult to judge what internal conflicts are present as a result. 

Issues such as education, rebellion against the veil, and hostility toward the repressive attitudes of men are not often discussed. Women are so dominated by the expectations of family and the need for peer approval that feelings of rebellion, if they exist, are kept under tight rein. 

The way a woman lives her life today depends largely on her social class. Lower-class women are almost untouched by modernization except in their material expectations. They live in ignorance because their husbands and fathers refuse to allow them any education. They continue to tend their families, exhibit fear of the men in their lives, and worry about their fertility. All that development has done for them is to give them some gold bracelets, a few baubles, and maybe somewhat better health care. Otherwise, life for them is much as it always was. 

Upper-class women, including those in the royal family, can escape the conditions that the sexual system imposes on women by spending time abroad. I know one princess, midway up in the hierarchy of the royal family, who refuses to live in Saudi Arabia. Except for visits with her family in Medina, she spends her time in Europe and California, where she lives a Western lifestyle. When she is in the kingdom, she conforms. But even her conformity has the stamp of Westernization on it. Discreetly woven into the silk of her $700 abaaya and veil are the initials of Dior. 

Wealthy women spend incredible amounts of time and money on clothing both in Saudi Arabia and Europe. Outside the kingdom they wear chic designer clothes, but within the kingdom they wear dresses that are a cross between those of Marie Antoinette and Scarlett O'Hara. Known by the expatriates as Cinderella dresses, they are stocked in quantity by every clothing store, including the designer shops, and sold at outrageous prices. I saw a dress at Riyadh's Center for Modern Design that was fashioned from greenish yellow silk. It had a tight bodice attached to a hooped skirt adorned with purple sequins, ribbons, and garlands of artificial flowers and sold for $3928. The wealthy also import Oriental seamstresses to make their clothes and often boast that they never wear a dress more than once. Even when the ports were the most congested and the consumer markets had almost no wares, the fabric shops were overflowing with chiffon and fine satins, gold and silver lame, lace, embroidery, rhinestones, and beads to keep the newly rich women of Saudi Arabia dressed like circus ponies. 

Other than shopping, upper-class women have absolutely nothing to do. The servants clean the house, cook, do the grocery shopping, and care for the children. One acquaintance of mine had seven servants to take care of a family of three. She claimed to be perfectly happy and pitied those of us who find fulfillment in physical labor. But are these women really happy? An English nanny in an influential Saudi family once told me that she left her job because of the acute depression she suffered seeing the emptiness of Saudi women's lives. Their days are long and the quickest way to get through them is to sleep. Few upper class women rise before noon and some sleep until five in the afternoon. When they are not sleeping, they watch videotapes, most of which are brought in from the United States. As might be expected, there are drug and alcohol problems within the upper classes that ex tend into the palaces of the most powerful. An addicted woman is generally left alone unless her problem becomes known, threatening to create a political issue or cause embarrassment for her family. Such was the case of the rejected wife of one of the highest ranking princes, who came into the hospital one night under the influence of drugs and threatened anyone who got in her way with a gun. She finally collapsed and was taken away by a special contingent of police, never to be seen at the hospital again. Like other women with similar problems, she was probably sent abroad or kept at home under the watchful eye of trusted servants. 

But the future of women in Saudi Arabia does not lie with the wealthy. It is the new middle class that has experienced the greatest psychological impact from development and it is there that much of the limited rebellion that is occurring is to be found. The women who most acutely suffer the pains of change are those who have lived abroad either as students or with their student husbands. Almost all speak a second and sometimes a third language. Returned to Saudi society, they float between two worlds. Since the King Faisal hospital was the most Westernized institution in Riyadh, women patients, dressed in traditional garb, entered the examining rooms of male physicians. Without hesitation, however, they removed their veils, allowing the doctor to ex amine them while they comfortably conversed in perfect English. Then they donned their veils again and emerged once more into the sea of black-clad women. 

The current state of middle-class women in society is mixed. Like other women, most are relegated to the house in their traditional roles. Some are more liberated. Increasingly, with the support of their husbands, middle-class women are no longer wearing veils. (This is true more of the coastal areas than Riyadh.) Birth control is becoming more widely accepted. A growing number of urbanized women have jobs in education or medicine. And some women are going into business, primarily as shop owners. One of the few attempts to preserve traditional crafts in the kingdom has been undertaken by a woman in al-Khobar who sells authentic weavings and other handcrafts. With the approval of her husband, she has discarded her veil, hired a driver, and scours the countryside for Arabian antiques and Bedouin jewelry. She clearly states that she has been able to do what she wants only because she has the permission and support of her husband and father. Even with the liberties she has assumed, she still functions within her family. As it is for the vast majority of women, her willingness to grasp the opportunities that have opened up as a result of development depends on how damaging she perceives it to be to her family relationships. Those who do have jobs regard them as secondary to their primary role in a rigid family structure. For among Saudi women, there is a basic acceptance of the role religion and society have decreed for them, that of wife and mother. 

The worth of women in the traditional Arabian tribal society was as bearers of children, who would supplement the strength and, therefore, the survival of the group. In the harsh environment of the desert, life spans were short, disease rampant, and infant mortality high. Tribes survived by raiding their rivals for their animals, pasturelands, and water. Protection depended on numbers, demanding high birth rates from fertile females. In religion, Mohammed coupled the tribe's need for a woman to reproduce with a set of stern dictates on a woman's position in Islamic society. 

Mohammed's highly structured social order based on the family seems to betray an underlying bias against women. From a Western point of view, the Koran's specific references to women belittles them, especially in their relationships with men. In Sura 4:34, Mohammed said: Men have authority over women because Allah has made the one superior to the other, and because they spend their wealth to maintain them. They guard their unseen parts because Allah has guarded them. As for those from whom you fear disobedience, admonish them and send them to beds apart and heat them. 

It is through these claims to the superiority of men that the Koran ratifies the traditional roles of men and women in society. Men are to hunt and trade while women are to keep the house and tend to the children. Men are strong and free; women, because of their femininity, are weak, dependent upon men and available for their use upon demand. "Women are your fields. Go, then, into your fields as you please." *

*Sura 2:223. 

In Islam, as with traditional society, woman's supreme task is to produce and case for children. In theory this should bless and strengthen her because it is through her that God has chosen to bestow children on men. Yet a woman is somehow tainted by the reproductive process. A woman's menstrual cycle condemns her as unclean, preventing her from entering a mosque. And menstruation is viewed as so weakening a woman that she is granted concessions in her religious duties. For example, menstruating women are excused from fasting during Ramadan. 

Islamic theologians view the rigid roles assigned to each sex as a simple recognition that each sex is best suited to fulfilling specific functions in the life of the family and, beyond that, in the social structure of the Moslem community. As one contemporary Islamic scholar said, "Islam has given women the status which is most suitable to them and has provided them with the necessary care and protection which is due to them in order that they would be able to contribute to the life of the family and the life of society to the best of their ability." He went on to say that Allah has never chosen a woman as a prophet because the role He has assigned to prophets is best filled by men. 

· . . Each one of (the prophets) had a mammoth task which required him to give of his abilities and talents more than anyone can give to his work. To ask a woman to do that when she has to look after her family, is to assign to her a burden which is far too heavy. . . . What sort of an example of a happy family life would a woman prophet give if she were to abandon her family duties in order to discharge her message the duties of which are greater by far than the duties of a prime minister in a country like India or Britain? * 

No matter how archaic the status of women appears, Mohammed did go a long way in giving women some protection over their status in the tribal hierarchy of the time. Women were granted legal rights. The Koran and the hadith both laid down rules ensuring women a respectable and dignified status that had been denied to them previously. The Koran explicitly states that Moslem women are not servants, chattels, or playthings. Their equality in seeking to serve God is guaranteed, and no ancestral Eve is held responsible for the imperfections of mankind. "We shall reward the steadfast according to their noblest deeds. Be they men or women, those that embrace the faith and do what is right we will surely grant a happy life." * What has been assigned to women to achieve a happy life is to tend the home and family. 

*Arab News, Feb. 10, 1984. 

Because ancient traditions have made a woman the repository of group strength and Islam has made her subservient to men and the protector of the family, Saudi attitudes toward marriage are vastly different from what they are in the West. The philosophy of marriage in the West emphasizes individual choice and personal fulfillment. In Saudi culture, the purpose of marriage is never the happiness of the individual but rather the good of the group and the perpetuation of its interests. A Saudi never expects to experience the romance and ecstasy of courtship and marriage that a Westerner does because love, if it develops, comes after marriage, not before. 

Marriages are arranged. Although there is some breaking away from tradition, most marriages remain an alliance between families. The ideal union is a marriage of first cousins. By marrying a cousin, a man's daughter, instead of leaving his family to add to the population of another, becomes the wife of his brother's son, consolidating the two families and increasing the benefits to both. As a result of centuries of consanguineous marriage, the Saudi population is a vast laboratory of genetic defects. The problems extend from the lowliest peas- ant to the royal family. Congenital heart defects, hip displacements, an exotic array of endocrine abnormalities, and strabismus, a muscular disorder of the eyes, are a mere sampling of the range and variety of inherited disorders. Among the educated Saudis whom I knew there is an awareness of the problem of consanguineous marriages but little willingness to alter the practice. The prevailing attitude is that the benefits of marriage within the family far outweigh the risks. 

Girls are considered marriageable from the time they reach puberty. The lower class marries very young. The ages for marriage and first pregnancy on Tarut Island, off the east coast, were published in a rare study on women that I unearthed from a library. In the group as a whole, the mean age for marriage was fourteen, with the first pregnancy occurring at sixteen. Out of 193 girls, 3 married as young as ten. ** 

*Sura 16:97. 

**M. Akram Bhatty, M.D., Hishm al-Sibai, and Surindar M. Marwah, M.D., "A Survey of Mother and Child Cane in the Saudi Community in Rabaiyah, Tarut Island," Saudi Medical Journal 4 (January 1983): 37.

Among the Bedouins and the rural poor, a girl can be the second of two wives, married to a man older than her father, the mother of several children, and suffering from severe depression by the age of eighteen. But according to the norm, most girls marry somewhere between sixteen and eighteen and boys anywhere from about sixteen to twenty, ages regarded as optimum for reproduction. 

Girls on the marriage market are like prime breeding stock on the block. The right girl can be a valuable commodity on the market, for, like all good breeders, the groom's family is shopping for bloodlines to perpetuate the pure strains of his family. The bride's family, knowing the worth of its stock, will negotiate the best possible marriage contract in terms of money and family connections. When agreement is reached, a marriage contract is drawn up that clearly states what the groom is to bestow on the bride. This bride price is usually paid in jewelry. Before the oil boom, brides were adorned with heavy, low- grade silver jewelry peddled throughout the peninsula by craftsmen from Yemen and surrounding areas. Now it is primarily the Western expatriates who collect the Bedouin jewelry, which the Saudis have rejected. Today's brides receive 21 karat gold coins strung together to make breastplates that reach from shoulder to shoulder and drop to the navel, accompanied by a matching ring, bracelet, and large earrings. I never went to the gold souqs without seeing young men shopping for their brides. At the height of the oil boom, they came weighed down with grocery bags full of Riyals, which they traded for gaudy jewelry. All were packaged in flashy velvet presentation boxes to be laid out before the bride, the bride's family, and all of the guests as testimony to the worth of the bride and the wealth of the groom. This jewelry becomes the exclusive property of the bride and is, in essence, her alimony if she is divorced. 

In addition to perpetuating the family, the other purpose of marriage is to legalize sex. Sheikh Abdul Aziz ibn Baz proclaims that marriage shields young people from vice and the whims of passion that can lead them to all that is forbidden. "Marriage makes our young people lead a decent life".* Because no family gives a daughter in marriage for nothing, the poor can become desperate in seeking wives for their sons. Sheikh Baz has established a fund to supply gifts to needy Saudis marrying for the first time. The fund, his favorite charity, is supported by donations from wealthy Saudis. In 1983 it spent $21.2 million, with the sheikh making a public plea for several million more. Under the terms of the grant, any certified needy Saudi receives about $7200, which can be used for the bride price. The only requirements other than need are that both the groom and the bride are Saudis and that the imam from the mosque nearest to the groom's home will testify that the groom performs collective prayers. 

*Arab News. June '9, 1984.

In any marriage negotiation, a girl does have the right to refuse her family's choice, but that seldom happens. Because girls are raised with such a strong sense of existing for the good of the group and with such fear of the men in their lives, it takes an extremely strong person to reject the choice of her family. Therefore most girls docilely accept the choice of their parents. 

A young Saudi woman sees her wedding as the affirmation of her maturity and the most important day in her life. Marriage is her reason for being, the ritual that will allow her to fulfill her ultimate destiny, that of mother. 

Wedding celebrations, attended only by female guests, are held in the evening in the bride's home, or, for the wealthy, in the posh new hotels. A wedding can consume the net worth of the bride's family, for her father, to retain his honor, must stage a ceremony as elaborate as he can muster. I spent many hours drinking coffee and tea, nibbling from baskets of candy and nuts, and fanning myself with the smoke of burning incense as I waited for a bride to arrive. Especially among the upper classes, weddings are the occasion for intense competition between the guests over clothes and jewelry. The women preen and strut before each other like peacocks, eyeing what everyone else is wearing. The men celebrate elsewhere, casually sipping their own supply of tea and coffee and never seeing the bridal couple. The festivities having started about 9:00 P.M., the wedding party eventually arrives about 11:30. The bride and groom, accompanied by several of his closest relatives, slowly proceed through the guests, displaying to everyone how much the father spent on the dress and how much jewelry the groom bequeathed as the bride price. They then take their seats on a flower-decked platform to receive the congratulations of the guests. After greeting the last guest, they depart. Once the wedding is over, the quest to produce sons for the family begins. 

The need for males to ensure the tribe's survival had a certain rationality in its day. Even now the need for one son as a form of social Security in old age can be argued. But the male ego has intruded beyond even this rationalization. A man must father children to claim any respect among his peers, but to father sons in great numbers gives him honor and proves his virility. There are few scenes of Saudi arrogance that surpass a male strutting down the street followed by several sons, who in turn are followed at a respectable distance by his wife. And psychologically, Saudi men never let loose of the need to produce sons. Typically, a seventy-two-year-old man admitted his sixteen-year- old-wife of one year to the hospital's fertility clinic, obsessed with her failure to become pregnant. It is this tremendous desire for sons that puts such enormous demands on women's bodies and psyches. 

Science has failed to penetrate the minds of Saudi males. Only the most educated and sophisticated men, whether they accept it or not, know that the sex of the child is determined by the male. The failure to produce sons is laid squarely at the feet of the female. A woman who has only daughters is not much better off than a childless wife. Divorce is not only a threat but often a reality and bears upon all social classes. An acquaintance of mine described accompanying one of the wives of a prince, highly placed in government, on a falcon hunting expedition far into the northern desert. During the entire two-week trip, the princess sat in her ornate, custom-built recreational vehicle and constantly talked about her anxiety that she had had five daughters and no sons. She was frantic to conceive. In the middle of the desert, she spent all her time with her dressmaker, who produced a new garment almost daily, and her hairdresser, who curled, combed and scented the princess's hair, in case the prince might come to her. 

But as difficult as is the plight of women who are constantly called on to bear more and more children, it is the barren woman who really suffers. In the case of the middle class, it means almost certain divorce. The alternative, if the husband is particularly fond of his sterile wife, is for him to choose instead to take a second wife. This can prove more difficult for the barren wife than divorce. Because of her child- less state, the first wife is humiliated in her relationship with her husband and the second wife, especially if the second wife bears him a child. In addition, she also becomes an object of pity within the female social circles, where women spend the majority of their time. Children are the major status symbol for a woman and one she uses to establish her position with her peers. At a tea one afternoon at an Arab friend's house, I observed a small porcelain-skinned figure huddled in the corner of a heavy, overstuffed sofa, her pale skin and high cheekbones highlighted by her heavy black hair, drawn into a soft knot on top of her head. She seemed cowered by all the chatter about children, one of the chosen topics of conversation at these women's gatherings. Soon she made her excuses, kissed her hostess on both cheeks, put on her abaaya and veil, and quietly left. No sooner had she closed the front door than my hostess began earnestly to explain to me with compassion that the woman had been married for eleven years and had never conceived. She had consulted specialists in the United States, had had surgery in Europe, and was now desperately taking high doses of experimental fertility drugs. Through all of this, her husband's sisters constantly nagged him to take a second wife, which he had so far refused to do. The hostess's final comment to me was, "It is remark able that he continues to tolerate the situation. He must love her." 

With the pressures to reproduce and society's general preoccupation with sexual behavior, sex dominates a marital relationship as it dominates all relations between men and women. Western women who suffer frequent and blatant sexual advances on the streets come to believe that Saudi men are sex-craved and thrive on stories that confirm this belief. There were many such stories. One jolly little middle-aged man proudly told his doctor that he had sex with all three of his wives every night. An eighty-year-old man continually sought treatment for his impotence. But perhaps the best account came from a nurse on the cardiac surgery ward. One evening while she was checking the progress of the day's postoperative patients, she threw back the curtain sur rounding one of the beds and found a patient's husband indulging him- self in sexual intercourse with his near-comatose wife. 

Saudi men are obsessed with sex largely because it is so forbidden but also because male sexual prowess is among the highest values in the society. Although female chastity is paramount outside of marriage, in marriage sex is encouraged. In the marriage bed, everything is allowed. ''The knowledge that nobody sees what is being done, and that therefore anything can be done with impunity, breaks through the repression and inhibitions." * 

* Raphael Patal, The Arab Mind (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1976), p.138.

But just as there is a dichotomy of strict female chastity outside of the hareem and a preoccupation with sex inside the hareem, there is an equally strong contrast between the frank openness about sex in general terms and the obsessive concealment of bedroom specifics. 

The individual sexual habits of Saudi couples is more sensitive and private than in the West. But at the same time, the outright honesty about the pleasures of sex remain. H. St. John Philby, the Western confidant of Abdul Aziz, described how casually the king got up from lunch with his male entourage, excused himself to go to the hareem, and then returned shortly with no indication of embarrassment. Black- shrouded women cluster around display windows in the new shopping malls to admire and chatter about the prominent exhibition of lingerie in the style of Fredericks of Hollywood. And under all of the black garb, women sport underwear that belongs in a Paris brothel. 

The general assumption about Saudi sexual practices is that for them intercourse is frequent and quick. The rapidness of the sexual act is certainly the norm among the Bedouins and in joint families sharing limited living space. Tents and communal living provide little privacy. Sex is almost a furtive act, usually performed from the rear with both parties fully clothed. How little personal intimacy is involved was demonstrated by a patient Dan once had, a Bedouin woman who appeared with large blue circles distributed over her body. Unable to elicit from the patient how long they had been present, he asked her husband when he first noticed them. Confused by being questioned about such a subject, the husband said that he never knew they were there since he had never seen his wife undressed. The practice of staying dressed during intercourse may explain why the absence of pubic hair is believed to be sexually stimulating. Bedouin women pull out their pubic hair with a mixture of sugar and water, while upper-class men shave theirs with expensive razors. 

Since men place such importance on their prowess and women so highly prize their sexuality, illicit sex is almost bound to follow. But considering the severe punishment for sexual dishonor, where and how often women work out their sexual fantasies is a dark and dangerous secret. Saudi women do carry on discreet flirtations with men. One of the points made in Death of a Princess was that affluent Saudi women cruise the roads in their chauffeur-driven limousines looking for interesting men. It is true that, before it became a major transportation artery from the Arabian Gulf to Riyadh, the Dammam Road was the scene of princesses out for the sport of it, leering at men. A few affluent female adolescents boasted to Westerners about going to Bahrain, the island state off Saudi Arabia's eastern coast and the "den of iniquity" for the whole gulf, to find attractive men. And it is not uncommon for upper-class women to proposition foreigners working in the country Foreigners are probably chosen because both the chance of being accepted and the chance of being caught are reduced when the intended partner of illicit sex is not a Saudi. I knew young Lebanese male nurses who refused to be left alone with a Saudi woman for a moment because they were terrified that the women's sexual advances would result in deportation at best or an appointment with the public executioner at worst. Whether or not these women carry through with their propositions or their quests for sex partners becomes another question. No doubt some do. During my first two years in Saudi Arabia, all public beauty parlors in Riyadh were closed because, according to rumor, they were being used by women for clandestine meetings with possible lovers. Boutiques are closely patrolled by the matawain to ensure that they are in the business of clothes and not sex. During my second period of residency in Riyadh, a woman was stabbed to death by her husband as she walked through the back door of a super market after meeting her lover. And three Filipinos were beheaded in rather obscure circumstances, the speculation being that they were sexually involved with some member of the royal family. Other than these instances, I saw little evidence that seriously suggested that Saudi women often venture outside the strict confines to which the protection of their chastity sentences them. The risks inherent in extramarital affairs for women are far too great for many of them to cross the line. Female flirtations and hints of sexual indiscretion are, in all probability, an arena in which women can play out their sexual fantasies. The men, on the other hand, have their own outlet for their sexual fantasies: the flesh markets of Bangkok. 

In the mid 1970's, London was rampant with examples of the sexual binges engaged in by Saudi men. Soon the playgrounds of the rich spread out from London to the French Riviera, the Costa del Sol, and on into staid Switzerland. The Swiss, having endured the most recent onslaught of the ultrarich, ultranaughty Saudis, have developed a certain sympathy with anyone who strikes back. The courts once allowed a Swiss prostitute to escape with a murder sentence of only eight and a half years for castrating a Saudi diplomat with a pair of scissors. But Europe faded for many except the very rich, who could afford the steep fees for hotels and prostitutes. For the less rich, Bangkok plugged into the petrodollars by offering beautiful, demure, and submissive girls for a fraction of the cost of London or Geneva. So the stampede for easy sex moved to the Far East, and the Saudis' reputation for sinning in the excess went with them. 

With their sexual exploits abroad, Saudi men are bringing home new and virulent strains of venereal disease. The rates of gonorrhea especially are increasing rapidly. Although no statistics are kept by politically astute health officials, gynecologists report that the incidence of venereal disease has increased dramatically over the last decade. Ac cording to one physician, when he came to Saudi Arabia in 1979 there was essentially no gonorrhea. Now he sees six to eight cases a month in an elite population. Among the victims he saw was the wife of one of the royal family's black sheep princes, who was infected with a highly resistant strain of gonorrhea endemic to southern Thailand. She was finally cured with massive doses of medication. She emerged from the ordeal with little emotional trauma, for venereal disease among married women is not, as yet, a sensitive problem for them. Few women really understand what they have or how it is transmitted and are, therefore, relieved of any social stigma attached to the disease. 

The impact of a man's sexual exploits on a Saudi marriage is clouded, and the attitude of the offended party obviously differs from one individual to another. Extramarital sexual relations can be divided into categories, some of which do not fall under the all-consuming ban on adultery. Under the laws of Islam and the rules of Saudi society, a married man is permitted to have sex with his legally allowed limit of four wives plus concubines or women not under the jurisdiction of another man and still not be guilty of adultery. A man is guilty of adultery only if the woman with whom he has sex has herself committed an act of sexual dishonor. In other words, she is responsible for his sin. Although Abdul Aziz openly maintained a complete household of concubines, a Saudi man today is not likely to maintain a mistress in a house of her own. Most Saudis with mistresses use the sexual services of an Asian or African house servant, maintain a Western mistress outside Saudi Arabia, or, as the ultrarich do, staff their private air planes with a whole crew of beautiful girls. Much of any wife's attitude about "other women" depends largely on whether or not she maintains her position of respect in her husband's household. 

Beyond the unanswered questions about heterosexual practices is the other question: how much homosexuality is there? Behavior pat terns, if viewed from Western cultural norms, indicate homosexual acts may be prevalent among a significant percentage of the population. Loving relationships between men, even strictly heterosexual men, are more common than loving relationships with women. Men seldom walk down the street together without holding hands or physically touching. The long hours of conversation that characterize Saudi social life take place only in either all-male or all-female groups. Greetings are always extended by kissing. How these physical relationships translate into overt sexual acts is difficult to judge. Men, in their long hours together, are not believed to engage in group sex, nor are their social gatherings an excuse for homosexual activities. Adolescent boys practice group sex but its incidence may be no more than in Western culture. The significant difference that distinguishes Saudi adolescent sex from that in Western culture is that masturbation is rejected in group situations and in private as psychologically repugnant to those who practice it. To the Saudi, masturbation is far more shameful than taking a prostitute because of its inference about a man's virility. The Saudis share with the Turks the attitude that an active homosexual role is compatible with virile masculinity. The performance of the active role in the homosexual act is an assertion of one's aggressive masculine superiority. But the acceptance of the passive role is demeaning because it puts a man into a submissive, female role. The same parallels can be drawn with masturbation. When a man has intercourse, even with a prostitute, he is performing a masculine act. When he masturbates, he is implying his inability to perform the active sex act, inviting the contempt of his male peers. 

There are marked ambiguities regarding homosexuality in Saudi society. There is a fairly consistent opinion among the medical experts that I talked to that bisexuality is more common than it is in the West. But it appears that almost no men choose to live a strictly homosexual lifestyle. Although homosexual acts are expressly forbidden by the Koran* and therefore illegal, society gives little attention to the issue. There seems to be widespread acceptance of occasional sexual acts between men as being neither sinful nor seriously damaging to a man's image, as long as the act is performed in private - and only within his own society. It is when a Saudi man becomes sexually involved with a Westerner that the authorities intervene. During my time in Saudi Arabia, there were at least two incidents, one in Riyadh and one in al-Khobar, where a number of known or suspected Western homosexuals were rounded up and deported on twenty-four-hours notice because young Saudis had been seen frequenting their living quarters. And like other forms of illicit sex, homosexual relationships are often carried on abroad. 

Despite the various deviations, most sex stays within marriage, where a woman produces one child after another. Contraception was technically illegal until 1980, but every brand of European and American birth control pill was openly available in the pharmacies The legal ban on contraception was the government's verification of Mohammed's words that Allah blesses the righteous with many children and of the culture's demand that great numbers of children be produced. The government never sought to forbid birth control, only to placate the traditionalists. Birth control is now becoming more widely accepted among the educated women but only after an adequate number of children have been produced. I remember sitting at dinner in a restaurant one night with a Saudi couple expecting their fifth child. The wife, fluent in English, sat silently while her husband pressed Dan about every form of birth control available. She remained silent because the decision to limit their family would be made by her husband. This is true even among Western wives of Saudis. An American I knew was al lowed to get her first IUD only after bearing seven children. 

The emotional attitude toward, if not actual rejection of, birth control is a reaction to the threat that any limitation of a woman's fertility poses to the cultural imperative to reproduce. The decision to have a Caesarian section is fraught with fear for the possible consequences it might have on a woman's fertility. Only the most educated and en lightened women or their husbands will permit Caesarian sections to be done. The possible sacrifice of the life of the mother or child is less threatening than the fear that a surviving woman might in the future be barren. 

Since men and women who approach marriage carry exaggerated taboos on male-female relationships, have little to say as to whom they marry, and, once married, find their lives consumed with fulfilling the needs of their extended families, one might not expect to find many "good" marriages in the Western sense. In any society, however, marriages are good or bad as judged by that society's norms. Because of the low level of expectation in Saudi marriages beyond the production of children, most are probably neither particularly good nor particularly bad. It was my experience that the majority of Saudi women seem willing to accept marriage as a practical arrangement to further the interests of their families and to provide themselves with security. From the viewpoint of a Westerner, I saw marriage as another way of institutionalizing the inferior position in which a woman is placed by a society that deems her little more than a convenience for her husband. Close relationships, if they develop at all, often come after a woman has gone through menopause, removing from the relationship the burden on both the husband and the wife to reproduce. A woman who has produced ten children is content to be left alone by her husband. The husband, since his wife can no longer conceive, is released from his obligation to beget as many children as possible and can approach his wife as a companion and not as a sex object. 

Old age may well be the most satisfying period of a woman's life. After a lifetime of serving men, she is accorded great honor by her family. Sons revere their mothers. Younger women in the household fall under the authority of the matriarch. Her husband can become solicitous of her needs. I will never forget the emaciated figure that I watched in the King Faisal hospital chemotherapy department. Her hair was gone. She slumped in a wheelchair for lack of strength to sit. Periodically she moaned with pain. Her husband, a Bedouin, stood behind the chair whispering comforting words into her ear and gently stroking her thin hand. He stopped only to keep a light blanket tucked around her legs. At the other end of the social scale, King Khalid and his wife also enjoyed a warm relationship. To an outsider, they appeared to revel in each other's company. The king was, above all, a kind man, not particularly fond of his position, and his wife was a traditional Saudi woman almost untouched by either her status or the changes that had descended on her country. They exhibited a playful ness and humor with each other that I saw between few other couples. 

But for most women, married life is spent in the company of female relatives, waiting to be summoned to serve her husband. A woman has almost no control over her own life. Her husband makes all the decisions for the family. If she lives in a joint family, then she is under the authority of her mother-in-law or the wife of the oldest brother. If she is the youngest wife in a joint family, she is usually designated by the other women as charwoman, scullery maid, and baby sitter for the entire household, with no defense other than to await the arrival of someone her junior. There is in the society a general, although largely unspoken, knowledge that various types of wife abuse are common. It could be claimed that the entire marital hierarchy is a form of psycho logical abuse, which Saudi women accept as the way society should be structured. Late in the oil boom, the government, in its murky decision-making process, assumed a position of trying to improve the physical and emotional well-being of women. Recurring attacks on how men treat their wives appeared in the press. Perhaps because it undermined the unity of the family, the practice of men going abroad on vacation and leaving their wives and children in the kingdom came under particular scrutiny. The message was most often delivered in the form of cartoons in the kingdom's newspapers. One showed a man clutching a suitcase overflowing with money, standing over his pregnant wife and three weeping children, saying, "Now that's enough. I promise I will take you on an enjoyable tour of the city when I get back from Europe after three months." * 

The most direct criticism of wife abuse came from Dr. Abdul Aziz Muhammad al-Nahari, writing in the Arabic-language newspaper AlBilad: I cannot understand how marital life can proceed peacefully when the husband adopts the role of the all-powerful, domineering, and violent tyrant. . . . He exercises his might over a feeble woman, who tries to indulge him even at the cost of her health, her self-respect, and her humanity. He treats her as a child who still needs educating despite the presence of her children around her. He scolds and humiliates her. He may even turn into a criminal and a savage to slap her for the most trivial reason. . . . He has no regard for her as a human being nor as a house wife who relieves him of the task of bringing up their children and shouldering domestic responsibilities. . . . The passive attitude of the wife in condoning the maltreatment meted out to her may be the result of a similar treatment in her own family before marrying or that she was weakened by the loss of one or both parents, thus succumbing to persecution and humiliation. The husband shamelessly exploits this weakness and vents his complexes on her by subjecting her to excessive maltreatment whenever he can. * * 

*Saudi Gazette, July 19,1983.

*Reprinted from AlBilad in the Saudi Gazette. April 19, 1984. Mysteries of the Hareem 161i

Along with abuse, the possibility of divorce is accepted as part of the marital arrangement. And if it occurs, it is not regarded as evidence of a failed relationship, with all the accompanying guilt as in the West. Women constantly live with the possibility of divorce because it is so quick and easy for the husband. A man may divorce his wife by simply pronouncing three times: "I divorce you, I divorce you, I divorce you. 

His only obligation, aside from staying with a pregnant wife until after the birth of the baby, is to convey to his wife any property agreed upon in the marriage contract to be hers. The children of any union stay with the mother until the age of seven, when they become part of the father's family. 

In extraordinary circumstances, it is possible for a woman to divorce her husband. A divorce order can be issued by the local imam on the grounds of the husband's failure to support his wife, excessive physical abuse, the husband's refusal to have sexual relations with his wife, or impotence. A woman may not divorce her husband on the grounds of polygamy. Because divorce is an assumption in marriage, there is no social stigma attached to it for either a man or a woman. Therefore, it is the threat of a second wife, more than divorce, that haunts most marriages. Divorce, more common than taking a second wife, may well be psychologically more palatable for a woman than suffering another wife. 

Plural marriage on the Arabian Peninsula is older than Islam. As a practical man seeking to enlist converts, Mohammed was hardly in a position to abolish the custom outright, especially since he himself enjoyed a total of nine wives during his lifetime. Practically, though, polygamy was the solution to the problem of large numbers of widows and orphaned girls. The Koran sanctions polygamy, but in terms that seek to discourage the practice. Rather than forbidding plural marriages, Mohammed limited the maximum number of wives allowed to any man at any one time to four. And polygamy is permitted only to those who can treat all their wives equally. 

If you fear you cannot treat orphans [orphan girls], with fairness, then you marry other women who seem good to you: two, three, or four of them. But if you fear that you cannot maintain equality among them, marry one only or any slave girls you may own. This will make it easier for you to avoid injustice.* 

*Sura 4.2.

A man with more than one wife must provide each with material possessions equal to those of another wife or wives, and he must further distribute his sexual favors equally among them. 

The injunction to treat all wives equally is taken seriously. I once saw an old Bedouin man squatted down in the Dirrah gold souqs, surrounded by four veiled wives huddled in a circle. In his hand, he clutched a large roll of SR 50 bills, which he was distributing one at a time around and around the circle. When he reached the end of the roll, each wife grabbed her share, stuffed it in her plastic purse, and scurried off to spend it with her favorite gold trader. 

Because of economics and a new attitude among educated urbanites that the practice of polygamy is archaic, the instances of multiple marriages are rapidly declining. Yet Prince Abdullah, currently next in line for the throne, marries and divorces with equanimity. Seldom does he fail to have his full quota of four wives. Someone in his court recounted that the prince has had more than thirty wives, so many that one year during the eid at the end of Ramadan, the prince rented an entire hotel in Taif for a grand family reunion of his children and former wives. 

Second wives are still socially acceptable in the more Westernized classes if the existing wife is ill and unable to fulfill her sexual obligations to her husband. Or if the existing wife is unable to bear children, it is incumbent upon the husband to seek a second wife. King Fahd currently has at least two wives. Fahd's first wife has long been a victim of kidney disease, allowing him to take a second wife and still retain his image as a progressive. 

The complex relationships in the triangle of one man and two or more wives defies generalization. Few women experience the husband's taking a second wife as anything but devastating. Multiple wives are most often intensely competitive for the attentions of their husband, although they can, on rare occasions, become close friends and confidantes. In most situations, the second wife never suffers the same level of emotional stress as the first wife. Second wives are spared the same sense of rejection felt by the first wife. And, for some women, becoming a second wife is the only road to marriage. Such was the case of the daughter of a sheikh, pretty, well educated, employed, and somewhat emancipated because she had lived abroad, who agreed to become the second wife of an older man. She had all she needed to make an excellent marriage until her chances were ruined by a car accident that left her lame. Her deformity denied her certification as prime stock. As the daughter of a sheikh, she told me, she could only marry a Saudi of equal standing or a member of the royal family. With her accident, her marriage prospects evaporated, leaving her no apparent alternative but to become a second wife. The marriage lasted only a few days, however. She was almost immediately divorced, leaving her desolate. She is now back with her family, watching her six sisters be married off one at a time while she sits wondering if she will ever have another chance. 

I knew other women who developed severe psychosomatic disorders associated with a second wife. One was middle-aged, the first of three wives, who spent seven months bedridden with arthritis. The disease was not severe enough to incapacitate her, yet she refused to walk. In talking with her, I found that when she first became ill her husband promised not to take another new wife until she was well again. In another instance, the advent of a second wife not in her own marriage but in her sister's was enough to incapacitate a woman. Three sisters, all in their thirties, were married to three brothers. When one of the brothers took a second wife, his first wife adjusted to the situation but one of her sisters did not. She became emotionally paralyzed by the fear that her own husband might also take another wife. Consequently, she developed excruciating headaches and became extremely dependent on her husband. With him always at her side, she moved from one specialist to another, trying to find relief for her physical symptoms without ever coming to grips with the emotional root of her problem. 

The status of women in Saudi Arabia was already a collage of conflicting values and practices by 1980. The pattern of competing forces in which women were tangled had been established. In the ensuing years, the conflict between the thrust of change and the pull of tradition has done nothing but escalate. 

Much of the evolution in the position of women is due to the wide availability of female education that came with the oil boom. And education remains the field in which women have experienced the most real progress. Prompted by the late King Faisal's wife Iffat, the Dar al-Hanan and the Nassif schools for girls were opened in Jeddah in 1957. State schools soon followed, but not without the unremitting opposition of the religious fundamentalists. The opening of the girls school in Buraydah in 1960 forced King Faisal to call out armed troops to control protesters. Much has changed. Today schooling for girls has become widely accepted as a way of improving a girl's chances for a good marriage.* 

Education is open to any Saudi female whose family will permit it. By now even the arch-conservative Sheikh Abdul Aziz ibn Baz is calling for girls to pursue an education. It seems he wants every Saudi girl to be either an educated housewife so she can teach her children the Koran or an obstetrician/gynecologist who will uphold Islamic tenets by ensuring that female patients have female doctors. But he will only go so far in the emancipation of women. When the government announced that it was instituting a training program for girls to work in both the male and female wards of the King Khalid University Hospital in Riyadh, the sheikh said that a mixed staff would be inconsistent with the Koranic injunction "aimed at keeping the society away from temptation and corruption." * 

The bottom line for any Saudi female seeking an education is the impact it will have on her primary responsibility: her role as wife and mother. Reporting on a graduation ceremony awarding diplomas in gynecology, the Arab News said, "The Saudi government was extending every facility to Saudi female doctors to carry on their duties in a way which does not affect their marital life." ** 

The education of women has had predictable consequences, which the government tries to contain. In the early seventies, the need for educated Saudis to fill jobs created by the demands of development won for some women the right to study abroad. It soon became apparent that university graduates returning home brought with them dangerous ideas about how women in Saudi Arabia should live. So the government, reacting to the concerns of Saudi males and the religious uprising in Mecca, announced in 1980 that "women university graduates will not be allowed to go abroad to study for Masters or PhD degrees in future…." ***

*From the perspective of fathers with marriageable daughters. there was an alarming tendency for Saudis sent abroad 10 study early in the oil boom to return home with a foreign wife. In the late 1970s. the government attacked the problem in two ways: regulations forbidding a Saudi to marry a foreigner and still retain his benefits as a Saudi citizen were enforced, and the number of university places open to women were greatly increased, to make Saudi girls more desirable a' wives for the newly educated men, 

*Arab News, April 18, 1984. 

**Arab News. March 2, 1984. 

***Saudi Gazette. March 4, 1980. Mysteries of the Hareem 165 

A second problem is where to put these educated women. With education, the boredom factor amplifies, presenting a menacing possibility that women will violate their sexual chastity for lack of anything else to do Constructive outlets are being pursued. The government sponsors a group of charitable organizations for women, the Saudi version of the Junior League. If a woman chooses a career, she is largely restricted to the fields of medicine, education, or women's banking or becoming an entrepreneur who deals only with women. With the government easing the bonds on female employment, what men fear most is that the entrance of women into acceptable areas outside of the home will be like the nose of a camel in a tent: eventually the entire camel will move in, disrupting the life of its former occupants. 

A third problem rising out of the boom was that few women were left unexposed to Western culture. Through education, television, for eign travel, or simply the presence of Western women in the kingdom, a whole new way of life unfolded before the eyes of Saudi women. At least some are questioning some aspects of Saudi Arabia's system of sexual authority. There were recurring rumors in Riyadh that both King Khalid and later King Fahd were being besieged by complaints from Saudi fathers and husbands about the increasingly restive females in their families. Rebels continue to rise among the women of Saudi Arabia, but their rebellion is of their own design, to fit their own culture. No Saudi is an individual first and a member of his group second. After centuries of the most severe sexual oppression, women may complain but few will openly defy the existing social order. They do pursue some subtle forms of rebellion. The women's section on a public bus is a small cubicle in the back, separated from the men's section by a heavy metal wall. On the back of the wall hangs the fare box, out of the sight and reach of the driver. The Saudi Arabian Public Transportation Company estimates that it loses about SR 4 million a year be- cause women do not pay their fares and no man can touch them. 

The overt acts associated with social change are largely the rejection of the veil and of strict seclusion, because women see these as pre scribed by Saudi culture and not by Islam. Yet those who successfully throw off some of their shackles do so with the permission of their families. Those who rebel directly against patriarchal authority most often fail. 

I had a friend who as a nurse spent several months working with a twenty-two-year-old girl hospitalized with anorexia nervosa. Her problem began when she finished secondary school and her brother, the forty-year-old head of the household, refused to let her go on to the university. To placate her, she was sent to visit her twin sister, who lived in the United States with her Saudi student husband. Exposure to the West only aggravated the situation. When the brother demanded that she return to Saudi Arabia, the girl became so depressed that she spent a year and a half in a psychiatric hospital in the United States before being brought back to Saudi Arabia. In Riyadh, her physical condition deteriorated, allowing her to use the King Faisal Specialist Hospital as a refuge. Her hostility toward her brother increasingly forced her to reject not only him but her whole culture. Because she is so alienated, she has no friends and refuses to accept a Saudi husband either of her brother's choice or of her own. What she wants she cannot have: escape from her family. When I last saw her, she sat in a hospital bed, her large, sad eyes emphasized by the extreme thinness of her face, staring into an untouched plate of food. 

The issue of women's rights, as with so many other issues rising out of modernization, has caught Saudi Arabia's rulers between two powerful forces. On one hand are men backed up by the religious authorities who desperately fear what development might do to the subservient position of women. On the other hand are educated Saudi women, many of them occupying positions of influence in the royal family, who are being buffeted by an inescapable whirlwind of foreign influences. Women themselves fear many of the changes that are occurring. But once alien ideas were let loose in the society, it became difficult, if not impossible, for women to determine just how far they wanted the modifications to their unique way of life to go. How firmly women have actually set forth on the road to change is a great unanswered question. Men remain unchallenged in their exalted position. Their superiority is continually reaffirmed in all major areas of Saudi life, as well as in such minor instances as a newspaper report on the mental hospital in Taif: "In November, 139 patients were admitted to hospital, only ten of them men. 

*Arab Times, June 28, 1983.

At the root of the Saudis' struggle with the new role of women is the knowledge that it was the introduction of Western ideas into this, the most sensitive area of Saudi life, that has so disrupted age-old traditions. When I asked a one-time deputy minister of Planning what he thought was the single most negative feature of development, he immediately said, "What it has done to the family." This was really a statement that the changing position of women is the most threatening aspect of development. Much of the growing emotional rejection of the West among Saudi men is, in reality, the rejection of women and the role they might play in a new social order. The confusion, hostility, and fear of men about their women manifests itself in their relations with Western women. Saudi men regard Western women on two levels. I experienced both. When they deal with a Western woman as a professional, it is as if she ceases to be a female and becomes a man for the purposes of conducting business. This same woman can then go out on the street and angrily be pushed into a gutter by some Saudi who decides that she is blocking his movement on the sidewalk. There is a contempt for Western women inside the kingdom that causes Saudi men to view them as prostitutes unless the women draw firm lines between themselves and any social relationships with Saudi men. Western women in the kingdom are warned repeatedly not to socialize with Saudi men. In the first place, the government frowns on it, thus causing problems for the woman's employer. But the protection of a woman's own safety demands prudence. There are endless stories about naive Western girls succumbing to the fast cars, lavish presents, and intrigue associated with a romance with a Saudi. One young woman ignored the warnings and went to a Saudi's apartment, where she was entertained with contraband alcohol. After getting her intoxicated, her companion summoned a group of his friends by telephone, offering them the opportunity to gang rape a Western woman. It is as if Saudi men see Western women as posing a deep threat to them. Consequently, they act out their anger in gestures meant to humiliate the same women they fear. 

Less threatened than men, educated Saudi women seem more willing to make contacts with Westerners and to cultivate friendships as opposed to acquaintances. This seeking out of Westerners is perhaps symptomatic of an alienation they feel from their own culture. It is the general assumption among Western students of Saudi Arabia that women are trapped between two cultures. What women are thinking is impossible to know; one can only guess. With the Saudis' great concern about their image in the eyes of others, the government will hardly allow itself to be embarrassed by studies of women's attitudes, especially if such studies are done by Westerners. And no man will allow his women to be questioned about anything. Saudi women themselves tend to tell a listener what they think that person wants to hear rather than the truth. All of these factors combine to make conclusions about attitudes among Saudi females difficult. With this qualification, it is my feeling that educated Saudi women, even the ones who have lived in the West, are not as trapped between two cultures as many suspect. 

Saudi women enjoy great confidence from an unflinching belief that their culture is far superior to that of the West. They may not be as restive as some think. I have had countless Saudi women shake their heads and click their tongues at me as they told me how much they pity Western women because we lack the security that Saudi women have within their families. The great majority of Saudi women are willing to accept their position within society in return for the guarantee of security that their traditions provide for them. They do not deny that they would like to see some changes in their society, but they want these changes within the context of their own culture. They resist forced alteration in their lives prompted by nothing more than the desire to appear Westernized. As the fascination with Westernization increasingly wears thin, Saudi women may become as ready as Saudi men to retreat back into their own culture. 

But whether they realize it or not, Saudi women have been subconsciously and irrevocably changed by Western images. The greatest impact of the West on women may prove to be television. Most urban women sit in front of their video recorders six or more hours a day, watching Western movies. Will adolescent girls brought up on a steady diet of contraband movies such as Endless Love and The Blue Lagoon still accept an arranged marriage? How will the distorted picture of Western sexual practices affect a society obsessed with female chastity? Will Saudi women be disappointed in what they perceive as a Western style of life and then become even more hostile to the Westerners who imported heretical ideas and practices into their society? These are profound questions as women struggle to define their place in a new order, an order not necessarily chosen but one that has become fused with the physical development of Saudi Arabia.